Taking Credit

There Are A Couple Of Meanings At Play Here

One is the sense of claiming to be responsible for an act, thus reaping the benefits of said act, such as arresting a dangerous criminal or extinguishing a conflagration.  Of course - inevitably! - there are those who will sweep in and take credit for deeds done that they have absolutely no claim to.  Art!

     Yes, it's the Orange Land Whale, whom we haven't insulted for a while on the blog and he stands as both metaphor and example for taking unearned credit.  He now claims to have stopped 10 wars, probably up to 11 by now, including the Austro-Serbian Pig War of 1904, Gondor versus Mordor and the War Of Jenkin's Ear.  South Canada itself was late to both the First and Second Unpleasantnesses, which they don't like being admitted, especially as they are convinced it was all over once they joined the throng.

     Here an aside: DJ Tango seems to have contracted that hideous scabbing disease from Starry Trex's 'Miri', as exemplified by raging hostile mood swings.  Art!

Jim being his usual understated self

     ANYWAY the other sense of taking credit is in the business world, where a line of credit may be extended to an organisation.  This is a species of loan, where the amount may be borrowed, repaid and borrowed again.

     So to the meat of the matter, for this Intro involves manglement, filial piety and revenge.  As is usual with these South Canadian Youtube Reddit tales, the narrator is careful to be very vague about exactly what kind of business they were in, because Litigation!  Art?

     Quietly Vengeful Child, hereafter QVC, worked at the same business as his mother, who had been a fixture there for many years.  Daily office life was bearable, if not great, as the upper management were liable to make stupid arbitrary decisions, which QVC's boss visibly and verbally chafed at.

     One such decision was made about Maligned Undeserving Mother, hereafter MUM, who was promptly sacked one day with 0% warning and marched out of the office.  Art!

QVC

     QVC himself was sat down in a meeting, supposedly to be told ahead of the rest of the floor about MUM being fired due to 'restructuring', as the e-mail sent out claimed.  He was inwardly seething, yet gave nothing away to manglement - 'Quiet' being the active verb here - but did tell his direct boss.

     A week later a job spec is e-mailed out, exactly the same as MUM's old role.  So much for 'restructuring'.  

     QVC proved they were amaster of the low blow.  They copied in the restructuring e-mail to the new job spec and sent it out to the international CEO and head of HR, subject line 'Anyone see a contradiction here?'  Art!

     That's a cat amongst the pigeons, just so we're clear.  QVC's e-mail lit a fire under both the people who read it.  They responded within minutes, and the upshot was an unannounced visit for auditing purposes, which involved lots of shouting between senior manglement in QVC's office, who were thunderstruck at this visitation.

     Remember credit?

     It transpired that the business's General (Unfit) Manager had, very very unwisely, extended a huge line of credit to a client, whom had subsequently rolled over and died.  Business now out of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars.

     So! In a stroke of genius, GUM decided to make MUM  the fall-guy for his disastrous decision, as anybody would.  Said no competent businessman ever.  Art!

AI Art Generator proves machines will never take over

     GUM was busted down to Head Of Sales, not sacked, because manglement looks after it's own.  Or does it .....

     QVC's revenge didn't stop there.  Their boss suddenly resigned, as this business with MUM and GUM was the last straw for them, and they went to work for the competition.  They offered QVC a better-paying job with said competitors, which QVC grabbed with both hands, quitting without notice.  Fair's fair, that's how much notice they gave his MUM, right?  Art!

                             

     Not only that, QVC left a huge project to be completed, which the only other person in his department couldn't even begin to start.  The business had to bring in an external contractor to do the task, who gouged them thousands for a week of work, and they had to pay their client for the delays.

     I think this one covers all the bases.

     One reason they may not have sacked GUM is because then they'd have to pay him unemployment.  On the other hand, if they ensure he has no direct reports, reports instead to the CEO, has no budget, is off in a corner of a sub-basement, has his lunch breaks timed to the second and is issued a dodgy laptop and a works mobile with a broken screen - resignation cannot be far off.

Art Reflecting Real Life, In A Way

As you should surely know by now, Conrad is working his way through the 'UFO Anthology', and having a rare old time doing so.  I came across a story with curious echoes of real life, remembering that it was scripted and drawn in 1972.  Art!

     At the time of publication, 'Moldavia' was still part of the Sinister Union, though nowadays it is indeed an independent republic.  It's not that tiny, either.  Google it on Maps.

                                             

     This is General Karasko, the dictator of Moldavia, who bears a striking resemblance to 'Potato Fuhrer' Lukashenko, the deeply unloved dictator of Belarus.  Close but no cigar.  Art!

For comparison

     You don't often see this kind of detail in the comics, where the nefarious ends of the aliens are usually unseen.  Here we have at least 7 Hom. Sap. in deep-freeze, so they can be transported back home and harvested for organs.  Art

     I did say the comics were nothing like as dark as the television program, but this page proves me wrong - all those frozen abductees get blown to kingdom come, which is pretty bleak stuff for 8-year olds.


More Of Trojans

Here we're looking at the computer analogue of that epitome of Greek treachery, the Trojan Horse, usually abbreviated by the IT people to merely 'Trojan', because they are lazy and lack a classical education.

     ANYWAY allow my Collins to shine forth again.  "Computing.  A bug inserted into a program or system designed to be activated after a certain length of time or number of operations."
     Lest ye be unaware, no, a Trojan is not there to celebrate life, love and happiness, it is there to generally beggar things up.  Art!

     That's the wonderfully-realised 3-D computer system in 'Paycheck', where the whole thing is paralysed by a Trojan, later identified as being installed in a component the size of a thumbnail.  Art!

     In real life there was 'Stuxnet', a Trojan that caused Iranian uranium enrichment centrifuges to spin wildly out of control and suffer critical damage which took years to replace.  Ooops.

"The War Illustrated Edition 212 August 3rd 1945"

We all know what's coming, but the forces still locked in combat in the Far East had no idea about 'Tube Alloys' and what would befall the Nipponese empire with a couple of instant-sunshine bombs.  Art!

      Under new management OR sic transit gloria mundi.  At upper port and starboard is the Reich Chancellery, and to port you can see Herr Schickelgruber in his glory days, doing the old haranguing to an adoring crowd.  To starboard there are a few curious British soldiers having a nosy to see if anything worth nicking remains.  Probably not.  As you can see, the Sinisters inflicted quite significant property damage in conquering Berlin; that's the interior of the Chancellery, exhibiting all the signs of being a 'fixer-upper'.  At bottom starboard every Sinister soldier able to wield a piece of chalk has left their name on the pillars of the Reichstag.  Bad lads.


Concerning If True
Your Humble Scribe's not going to submit to clickbaitery and follow the link, just copy and paste the original item.  Art!

     What on earth is a 'diesel tourist' when it's at home?

     Googling does not enlighten.  We shall never know.