My Mother (In Law) The Car

I Shall Need To Explicate This Title

 - and how hilarious it is.  You see, Conrad is riffing on an old South Canadian television comedy, which we have touched on in the past many years ago, back in the days when a series plot could be encapsulated in eleven words, thus: "A fever dream of an acid trip out of Henry Ford".  Art!

     That's David's mother, reincarnated as a car, whom communicates with him - and only him - via the dashboard radio.  Amazingly enough, David did not check himself into the nearest psychiatric ward, and thus began thirty episodes of unparalleled hilarity (it says here).  Your mileage may vary.  Ha! do you see wh - O you do.

     ANYWAY I thought I'd relate to you the tale of a Mother and a Car, also a Father and a daughter, except these were Mother In Law and Father In Law, and the amount of skulldiggery - which you will recall is much worse than mere skullduggery - on display quite beggars belief.  Art!

A Sports Utility Vehicle

     Looks like a Ford Model T-800, doncha think?

     The principal characters in this farrago are Abused Targeted Male, hereafter ATM* (O what a coincidence!), his wife Melissa Major Mooch, hereafter MMM, and MIL and FIL.  For information, ATM was a regional sales director pulling in $120,000 per annum, whilst MMM was a part-time dental hygienist earning but $35,000.  SUPPOSEDLY.  Not to foreshadow much.  Between ATM and MMM, they had accumulated $78.000 in a savings account, which was intended to go towards a house down-payment.  This had been invested over the 7 years of their marriage.

     Thus we have established the mise en scene.

     One weekend the ILs come to visit, and make much of how their car is a rusting mobile scrap heap, also dropping comments about family and blood being thicker than water, which is not true if it's ice or 

     ANYWAY Art!

     Not long after, ATM notices a withdrawal of $5,000 from their joint account, and since he didn't make it, he enquires politely of MMM, not being suspicious.  AT THE TIME.  Sorry, more foreshadowing.  O it was for er re-certification of my dental hygiene qualifications, explains MMM.

     ATM may have been naive but he's not stupid.  Getting a tad wary, he discovers that MMM had, over the years, secretly run up $25,000 in credit card debt using card and accounts that she'd hidden from him.  The exact nature of this revelation is not given, so we can only assume he intercepted the mail before MMM could sift out the bills.  Art!

A pair of bills

     Now beginning to get really worried, ATM checks their savings account and discovers that <drum roll and sinister oboes> $42,000 has been taken out.

     Not by him!  Initially MMM pretends to know nothing about it, until ATM states his intent to go to the bank and have them review their internal security cameras.  Whereupon she calmly states that yes, it was her, she took the money out and sent it to her parents. "What's mine is yours and what's yours is mine" she quoted, which, translated means "What's mine is mine and what's yours is mine as well".  Her parents deserved a new car, and all three of them had discussed ATM paying for it, without asking or telling him beforehand, which, translated, means "Stealing".  So yes, the in laws knew the money was taken illegally and didn't care, because it allowed them to buy an SUV.

     MMM denied any wrongdoing and tried to blame ATM, which is when he served her with divorce papers.  Ooops.  Art!

     She scuttled off to her parent's house and lodged a counter-suit, which was probably funded by her parents, as will become clearer later on.

     ATM's lawyer is hot stuff, and rapidly digs up text evidence of the Scum Boy Three plotting together over months to do ATM dirty, which goes very badly for MMM in court.  That $42K?  It will be taken out of any assets she got in the divorce, and she got a lot less than 50% because of her skulldiggery.  The in laws tried to stall but had to eventually return the car to ATM, who sold it at an $8,000 loss.

     Then, ATM's lawyer being hot stuff, it was discovered that MMM was earning considerably more than $35K, because she was doing jobs on the side for cash in hand and squirrelling it away.  Bad MMM!  Naughty MMM!  No biscuit for you!  So, her wages were garnished to pay back ATM.  Ooops.

     I know what you're thinking.  What a wild ride!  Art?

     You don't know the half of it, because it gets wilder from this point on.  Yes, we are only half-way through My Mother In Law The Car.  More tomorrow.  I bet you can hardly wait.

Dam And Blast

I say 'Dam' because this item involves a river, which may well have had a dam or weir spanning it along it's length, and which definitely had a suspension bridge across it at a very particular point.  For Lo! we are back on one of Sapper's short stories, titled "The Bridge", which is "Podul" in Romanian, leading to the possibility of having a podul over a puddle, with a poodle having a

     ANYWAY we get one of Sapper's characters explaining how they had set up to demolish the bridge, for this was in the high summer of 1914, when the British Expeditionary Force was retreating before Von Kluck's 1st Army**.  I leave it to your imagination about what nicknames the irreverent Tommies came up with for their opponent.  Art!

