Ozymandias

No!  This Intro Is Not About The Super-Villain

Whom you ought to be familiar with from "Watchmen" which is a graphic novel NOT a comic book, and on this I will brook no discussion.  Art!

     That's Rorschach getting a bit of a biffing from Ozzy, and Night Owl in the background, about to whip out his pocket laser, which is considerably more than a little light that blinks.

     ANYWAY enough of the climax to Moore and Gibbons finest moment, because what I wanted to summon up was the poem 'Ozymandias' by Percy Shelley, which is quite my favourite poem (of the three I like).  Art!

     Now, to get my point across in glorious four-tone monochrome, we need to quote the whole poem, which only incidentally ups the Word Count.  

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desart.  Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

No thing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

     Ol' Perce packs a lot into that sonnet.  Published in 1818, you can see it reflects the Enlightenment's interests in antiquarian culture, principally of Rome and Greece but hinting in this case about Egypt.

     Then, too, there is the concept of hubris: for all Ozzy's boasts about his mighty works, there's almost nothing left of them thanks to the passage of time and everything bar his statue's legs and head are gone.  Perhaps also substandard construction materials used by builders skimping on their contract.

     Third of all, we have the concept of entropy, in that disorder in systems tends to increase over time, so that buildings eventually collapse, roads erode away and statues become splintered remnants.

     Where am I going with this?  O I thought you'd never ask!  Art?

     This is Saddleworth, that area of high moorland in the heights above Oldham, and what you see here are the last sad remnants of Ashway Gap House, a mansion that once stood here.  It was built for John Platt, local business magnate and MP, in the grand baronial style.  Art!

     Note steps at front.  Platt died in his bed there, not as you might imagine in over-indulgence of gin and caviar, but because of a hunting accident that involved his leg getting shot about.  The mansion's fortunes rather ebbed after that, lying empty for long periods, then  being used as a hospital in the First Unpleasantness and a prison for Italian PoWs in the Second Unpleasantness.  Art!

Looking pretty dark and stannic

     The crumbling pile was demolished in 1981, with instructions to return the site to pre-building state.  Which we know didn't happen because the lonely steps are still there, unencumbered by any other architecture.  Art!

Ozzy says hi

     Conrad, in a display of serendipity, found a page from a Marvel comic book - this was before the days of graphic novels - that also quotes the whole of Ol' Perce's poem, with some nifty artwork to boot.  Art!

     This is how Pele learned to play soccer Sorry! no, this is how Ultron, villainous robotic arch-fiend, met it's end, thanks to getting head explosively separated from body.  Doubtless the writers found a way to resuscitate it, comic books love the money a good villain brings in.

A Short Visual Between Two Texts

A anyone who has been reading BOOJUM! for the past decade or so will be aware, Your Humble Scribe has a collector's pash for Official Histories of the First Unpleasantness.  I won't go into the details of the list acquired or we'd need another Intro; suffice to say I've now got six volumes of the twelve that make up the Australian Official History.  Art!

     This is Volume IV, an absolute bargain at £35 with free P & P, otherwise it would cost about twice that at the cheapest.  
    Now that I have Vols III, IV, V and VI, which cover the Ockers on the Western Front, I may begin to read them in sequence.  That's 10 inches of hardback.  Wish me luck.

The Twenty-First Century Equivalent

Or, as I tartly commented on Twitter, 'Not quite the surface of the Moon, but getting there.'

     To what am I referring?  Why, the ammunition storage area adjoining Engels-2 Air Force Base in Modern-day Mordor.  We have already illustrated the enormous explosion that resulted from it being hit by Ukrainian drones or missiles or both.  More accurate info has come in from the Ukrainian assessors, who gloatingly reveal that 96 Ruffian cruise missiles went bang prematurely, sending up as an expensive vapour three-months worth of ordnance.  Art!

After and before

    Ukraine isn't going to say, and Ruffia won't admit, just what was hit and how, so there is speculation that an assembly facility (the long white sheds) was hit once the Ukes knew it was chock-full of missile components being assembled.  We shall just have to take Maxar's godlike viewpoint as evidence of the site being Ozzyd, because the damage was sufficient for the orcs to pretend nothing happened and that all the people being evacuated are being sent on holiday by mistake.  Art!

