No! This Will Not Be A Treatise Upon Charles Dickens
Although Conrad can recommend him as an entertaining novelist, whom gives one an insight into the Victorian era and others besides. I, myself, was hugely surprised when I read and enjoyed "Little Dorrit", which might be a bit of a handful for the novice, as it (and several of his other novels) are two inches thick in the paperback edition. Art!
Who's that in the background?
 |
| Letitia James, keeping a proprietorial eye on things! |
This is not mere window-dressing. Dickens spent years as a court reporter when a young journalist, which gave him an insight into how the British judiciary operated, and he came across an incredible cross-section of Victorian society.
ANYWAY Conrad was about to recommend "David Copperfield" for readers curious about Dickens, simply because it is of reasonable length (so is "A Tale Of Two Cities", except it's much, much darker). This novel - by a wild coincidence, I assure you - features the splendid character Mister Wilkins Micawber, and here I add his most famous quote: "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery."
I probably need to explain that, up to decimalisation in the Seventies, British money came in pounds, shillings and pence, often abbreviated to LSD - WASH OUT YOUR FILTHY MINDS! - which is what Ol' Wilky refers to here. Art!
That'll be $41.5 million each, ta!
Yes, this all comes back to the verdict against Pimpkinhead for $83.3 million, on top of the previous award of $5 million.
You see, there is a legal wrinkle here Conrad was unaware of. In New York State, where the trial was held, if a defendant wants to appeal against a civil judgement they have to put up a bond. So far, so good, as this is common practice in other South Canadian states, too.
However - O! how I like that word - in NY the bond has to be 120% of the judgement total. Which would come to $100 million (well, $99.96 million, so I rounded up).
Oooops. Art!
The bad news doesn't stop there, because I did a little more digging about interest owed on court judgements. Remember that $5 million total? Well, with the 120% bond it became $6,000,000. Interest is charged at 9% annually on these sums, so by the time DJ Tango's appeal on the first case is heard, it will have added $540,000 to the total.
So, if the second appeal is made, it will wends it's weary way through the South Canadian judicial system, again probably taking a year to resolve, by which time it will hit the $109,000 million mark. As other, (slightly) smarter people have observed, this is an enormous amount of money that Donald Buck cannot possibly grift out of his MAGA base. A South Candian attorney on Quora predicted that Grumpy Trumpy will froth and vent on social media, and then have his attorneys reach out to see if EJC is willing to settle for 80 cents on the dollar, in return for not trying to kick the can down the road for a year or two.
It will be interesting to see what the lady decides! Art!
No! Not W C Fields. Wilkins Micawber.
The bit where Ol' Micci is relevant here is the looming judgement about Pimpkinhead's NY fraud trial. You will probably remember that the original disgorgement requested by Letitia James came in at $250 million (which is an eye-popping amount in and of itself), and was amended upwards late last year to $370 million. So, if Agent Orange does appeal the second EJC case, he's looking at $470 million, when he stated last year - to be taken with a metric ton of sodium chloride - that his organisation had lots of cash on hand, simply oodles of cash, no shortage of cash, all $400 million of it. I also recall that a commenter, and I can't remember if this was Youtube or Quora, said that the court could award MULTIPLES of the disgorgement total. $500 million? $750 million?
It will be interesting to see what Judge Engoron decides! Art?
Ol' Stevie predicts!
Edgar Rice Burroughs Would Approve
You would best know Ol' Eddie as the author of the "Tarzan" novels, and rather less so as the author of a whole clutch of fantasy novels about Mars, which his in-story Martians know as "Barsoom". His lead character was originally John Carter. Art!
Entertaining nonsense
Now, if I were to say "Varsovia!" to you, then you could well be forgiven thinking that this was a city on Barsoom. I mean, it sounds right, when you consider Barsoomian includes words like "Gathol", "Thuvia" and "Hellum"
Except not. Art!
Yes, the fair city of Warsaw. Where does "Varsovia" come from?
Romanian.
I have used the odd word of Romanian here and there, and find it oddly comprehensible, as it is similar to Italian, although it uses a whole lot of diacritical marks. So, Varsovia is exotic in it's own right (unless you're a Pole) but not quite as exotic as Barsoom.
Which, I would like to point out, was created in 1911. Imaginative chap, Ol' Eddie.
Conrad: He's The Audience You Do NOT Want
Your Humble Scribe has been watching and enjoying the first four episodes in the "Foyle's War" series, which was a very well-produced and nuanced story set from early 1940 onwards, during the Second Unpleasantness. Since this is a subject I have considerable knowledge of, it's nice to see the script (by Anthony Horowitz) hitting the right notes and getting it right.
The last - it's not realllly accurate calling them episodes as they're 90 minutes long, which is more like a film - was "Eagle Day" which is rendered "Adlertag" in Teuton, which was the first day of the Luftwaffe's all-out offensive on This Sceptred Isle. Art!
Conrad is by no means an aviation expert. I do know the basics of the Supermarine Spitfire, and the four-bladed propellor was not around at the time of the Battle Of Britain. Those Big Pokey Things protruding from the wings are 20 mm cannon, which again were not present on Spits during the BOB. This means we are probably looking at a Mk IX Spit. Art!
This is the Mk I version the Brylcreem Boys were flying in mid-1940, being re-armed and re-fuelled. Art!
Note absence of Big Pokey Things. These are 0.303" calibre Browning machine guns, having their ammo belts replaced.
HOWEVER! it is quite unfair and ridiculous to expect a television program of modest means to find an authentic 60-year old Spitfire still in flying condition. You go with what you've got. Besides which, not one person in a thousand would notice or know the difference.
Still, I wear my Hair-Splitting Pedant medal with pride.
"City In The Sky"
So far, the Toxic Ants have merely bitten the unfortunate alien Mirkan 93 as he endeavours to escape from humans and discovery. They have driven him far off course, mind.
Giving up on trying to destroy them and with his pocket battery down to
near empty, Mirkan 93 slithered on at a killing pace, all of two miles per
hour. He tried the radio again – still
jammed. And what was that ahead? A writhing mass of hair – no, a mass of the
ants, clustered on top of an object completely obscured by their bodies. When he closed on it the hidden thing turned
out to be a stinking piece of carrion, dragged there by some outback animal.
Danger! Free-standing water! chirped his
computer, indicating straight ahead. The
ground sloped down beyond that rotting piece of meat, probably into a running
collection of water that the indigenes called a “river”. Mirkan 93 looked around uneasily, feeling
that he’d been forced into a bottleneck.
He carefully edged forward, intending to crawl along the ant-free ground
beyond that meat -
The ground gave way beneath him in a cloud of dust and stones, gravity
pitching him forward and downward, into a pool of shallow muddy water, cool and
gritty underneath the riverbank. Mirkan
93 screamed in mortal fear, inhaled ounces of water and began to haemorrhage
internally whilst blistering and peeling externally. His death-throes were strangely slow, more a
gentle quivering than an expected thrashing, and the last thing he saw was the
ambush group of dingoes that had dug away the riverbank underfoot to drop him
into water. One of them retrieved the
piece of carrion they had used as bait to attract the toxic ants, once they had
damaged their nests and provoked a predictable enraged response. Slowly chewing, the dingo looked on the dying
Not-Good with satisfaction. A dead
Not-Good with no dingo suffering as much as a singed whisker. The pack exchanged satisfied barks and
growls.
Dingos 1 Aliens 0
Nice doggie!
Finally -
It looks like the constitutional into Lesser Sodom is on for later this afternoon, the rains having stopped. Printing this may jinx me. Wish me dry-shod luck!
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