You Ought To Be Familiar With This Champ Of Scamp
She has learned, because she is quick-witted and greedy, that when the door of Conrad's man-cave opens in the morning for his first break of the working day, that there will be a plate with toast crumbs or even perhaps a piece of crust, as well as a porridge bowl that simply calls for cleaning with a dog's tongue. The moment that door opens she comes pounding up the stairs like an entitled cavalry charge. Art!
Now, I could fill the rest of this Intro with pictures of Edna, which would delight the dog owners who read BOOJUM! and satisfy rather less the cat owners, but this Intro is about entitlement amongst Hom. Sap. Edna was just there to establish the mise en scene. Take a bow, Edna, and exit stage left.
Okay, time to prod Art into his normal state of semi-sentience and have him earn his bowl of coal.
A South Canadian neighbourhood*
This sad and sorry tale is about a bad neighbour, who moved next to The Narrator, after the original inhabitant of their next-door house had keeled over and died of old age. This new inhabitant was christened 'Richard' and although TN never contracted it to the shorter nickname, Conrad will do so, because Richard was indeed Dick. Art!
Not long after Dick moved in, TN and his father caught him cutting down their bushes on their side of the property line; he claimed he had to do this in order to get his cars into his back yard. Toast crust and porridge bowls, anyone? Yes, Dick was a species of Entitled Bottomwipe. He stormed off after being caught, but came back later and cut down all the bushes. Then, still trespassing on TN's land, he drove his two cheap-bottom Porsches into the back yard, probably smugly gloating about it as he did so.
This was merely the first skirmish, because TN and his father made sure to mark out the limit of their property by knocking in metal fence posts along the common border, just 5 inches inside their property line. They used big, robust metal fence posts and knocked them into the ground very deeply indeed. Art!
Later that evening they could tell when Dick discovered what they'd done because he swore loud and long. He then proceeded, like a petty seven-year old, to drive both cars from his back yard out to the front, scraping their sides badly, because he could.
The police, when they arrived and were informed of the trespassing and property damage, were less than amused and issued him with a ticket.
Ding ding, seconds out, Round Two commencing! Art!
TN and father replaced the metal fence posts with wooden fencing. Soundly-based, concreted-in wooden fencing. Dick retaliated by piling up rocks against the fence on his side - which was still inside his neighbour's property line. This caused the fence to collapse onto TN's property, spilling all the rock junk. TN thoughtfully picked up all the rocks and threw them onto Dick's porch.
Rashly, Dick called the cops. By this time they had the measure of the man and issued him a citation for property damage.
Proving that he had the body of a man but the head of a Richard, and an Entitled One at that, Dick 'acquired' a set of "No Parking By Order Of The Police" signs and put them up outside his home. He then called Traffic Enforcement on TN when he ignored the signs. The TE lady took a closer look at the illegally-acquired signs and - you may be ahead of me here - called the cops. Art!
The upholders of the law stuck him with another two tickets, and City Hall hit him up for another three.
TN's family had, by this time, taken out a Restraining Order on Dick, so the bases were loaded against him - but of course an Entitled Bottomwipe doesn't feel that the law applies to them. He tried stalking TN in one of his (scarred) cars, and was speedily arrested for violating the RO. After his day in Court, Dick no longer had a driving licence or cars and had to take the bus. Art!
Demonstrating a keen lack of understanding about how buses work, Dick flew into a rage when the bus driver wouldn't stop between two bus-stops to let him off; as well they might not, I bet their public liability is voided if they do that. This minor legal point was completely lost on Dick, who kicked out the bus windows.
That earned him a 3 month prison spell. After which he was sacked. No income meant being unable to pay the mortgage on his home, so he lost that, too.
In life, don't be a Richard.
"Wild Swans" By Jung Chang
Conrad is about 1/5th of the way through this long autobiography, which details the lives of the author's mother and grandmother in China, before getting round to Jung herself.
The story really kicks off in 1924 when her grandmother became a concubine to General Xue, at a period where there was no Chinese state, merely a patchwork of fiefdoms run by various warlords. Art!
Prior to 1931, General Chiang Kai-Shek and the Kuomintang had nailed together most of China through naked force, but was being challenged by the Communists. Then came the Japanese invasion, and a brutal occupation enforced with extreme cruelty and harshness. The KMT and Communists kind of ignored each other to fight the Japanese, which forbearance ended in 1945 when Japan surrendered. Then the Ruffians turned up, stealing and raping as they traditionally do to this day, until replaced by the Chinese Communists, who were then chased out of Jinzhou, Chang's native city, by the KMT. I've just reached the point where the KMT were beginning to lose the civil war.
Blimey! What an era to live through. Conrad unsure where the swans come in, these people were desperate enough to eat them if they loitered around.
What Can Possibly Go Wrong? Part 1
How can you tell if a structure is load-bearing? You could consult the architectural plans and see if they specify, you can use the Mark One Human Eyeball if you have experience in such matters, or you can just put it under stress and see what happens. Testing to destruction, in other words. Art!
This is a large vehicle mounting a very heavy rig of some description. Don't worry about the upper works being out of shot here, that will soon be remedied. Art!
This is obviously a large lined pit. You may be able to guess where this clip is heading. Art!
"Bomba De Lodo" is Spanish for 'Mud Pump', and is used to pumps muds, slurries and other thick liquids. I've gone searching for more details about this incident and found exactly 0%. O well. I tried. Art?
Told you so.
What Can Possibly Go Wrong? Part 2
Allow me to put up a picture or two. Dimya won't enjoy seeing these as it's one of his oil depots on fire. Art!
Distant film clip of the Liski depot on fire in at least two places, thanks to - er - 'debris' which happened to fall on the fuel storage tanks when 'all the drones were intercepted' again. By my calculations these drones are as big as a 747 and composed of equal parts TNT and reinforced concrete, flying at Mach 25. Art!
Interestingly enough, the orcs seem to have tried to protect these tanks with a 'cope cage' arrangement, which has proved to be spectacularly unsuccessful. The fire is now in it's fifth day, so I would advise selling tickets to it as a tourist attraction. They might be having trouble trying to put out simultaneous fires at four different widely-separated sites and may be short of the proper firefighting foam. Having hundreds of storage sites stocking flammable substances right next to your neighbour*, whom has an enormous drone industry has proved to be a very bad idea indeed.
Finally -
We have learned that the gas will be cut off on Wednesday, for that day and Thursday, too, so no hot water for showers or shaving, bar what we can boil and store in a vacuum flask.
* Note CORRECT spelling
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