- Fire Zone
- and the land of the crave. You may have guessed that this Intro is about South Canada, and you'd be right. They are just chock-full of wonderful content creators, for which this blogger is very thankful.
Here we shall have an intersection of three things the South Canadians are notable for: Guns, grains and GMC Trackers. Yes yes yes I'm reaching a bit with that last, sue me, there aren't that many 4 Wheel Drives from the Eighties that begin with "G". Art!
Now, you are surely aware that South Canadians are all armed to the teeth and that their homestead bristle with firearms, all the more in rural areas where the writ of the law lays lighter than in the big conurbations. We are talking not merely pistols - Pshaw! mere pistols! - but rifles and shotguns and automatic weapons, too. Bear in mind that this Intro is set many decades ago. Art!
Every boy's dream 14th birthday prezzie*
Also found in rural areas are vast fields of crops such as wheat or corn, which is pretty much a given, because you can't really fit an area yielding 250 tons per acre into a downtown New York allotment. Art!
Reminds me of - a banner or similar
No description of South America would be complete without a nod to their love affair with the automobile. To be fair, it's a whacking big country and you need transport to get anywhere not immediately local. One of their affectations is the '4WD' which is not a typo for 'WD40' but a breed of car: four wheel-drive. Meaning that all four wheels are powered, enabling cross-country travel when off-road. There's enough of their countryside to be able to off-road it easily. Art!
"Vince's neighbourhood did not have any adopted roads"
Our Narrator on Quora told the tale of an unspecified rural location, where a bunch of ignorant petrolheads used to tear up and down the local creek ('river' in proper English) in their 4 x 4s, driving through fences and over fields of crops. This highly destructive behaviour was but transient thanks to the speed of said vehicles over rough ground, and none were ever caught.
That is, until one of them hit a large tree stump in the middle of a field of growing corn, having deliberately driven off the nearby track a mere 50 yards away. Once on the stump, they could not get their 4WD off again, leaving them st- baffled. Art!
They left, to return with friends recruited to hoist car from stump, and to an unpleasant surprise, as the farmer and sheriff were waiting for them. 4WD inviolability considerably reduced by being static.
It was put to the petrolhead 4WD owner that he had 2 choices: 1) pay Farmer Jones the value of the whole crop in that field, a value not specified but surely in the $1,000 range. We are talking (or guessing) at Eighties prices here. PH4WD decided to go for option 2) Wait to remove car after the field had been harvested, at a cost of $0.
WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG!
You are probably ahead of me here, because The Guns have not made an appearance yet.
Well they did after matey left his car there. As mentioned above, it was clearly visible from the nearby gravel track, and at 50 yards posed just enough of a challenge for anyone out with a gun. You see, in the far-off days of the Eighties, without teh Interwebz or video tape, bored South Canadians in rural areas used to get <ahem> 'likkered up' and tour the backroads shooting at road signs.
Or, in this case, abandoned cars. Art!
CAUTION! modern cars not bulletproofed as standard
As Our Narrator explained, back in those days it was easy and legal to get hold of armour-piercing ammunition, because - er - rats and wolves wore Kevlar?
ANYWAY thanks to ALMGHTY COINCIDENCE that field was the last one harvested, meaning the 4WD sat stuck on a stump for 8 weeks, being riddled with bullets. For completeness ON mentioned that the engine, transmission, axles, wheels and tyres all manifested an impression of a colander.
There were 2 results. 4WD went straight to the county car-crusher, and the petrolheads stopped their off-road rampaging.
There will now be an hiatus as I get me a bit of brunch. Laterz!
Your Daily Dose Of Dismal
Into each life some rain must fall, as the lady sang, except if you're British, in which case a lot of rain will fall, or if you're Ruffian, in which case there will be flooding, too. Art!
You may, after a first glance, be wondering why Conrad is putting up a picture of the continental shelf as it descends into the abyssal depths. Well, no, allow me to show you a genuine schematic of the oceanic shelf. Art!
In colour yet
Conrad is only messing with you. I took a graphic and vertically flipped it, so allow me to introduce the real thing. Art!
Poor sad Elvira
Imports will now cost more, which will drive up inflation, which means higher interest rates, which stops investment, which lowers revenues, taxes and other returns, and the whole cycle continues.
It's all terrible news. Bring more popcorn!
Another Mystery MacGuffin
Because we've been a tad text-heavy, let us now bring up another baffling object in the sidebar adverts of my feed, which will make an excellent and free substitute for "The Daily Beast". Art!
No, I have no idea what it is, apart from having a lens and six buttons. World's smallest video camera? Remote Nuclear Irritator? Throw your voice in four different Asian languages?
Let me click on it and discover what's what.
As suspected, it's clickbait. There's a list of 50 items of tat they want you to buy, none of which are this device, and a reverse-image search doesn't detect it either, so it may be completely fictional.
Possibly Good News
Conrad enjoyed both the Guy Ritchie-helmed 'Sherlock Holmes' films, even though the latter one used anachronistic weaponry. They tried, damn it, instead of just using limp CGI. Art!
The rule of thumb about announcements like this is that they can mean the film may be stuck in Development Hell for a decade, so don't get your hopes up Holmes fans. On the other hand, if Rob Downey does commit to it, then it means he's not able to make any more terrible Marvel films, which sounds like win-win to me.
Finally -
Conrad ponders. Should he bake another cake or tea-bread today? Thing is, I'm eating that Date & Walnut tea-bread pretttty slowly, by slicing it very thinly, in order to not consume too much sugar. At 50 grams total and 10 slices that's only 5 grams per day. Which statistic means it'll probably still be here next Saturday, and any cake I bake will have to be good for that long before I start eating. O the humanity.
* Perhaps.
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