     " - how we placed the gun-cotton on the cables, and the leads were running to the exploder hidden behind a tree on our own side.  We tested it all, and we had the bit of fuse and another detonator fixed up in case of any failure in the electricity."

     Why hidden?  Because if any enemy patrols spotted the leads they'd have a pretty fair idea of what was in place, and seek to either cut them or kill the engineers ready to blow the bridge.  Having a back-up is also eminently sensible in case the dry-cells fail.

     If the bridge is destroyed, then the enemy may be able to cross the river on foot or horseback, except the odds are against it.  The current may be too strong, the river too deep and the banks too steep.  In which case the broken bridge will have to be substituted by a pontoon version, which is guaranteed to take hours to arrive and set up, during which the armies of Perfidious Albion can retreat in safety.  Art!

Valiant valedictorian vandalism

Our Jaundiced And Cynical Eye Remains Upon "Elevation"

Don't get me wrong, Conrad enjoyed watching it and would give it a solid 5.5 out of 10, it's just that Hair-Splitting Pedantry is engrained in my very DNA.  Art!

Do fear The Reaper

     Hay Pesto, one of The Reapers, the apex predators that have wiped out all Hom. Sap. below 8,000 feet.  They're bulletproof, as we see demonstrated at several points, and this is established right at the beginning of the film, so that's not a spoiler.

     So, of course - obviously! - Conrad cogitated on this.  Bulletproof, hmmm?  Yes, as far as the automatic rifles in 5.56 mm calibre that we see the cast toting around.  Art!

     Whomever trained the cast in weapons use did a good job, all three of the leads handle their guns as if they know what they're doing.  They also conserve ammo by firing single shots, as you would do if your supply is finite, and they only resort to full automatic a few times.  Congratulations to the makeup people, they managed to make Morena Baccarin look merely attractive, when, if yo

     ANYWAY ANYWAY - one wonders how bulletproof The Reapers would be against an M240 firing NATO 7.62 mm at 1,200 rounds per minute.  No, you might not pierce their armoured scales, yet physics is physics and transmitted kinetic energy could cause their insides to suffer spalling.

     Then there's anti-tank ammunition.  Art!

     That last is 'Armour Piercing Discardable Sabot Fin Stabilised' and by the time you count 1- 2 - 3 it will be a mile away.  Reaper rendered Creeper, one feels.

     Then there is the Barrett Light Fifty, the most mis-nomered of guns.  It fires a .50 calibre armour-piercing round using a depleted uranium core, which stings a bit it if hits you.
     That still leaves anti-tank rockets and missiles, which typically have a shaped-charge warhead that will mimic the HEAT effect above.

     The Plot Armour that explains away all the above, I suppose, would be that after three years any such weapons the surviving colonies had are long gone.   Yes yes yes but I enjoy my pedantry, so there.

Blimey!  We're at 1,500 words already.  That's that happens when you build up a creative head of steam.

Oooops

Kadi, Estonian Ladi, posted what I think is an article from the 'Kyiv Post'.  I am not certain, as their website takes a geological age to load.  Art!

     The Ruffians were due to launch a 'Yars' ICBM on Monday evening, which, as of Tuesday evening at 23:30, has not happened.  There has, of course - obviously! - been no mention of this failure from the Kremlin or any Ruffian media channels, because that would make Bunker Midget Grandad look weak.  If it had merely been postponed then they'd be gloasting about the successful launch by now, so this utter silence implies that it not only didn't happen, but that it's not going to happen.  Conrad awaits Maxar's satellite imagery with interest to see if it blew up  as their 'Sarmat' did last year.  Yes, ICBMs are designed and intended to blow up, but only when they hit their target and not in their launch silo.

Kicking 'Em Whilst They're Down

How serendipitous.  Only last week Your Humble Scribe was wondering what the desertion rate was amongst the orcs.  Art!

     I shall investigate further and let you know.  I bet you can hardly wait.

Finally -

Ooops, I accidentally typed 1,700 words.  Time to log off and watch "The Boys".

*  Automated Teller Machine - South Canadian for a cashpoint.

**  This isn't spelled out or dated in the story, I'm just that well-informed.