A Spanner Darkly

NO!  That Is Not A Typo!

Good lord aloft, here we are after over 10 years <winces slightly at this total> of blogging and you still cannot understand that the English language dances to Conrad's sneer of cold command.  If it is spelled thus then that is deliberate.  I also have to over-ride Blogger's South Canadian spell-checker, which highlights words it doesn't like, such as 'Labour' or 'Colour' or 'British Victories In The Revolutionary War'.

     ANYWAY Conrad can read your minds, and can tell you're expecting a screed about Philip K. Dick's "A Scanner Darkly", his often darkly comic tale about future drug abuse and detection.  Art!

     The film is a weird and wonderful Rotoscoped animation that, perhaps, best  captures Ol' Phil's paranoid, drug-fuelled, gadget-laden Weltanschaung like no other.

     Of course - obviously! - that has absolutely nothing to do with today's Intro, which is where we got nuts.  Art!

Not the edible kind

     This tale centres (NOTE CORRECT SPELLING) around wrenches, which, for your information, are defined as: "A spanner, esp. one with adjustable jaws" so the title is justified.

     Now for another sorry tale of Manglement.  Are we sitting comfortably?

     Okay, imagine a light engineering firm, with about 35 employees, where OP has been working for almost 5 years.  The owner was a stingy sod who wouldn't provide two types of wrench used at all workstations, so OP went out and bought them - 20 in total.  Total expenditure about $100.  Art!

     There was no reimbursement forthcoming, so OP took them all home and spray-painted them lime green, as evidence that they were OP's property.

     So far, so pound-wise penny-foolish.  Where the real manglement came in is when the owner hired his sister to work for him.  She was a spiteful, hateful, obnoxious, petty person who probably passed the port to the right as well, so he simply had to place her in HR.

     Ooops.

    One-third of the employees left within the space of two months, as her reputation preceded her, and not in any good way.  Art!

     The business then had to scramble to find new employees, whose positions were advertised at $5 per hour above existing employees.  That's how desperate they were, and it went down like a Blue-Ringed Octopus in a jacuzzi.  Thus, OP and the only other two remaining long-term employees went to HR to bargain for an hourly raise.

     Owner's sister immediately fired them.  How this would cope with being very short-staffed is anyone's guess, but it probably gave Bokebag Sister a short power trip.  OP, too, took a short trip, to collect all their personal possessions - including all the lime green wrenches - before leaving.  Art!

     As you might expect, firing the only remaining long-term employees who knew how to do everything, and whom had been running departments in lieu of management, backfired wonderfully.  Boakbag Sister also sicced (I believe this is the correct term) the police on OP for stealing all the lime green wrenches, in a case that rapidly went nowhere since OP still had the receipts.  So, the owner either had to suffer production loss or replace all 20 wrenches, and after 5 years they'd cost a lot more than $100.

     But hist! for the tale is a long way from over.

     Bokebag Sister also ignored the state's requests for information about OP's unemployed status, which is a legal obligation upon businesses in South Canada when they fire a person.  Stick a pin in this one.  Art!

     OP, and presumably those other two fired employees, were flooded with frantic, despairing e-mails from the owner about How To Do This, and How To Order That, because he had no idea, his Bokebag Sister had no idea, and none of the remaining new hires knew anything about anything.

     Nor was that all.  HR at the business (I got tired of typing out "Boakbag Sister") dragged their feet about providing statutory information to the State Labour Board, who then imposed a hefty fine for what OP called 'file stuffing', which I think means providing data compressed into incomprehensibility, and failing to provide evidentiary information.  No number given, so we shall assume $5,000 each.

     The business still had to pay all three employees employment benefit.  Guessing again, say $5,000 for three people over six months.  Art!

     Then comes the cherry orchard on top.  OP's case worker from the SLB gave them advice on how to sue the business for both unpaid leave not taken when fired, and for wrongful termination to boot.  The state did the prosecution so it cost OP $0, and they won.  Presumably legal constraints prevented them from gleefully posting the total, but it was a 'tidy sum', which Conrad has checked up on, and the lower bound is $5,000 (that sum again!) going up to $40,000.  We shall go for the middle ground and guess at $20,000.  Once again, add in the other two fired employees, because Conrad cannot see OP not telling them what they'd been up to in court.

