Braking The Bank

Am I Going To Have To Put -

"Conrad narrowed his eyes menacingly -" and I have to add 'menacingly' in there as otherwise people will think I'm merely squinting in the sunshine.  Yes, we had sunshine today, because it was so incredibly windy that the overcast was sundered to the four corners of the earth.

     ANYWAY that's not a spelling mistake, it's a deliberate pun.  Deliberate I tell you!  Art?

     This is the groovy AI image generator working on the text template "Cromwell Tank", and it looks nothing less than verrrry peculiar.  Almost as if a man totally unfamiliar with tanks had read about them and made it up from whole cloth.  You really need to see a proper Cromwell to make your mind up.  Art!

     This is from "War Thunder", whatever that is.  Note that they got that red-and-white marking WRONG.  This was the tactical marking used in North Africa for British tanks, and the Cromwell never served in NA.

     Where were we?  O yes, a tale of Reddit Revenge.  OP was what I would call a Master Carpenter, with decades of experience in the trade, an ability to work out solutions to problems that boosted business profits, and a salary to match - $65,000.  The prime example he gave of creating profits was helping to generate $4.5 million dollars on a $24 million project that had been predicted to net $1.2 million.  Art!

     

     This being South Canada, when the old President got replaced, the new President had to exert his influence and prove how clever and powerful he was, which meant telling OP that, from now on, he would be a Supervisor, not a Master Carpenter.  Based purely on his salary.

     At this point one feels like casting the words IF IT AIN'T BROKE DON'T FIX IT in iron, sharpening them to a point and hammering them into New Prez's head.

     Forsooth, what did OP do?  Ask to think about it over the weekend.

     What he actually meant was "No!".  He just discussed his wife's new-found ability to move to another state with her, thanks to him leaving his job, allowing her to get a better job and earn twice her previous salary.  Together their joint salaries before he quit were $110,000 p.a. and with hers alone being $90,000, not too much of a sacrifice.

     Part of OP's not-so-petty revenge came when he moved out all the tools he had bought himself.  He had a huge array of printed e-mails where the business refused to reimburse for these purchases, so he took the lot.  His job title is obviously rather narrow, as he took away: a welding unit (wood not good for welding with); grinders of various sizes - Art!

     Yesterday's Temu takeaway bargain: a precision angle-grinder.  Nothing to do with niche microscopes.  Matey also hauled away other kit I had to look up, such as a:

CONCRETE SAW: a heavy-duty rotary cutting saw used for slicing through dense materials such as concrete.  Art!

BULL FLOAT: This is a tool used to apply a final level and finish to poured concrete, after which it is left to cure.  Art!

Note before and after texture

BENDING BRAKE: You'd never have gotten this one, partly because it's to do with bending sheet metal, not planks of wood.  I told you it was a very narrow job title!  There are different models that can carry out either simple or complex bending (more correctly 'manipulation') of sheet metal.  Art!

     A brake and what it bent.  Hence part of today's title

     To cut a loooong story short, the company later sued OP for criminal activity, to wit, stealing $45,000 worth of tools.  

     Which were his.  

     Which he'd paid for.  

     Which he had proof of buying.  

     Which his attorney presented in court.  

     Which resulted in all charges being dismissed.  

     Which got him $5,000 in costs repaid.  

     Which cost the company $30,000 in legal fees.  

     Which got them into perjury charges (they altered the e-mails OP had original copies of).

     To add further insult to financial injury, OP cost them $5,000 in having to buy-in sub-contractors to replace him for the project he was working on AND getting them visas to be able to work in British America.  I make that $40,000 in outgoings, to which you can add all the unrealised profits from making him quit.

     From golden goose to leaden quail.  Definitely a load of bankers.

Art Mocking Life

No,  not our resident Neanderthal who, many eons ago, was known as "Art Department" and whom works for coal, coke, spent nuclear fuel rods or charcoal briquettes.  I mean one of the purchases of last weekend.  Art!

      This cover is a challenge to the dedicated.  I can tell you that I've identified the Angel Gang, Mean Machine Angel, the Dark Judges, Trapper Hag, Satanus, the Kleggs, Death-Fist, the Sov-Blok Judges and Chopper.  Art!

