Except Not How You Were Imagining Them
All you perverts expecting pictures of ladies reclining in bubbly baths with foam acting as a censor, tough luck. Art!
AI Art Generator jibbed at 'Bathtub' yet not 'Barrel'
As saucy as we get.
ANYWAY today in this Intro I want to talk about lasers, which might not seem to have any relation with bath salts, but if you bear with me we'll get there.
Firstly, 'laser' is actually an acronym, and stands for 'Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation', and has been around for so long that most people don't recognise it's status as an acronym, and omit the full stops.
The people who first seized upon it as a concept were the jobbing hacks who wrote for pulp sci-fi magazines from the Thirties onwards, a theme that their cover artists picked up and sprinted with. Art!
Here the <ahem> scarlet woman is in fact turning a trope on it's head, as she is the valiant defender of a fallen male, nor is she wearing a brass bra (see earlier BOOJUM!s for more on this topic). You might be alarmed by his broken helmet, BUT since you can actually see the laser beam, that means it's collimated, which implies an atmosphere, ergo he might not die within 10 seconds. Art!
This is more typical - giant robots blasting the living daylights out of New York City, usually the Chrysler Building or Empire State. Art!
Another aside, I'm afraid. Manly Wade Wellman was an excellent storyteller whom is probably best known for his tales of 'John the Balladeer', set in the Appalachian Mountains and as far from lasers and rampaging robots as you can get. Available free on teh Interwebz so go track them down.
Then you have the other end of the Super-Destructo scale, where Colonel Lightyear (what swines his parents were!) has the least effective laser weapon ever, being merely 'a little light that blnks'.
Your Humble Scribe could pad out the Intro with an awful lot more about lasers, except we have the main meat of the matter to get to. So!
Our story, combining Malicious Compliance, Petty Revenge Bordering on Pro, Entitled People and Manglement, begins with the narrator, Captain Lazer Light Show Dave Larry, hereafter LSL. Art!
There you go, various laser cutters in action. LSL's business used - you may be ahead of me here - an industrial laser cutting machine, which was capable of cutting through metals up to 3/4 of an inch thick. He didn't give any specs for the energy output of his equipment, so we can only guesstimate that it was Dog Buns! powerful and not to be treated lightly. Judging by the promotional blurb from various companies, LSL was rocking a 30 kilowatt version as this seems to be the upper limit. Art!
Laser cuttery
LSL paid for his Laser Certification himself, after which the business made various vague noises about compensating him, which never happened. He was also the only person trained in how to repair the laser DANGER WILL ROBINSON BUS FACTOR ONE APPROACHING!
He also mentioned that the cut metals were treated post-lasering, by being put in either oil baths or salt baths - hence today's title. The 'salt bath' was not perfumed balls of soluble chemicals obtained from The Body Shop, it was molten salt, meaning it was at least 150ºC.
For a relaxing soak
All ran smoothly until those dread words appeared - The Business Was Bought out.
New owner, being an Entitled Bottomhole Of Limited Intellect, hereafter EBOLI, promptly sacked LSL as being 'too expensive'. This was a spectacularly stupid decision as rational as cutting off one's nose to spite one's left patella, because LSL removed the business's Laser Certification and left. It was his certificate, after all.
Now, South Canadian government agencies do not allow dangerously powerful laser systems to be operated willy-nilly or even nilly-willy, and require a Certified operator to be present in order for them to operate. They inspected the business and revoked their licence to operate a week later, which is suspiciously rapid and perhaps not un-associated with LSL being fired.
Ooops. Art!
Net income = $0.0
Eventually EBOLI trained up an employee to get the certification, and ten hired an outside contractor to do repairs, which LSL alleged cost fifty times what his rates had been, and is quite possible, because whilst the business had no laser cutter doing the laser cutting, it was bleeding money and could easily be gouged by anyone with any leverage.
10 years later the company is still going, with profits down 90% - says LSL so take with a pinch of salt* - from his heyday**. As for him, he got another job within 30 minutes of being sacked thanks to a phone call and being in a highly-desirable occupation.
Conrad Is Still Angry
In case you were wondering, and even if you weren't. I did warn and threaten you that I had a Theme to yark on about when complaining about Codewords, and here it is.
QUERN: This one really threw me, since I had "QUER-" and began wondering if I had mis-identified a letter, and should the 'E' be an 'I'?
No. Art!
Behold a 'Quern', a pair of stones used to manually grind wheat. WHAT! WHAT! ARE WE ALL OF SUDDEN ARCHAEOLOGISTS?! <mutters darkly>.
WASABI: This is the Japanese equivalent of horseradish, best used in small amounts on your sushi or it feels like a salt bath on your tongue. Really! Another exotic food solution? Art!
SUSHI: Another exotic food that ends in 'I'? How many of these can they cram into a single Codeword, the pikers!
No, Art, no picture. My frothing nitric ire precludes pictures.
BHAJI: AGGGGGGGGGGGGH WHAT! How dare they! <mashes the Remote Nuclear Detonator like a potato>
Let us move on lest I have a myocardial infarction.
No Sonar A-Go-Go
Another sorry tale of sanctions biting the Ruffians, whom then turn around and blame other Ruffians, because Ruffia. Art!
This is one of the smallest naval ships possible, a corvette, which is the biggest thing Modern-day Mordor can construct. Eventually. Two of these ships were delayed in being launched because their sonar systems. Ooops.
The Amur Shipbuilding Plant sued the Priboy Plant after it failed to deliver the Zarya-2 sonar system. The system, essential to the corvettes Grozny and Bravy, relied on components banned under EU sanctions. Priboy admitted its suppliers could not fulfill the order, and its efforts to use “domestic” replacements failed when the Russian-made parts were found to contain foreign chips themselves.
There you go, a waah-waah-waah sound effect ending.
On A Slightly Lighter Note
If I were to inadvertently blurt out that this item is to do with the Ukrainian Army, no doubt you would run for the hills at Conrad pontificating again - except SIT BACK DOWN! Art?
I've no idea how I came across this, but it's a stuffy-looking adjutant in uniform dancing manically to a brass and woodwind band, in what cannot fail but to cheer you up. Here's the link:
Ukrainian military band - A Cruel Angel Thesis
Don't ask me why an angel, nor a cruel one at that. No idea.
When I Take Over -
A prospect that ought to fill you with fear, then the editorial staff of the 'Daily Star' are going to be first into the uranium mines, just ahead of Russell Brand and Ian Carr. Art!
Which volcano? What country? Which hotel? CLICKBAIT ALERT, the pikers.
A little digging ensued. Art!
Ha! Take that, you pikers! No need to click their link.
Finally -
That's enough.
* Table salt at room temperature, thanks. Not molten.
** One can see them taking a very big hit initially, then slowly getting back into profit.
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