     What's the damage?   Our BOOJUM! guesstimate come out at $85,000 and, although it might have been less, it might equally have been a lot more.

     There was no news about the business going under, so it very likely survived, if in straitened circumstances, and possibly with new HR.  After all, you don't want to employ a person who throws a wrench in the works.

     Or, as I think OP is female, a wench in the works*.

Mister Clumsy Strikes Again

<sigh> I just dropped a plate and my 'Callan' mug after walloping my tray into the bannisters and now both are in bits.  I even had to hoover the hallway to avoid leaving sharp pieces of chipped enamel, because if Edna scraped her tootsies trotting up and down, Your Humble Scribe would also be getting scraped, mostly off the kitchen floor.

     That's not all.  I managed to knock my table lamp onto the floor and - Art!

     It still functions as you can see, and no, that gaping hole twixt base and socket ought not to be there.  Memo to self: get a new lightbulb on Wednesday's big shop.

     These both during the entirely abstemious month of April.

The Haul

Conrad has bought three more books, hurrah! and may even keep one of them.  Art!

     There should have been another, David Lister's "Defeating the Panzer-Stuka Menace" about British spigot weapons of the Second Unpleasantness, HOWEVER (and not in a good way) Abebooks notified me that it was suddenly unavailable, so I shall have to look out for a re-order.  Art!

Grrrrrr

     As for what I did get, TTK is one of the works in Professor John Buckley's biblio in "Monty's Men", which is recommendation enough.  It's not all Allied accounts, either, and even includes a chapter on the Romanian army of the Second Unpleasantness.  Yes, they fought in the SE, on the Eastern Front.

     "Valedictory" is a novel, based on real events, and rather encapsulates the bitterness felt by a lot of Poles about their country being sold down the river after the Second Unpleasantness ended.  Yes, well, it's rather hard to argue with the Red Army when it's camped out in occupation on the other side of Occupied Germany and the cons <Cont. Page 94>

     "Feed" is the first part of a trilogy, which already means Conrad is looking at it with suspicion.  If you can't wrap up a simple story in 600 pages then your editor is a lazy waffle-bottom.  We shall see.

"City In The Sky"

Ace and Kirwin are lying-up, spying on the Lithoi's base-ship and seeing what frantic activity is going on.

The wavering image came into focus, revealing a giant grey mushroom humping up over the plains, concealed by a vast plastic cover.  Slinking silver shapes moving painfully slowly proved to be the Lithoi, covered against Earth’s weather, moving to and around a spindly metal construction being erected out beyond the canopy that overlaid their base.  Small motorised tractors also helped shift materials from a cavernous doorway in the base, moving as slowly as the alien lizards.

     Rather than work on the platform themselves, the aliens allowed their tractors to do the manual handling, carrying, laying and slotting metal components together.  One tractor slowly skirted the hexagonal platform, putting up tall plastic poles at each corner, until another concealing plastic canopy could be hauled over them.

     Kirwin took over observation, in time to see one of the Lithoi tugging at a corner of the plastic cover over the platform; a stream of mud or water came dripping off the shroud from where it had been lying on damp ground and played all over the alien, which went rigid before keeling over.  Only when another Lithoi used a tractor to haul the limp body away did Kirwin realise the paralysed lizard had died of shock brought on by exposure to water. 

     You can see why they kept well clear of This Sceptred Isle.

Finally -

People have been pestering as to what happened to the latest Motley.  Art!

     I hope that satisfies.

*  Sorry not sorry.

Keystone Chops

NO!  No, That Is Not A Typo!

Jovus Tapdancing Grudd On A Petrol-Powered Pogo-stick, am I not skilled in the English language?  If the title is spelled like that then the spelling is deliberate.  DELIBERATE!  

     I suppose I shall now have to explicate about the "Keystone Cops", because they are probably a little obscure by now in terms of popular culture, having come out of the black-and-white silent era.  Their glory years were from 1912 to 1917.  Art!

     Here is one ensemble, as they used to have various comic actors take a role; above to starboard you can see Fatty Arbuckle.  The KCs onscreen were hilariously incompetent slapstick idiots, who would always manage to slip on the banana skin, tread on the rake or fall down the open manhole.  Art!