     There is also unsubstantiated chatter on Twitter that the background count at Engels has increased by a factor of 44, and special decontamination vehicles and crews have been sent in - as above.  The hypothesis is that nuclear ordnance may have been damaged in the strike, which would be the killing joke if true; the nation accusing others of creating dirty bombs is dirty bombed by it's own arsenal.

     Most annoyingly, Conrad cannot find the video clips of infra-red footage covering the Engels area, which I'm pretty sure I saw on Twitter.  The background was dark blue, with heat showing up as white areas.  I cannot find anything on Twitter, Bluesky or Youtube, despite going back days and days, nor on Google.  So thoroughly have these video clips vanished that Your Cynical Realist wonders if they were not faked up in the first place.  Otherwise they are an Ozzy of the online world, totally absent.  Art!

Conrad looking angry

And What's This?

One of the consequences of Mopey Dick bloviating about Greenland is that the Vice Prez, JD Pantz, sent his wife there to fly the flag and press flesh.  Then, in the wake of the Signal scandal over intelligence - in that it showed Pantz has none- he deemed it wise to get out of South Canada and avoid the press. So it was going to be a two-fisted charm offensive in Greenland.  

     However - Art!

     None of Trump's administration seem to have that most basic of requirements for public life: being able to read the room.  The pro-Trump party in Greenland got 1% of the vote in recent elections.  South Canadian officials, going house-to-house, couldn't find a single one willing to glad-hand Pantz and/or wife.

     Thus, this visit will be confined to the Pituffik Space Base, which - Art!

     - is the South Canadian military base already present in Greenland and which has been there for the whole of the Cold War.

     This risks confusing South Canadians horribly, as they look askance and quibble "What, we already have a base there?  But President Trump said -" <Cont. Page 94>.

Conrad Is Curious

My attention has been attracted and my nosiness piqued, thanks to a sidebar on the feed this morning.  Art!

     "BYD" at first glance sounds like a crypto scam currency.  By implication, though, it seems to be a manufacturer of electric vehicles.  'Bloomberg' is also a reputable news media source (unlike, say "GB News" or "Sky News Austtralia" which seem to be channelling Marjorie Bloaty-McBloatface).

     I don't have the luxury of time or Count to examine this too closely.  After all, if this win concerns only revenue, BYD might have only sold 5 cars that cost a billion dollars each.  Or shizzle like that.

     Since it looks bad for Muskie The Rat, Conrad will do a bit of digging and let you know.

Finally -

We've had an awful lot of current eventish stuff on today's blog, so here's a reminder and remembrance, lest ye forget.  Art!

One of the volunteer Polite Australians who never made it home.

Стрибаючий Джек Флеш Це Газ Газ Газ!

 Or, If Your Cyrillic Is Not Up To The Job

"Strybayuchyy Dzhek Flesh Tse Haz Haz Haz"

     Which, of course - obviously! - is Ukrainian for "Jumping Jack Flash It's A Gaz Gaz Gaz"

     For Lo! we are into the second part of Conrad's inimitable analysis of the travails and torments of Ruffia's largest (current) employer, namely Gazprom.  This business is getting the old one-two from the steel fist, whilst the iron fist is giving Rosneft the old three-four.  Black eyes and broken teeth abound.  Before we get to the main course I have a couple of entrées for you.  Art!

     Gaze upon 'Gaz', or, more accurately nowadays since they transmogrified the title, 'Campingaz', which is a French company whom we won't bear any ill-will towards because they can't help it, who cornered the camping market from 1949 onwards.  What you see here are containers of mixed butane and propane under sufficient pressure to render the gas unto a liquid.  These provided a convenient and relatively safe source of portable heat for folks venturing into the great outdoors.  Art!

     Your Humble Scribe has used this unit in the past, and jolly handy it was too, as long as one kept a sharp eye out for potential accidents.  Art!

     Talking of dangerous incendiary occurrences, here is a Ruffian GAZ truck, as was used by their military.  The name comes from an acronym: Gorkovsky Avtomobiliniy Zavod, or Gorky's Wagon Works.  I use the past tense here because they are now becoming rare, since they have been sent off to get scragged in Ukraine by the thousand.  Art!

     Yes, Dougal, you could boil a kettle over that open flame, and no, Dougal, you are not supposed to be able to do that.

