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.