     Studios back in the early years of film were quite cavalier with stunts and safety, and what you see above is probably exactly what it looks like, with the actors/stuntmen holding on grimly above a sheer drop.  Art!

What they ought to have done here is shoot it in reverse, with the car being dragged backwards by cables, and the tram moving away from it.  This would have been expensive and time-consuming so they just winged it for real.

     Of course this has nothing to do with the rest of this Intro, Conrad was just introducing the concept of a 'Keystone', because why use a single sentence when fifty will do?

     ANYWAY, let us bring in an architectural drawing.  Art!

     You can see how important to an arch's integrity a keystone is, since it forms the final structural element that holds all the other curving masonry in place.  No keystone, no arch.  Certainly not in anywhere remotely prone to earthquakes.
     Thus we come to another tale of South Canadian manglement.  Don't worry, all will become clear.  Art!

     I Googled 'Non-lethal weapons' and this array came up.  Note our old friend the caltrop to centre port.  A few of these look extremely lethal, to be honest.
      This little lot is relevant because Original Poster worked at a small company of thirty workers, that won a contract to make a non-lethal police weapon, which they were cautiously and coyly careful to not categorise.

     They did explain that the two brothers who owned the business were wont to give management jobs to family members who were in no way equipped to do them.  Family members, it seems, who would have a hard time walking and breathing at the same time.  Manglement, in other words.

     Anti-Castor & Pollux (them being the opposite of the Heavenly Twins) appointed a family member as the business's Scheduling Manager, their principal qualification being that they knew absolutely sweet Fanny Adams about schedules.  Art!

This is a Yule Shed.  "Shed Yule".   You know, how South Canadians pronounce - O I give up

     Yule Shed Expert promptly sacked one worker for wanting two weeks leave, and a team leader because they objected to the ridiculous work schedules being put out.

     Two people having got the chop.  Keep a five-bar gate of this metric.

     When OP, the process expert, was asked to quantify how many Non-Lethal Weapons could be produced per diem.  They said 100, which would still leave them time to work on all their other products.  Yule Shed Expert promptly ordered OP and their team to make 200 per day, keep up with all the other products and not to dare do overtime.  Whilst now being two people down.  Art!

     Inevitably, a backlog developed, which meant Yule Shed Expert came shrieking at OP, complaining about <insert drivel here> cats and dogs living together.

     "What about the Key -" I hear you quibble.

     PATIENCE! we're getting there.  OP was looking at a backlog of thirty-eight hours work on the NLWs, with only eight hours to work on them.  They explained, a tad sarkily, that they were limited by the time-space continuum and couldn't physically do the work.

     So - YSE fired them on the spot for being a smartbottom.

     Three people down.

     How this would remedy the backlog is anyone's question, and the other employees did not like OP, who had been there for ages, getting the heave-ho in such cavalier fashion.  So, by the end of the week five more employees had walked, without giving notice.  South Canadian management like being able to fire people on the spot, which is mostly legal in all states, but the corollary is that employees can also quit on the spot, which manglement tends to bitch and moan about.

     Eight people down.

     OP doesn't specify what date this sacking happened, so we can guess perhaps mid-year.

     By the end of the month another ten people had left.

     Eighteen people down.

     By year end nearly all the original thirty staff had left, meaning that the business had to contend with a shortage of staff, an increasing backlog of orders, unhappy customers and the need to hire new staff and train them whilst dealing with the above.  OP was informed that the manglement got worse over this period.  Art!

     Two years after OP being sacked the business went bankrupt.

     NOW do you see the importance of a keystone worker and what happens when an incompetent nincompoop gives them the chop?

Special K

By which Conrad means the continuing economic saga of Ruffian woe and despond as related by Big Konstantin Samoilov.  We move beyond simple demographics and into wider economic matters.

     As he relates, Ruffia is now effectively locked into an arms race with the global West (which includes Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand), which is running at unsustainable levels in Ruffia, where one-third of the annual budget is now devoted to war production.  Art!

     The West is also ramping up production, to as much as 2.5%, which is easily sustainable and can outstrip Ruffia if even more is invested.