     ANYWAY back to Gazprom.  Yesteryon we displayed data explaining how very, very badly Gazza is doing financially in the wake of the Special Idiotic Operation, with a $12 billion drop in 2023 from profit to a loss of $7 billion.  One reason Ruffian oligarchs have been emulating Plummet Airlines in their behaviour near open windows is that their pie is shrinking dramatically, so there's no longer enough to go around.  Art!

     This is the Export HQ of Gazze in Saint Petersburg.  It was constructed in the interior of an historic building, designed by a British architectural firm, and opened in 2016 to much fanfare.  600 staff worked there.

     That picture to starboard is from the pre-opening portfolio, but it might as well be the HQ as of today, because the total number of staff now employed there is -

     Ten.

     Thus this building is one Gazzi is looking to sell in order to raise capital, because they seem to have realised that the EU gas market is deader than dynamited dodo discotheques.  Art!

Mister Freud would heartily approve

     We briefly graced you with a picture of this building yesteryon.  It's the Lakhta Centre, commissioned by Gazprom and constructed at a cost of $1.77 billion, finally being completed in 2019.

     However - a word you knew was coming - Gazzo is now making noises about selling it, because they need the money.  If your balance sheet is in the red, you need to raise capital and reduce expenditure.  Art!

     In a foreshadowing of things to come, the Lakhta HQ is looking to sack 1,600 management staff in order to reduce their wage bill, a chop of 40%.  Whilst this is still a drop in the ocean versus their total of 498,000 employees, it does denote a trend likely to be continued in future, because why employ people to sit around and do nothing? when you can fire them and then send them to Ukraine expenditures down.  If this total was reflected in the overall workforce, we'd be talking 200,000 job losses, a banner headline that Charlie Chipmunk Cheeks would probably kill to prevent being published.  

     Those lay-off figures are from 13th January 2025, and as yet Conrad cannot find any information about any other planned redundancies since then, which might mean nothing is being contemplated, or it's all being kept hush-hush to avoid making Putinpot look bad.  Art!

     One of the most disturbing caricatures of Putinpot I've seen, and possible artistic interpretation of how he ended up looking so bad.  Art!

     This is one of the Teuton Liquid Natural Gas plants, of which they built six.  What I want to show here is that the basic infrastructure to allow EU nations to deal with LNG not pipeline gas has already been budgeted and planned and created.  Thus the first major hurdle of dealing with gas blackmail has been overcome, and the rolling overheads will be a fraction of the initial outlay.  Briefly put, there is no reason for the EU not to continue to use LNG; the other side of this coin is that Ruffian gas exports are now surplus to requirements.

     Oooops.

The Rollercoaster Ride Continues!

You wouldn't expect a car to be able to duplicate the gravity-defying feats to be found in an amusement theme park, but Tesla says "Hold my beer!"

     I did mention, with considerable dudgeon, that the share price for Elong Tusk's pet vehicle project had climbed upwards again, after plunging rapidly, despite the Orange Land Whale acting like a used-car pimp on Muskie's behalf.

     Well, it seems the Big Dipper component of Tesla's vehicular DNA has been activated again.  Art!

     This is the market position as at close of business Wednesday, so it'll be interesting to see what it looks like by the time markets close for the weekend.  Conrad suspects the euphemism for this performance is 'volatile', meaning staid business investors don't like it and cross fingers and toes that it settles down.  Or else!

Conrad The Cynical Is Not Surprised

We have, in the recent past, done an item on 'Whisky Cask Investments' because they keep cropping up on my feeds and won't go away.  Slightly more grounded than 'Log-counting software' and 'Portable Lumber Mills' of the distant past, yet not what Conrad is going to invest in.  

     So, what is this that I espied just now on the BBC News website?  Art!

     Yes, the leeches and criminals come out of the woodwork to rip people off wherever there's money.  We may cover this in more detail as a cautionary warning.

Another Way To Spend Time Gainlessly

Conrad is far too fond of playing solo Mahjongg, which is not the game played with tiles akin to an Asian version of poker, but a tile-matching version where you attempt to empty the board.  Art!

     
     This one looks better than the one I normally play and has more scoring options but it is EXACTLY as time-wasting as the previous version.

     Yes I am a very sad man.