     For your information, Ranson, Gibson and Kennedy are all from the glory days of "2000AD" when 2000 AD was a loooong way off.  Art!

     How very interesting!  Mike is the artist who drew "Powers", which began in 2000 <no synchronicity intended> and this volume published strips from 2006, so he was definitely a known name in comics by this point.  Was his exclusion accidental or deliberate?  Perhaps we will never know.  Art!

     That's an excellent sneer you drew there, Mike!  Note that, as is their wont, "2000AD" is satirising a modern-day pop culture trope or trend - "Queer Eye For The Straight Guy" in this case.  If they're sending you up in their pages, then you have definitely arrived, baby!

By The Time You Read These Lines -

Perfidious Albion will have selected and elected a new governing party.  Note that we do not, in this more perfect Union, carry out murder, torture, assault, bribery*, coercion, blackmail, extortion or plain old ballot-stuffing to elect a new gov.  Art!

     And do you know what?  The new incoming gov will not have to physically kick the old one out of office, because the Spirit Of Cricket prevails in our culture, which is to say Do What Is Right And Decent.  The outgoing gov and Prem will not whine for the next five years about how 'They' stole the ballot and it was all rigged by purple invisible unicorns from the San Jak of Novi Pazar <Cont. Page 94>.

     Thank heavens for the Fourth Of July, which I will leave as ambiguous as possible.

"City In The Sky"

Corks!  Things are nearing a terminal resolution, and how.

     ‘Can’t you look faster?’ complained Orskan, standing watch whilst the Doctor used his sonic weapon to open a stores cupboard marked “DANGER!!!”. 

     ‘No,’ replied the Doctor, shortly.  ‘I’ve got to interpret Lithoi pictograms on whatever’s stored in these cupboards, and work out what I can combine them to do.’  He cast a look to left and right: they were opposite a deserted open-fronted lab, which didn’t contain anything more dangerous than a fume cupboard and a dirty workbench.  Physical chemistry, he guessed.

     There were several likely candidates in the stores cupboard: from the labels and their diagrammatic molecular schematics he managed accurate guesses at several: Methyl Nitrate – noooo, far too temperamental; Copper Azide – much the same, if not so extreme; ONC – too inert, he’d need special detonators for that; Thermite – ah, thermite.  Powdered iron oxide and aluminium. 

     ‘They weld with that,’ explained Orskan.  The Doctor understood immediately: thermite when burned produced molten iron and heat, vast quantities of heat, without any other byproducts.  If you used MIG or TIG to do welding then you risked releasing water into the air thanks to the byproduct of  combusted gasses.

     He plucked the plastic jar from the shelf with the glee of a housewife finding a supermarket bargain.  When he turned to gloat at Orskan, he found the Lithoi listening, focussed with purpose on distant sounds.

     ‘A search party,’ whispered the alien.  Really! frowned the Doctor.  How inconvenient.

      Ah yes, thermite - dangerous fun for all involved!

Planet Error

Your Humble Scribe has been watching the grunge-fest that is "Planet Terror" over the past few days and would like, in best pedantic hair-splitting fashion, to point out a major problem about one of the lead characters.  Art!

     You might, at a pinch, be able to use an M16 as a prosthetic leg, although the under-barrel grenade launcher is going to throw you off your axis of balance.

     HOWEVER - O my favourite word! - if you walk around like this, you are going to get the muzzle clogged with all kinds of crap you encounter as you perambulate.  Heaven forfend you walk across a lawn or field, because that will jam a good few inches of mud up the barrel.  When fired, this wad will not be magically propelled from the gun.  No.  It will likely blow the receiver apart and send the bolt shooting back up her thigh.

     I realise this is probably being far too analytical about a film centred about bubo-sporting pus-oozing zombies, but I have standards, and I will not raise them.  Art!

Melt off those excess pounds!

Finally -

I have to keep pinching myself to remember that, in another "2000AD" inspired story, there is a "Rogue Trooper" animated film in the offing.  I've deliberately not kept apace with what it's doing or when, so it will be a complete surprise when it finally does arrive.  Art!

     Here you see 4 GI's - Genetic Infantrymen - Rogue, Gunnar, Helm and Bagman.  No, I shan't explain it.  Go back and read the comics.

*  In the narrow sense.