     Konstantin's predictions (remember, this guy is a certified accountant and economist and knows whereof he speaks): 

1)  People will get poorer.  Inflation is increasing, so the official line is to ignore it.  Interest rates have been stuck at 16% for ages.  The ruble is depreciating despite massive interventions to prop it up.  Art!

Ruffian petrol prices 2024

2)  More catastrophes!  Over the winter, 40 Ruffian cities declared emergencies.  These were disasters with utilities.  Now, in the rainy season, we are seeing floods.  In summer it will be fires.  The Ministry of Emergency Situations, that would deal with these Biblical plagues, is understaffed.  Art!

Come home to a real fire - live in a Ruffian forest!

3)  No Reserves.  The National Wealth Fund will run out in 4 months, after which the state is simply going to print money, thus stoking inflation, and the end of war with Ukraine will trigger a decades-long recession.  Big K countered the rosy International Monetary Fund predictions about growth because they just accept whatever Ruffian government data they are supplied with.  Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld has pointed this glaring stupidity out, too.

     Perhaps the most worrying numbers for Peter The Average are the projected Ruffian demographics for the year 2100, where the current population of 140 million has shrunk to 67 million.

     Still, vodka sales are through the roof.  Silver linings and all that.

An Unfortunate Truth

Last year Conrad was rooting for the Ground-Launched Small-Diameter Bomb, a cheap yet accurate and long-ranged missile system developed by Saab and Boeing, of which great things were expected.  Art!

     It seems to have been a dismal failure in Ukraine.  For one, the Ruffians have apparently been able to jam it's GPS systems.  Their operators were not well-trained in their use, and maintenance issues have bedevilled them.  The Ukes tested a few close to their front lines to see if they worked, and after that - nothing.

     O well.  BOOJUM! could have kept quiet about this, but we have a reputation to live down to.

"City In The Sky"

Ace and Captain Kirwin are scouting for aliens.  And finding them!

     ‘How hot does it get?  It must be at least sixty degrees already,’ she asked shortly before noon.

     Taking pity on her, Ace stopped them for a couple of hours whilst they swigged a bottle of water each and their dingo escort panted in the shadows.  Ace then had to explain about wind, and why shadows moved over time, and what dust was.

     Eventually they moved off, dingo leading.  It took the rest of the day to reach what the Captain called a “lying-up” position; a suitable shallow dip in the ground with enough cover from scrubby sedge to conceal them from inquisitive eyes.  At this distance the Lithoi base could only be seen via binoculars, and the captain had an impressive high-tec digital pair that she let Ace look through.  Not only that, she produced a small telescopic tripod from her rucksack and set the binoculars up on them.

     ‘It’ll keep our view steady and focussed,’ she said.  ‘You take a look. This is all new to me!’

     Ace peered into the unfamiliar instrument, seeing the distant landscape overlaid with a glowing green grid, and flickering numbers that indicated distance.

     The prosaic and not-so-prosaic.

I Object, Your Honour

Conrad came across this sidebar on the browser yesteryon - Art!

     This is a still from "Chopping Mall", which is indeed very cheesy, and you know exactly what you're going to get from the title alone, so you can't call it unexpectedly void of value.

     However - Art!

     I OBJECT!  This is a cult classic in every sense of the word - how many other films feature Thomas Pynchon's "Yoyodyne" as a location? - without any negative aspects.  Cinemablend, you are on notice <eyes Remote Nuclear Detonator>.

Finally -

The whole weekend has gone by and I've not played another turn of "Siege", which I shall have to remedy.  It's not looking good for Sir Ralphs, we have to say; Sir Wulfric's crossbowmen were rolling all 1s last turn.

Bird Sweat!

That's The Other Official BOOJUM! Swear Here

I just realised I haven't done my brace of Codewords for today, which pace has so far gotten me up to Page 156 out of 165.  Hardly stuff to stir the senses I agree, but that's as racy as we get around here.  Art!

     It's a MAUSOLEUM, one of the solutions.  Just so we're clear.  Yours for as little as £10,000.  Wow, just think of all the books you could purchase with that lot!  Although, come to think of it, you'd need external accommodation to house so many volumes.

     ANYWAY let us compile today's Sunday retrospective, and see what nonsense Blogger's Traffic Stats will throw up for us this time.