Elsewhere In South Canada -

Forgive me if I continue, in my unlovely style, of kicking a film when it's down, and out for the count, too, seemingly.  Yes, we are still mocking 'Snow White' Vulnavia, because it's such easy-cheesy low-hanging fruit.  One suspects that Disney would have quietly shelved this film and taken a tax loss on it, if they hadn't allowed Rachel Zegler to go braying louder and freer than Shreck's Donkey about it, for years.  

     One of the positives about it is that it gives critics like 'RK Outpost' an abundant supply of ammunition.  Art!

     Blimey, Ryan, leaven the mixture a bit, can't you!

     Your Humble Scribe can provide a bit more bad news in hard data form.  Art!

     
     Conrad can tell what you're thinking "O gosh look at those figures".  Please bear in mind that those figures are for close of business as at Wednesday, and have been up since Thursday last week.  SW was projected to take $50 million at the box office on it's Saturday opening and Sunday follow-on, both domestically and internationally.

     Yet here we are three days later and still short of that target.

     Is this important?  Heck yes!  Don't forget the rule of 50%, which is the maximum return a studio gets from box office receipts, meaning SW has cleared $46 million.  Also remember that box office receipts are always front-loaded, meaning that the longer as film has been released, the less the take becomes on each successive day.  Art!

     Also remember that Ryan very perceptively noted that, for other Disney live action remakes, the International box office has been multiples of the Domestic, helping to either minimise their losses or help make a profit.  No such succour for SW, it seems.

     Conrad predicts it will get pulled from cinemas as soon as decently possible and then pimped to the heavens on Disney+.

     Or, the rumours are true, and Disney is a money-laundering operation.

Carbonaceous Cash Crop Crisis

Conrad Is, Perhaps, Skirting Definitions Here

How unusual!  Well, not really unusual.  In fact, how quite usual.

     What crops am I bloviating about?  O I thought you'd never ask!  Art?

A field of ferny forest

     What you're looking at here is one of the prehistoric forests that, millions of years ago, died and were compressed beneath the earth.  After baking and cooking for several million years, these forests were transformed into the fossil fuels that we know and love, apart from Greta Thunberg and just wait until she has to travel to work without a car*.  Art!

     Here's Charlie Chipmunk Cheeks, whom also loves loves loves all the fossil fuels, because his tsardom has lots and lots of them.

     Well, I think it's time to abruptly switch tracks and instead direct our attention on Tennessee Ernie Ford, seminal radio announcer, television presenter and warbler of that classic "Sixteen Tons", which is about, surprise surprise - Art!

     Coal mining.  These grubby yet cheerful troglodytes are South Canadians, working in one of their Pennsylvanian coal mines, which might even be the Number Nine Mine, which is where the line 

I loaded sixteen tons of number 9 coal

     comes from.

      So, you see how we still adhere to the concept of fossil fuels?  I keep informing you, there's at least ten or twenty seconds of thought put into these blogs.  Now, the telling part of this song's refrain is towards the end, when Tenny sings about how he, the narrator, is a no-nonsense burly fist-flinging typa guy.  

If you see me comin' better step aside

A lot of men didn't, a lot of men died

One fist of iron, the other of steel

If the right one don't getcha, then the left one will

     That's the concept I want to get across in this Intro, that Fate, Destiny, Ukrainian drones and the Global West's sanctions are doing a double-whammy upon Modern-day Mordor's fossil fuel industry, primarily the oil and gas sectors thereof.  In this Intro I would like to pay close and mocking attention to <sustained drum roll>

     GAZPROM!  Art?

     

Their St Petersburg HQ

     Gazza is the state agency dealing with gas - it's in the name - and used to be one of the biggest employers on the planet, number 12 globally with nearly 500,000 staff.  This is due to an accident of geography, in that Ruffia sits on the largest gas reserves in the world, and to prove it - Art!

     In the halcyon days before the Special Idiotic Operation, Gazze had established a huge gas pipeline network into Europe, at a fixed cost that had long been paid off, and which allowed the extremely rapid transit of cheap gas.  So much of it that Gazzi's profits made up 5% of Ruffia's national GDP, which is to say an awful lot of money.

     Since February 2022, though, Gazzo's exports to Europe have fallen off a cliff in terms of traffic, because the EU has defied Ruffian energy blackmail and made the transition to Liquid Natural Gas, which is 'bottled' gas that can be transported.  Guess who didn't bother to invest in LNG technology?

