With Apologies To Sal Mercogliano
You know, the merchant mariner who runs 'What's Going On With Shipping?' over on Youtube, one of those channels that you never realised you needed until you start watching his vlogs. We haven't mentioned him in a while, because there are always more things in Heaven and Earth than BOOJUM! can fit into 1,500 words or less. Art!
We'll come back to Sal's well-informed views on this rescue at sea, where a 4-year old child went overboard and her dad followed to try and save her. Thanks to some EXTREMELY sharp drills from the rescue tender, both were picked up within 20 minutes. This is the kind of event that crews train and train and train for in the hope that it never happened. Well, it happened.
ANYWAY we are here to narrate a rather less fraught yet more fought tale of Malicious Compliance and Pro-Revenge, which centres around that most contentious of modern urban phenomena: parking spaces. Our Narrator, Urban Motorist But Redefined After*, hereafter UMBRA, lived in an apartment complex that allocated parking spaces, if you paid $25 per month for them. People paid up because otherwise it was a mad scramble to park on the nearby streets, and in the case of UMBRA, they needed a space close to their apartment, thanks to their ongoing recovery from an ankle and knee injury. Art!
UMBRA's car was a clunker, no other way to put it, and 3 months after he paid for the space, it died a death and went from clunker to junker. UMBRA then discovered the joys of public transport - paid for by his job - and that a nearby supermarket would deliver his weekly shopping. His injuries had presumably healed by then, but just try juggling and carrying a week's worth of groceries on the bus!
Excellent was his verdict! He went to inform the apartment complex admin that he no longer had a car and wanted the charge dropping.
Three months later they got back to him and informed that the 'parking space allocation' was part of his lease, it could not be merely dropped and if he wanted that doing he had to break his lease, renegotiate it for the new, higher rental and pay an 'initiation fee', which sounds like euphemistic jargon for 'we're going to gouge you because we can'. Art!
Unfortunately for Surcharging Complex Antagonistic Management, hereafter SCAM*, they were dealing with an entity both clever and devious, for UMBRA went over their lease and found that he could put anything in his parking space as long as it had wheels.
Enter a shipping trailer. Art!
SCAM complained, tried to have it towed, stated it was 'out of compliance', was incorrectly parked, only to be beaten down with their very own clause.
Rather coyly, UMBRA didn't reveal how much his trailer cost. He did offer it to his neighbour at $35 per month, one-third the cost of official shed storage in the complex. After 18 months UMBRA moved out, selling the container to his Grateful Neighbour Appreciating Trailer, hereafter GNAT**, who saved over $1,000.
You know what succeeds? Success. Other tenants began to hire trailers, and the storage arm of the complex was shuttered, so much so that they wrote out new leases forbidding the hiring or use of trailers. Too late to prevent at least a dozen other tenants from copying UMBRA under the terms of the old leases.
Wow, one bets they bitterly regretted playing the jobsworth with UMBRA and his parking space costs. Art!
Poetic licence
In fact, as time went on, rather than break leases, tenants passed them on to new lessees, in a process I am not sure was entirely legal. This meant they could not be forbidden their wheeled shipping trailers. Tee hee!
2 years after moving out, UMBRA drove past the SCAM apartment complex, only to see that it had been sold and was operating under a new name. One supposes, doing the maths, that losing perhaps $12,000 of income per year on tenants with their own storage facility and being totally unable to rectify this, might have sent SCAM into a bit of a downward spiral.
There were still at least a dozen wheeled shipping trailers sitting in the parking lot.
 |
| Poetic licence. Again |
The Grate Pudding
Not to be confused with 'The Amazing Pudding', which was a fan magazine that ran for 10 years, dealing with all things Pink Floyd, including solo work. Art!
Say hello to the Carrot and Cheese Pudding. To port is the one I made a couple of months ago, which went mouldy before I got to eat more than a third of it. As is clearly visible, it looks very much like cottage cheese with coarsely-grated carrot in it.
Sad News Of A Passing
I can guess what you're thinking, and you're WRONG. WRONG WRONG WRONG!
No, we are not talking about that 'mysterious death' over in Mordorvia, where a chief judge fell on a butter knife and was poisoned to death by the bullets, or similar. Art!
This, gentle reader, is Shunsaku Tamiya, who gambolled off this mortal coil today aged 90.
Anyone over the age of 13 and under 65 will be familiar with the name 'Tamiya', which is a Japanese company that has been making plastic models for generations. Conrad well remembers the enormous boxes of 1/35 scale plastic kits of Tiger tanks et al in all the model shops he ever entered. Art!
The problem with a kit like this is that the Chieftain is a big tank, and 1/35 scale means big models, so you run out of display space very quickly, unless you have a custom-built shed in the back yard, Wonder Wifey permitting.
Speaking Of Chieftains .....
We occasionally mention Nick Moran on the blog, he being a naturalised South Canadian citizen who originally hailed from Ireland. He was a tanker in the Gulf Unpleasantness, which is incredibly remarkable as he's about 6' 7" and must be a contortionist to fit into even an Abrams properly. His Youtube and Twitter handle is 'The Chieftain', and he posted this on Twitter today. Art!
This looks like a Leopard II, and the Ukrainian iteration of same - you can tell by the ERA (Explosive Reactive Armour) they stick on their Western kit - O and yes their flag. Given that the text is in Japanese, quite possibly the Tamiya 'Ukraine' version of the Leo.
The little white dumpling-folks are 'florks', a meme from Twitter, where they gift a hat to whom or whatever has been making life difficult for Modern-day Mordor. Art!
Conrad The Critic
Your Humble Scribe has seen various clips of the disaster flick 'Greenland' on Youtube, where it gets invaded by an army of orange land whales in order to capture the snow mines and free the musk oxen from hideous Danish slavery, except th
Sorry, too much diet tonic water. It concerns a disaster delivered via comet, I think, and because I freeze into immobility if not making notes, I have started to - you may be ahead of me here - make notes. Art!
One for the ladies: Gerard Butler. One for Conrad: Rowena Baccarin.
Finally -
I am falling behind in my homework - at least 20 pages per night of "The Ockers Go To France", so I shall bid you farewell and get cracking. Art!
* Yes, I am making a meal of these acronyms. Sue me.
** This was going too far - excision courtesy Mister Hand
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