When Coming Of Age Brings On Rage

I Made That Up All By Myself

I shall pause for you to be properly appreciative <preens moustache>.  Yes, here in the Western world - No!  Nothing to do with "Mackenna's Gold" this time - we place a lot of emphasis on young people becoming adults at age eighteen.  You can legally drink, drive and get married (not entirely sure about that last one) without needing parental permission.  You can also get conscripted, which is probably just as life-changing if your government decides a Special Idiotic Operation is just what's needed.  Get me, being all controversial and shizzle.  Art!

     The flip side of this is that one's parents are no longer legally required to put up with you, and many an unruly, freshly-minted eighteen-year old has discovered that dear old Mum and Dad (or Mom and Pop) are washing their hands of said no-longer-kiddo.

     Which is where we begin with today's Intro, written by Original Poster with a couple of updates.  OP and wife owned a farm, and although OP wasn't explicit, he's very well-off thanks to both luck and hard work.  Having a farm meant lots of space to have enormous family get-togethers, 60 plus people to the total from all over that part of South Canada.

     OP's brother, Bill, is where the problems started.  His first wife died, leaving their daughter Alice rather isolated as there were no relatives of hers in the whole of South Canada.  Art!

A farm

     Bill then marries Tanya and they have 3 more kids.  Alice is neglected and unwanted, as Tanya dislikes her.  She didn't get birthday presents, go on excursions or get extra classes at college as that would require money.  In fact she had been sent to work on OPs farm, as the rest of her family wanted her out of the way over the summer holidays.

     Then Alice hit 18.  Prior to this, Bill had been boasting that he was throwing her out of the house the minute this happened, to "teach her responsibility".  Instead, OP and his wife showed up at their residence, took Alice and all her possessions and left. 

     Ooops.

     Bill and Tanya were steaming with rage at - Alice leaving their demesne.  Wait, what?  They informed everyone in the extended family that they wouldn't be attending any of the events at OP's farm, and a clutch of people took their side, because bottomholes love company.  So, they decided they weren't going to attend the events, either.  Art!

Another cutesy-pie farm

     One of OP's defining characteristics is his stubbornness; he gloated that not having to feed as many greedy relatives was, perhaps, not the flex they thought it was, and then, to rub it in, he said he'd use the saved money to provide petrol money to those attending long-distance.  He and brother Bill had heated words about the situation, such that Tanya drove over the next morning to explain: the threat to kick Alice out was only to "scare her straight" and hadn't been real.  So, imagine their shock when they arrive home to find it absent Alice.

     The next update came a year later.  Alice was now doing an engineering course at university, playing hockey and still living with OP.  Art!

I cannot get enough of South Canadian farms

     Things between Bill and OP got so heated a few weeks into this business that a 'peace bond' got applied, which severely restricted Bill and Tanya's ability to engage with OP, his wife or Alice.  This ran out after 6 months and Bill has been genuinely attempting to be fatherly to Alice, a process he has to make a lot of progress in to succeed.  Tanya still seems to be an utter cow - ha! do you see wh - O you do.

     The next Big Family Event OP staged on his farm only brought 26 people, rather than the 60 or more of previously, but enough people submitted to greed not pride and the next one hit 40 attendees.

     Coming of age - ain't it great!  Art?

More cowbell! and farms.

Here's A Drama-Farmer

Ha!  I amuse even myself sometimes.  Art!

     O Rly?

     I'm afraid it's accumulated a bit more since the judgement, as you can see another $3 million.  Goodness me, whatever will happen?  Conrad unsure but has laid in extra supplies of popcorn.  Art!

One of these is a horse's bottom.
The other is Dobbin.

     O the incisive satire that graces BOOJUM!

Meanwhile, In The Land Where The Shadows Lie -

 - and so do the politicians and state television, Ruffia, I have more details about the ongoing Ukrainian drone campaign against Ruffian oil refineries.  Art!

     This is a graphic from "Forbes" showing only the major refineries.  As is obvious here, they cluster to the western region of Ruffia because that was closer to their export markets in Europe.  There are 20 west of the Urals, and 10 scattered over Siberia.

     What you might call a 'target-rich' environment, hmmm?

     Ruffian oil production has been cut by 12% in the past few days.  Their daily loss of profit is AT LEAST $75 million per day, because that's how much they'd make exporting crude oil.  If the cuts are of refined products then we're talking possibly as much as $150 million per day.  That's $45 billion per annum.  Art!

"Vote for me or I'll kill you."

     I hope he enjoys his victory charade, it's much later than he thinks.

A Footnote To The Above

Thanks to the inestimable "Joe Blogs" for highlighting the Ukrainian "Brave 1" program.  This was a government-funded initiative to enlist Ukrainian companies and businesses into military production.  The Ukes are good at improvising, and equally adept at innovating, and you can see the results in the array of drones they've developed.  Art!

     This thing has the range to hit Moscow, and enough explosive payload to demolish a distillate tower.  Art!

     "Toloka" seems to mean a rural collective assembled to carry out work at speed in mass, so whoever named this one was being clever.

      The kicker is, all this hardware has been developed, designed and planned from a start-up budget of £2 million for fiscal year 2023.  Brave 1 in 2024 has been allocated £30 million.  This is the way conflicts of the future will be fought, and we're seeing it develop in  real time right now.

     Much, much later.

"City In The Sky"

The Doctor reveals his cunning yet risky plan.  Dog treats!

     ‘Here’s an explanation, Billy, and Mike.  I made a considerable mistake, assuming that the Lithoi would only have a single flying weapon.  They had two.  They weren’t operated by a crew-member, instead they ran by remote control.  I was wrong about that, too.  If that Dilly hadn’t appeared – and no, I really didn’t plan that – we’d have been in serious trouble.’

     Mike rubbed his blistered skin and shrugged.

     ‘You weren’t to know,’ he said, at which the diminutive, dapper man froze into a posture that reminded both men of their parents about to inflict corporal punishment.

     ‘I didn’t know.  I could have guessed,’ he said, very quietly.

     ‘So what’s your plan?’ asked Billy.

     The Doctor shrugged.

     ‘The Lithoi know a great deal about us.  We know practically nothing about them, and I intend to address that imbalance.  I’m going to take a dozen kangaroo steaks out into the bush and track down the dingoes for an exchange of information.’

     Mike stared and Billy frowned.  The young man didn’t even begin to debate the matter that dingoes were wild animals, a species of dog, and they might be able to communicate between themselves but human beings were certainly not able to talk to them!

     ‘You can’t do that!  They don’t go looking for humans, the dingoes, but if you go trespassing on their territory they’ll likely tear you to bits!’

     Who said anything about being human?

Finally -

I need to douse the glim in here to try and get decent screenshots from my Ridiculously Large Monitor.  Laterz, people!