                                                       

          In the good old days of cheap gas exports, pipeline supply brought in $290 million per diem, a pretty good chunk of change.  Over time, mind, this amount dwindled somewhat.  Which is to say, a lot.  Art!

     If you want hard factual data, Conrad just so happens to have a bit here.  Pre-SIO, pipeline gas brought in $105 billion annually for Gazzu.   By today, that has been reduced to $27 billion per annum or a drop of 75%.  Once again, who was hit hardest by cuts in demand and supply of gas?  Art!

                                                           

     This wasn't an especially slow process, since by Q3 and Q4 of 2022 - a table would express this more succinctly.  Art!

     This shows the frankly alarming trend for Gazza, going from a profit of ₽1.2 trillion rubles in 2022 to a loss of ₽629 billion in 2023, or if you prefer your figures in real notes not Monopoly scrip, from $13 billion profit to $7 billion loss, a swing of $20 billion rubles.  This kind of abrupt and enormous change is scarcely believable and the execs at Gazze must still be rubbing their eyes in startled disbelief.

     O and a shout-out goes to 'Joe Blogs' and the 'Daily Express' for providing these figures.  The DE is for people whom the ''Daily Mail" is too smug, but they have really been covering the fall of the house of Ruffia in detail, props to their correspondents.

     ANYWAY as Joe pointed out and his previous economic data on Modern-day Mordor have shown, the final figures for Q4 of 2024 aren't in yet, which is a major sticking point.  Ruffian budgets, you see, from the lowliest corner shop to the national state one, all lump expenses in the final month of the final quarter, so that current total of $3.2 billion in losses is only going to get bigger.  Art!

     Well, would you believe it, we've only covered part of the steely left fist's impact upon the saggy solar plexus of the Ruffian economy.  We will definitely come back to this!  It's solid evidence that Charlie Chipmunk Cheeks is under severe economic pressure, no matter how hard and long he whistles to keep his spirits up.  And who is going to go bankrupt sooner rather than later?  Art!

                                                        

Conrad Is Angry!

Yes, again, what, are you keeping count?  I'll have you know that I need to keep my Frothing Nitric Ire in good working order and exercise it at least twice per week.  Here we are with the fruits of umpteen Codewords, and I know you'll feel my pain.  Because if you don't it's the uranium mines for you.

COZENAGE: Conrad is unfamiliar with this word and briefly considered that it might be to do with old age, along the lines of DOTAGE or similar.  Sadly not.  It refers to being tricked or deceived, which is pretty much BOOJUM!s stock in trade.  Sorry not sorry and all that.  Art!

Nice hat

PIZZAZZ: Really?  Really!  This is a word, now?  <mutters darkly> according to my Collins Concise it's: "An attractive combination of energy and style".  O and it combines four of the least-used letters in the alphabet in doubles, just to make it an even more confusing Codeword when you definitely don't need to egg the clue pudding that much.  Art!

Pizza zzz.  Close enough

ERSATZ: Another word ending in "Z"! This one is familiar to Conrad because of his acquaintance with all things Teuton, especially from the First and Second Unpleasantnesses.  It means 'substitute' or 'artificial' and is derived from the Teuton ERSETZEN.  How the average Codeworde solver is supposed to manage I don't know.  Art!

Wait - "Waltz for a pig"?

Conrad Is Going To Gloast A Tad Here

You know me, ever one to kick an unfriendly economy whilst it's down, so I couldn't resist posting this clip from the BBC News webpage, lifted and snipped from this morning.  Art!

     

     Gosh, as high as that?  Note no cozenage here.  Why, how must those living with rates 10x this be faring under their economic yoke? and whom could I possibly mean?  

Talking Of Teutons -
Yes, we are back with the consistently complaining German corporal, and extracts from his journal for September 1944, where he is not enjoying himself.  This is probably because his parent division, the 719th, had been performing cushy occupation duties in nice safe Holland, and now things were getting hot.    Art!

One of the heaters

6 September 1944: Strong enemy artillery fire in our sector.  American or Britons only 300 yards from us.  Assault guns of the SS are supposed to come to our assistance.  Communication path is under fire.  The company pets are no longer runners any more now.  The General is with us.