2023

BOOJUM!: Misery Loves Company (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2022

BOOJUM!: Conrad: If He's Breathe-y He's Seethy (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2021

BOOJUM!: Kissy Kissy Bangy Bangy (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2020

BOOJUM!: You're Not Going To Thank Me For This (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2019

BOOJUM!: The Artful Dogger (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2018

BOOJUM!: An Embarrassment Of Glitches (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2017

BOOJUM!: Is It A Bird? Is It A Plane? (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2016

BOOJUM!: Fore Seasons (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2015

BOOJUM!: Vanderlyle Crybaby G-No! Dogs.Sorry, I Meant Dogs (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2014

BOOJUM!: Conrad Laughs At Danger! Ha Ha Goes He - (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

Demongraphics

No!  That Is Not A Typo, It's An Hilarious Pun

Because I say so.  So, as we frequently do on the blog, I shall be going into a little etymology before we get into the meat of the matter.  First of all, consider the prefix "Demo-", which derives from the Greek <snark yark> for "People" or "Population".

     That is insufferably boring, so let's instead lead with "Demolition", which comes from the Latin <spit hack> "Demoliri", which means "To cast down" and is itself a portmanteau of "De-" and "Moliri" (which means "Mass").  Art!

     If I wasn't an internationally-renowned blogger and apprentice World Dictator, this is  one job I'd genuinely love doing.  This is Controlled Demolition Inc. doing a demolition on the 'Trojan' cooling tower.  The trick is to collapse the structure in question into either it's own footprint, or onto unoccupied land.  Art!

     "Demon", on the other hand, comes from Greek <booh hiss> "Daimon", which means "Spirit", and it's not until it got adopted by the Romans that it's Latin equivalent, "Daemon", became associated with eeeeeevil.

     Here an aside.  Don't whine so, the Remote Nuclear Detonator needs a test run.  Okay, in "Stranger Things" our intrepid band of heroes (before they added girls) are playing "Dungeons And Dragons", and come face to face with the dreaded 'Demogorgon'.  Art!

The creepy real-world version

 
     Now, "Gorgon" comes from the Greek for "Terrible", so are they are up against a "Terrible Person"?

     ANYWAY of course this has hardly any bearing at all on the real substance of this Intro, which is <drum roll>

     DEMOGRAPHICS

     More specifically, Ruffian demographics.  We did cover this subject a couple of months ago, using data from that Youtube stalwart "Joe Blogs".  Today, two months on, we are using data from that other Youtube stalwart, Big Konstantin from "Inside Russia".  Art!

     Big K - no slandering here, he's a big chap as you'd imagine a stereotypical Ruffian to be - led with a few eye-watering facts.  There is currently a 47% employment shortfall in Ruffia.  It is now legal to employ 14-year olds in Tatarstan factories.  Workers are now being forced to do overtime.  Ruffian women are now having to carry out heavy labour.

     Is it still all going according to plan, Putinpot?

     When we did our last blog entry about this -  

BOOJUM!: A Force To Work Is Not A Workforce (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

      - unemployment was at 3%, which Peter The Average crowed about as being a symbol of success, when it really appears to have been suck cess.  Art!

Cess about to be sucked

     Big K pointed out that the current rate has now dropped to 2.8%, the lowest in Ruffian history.

     THIS IS NOT A GOOD THING!  Drawing on his economics background, he said that in a healthy economy a rate of 5 - 7% is considered acceptable.  The current 2.8% rate means they have run out of people to employ.

     Ooops.

     How did this shortage come about?  O I thought you'd never ask!

1)  War In Ukraine: This has gobbled up, and continues to gobble up, hundreds of thousands of Ruffians.  There were the original 190,000 invaders, plus the 350,000 mobilised in September 2022, and the 400,000 contractors since then.  The casualties are getting on for 500,000 and the mobiks stuck in Ukraine have been told they either die there or Russia wins, however many years that takes.  These people are no longer part of the workforce.  Art!

A definite 'fixer-upper'

2)  Emigration: Big K is a tale here himself.  He reckons as many as 3 million Ruffians left prior to the mobilisation of September 2022, the vast majority being males avoiding conscription.  Consequently these men's families have now emigrated to join them, further decreasing the available labour force.  Big K mentioned that there had been another surge in emigration of late.  He also pointed out that the majority of these people are 'The Cream Of The Crop' in that they are highly qualified or skilled or both, and are thus a double deficit to the Ruffian working demographic.

