Your Humble Scribe Is Both Punning And Accurate
"Forsooth!" I hear you exclaim. "What strange musical rabbit-hole are we headed down today?"
Wellllll this isn't necessarily about music, you see. Art!
This is the trend-setting French publication "Metal Hurlant", which was a comic for grown ups. I've used a SFW cover illo here as some of them are quite saucy. The title translates as "Howling Metal" and guess what, the South Canadian market took to the version published over there as "Heavy Metal" which originally featured strips from the French magazine, translated. If you look at the title credits above, I've got trade paperbacks by both Bilal and Moebius <preens slightly>. Art!
Hmmm barely SFW. Perhaps I should have included this in my items about 'Robot Warfare'.
You might have been wondering about today's title. Well, 'Mettle' is an alternative word for courage or chutzpah, and it also derives as an alternative spelling for 'Metal'. We're going to be dealing with metal. Art!
Okay, the Original Poster for this torrid tale of torment lived in an isolated house up in the mountains of West Virginia, where it was still forested and your daily visitors might include trash pandas - 'racoons' if we're being formal - bobcats, coyotes and bears.
Also burglars.
One night, as OP and wifey were trying to get to sleep, he heard a commotion on the back porch, and then the sound of glass breaking in the garage door. First response: grab a shotgun (this is South Canada after all). Second response: call the sheriff's office directly, as it was quicker than calling 911. Art!
OP, who is a prudent chap, noticed once he got outside that the Perp's truck was still there with the engine running. So, he nicked the keys. The Sheriff and a state police trooper showed up and all three entered the garage, where they found the burglar passed out blind drunk on an old seat OP had in his garage. Sorry, no gun battles, just a lot of swearing from Perp.
Whom both police officers recognised. This is never a good thing for a criminal. Art!
Pedal to the mettle. We'll come back to this.
At first the Perp was only looking at breaking and entering and trespassing, but things rather snowballed from there, as OP learned from Kevin. Ol' Kev had been the person to sell them their secluded domicile two years before.
Two years before that, Perp had been Bottomhole Nephew to Ol' Kev, renting the property OP eventually bought. BHP got evicted by his uncle when he started beating up his partner, and was due to appear in court on assault charges.
Surprise! BHP jumped bail and fled the state, leaving a cousin out $850 bail money. Art!
Things got progressively worse for BHP. He was originally locked up in the town drunk tank, from where he called Ol' Kev and told him to come bail him out. Ol' Kev didn't bother. When BHP requesting a bail hearing it was rejected out of hand by the judge. Yeah, jumping bail might have them do that.
So, BHP ended up with charges of trespassing, criminal trespass, breaking and entering, driving under the influence, property damage, no driving licence, no insurance, the original 4-year old assault charges and, as a Commenter added, crossing state lines in pursuit of a felony, which might make the charges federal in nature. As another person calculated, he's going to be behind bars for possibly 15 years after that lot. Art!
The reason BHP came back to a house that ceased to be his 4 years previously is that 1) He was a fool and 2) He was an extremely drunk fool and 3) He wanted an engine block and transmission he'd left in the garage, so he could flog it.
Ho ho ho, BHP. Your uncle, Ol' Kev, a month after kicking you out, put your garage contents into a skip (or dumpster) and sold them to a scrap metal merchant for $850 bucks, which covered the bail money. So you have 5,475 days in clink to contemplate your own bottomholery.
The Sadim Touch
That is, the reverse of the Midas touch. You know who has this in spades? Donald Judas Trump. Everything he touches withers and dies. Like the life and career of Rudy Giuliani. Art!
"I'M MELTING!"
"Farron Balanced" listed a procession of misery for Ol' Rudy. He's not having a terribly wonderful time of it. The list includes: a lien placed on his Palm Beach apartment for taxes totalling $500,000, imposed by the IRS, an organisation that will pursue him to the grave and beyond for the money; the $148 million defamation pay-out, which is what forced him into bankruptcy in the first place; a lawsuit alleging harassment and wage theft from a former employee; law licence suspension with disbarment looming in the future; a lawsuit filed by Robert Costello for an unpaid legal bill of $1,400,000; future indictments in Georgia and Arizona about election fraud and interference.
To cap all this, his radio show got cancelled. I wonder if he still thinks being Pumpkinhead's criminal minion was worth it? Art!
The condo in question
For those unfamiliar, a 'lien' is a legal tool or injunction that prevents the sale of any property it is imposed on. So Rudy can't even flog his flat for funds*.
Enough Text! Pictures Of Starships!
Again, thanks to the "Interstellar Research Centre" for bothering to put up all these pictures, although a bit of explanation about a few of the weirder and more exotic ones would have helped. Art!
This is another 'Daedalus', except it hails from "Stargate" and is undeniably a warship. Expository blurb describes it has having 32 (!) railguns, alongside missiles and a number of smaller interceptor craft. Now we know more than we did five minutes ago. In the second picture it seems to be cruising through a debris field of less-fortunate opponents. Plus, is it just me, or do those side-hangars give it a rather "Gal-" nah I must be imagining it.
"City In The Sky"
Low jinks are about to unfold.
The Lithoi
guard’s e-collar picked up the intruder before the guard even swivelled his
head aside. A human being inside the
baseship didn’t feature in the software’s parameters, so there was no blaze of
laser and sudden death of the intruder.
When the lizard finally directed it’s eyes at the intruder, it witnessed
a human, dressed in strange clothing and carrying a device for shielding from
water. One of the human’s arms was
extended, bearing a yellow plastic device that resembled a caricature of a semi-acquatic
terrestrial avian.
That a
human had penetrated it’s baseship staggered the lizard, which was all the time
needed for the Doctor to pull his Donald Duck Super-Soaker’s trigger and spray
the creature with a fine stream of water.
When the
Internal Security lizard witnessed a solid beam of dihydrogen monoxide being
fired at it, and sufferd a hit on his lower belly scales, the unfortunate alien
went into screaming spasms of panicked terror.
It thrashed around, jerked across the corridor and slammed it’s head
into the wall. Despite the ceramic
helmet, it was a severe slam and the Lithoi collapsed in a senseless heap.
The horrors of dihydrogen monoxide**!
"The War Illustrated Edition 189"
Conrad counted 17 pictures he'd taken from this issue, so you are going to be seeing these for a good few days yet. Art!
Polar opposites, hmmm? In the large picture a rather dishevelled group of Teutons are, indeed, being made to hurry along. Possibly there is a threat of artillery or air attack, or mealtime is imminent, or the escorting Tommies felt like teaching the Herrenvolk a lesson or two. Contrast with the French civvies greeting an Universal carrier with outright pleasure, doubtless wondering what kind of tank it was with no deck or turret.
Conrad's Eyes Narrowed
No! I'm being menacing, not suffering from a migraine!
ANYWAY move your glazzies over this. Art!
* Tee hee!
** It's an old chemist's joke
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