Conrad's Commentary:  Since the location of fighting was the Albert Canal, the Allied soldiers opposite Grumpy German Gefreiter are British, which also explains the strong artillery fire.  That 'supposed' claim also adds in complexity and the possibility of not turning up, deliberately or accidentally.  The 'Communication' path GGG mentions and then runners implies that they are sending people to and fro with messages instead of using radios, perhaps due to a fear of eavesdropping or jamming.   And using the Dutch telephone network was hugely unwise as their Resistance would be eavesdropping.  Art!

     British bridge over the Albert Canal, several days after GGG had departed stage right.

Finally -

Rather over the Count at this point, so let's be succinct.  Brevity is the sole of flip-flops, or similar shizzle.  Art!

     This is the thumbnail from 'Hazegrayart' on Youtube, which Conrad will definitely be coming back to.  We feature Hazey's artwork every so often and you ought to pay them a visit, for it is truly worth it.

*  Yes, she can bike it.  In 30 mph winds at 2⁰ C with driving squalls of sleet, she's welcome.

More Of MalCom

I've Not Used This Portmanteau Word For A While

So allow me to explicate that it's a contraction of 'Malicious Compliance', which is one of the Youtube Reddit montages I love to read about.  Lest you be unaware, MalCom is where employees stick to the letter of instructions, orders, procedures or processes, and thus trample roughshod over the spirit of said instructions, orders, procedures or processes.  Usually with a nasty snarky grin and a sweet appreciation of schadenfreude.  Art!

This is what AI Art Generator thinks 'Australian cuisine' looks like

     For the narrator in this tale is a chef from the Antipodes, with several years experience, so we shall call him Qualified Ocker Chef, hereafter QOC.  He had spent several years at an apprentice, where, proving that the pen is mightier than the laptop, he used a handy-dandy notebook to compile the 150 recipes they were taught, as well as others his fellow chefs used.  Art!

     QOC's notebook was much more compact and ergonomic than the clumsy great volumes issued to apprentices, so he resorted to it by choice and eventually just left it in the kitchen all the time. 

     You can probably see where this is going, can't you?

     ANYWAY all the other chefs fell to using QOC's notebook, too, because it had factors like ingredient quantities and cooking duration which were vital for the end product to be edible.  This is where manglement rears it's unlovely head, because the restaurant/club management had stopped updating their official recipe books long before QOC arrived to serve his apprenticeship.  Art!

     You should all be familiar with the term 'Bus factor', or how vulnerable a business is to a single person being hit by a bus.  Conrad is now going to posit the 'Shred Factor' for books, manuals, journals and other paper artefacts, and there are few environments - blast furnaces come to mind - that are more detrimental to a cookery book than a kitchen.  Art!

     What manglement ought to have done is triplicate QOC's book, preserve all the leaves in plastic, use one as a back-up on the kitchen floor and keep one in a safe, safely out of the way.

     OUGHT.  A small word carrying a lot of baggage, because - 

     After three years in the kitchen, QOC got his accreditation as a chef, meaning his pay increased a lot, also meaning manglement sought to get rid of him as soon as possible to replace with a nice cheap apprentice.  Thus was pronounced the phrase: "Take all your things and leave as you can no longer offer what we are looking for".   What QOC included in his cardboard box of shame was, of course - obvioously! - his recipe book.  "His" and singular being the operative words here.  This, gentle reader, is where the most Malicious of Compliances comes in.  Art!

     It didn't take long for criticisms of the sports club's food to begin, and at one point QOC said they had 50 negative reviews on their website.  He was looking on with grim amusement, having already secured a job as a chef at a smaller restaurant.

     Then the phone calls began.  Eventually, after QOC felt they'd suffered enough, he answered one, which was from the sports club's management asking for the recipe book back as they needed it.  Art!

     Squeezing all the MalCom he could out of the situation, QOC riposted with 'Remember "you can no longer offer what we are looking for"?', that the recipe book was HIS HIS HIS and was staying with HIM HIM HIM.  I belabour the point but you can appreciate how he felt.  Manglement fell over themselves to then offer him his old job back starting Monday.  QOC hung up.

     Within the space of a couple of months this new restaurant had used about 1/3 of QOC's recipes on their menu, and were now poaching customers from the sports club restaurant in gradually increasing numbers.  So much so that a tranche of the sports club manglement came to check out the menu and beg for the recipe book back. 