     That tale of himself; he left Ruffia in September 2022 to avoid being drafted, and now lives in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, with his family.  He no longer has to be subtle about criticising the Kremlin or the Gremlin In The Kremlin, even though he rather flew under the FSB's radar due to his vlogs being in English.  His fellow expatriates have formed the 'Tashkent Breakfast Club', which now numbers one thousand people.  Art!

3)  The Military-Industrial Complex: Our man in Tashkent says that there are now 2 separate Ruffian economies: the civilian and the military.  Military businesses are paying up to seven times the salary of civilian enterprises ($2,000 per month as opposed to $300), because they can simply ask the government for more money and, since they are working on vital military equipment for the war effort, they'll get it.  This means workers from civilian industries move to the military sector, and consumer products decline in numbers, with no rebound.  

     Well, I do have more from Big K, but we're about 2/3 of the way through the whole of today's blog, so I shall put it aside for tomorrow.  Believe me, it's not a comforting read for those stuck in Mordor!

Return Of The Swivel-Eyed Loonwaffles

If they ever went away.  Truly, there are people out there who should avoid posting on social media, as it merely proves that they are, without a doubt, incredibly stupid.  Case in point.  Art!

     Conrad, perhaps defying my assertion above, just had to jump in with a snarky response.

Rich

and 25 others liked your reply

Ah. I see. Russian nanotechnology.

     In fact it's from a 'valve-core' as evidenced by another poster on that Tweet.  Art!

     Why you'd need to inject a comparatively huge piece of electronics into a person when you can just track their phone beats me.

The Biter Bit

One can argue that this isn't about Politics, but rather morals and ethics.  Whichever or whatever, let us pull a sidebar heading from "The Daily Beast" whilst our subscription is still running.  Art!

     That's Edith there, not Noem, just in case you're a vengeful South Canadian canine cosseter with a closet full of guns.  I shall let Edith have the last word ("VP" here means "Vice President" and not "Vile Person", which she already has a lock on).

But with this latest controversy, and the ensuing backlash from members of her own party, Noem may as well take her VP ambition out back, and shoot it.

Now, 'Geography King' Will Make You Feel Better

Also known as 'Kyle', we've featured a few of his vlogs in the past, and here's another pick from his "11 Interesting Natural Features & Locations In The U.S."  Art!

     This is Capulin Volcano in New Mexico.  As you may have guessed from the extensive tree coverage, it's an extinct cinder-cone volcano, which last launched lava 50,000 years ago.  GK makes the point that it's one of the most easily accessible volcanoes in South Canada, with a road that circles round from base to summit.  Art!

     One reason it's such an outstanding geological and volcanic feature is that it stands alone, out in the middle of a wide plain, completely separated from any other mountains and with no other corresponding volcanoes anywhere nearby.  Art!

"City In The Sky"

The Doctor is now trying to cope not only with proofing Arcology One against atmospheric transit, but the alien Lithoi busily preparing to carry out evil mischief Downstairs.

     ‘The Captain wants to - ’ began Ace before getting cut off.

     ‘NO!’ barked the Doctor.  ‘No nonsense about shooting or missiles.  You might very well destroy the launcher, but you will absolutely certainly be killed yourselves.’

     Pursing his lips, he realised his pre-emptive trickery for the sphere’s final descent needed to be wheeled out now.

     ‘Ace, you and the captain need to return to New Eucla and that kit we picked up in Adelaide.  It needs to be used as soon as you can manage.’

     ‘Righto!’ agreed the young woman, cheerily.  ‘Are you staying out of trouble up there?’

     ‘No,’ replied the Doctor.  ‘After my flyswatter, I need to work on a hammer.’

 

     En route to what the humans presumed must be the alien’s base, the trio of Ace, Kirwin and dingo travelled well during darkness, ironically, because when daylight came the American became very disoriented and her pace slowed.

     ‘It’s the sky,’ she muttered when Ace asked what was the matter.  ‘There’s just so much of it.’

     ‘Put your helmet back on,’ suggested the young woman.  Kirwin did and felt slightly less confused, though her head felt horribly sweaty as the sun rose.

      Big sky country, matey!