Citric Sixteen

You'll See Where This Comes In

Firstly, this sad story might be considered to fall among our tales of manglement, or you may classify it as Corporate Conceit, or Greed Is Good Up To A Point, or even Cooking Your Golden Goose.  Art!

Nearly pot-ready

     The background to this tale begins in college, where the Narrator's ARtistic Cousin, hereafter NARC, attended with Significant Technical AchieveR, hereafter STAR.  They became friends and, unlike other college friendships, this one lasted.  Art!

Meme girls

     STAR  then went to work for a business that came into existence in 1982, without Narrator telling who they were.  Not Apple, they originated in 1976.  Possibly Compaq, they have a 1982 inception date.  Regardless, this business was said to have become a 'corporate monolith' within a few years.  

     Re-enter NARC, who was working for an advertising company, which company was taken on by Possibly Compaq as a client.  

     This was MAJOR news for the Clueless Advertising Company.  Landing an enormous customer like Perhaps Compaq meant an immediate and precipitate increase in their budget.  They went from an annual budget of $300,000 per annum to $5,000,000 per annum, an increase of just over 16 times in the space of two years.  So you see where today's title comes from.  Art!

     Bear in mind that this increase is based solely on their having Possibly Compaq as a client, not a broad spread of clients that spreads income streams and mitigates potential risks.  Foreshadowing much?

     ANYWAY, the business owners of AC began to purchase brand new BMWs and houses in the suburbs.  Conrad has no idea how much a brand new BMW costs, so - allow me to dig a little.  Aha.  So, between $36 and $50 thousand.  Quite a chunk of change.  'Houses in the suburbs' is rather more generic, just assume a mortgages worth a couple of a million, that kind of ball-park figure.

     NARC got a $10 raise.  This is all the detail Narrator gave, which I am presuming is an hourly wage increase, rather than a single one-off bonus, which would be incredibly cheap, yes, and also well down to South Canadian manglement standards.  One presumes the C-Suite at CAC thought their landing Probably Compaq was down to their incredible competence and ability.  Art!

     After a couple of years with no bonus or other raises, NARC decides that the Clueless Advertising Company is not floating her boat, so she informs her manager that she's moving on, and leaves after having a small goodbye ceremony with cake and card.

     Canny Advertising Company swoops in and instantly recruits NARC, paying her five times what she earned at Clueless AC, with benefits and bonuses.

     Great, landed on her feet, good for her, you may be thinking.  Nothing so altruistic, I'm afraid.

     Pretend Compac contacts Clueless AC and briefly informs them that they are being dropped like a hot coal, and that going forward they will be retaining Canny AC - because PC goes wherever NARC goes.

     Ooops. Art!

Why the masks?  I have no idea.

     Canny AC had clearly done their homework and discovered that NARC and STAR were friends from college days, which is why Clueless had gotten their account.  They had been watching NARC from afar before making their move, knowing that paying her $250,000 per annum would be offset by increasing their income many multiples of millions.     

     No update on what happened to Clueless AC.  Losing all but 1/16 of your income stream doesn't bode well for them surviving.

     Another commenter said that this kind of management behaviour is extremely common, especially in advertising and marketing companies, which will palm off their employees with client merchandise (because it's freeee!), rather than pay them what is fair.  The employees, fed up of fighting for recognition, let alone payment, then leave - and take the clients with them.

Roast goose, anyone?

You What?

If you were to read the words 'Hogy Jutunk' then you might consider them to be a character in a novel by Joe R. Lansdale, a redneck cracker from Tribulation, Georgia, who brews 'shine and shoots at road-signs Friday night.

     A compelling sketch, yet utterly untrue.  Art!

     Magyar, you see.  The language of the Hungarians.  Allow me -

     "How do we get to Lake Balaton"

     "Not on foot"

     "But!"

     I think that caption to bottom port implies that the Orban government is in a convent.  Drinking 'shine.

More From "ANZACS"

Before we continue, I'd like to repost an illo I used a few days ago, part of the "The War Illustrated" retrospective montage.  Art!

     During the Second Unpleasantness, the Ockers and the Polite Australians had both been fighting in North Africa, over the desert terrain there.  Consequently, when they were transferred to the Pacific, they had to learn the art of jungle fighting, where you might only be able to see thirty yards, not three miles.  As mentioned before, the terrain, weather and disease made jungle warfare on New Guinea an awful experience, even before you factor in the Japanese.  Art!

     These two illos show a 25-pounder gun being hauled up a Kokoda trail at 45º, by hand, and it needed a lot of hands to do the hauling.  No such things as helicopters in New Guinea at this time.  Doubtless there are a couple of poor swine with the unenviable job of standing by, chocks in hand, ready to jump in and stop the gun from rolling backwards.  The whole equipment comes in at nearly 2 tons.  Then you'd need ammunition, and each shell weighs 25 pounds - the clue is in the name - with additional bags of charge for varying the power and thus range.  So, shifting about 50 shells and matching charges needs the sweating Poor Blamed Infantry to shift a literal ton.

Life Imitating Art

One of the best action thriller films ever made is 'Where Eagles Dare', despite it being utterly ludicrous if you step back and think about it for more than five seconds.  What I want to put up here is a quote from Colonel Turner A NAME THAT FORESHADOWS JUST A BIT and one of his quotes:

The Germans have totally
penetrated MI6.

They know every move we make
almost before we make it.

Where the hell are they
getting it all from?

We hand-picked every
man for this mission.

Art!

A man may smile and smile and be a -

      WED is fiction and features prominent use of the Infinite Ammunition Armour-Piercing Sub-Machine Gun, and 

     ANYWAY currently the BBC is reporting on how infiltrated in real life the Iranian military and security apparatus is.  

In its initial attack on 13 June, Israel killed top Iranian military figures including the Armed Forces Chief of Staff, the IRGC Chief of Staff and the head of IRGC missile and aerospace divisions, as well as a number of nuclear scientists.

Each successful operation points to a troubling truth for Iran's leadership: their internal security has been deeply compromised.

They know every move we make
almost before we make it.

Where the hell are they
getting it all from?

     One Ruffian, who has visited Iran many times since 2000, explained it all in one simple word: corruption.  This is rich, coming from an inhabitant of Mordorvia, but he claimed Iranian corruption dwarfed that of his homeland.  Every Iranian official that he met tried to extract bribes from him, simply because they could.  Everything could be bought, especially information, and it seems Mossad, the nosy Israeli people who get around a lot, have very, very deep pockets.  Art!

     Looks more like Brian Paxton and Lee Majors, but I wanted that quote and a picture, so it will have to do.

Finally -

You couldn't make it up, and if you did people wouldn't believe you.  Art!

     "Help, help, I've created a monster!" said the bad scientist.  "It's supposed to do what I want it to do, not the users!"

     Do you want HAL, Elong? because this is how you get HAL.  Get ready to bow the knee to your software overlords, puny humans.