     Their pleas fell on stony ground.

     QOC cut to the chase, 2 years later.  The sports bar restaurant had continued to haemorrhage customers and lose profitability, and most of the kitchen staff had quit, citing manglement as the reason, with poor reviews of their product also not helping retention, which further drove down custom and food quality.  Art!

Either a wake or QOC's former employer

     Oooops.  All ahead Shred Factor One!

Dog-Pile!  Dog-Pile!

'Twould appear that Tesla's share price is going up again BOOOOOO but, in further news, Jeremy Clarkson has weighed in with a lawsuit that Elong Tusk mounted against him and the BBC many years ago, during the heyday of "Top Gear".

     One of the components of TG was putting a car through it's paces as a test, and scoring the results, which Jezza did with a Tesla Roadmaster back in 2008.  Art!

     Jezza, TG (and the BBC's Legal Department no doubt) did not have good things to say about the Roadster.  Their first test vehicle broke down after 55 miles when the brakes went.  Their second substitute vehicle overheated and broke down, too.  Jezza's overall opinion was not appreciative, since the Roadster was 1) Unreliable (one hundred per cent failure rate!) 2) Horribly expensive (up to £200,000) and 3) Handled badly thanks to it's excessive weight (classed as 'that of several moons' by the unkind TG people) - 1.25 tons in proper weights and measures.  Art!

That soundtrack is "Racetracks Of My Tears"

     Showing that he took after Litigious Lollyagging Lout Mopey Dick back in the day, Elong promptly sued for defamation, and equally promptly lost.  He then promptly appealed and promptly lost that, too.  He then probably ran away crying to Mommy about the nasty mean <Cont. Page 96>.  Jezza claims Elong never got over this embarrassing legal defeat and he may well be right.  Let's cross fingers and hope so!  Art?

A metaphor for Elong.  If you know, you know.

A Blast From The Past's Blast From The Past

Conrad is now up to Page 430 of "11.22.1963", Stephen King's verrrrry long novel about a timeslip more than time-travel, and it's now hit a rather boring patch of plain old living in 1961.  Conrad hasn't given in to weakness and skipped forward to the last 50 pages, nor have I gone over the Wiki entry, so I still don't know how it ends.

     HOWEVER - that word again! - I keep wondering if all Jake's messings about in the past are going to have unpredictable future consequences.  Art!

     This is the excellent single-season series 'Odyssey 5', which I am horrified to see ended over 20 years ago.  It, too, concerns timeslip: 5 people sent back in time by five years, to see if they can prevent the future destruction of planet Earth.

     If I can add in to increase the Word Count: "Kurt makes a large bet on a football game whose outcome is already known to him, but the pressure of knowing has a negative effect on a player instrumental in winning the game, and the team loses."

     So, you see, the future as imagined here is NOT immutable and fixed and the protagonist's behaviour can materially alter it.

     What, then, of our hero Jake, grimly determined to save JFK?  Art!

     Food for thought, said Conrad, munching his last slice of cake.

A Stake Diet

As you should surely know by now, BOOJUM! likes to quote various aphorisms in Romanian, which is quite similar to Italian yet different enough to give people pause for thought.  You can do worse than read up on the history of Romania, and rest assured Your Humble Scribe is going to dig up a few recipes from Bucharest.  I seem to remember that 'mamaliga' (polenta) is big in the Carpathians.

     ANYWAY I thought I'd re-tell a verse that Daractenus translated for all to read.  

"Where are you, Vlad (the Impaler)? To arrest them all now come

Then divide them in two bunches: lunatics and vicious scum,

Throw them in two gloomy dungeons to await their executions,

Burn the jails with all these devils and the mental institutions!"

     He was taking a swing at Witless Witkoff, whose intellect seems to have taken a holiday, but whom can stand in for this -

     There's a short clip on Twitter of a very, very angry Pete 'Braindeath' Hegseth (the one asking for a neck-bolt inspection above) trying to blame Conrad, Ukraine, port being passed to the right and, as per usual, the pistachio harvest in the Sanjak of Novi Pazar and not himself.

Finally -

Sorry, still no pictures of the Chicken and Cauliflower Nut Stew.  Maybe tomorrow.