Getting To A Point

Which We Tend Not To On The Blog

For, despite our claims to be logical, sensible and fond of making a journey directly from A to B, we do ramble rather a lot, because making a journey to A via M, F, the number 3 and Tunbridge Wells and finally B is a lot more interesting.

     For proof, just re-read the above.  Art!

     What a wag young Jonny is!  What makes an arrow dangerous?  That sharp POINTy bit at the end, which is designed and intended to hit the target and kill it stone dead.  "How deadly?"  Very deadly.  Just ask the M8s about Crecy, Poitiers or Agincourt and watch them lose their temper at the Anglo-Saxons.  Art!

     I believe folks have studied the ballistics and kinetics of being hit by an arrow shot from an English longbow, and it approximates to being shot with a .357 Magnum round.  Very deleterious to one's health.

     You can judge how effective the pointy things fired from bows are because they have been around for millennia.  If we jump forward in time, we find specialised ammunition that requires a point, namely Armour-Piercing Discardable Sabot, which may be Finned or not.  Art!

Art!

     <Tazer sounds in the background>

     If the recipient of one of these is really unlucky, it will be made of depleted uranium, which 'self-sharpens' as it slices through the opponent's armour-plate.  It's also a toxic heavy metal, but by that point I think that's the least of your worries.

     Let us now get to the meat of the matter, which is points used to proportionally dish out an estate, which is very ingenious and thoroughly Teutonic.  Yes, this is another tale of malicious compliance or revenge all rolled up into one satisfyingly toxic bundle, as detailed on Youtube.  Art!

     The Ethical Narrator, whom we shall call EN from now on, chose to do the Civic Option rather than his 12 month's conscription in the army, so he spent a year in a retirement home, which he thoroughly enjoyed, even if it didn't teach him how to field strip and reassemble a G3 rifle.

     ANYWAY his best friends grandfather was having trouble coping with old age in the morning and evening, so Bezzie Mate - hereafter BM - asked if EN would teach him the ropes acquired via hands-on experience.  In fact both ended up being Gramps assistants for 6 months, partly because EN was so fond of his elderly friend.  Gramps had a mortal fear of retirement homes and his junior home helps enabled him to stay at home.  Art!

We feel his fear

     There were also a couple of Gramp's children in the background, and other grandkids, who appeared to have all the moral equivalency of a flock of vultures.

     This became apparent when Gramps had a stroke and died a couple of days later.  His will-reading involved EN, to his surprise, and here Gramps proved that his wits were sharp until the end - because he split the estate according to a POINTS system.

Letter/phone call = 1 point

Visit = 2 points per hour

Practical help = 3 points

These were totalled over a 3 year period

Son 1 = 8 points

Son 2 = 10 points

Grandkid 1 = 150 points

Grandkid 2 = 133 points

BM = 7,341 points

EN = 5,883

     The estate was going to be liquidated and the total divvied up between people according to their POINT total.

     The sons respectively nearly had a myocardial infarction when they heard these terms, and tried to sue.

     Which meant they got nothing; wily old Gramps had a secret clause in the will that invalidated inheritance for anyone trying to sue.

     O delicious Schadenfreude!

Conrad Polishes His Frothing Nitric Ire

I have to use it every so often, lest it become feeble and as dangerous as a leaky sachet of vinegar.  What am I fulminating about again?  The inevitable and unstoppable progress of "Strictly Come Dancing" is what, surely this program cannot be real and is simply a jest put on (at considerable expense and effort) to mock Your Humble Scribe?

     The other matter annoying me is, of course - obviously! - Codewords.  The compilers are getting far too cocky and seem to think they're not vulnerable to a good Remote Nuclear Detonation or twenty.  Wrong.  That peculiar orange sky a short while back?  What remained of a stable of compilers.

EXPUNGE: "To delete or erase; to blot out" states my Collins Concise, and it inevitably has a Latin root, "Expungere", meaning "To blot out" and is in turn derived from 'Pungere', which means 'To prick' and we'll call a halt at this point.  Yes yes yes, all well and good, but are we still living in 1859 and writing lilke Dickens?  NO!  NO WE ARE NOT!!  Art?

Another compiler expunged

HELIX: A spiral.  Why can't they just use the word 'spiral' instead?  O, because that doesn't sound pseudy and intellectual enough, I'll warrant.  It comes to us from the Greek "Helissein", meaning 'To twist', a motion that ought to be applied to the neck of whomever compiler dreamed this up.  Art!

Any excuse.

STOIC:"A member of the ancient Greek school of philosophy founded by Zeno, holding that virtue and happiness can only by submission to destiny and the natural law."  Thanks, CC.

     Typically in today's descriptions using this word, it means a person indifferent to pleasure or pain.  This philosophy must be what's driving these compilers.  Art!

     Must be a new, more modern translation.  Ha!  Look at those numpties wanting hundreds of pounds for their ex-rare edition; I'll be they're not feeling very stoic now.

Conrad Comes Over Critical

The usual suspects - musicians quivering under the table or behind the sofa because Citric Critic Conrad is criticising their lyrics - can rest easy.  This time.  Art!

     This is the end of the Dredd serial "Raptaur", and it ends with more of a whimper than a scream, which is a shame, as they had built up the titular monster into quite a beast.  I must have missed a bit of exposition because I don't recall Raptaur's origins being explained, apart from the Judges pondering whether it was a mutant or an escapee from ' - one of the alien zoos.'

      Which raises more questions than it answers.  The Big Meg has zoos full of alien exhibits?  Repeat after me, "What can possibly go wrong!"

     I shall now consider tonight's homework to be reading the serial again and paying closer attention.

I Couldn't Resist

I do try to keep the conflict on the ground in Ukraine to a minimum on BOOJUM!, as we have only recently made up the lost audience members who rather jibbed at such content.  Occasionally an item comes along that challenges this silence and yesteryon was just such an occasion.  Art!

     It seems that the canny and crafty Ukes have fitted up a drone that carries a payload of thermite, which is usually iron oxide and aluminium oxide.  Once you start thermite burning, you cannot extinguish it; if you set up a pot of it on the bonnet of your car and ignite, it will destroy the engine block.  This drone probably carries a large flowerpot filled with thermite (which the orcs have mis-translated as 'Termite'), and ignites it when nearing the opposition.  Whatever utility it has may be questionable, but it looks absolutely TERRIFYING in action.  It has already earned the nickname 'Smaug' and there will be others in considerably worse taste - "The Dragon Drone" "The Human Scorch" "Flaming Termites" "Roast Porc" etcetera etcetera.

Finally -

You can tell when a person is truly, truly middle-aged because they go on about the nights drawing in, after the longest day has passed.

     Yeah, well, that's why we have electric lighting not torches made out of tarry straw, Grandad.

     Ceiaou!