Revengeance

Yes, Another Word I invented

Again, if it turns up in future editions of 'Collins' then I want royalties.  Having made a portmanteau word from two others, Your Humble Scribe is, of course - obviously! - compelled to find out the origins of both.  You can't complain, we do this all the time, just not at the very beginning of the Intro.

REVENGE: "The act of retaliating for wrongs or injuries received, vengeance, from the Latin <hack spit> 'Revindicare"

VENGEANCE: "The act of or desire for revenge. from the Latin <spit hack> 'Vindicare'"

     Art!

A bit too literal, perhaps?

     I'm glad we got that cleared up.  So, essentially the same word,

     ANYWAY mentioning them brings about recollection of that old saw, "Revenge is a dish best served cold".  Conrad, about to re-tell a Reddit revengeance tale, also recalls a previous epic, and would like to add " - and all the more satisfying if your victim has no idea their downfall was due to you".  Art!

     That rather horrifying image is what the AI Art Generator thinks 'Maliciously rubbing hands' looks like.  I even removed the 'with glee' so t

     ANYWAY this tale was narrated by A Lady With Awful Taste In Men, hereafter ALWATIM, who began her story by narrating how awful her first marriage was and the subsequent divorce.  Kind of on the rebound, she began a relationship with a man she dubbed 'PS' and I shall leave it to you to decide if these are his initials or an acronym describing him.  Unlike Hubbo #1, whom seemed to possess all the self-awareness and expressiveness of a house-brick, PS was so 'in touch' with his emotions and extremely intense emotionally.  ALWATIM asked her readers to stick a pin in these qualities for later reference.  Art!

     That's the AI Art Generator creating an image for 'PS', and it is actually quite appropriate.

     PS looked to be doing well for himself, thanks to his car-wash and phone-making business HE ALLEGED and, since he lived in a huge house, ALWATIM reasoned he must be genuinely wealthy.

     A year later she and her son had moved in with PS at his insistence, although she very wisely kept her old house instead of selling it off.

     That's when the red flags began to appear .....

     For one thing, PS tended to be up all night long and sleep during the daytime.  Which is a bit odd.  Not only that, he was incautious enough to allow ALWATIM to overhear phone conversations with his ' business partners' that didn't sound anything like business comms and more like threats and extortions.

     How very odd!

An undeniably huge house

     Then came the time when PS was a bit short of cash RED FLAG RIGHT THERE, so ALWATIM loaned him $25,000, repayable in three weeks -

     Except on a night out with friends, she caught him cheating with another woman.

     Ooops.

     That was the end of the relationship and any hope of getting the 'loan' back (in the short term because this is a lady scorned), and ALWATIM moved out.  She was then updated on PS's true nature; he was a drug addict totally into GHB, and a conman who scammed old people out of their savings.  Those phone 'conversations' began to make sense, as did his strange sleep patterns.

     Foolishly, PS didn't revoke her access to his e-mails, and she painstakingly screenshot everything to do with money, creating a paper trail proving his criminal endeavours.

     Remember that loan?  Well, ALWATIM had been around for a while and didn't merely give it as cash; she paid PS with a cheque that was officially made out to be a loan, meaning she could file it as business expenses, and that he'd defaulted on it.  Whom did she report this to?  Art!

     These are the people you reallllly do not want to come to the attention of.  They hit matey with $9,500 in taxes on the loan and fined him $5,000 to boot.  Then she took him to court, which took ages, and won the case, meaning he now had to pay her the $25,000 and court fees on top of that.  

     Also, the IRS investigate his income and found that it didn't remotely square with his enormous house, and hit him with back taxes.  So much in back taxes, in fact, that his accounts were frozen and his bank foreclosed on his house.

     Net loss for PS = $500,000 and his home.  This story is not from South Canada, incidentally, as ALWATIM also explained that PS could not claim bankruptcy for a debt he owed to a government entity, so he still owed that money.  He had to move in with his parents, at age 40 a bit of a humiliating prospect, and is now employed by them as concierge (a posh word for 'doorman') at a hotel they own, and will be paying the IRS back for the rest of his life.  Art!

     The sweetest part of all this is that PS recently e-mailed ALWATIM stating that he misses her, she was an angel and he regrets what he did.  So, he has ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA she is responsible for his downfall.

     Tee hee!

A Chilling Comparison

Once again, we are going to look at the box office numbers for "A Minecraft Movie", which are illuminating, to say the least.  Art!

     Thus  by the Rule Of 50%, it's made $278 million in profits globally in less than a fortnight, and here's an interesting wrinkle.  Art!

     As is clearly visible, they have increased the number of screens showing the film, which is highly unusual and an indicator that this film is felt to have legs.  

     On the other hand you have 'Snow White'.  Art!

  So, once again invoking the Rule Of 50%, this film has made $90 million profit, on a budget rumoured to be $300 million.  Blimey, if it were any more of a turkey, it would gobble!  Art?

     That's the difference between Day 11 and Day 25; note that the number of cinemas it's being shown in has diminished sharply, reducing costs yet also profits.
     The truth will come out in 2026, when they have to release detailed tax records to qualify for their UK tax rebate.  I can hardly wait.

"The War Illustrated Edition 206 11 May 1945"

I didn't post this yesteryon as we already had an item on the First Unpleasantness, and you can have too much of a bad thing.  Art!

     There is an expression, isn't there?  'Salting it away'.  One cannot look at Herr Schickelgruber's face in that first photo without a silent smirk, his Reich being forced to hide all it's bullion in a mine to keep it out of Allied hands.  Not very effectively.  O and those unassuming jute bags at the bottom?  Full of gold bullion.

     This somewhat gloasting headline marks the final and permanent British arrival in Arnhem, from which the Teutons were expelled at gunpoint.  Fair dos, they have buried a fallen British paratrooper with a inscribed cross, possibly because even the SS respected their foes of September 1944.

The Oak Of Dungworth

One of the rationales behind Richard's 'Crisis Point' was that the "Royal Oak Hotel" stood but 2 minutes from the Village Hall and 10 from the School Hall, and could be adjourned to at lunch and after the day's wargaming activities had finished.  Not only that, since it was an hotel, attendees from far distant lands used to stay there overnight.

     No longer!

   The landlord retired last year and nobody else could pony up the £1,000,000 needed (important local colour imparted from Richard), so the lights have gone out after 210 years.  Which is rather a shame, to be honest, having been a customer there over the years.  It has knocked a bit of the stuffing out of CP and it's future is looking rather problematic.  Sic transit gloria mundi and all that.

Finally -

As per Facebook, Conrad declares that the Great British Summer is already over.  It was nice while it lasted, all five days of it, although I cannot now whine and complain about the heat.