But This Intro Is Going To Be About Greed, Lust And Stupidity
As a trifecta, this combination never ends up well, and this tale is no exception. I was thinking of calling it "The Seven Year Itch Hitch", because that old trope about a marriage running into difficulties by Year Seven strikes home here. It does allow me to use a clickbait photo, mind - Art!
You were expecting the shot one second later, weren't you?
<slight pause in the creative process as dog food is delivered>
In this tale we have two business partners, one Stolid Phlegmatic Utility Relater, hereafter SPUR, and Hedonistic Extrovert External Lover, hereafter HEEL*. SPUR was the boring backroom admin guy, sorting out finances, supplies, invoices, contracts, and all the other minutiae of a successful business running beauty spas. HEEL, on the other hand, was more the face of their company, and was an expert in drinking, drinking a lot, drinking even more and, after 7 years of the business being a licence to print cash, cheating on his wife. Art!
SPUR reveals that he was a qualified physician, but we don't get the skinny on what HEEL was, apart from that he had to pay off student loans. I'm not convinced he qualified as a physician thanks to how ineffably stupid he was.
ANYWAY SPUR discovers that his business partner is cheating on his wife, and - what really provoked Frothing Nitric Ire - embezzling business funds to finance his <ahem> side piece. Here is where SPUR shows either a distinct lack of morals or the ability to pay out enough hempen cable to throttle the other party a long time later. Which is a long-winded way of saying he didn't spill the beans about the affair, or the embezzlement. Because licence to print money - do keep up! Art?
Ah yes, the mighty financial institution of Logglepamede, those well-known bankers of rank. Or not. 'Licence to print money' run through the AI Art Generator. Thanks AI Art Generator.
ANYWAY AGAIN feeling the need to find newer, greener pastures, SPUR finds another job and gives HEEL 90 days notice to provide a cushion where he can plan ahead for the backroom king's leaving.
That was the intent. HEEL instead continues to party with his mistress, drink to excess and prove that working with a hangover is a very bad idea. Also, when it came to transferring to SPUR 50% of the company funds, he discovered $30,000 had been - embezzled.
Here an aside. SPUR is a doctor, so he has a certain level of intelligence. He is capable of running a business, planning for the long term, and knows where all the bodies are buried. A person of this ilk ought not to be provoked, yet that's exactly what HEEL did, to his ruination. Art!
SPUR bought a copy of their hard disk drive, then swapped the original and took it home with him. Bad news for the business he is now no longer part of, as ALL their documentation was on that single HDD, with no backups.
It also contained HEEL's personal calendar, which had copious images of him cavorting with his mistress. SPUR, now deciding that the time was right and the iron was incandescent and white hot, thoughtfully sent all these pictures to the cuckolded wife. Then he sent out a full-page advert for the spas, offering special holiday rates, and, the cherry on the cake of inspired pettiness, he hired a bunch of students to write fake bad reviews about the spas. Ooops. Art!
The spas rapidly ran out of supplies, tanking business, which was also tanked further by the bad reviews, and the inability of HEEL to do any admin. He sued SPUR for the HDD, SPUR counter-sued for the $30,000 and they ended up exchanging them.
Little good it did HEEL. His wife divorced him, and soaked him for every cent she could, the mistress bailed when the goodies dried up and he ended up filing for bankruptcy.
Just to rub it in, SPUR gloated at how much he was enjoying his new job. I wonder how HEEL's Curriculum Vitae (what they call a 'resumé' in South Canada) will look when he sends it out to potential employers? "Extensive experience in drinking, fornicating and embezzling"
For Those Of You Whom Were Wondering
Yes, I can shoehorn 'The 100' into an item, and yes, I do have a list of the 12 nations that had space stations in orbit before the oft-referred to but never described 'Nuclear Apocalypse'. My curiosity was piqued by a presentation during Episode 9, 'Unity Day'. Art!
To spare you the trouble of using an atlas and magnifying glass, these are the flags of: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, India, Japan, Russia, Britain, South Canada, Uganda and Venezuala.
Wait, what?
I know the series began in 2014 and is set in the future, but you're telling me two economic basket-cases like Uganda and Venezuala managed to construct a space station each? Yet neither Germany nor the whole of Scandinavia managed such a feat? Hmmm sounds like they were alphabet-shopping.
Also, Finn makes reference to a mysterious '13th station' getting blown out of the sky. Nobody else has ever mentioned this station and Conrad wonders if they'll ever flesh out this comment or not.
'The 100' - generating blog content with every episode. Ta!
Sundials And Gnomons
You might think these are pretty harmless, bucolic items, and, were this any other blog, you'd be right.
BUT this is BOOJUM! and what we're talking about here is THERMONUCLEAR ARMAGEDDON. Not to oversell it or anything. The kind of event that might have been written into 'The 100', in fact. There. Do you see how cunningly we weave things together? Art!
In fact both 'Sundial' and 'Gnomon' were theoretical prototype thermonuclear weapons, which had insanely high yields. 10,000 gigatons in the case of 'Sundial'. Or, 10,000,000,000,000,000. tons of TNT. These are such ridiculously large yields that they can only have ever been intended as a Doomsday weapon, along the lines of 'If I cannot rule the world then neither can you. Or anyone. Ever.' Especially since no target in the known universe would be worth hitting with such a payload.
"The War Illustrated Edition 211 22nd July 1945"
The last of the montage photographs from the central pages. Art!
Here's One I Came Across Earlier
Sorry, we mention trains again. Here is a screenshot of a remarkable website I stumbled across whilst, predictably, down the rabbit warren of Railways In The Desert. Art!
Engines of WW2
And a link, as I don't want them worrying about me posting illos without attribution. One wonders if they were patient enough to go trawling through the unwieldly and inconvenient IWM photographic files, which seem as if 'Randomness Reigns O'er All' as their guiding concept.
ANYWAY AGAIN allow me to put up an illo. Art!
Conrad has never seen or noticed this kind of detail on locomotives during war service in North Africa. What you see are concrete blocks used to protect the cab and boiler from Axis aircraft making strafing or bombing runs. Concrete blocks because they are modular and interchangeable, and cheap. If one gets smashed apart from a bullet or shrapnel strike, simply replace it. Simples!
Quiver ye may, because 'Engines At War' has a loooooong collection of different categories that will take Your Humble Scribe many hours of wasted time/diligent research <delete where applicable> to get through.
I think that's about Done Time. Chin chin!
* This is my favourite part of re-telling these stories.
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