You Know Conrad By Now
Ever one to pursue a means to manage an Intro that makes it deliver a visual impact, without costing BOOJUM! anything. This particular Intro is one I was ferreting about yesteryon, unable to remember who the artist was, bar 'British and dance music', with 'lasso'. Art!
Now we know and everyone is better-informed.
Apparently this thief cannot be caught as they can morph through solid objects*. Meanwhile, back in reality - Victim Of Lunch Thief, hereafter VOLT, kept on having her lunch stolen and eaten, by Tomato-Hating Ungrateful Git, hereafter THUG, who would carefully remove any tomatoes present, as they didn't like them. How very abstemious. None of VOLT's managers did anything about these thefts when she complained, because endemic laziness and manglement, those two signature traits of upper management echelons.
After many weeks of theft, VOLT finally took the law into her own hands, Given that we are talking about South Canada many decades ago, this was a risky step, because as any fule no, South Canadians sue for anything at any opportunity. Art!
The AI Art Generator is really doing one today! Yes, VOLT made up a sandwich from tuna cat food, which THUG ate, probably with all the relish of Burglar Bill eating his stolen fish and chips. Then, the next day, she put a note on the work fridge about what she'd done.
THEY FIRED HER.
Enter Competent Humane And Sympathetic Manager, hereafter CHASM, whom VOLT went to in tears about her dismissal. CHASM investigated, which other manglement had not done for months or at all.
Surprise! The company had security cameras recording in the break room where the fridge was, and on reviewing footage CHASM immediately identified the thief.
Problem solved, right?
WRONG!
When confronted, THUG admitted everything but claimed his life had been hazarded by the business and that they thus couldn't fire him and he would be suing them. Thanks to manglement and stupidity - from context Conrad judges this was around the Eighties when male chauvinism still rode high - CHASM couldn't fire THUG, though he did get VOLT her job back, since check out his acronym. It also solved the problem of lunches going missing. Art!
CHASM at work, bless him
He was also capable of playing the long game, which he did here. Having identified THUG, he recognised him as a lazy, unreliable, frequently absent warehouse employee. Who never delivered on the suing-for-the-horror-of-cat-food threat, either.
So, why not promote him? Not as daft an idea as it seems. A year later, when a forklift truck vacancy under CHASM came up, THUG applied, as it was a bump in responsibilities and earnings. Unfortunately for THUG the application process also involved a drugs test; Conrad encountered these when working at the Co-Op and they are very, very thorough.
Surprise! THUG failed his drug test, coming up positive for meth and pot, which explained his erratic attendance and performance, and CHASM, possibly rubbing his hands gleefully, fired him. THUG once again tried the suing-because-I-can tactic and got nowhere, as failing a drugs test was an instant dismissal offence. The protective umbrella of manglement seems to have vanished over the year since THUG's culinary thieving, so no old boys network to the rescue. Art!
THUG counting to two
You might expect that to be all, except there was a coda decades later, when CHASM was in conversation with an acquaintance, and THUG's name came up. It turned out that getting very obviously fired for being on drugs was a wake-up call for THUG, and he cleaned his act up. The acquaintance showed CHASM a picture of a much older THUG, minus hair but also minus the drugs, as they were now running a substance abuse facility.
All that from a cat-food sandwich. Don't you just love the drama of the human condition?
Conrad Recognises This Title
As encountered during a random trawl of my feeds. Art!
The article will be about Scapa Flow, that giant natural harbour in the Orkney Islands, where the Royal Navy long lurked, and where the Teuton Navy scuttled itself after they lost the First Unpleasantness. Note that the photograph above is of a ship in dock, not at Scapa Flow, and it's possibly one of the Teuton battleships that got a malleting at the Battle Of Jutland. Let me dig a little further.
Aha! It's the wreck of the 'Hindenburg', being salvaged after the mass scuttle in 1919. What remains underwater at Scapa is now legally protected, meaning nobody can muck about with or steal any of the wrecks. Quite what you'd do with a 25,000 ton mass of rust and barnacles is open to question.
'Popular with divers' says the article. Remember your silt management skills, divers! and always go in pairs.
There Goes The Neighbourhood
Relatively speaking. No, nothing to do with Athlete and their last album <(sad face> Art!
No, this is about an astronomical term being used a tad loosely, and if Art will get off his laggardly Neanderthal behind -
Looking at this headline, you would be forgiven for thinking that they mean another gas giant in the Solar System, the one that was wrongly thought to exist beyond the orbit of Pluto, which itself has been downgraded from planet to planetismal.
What they ought to have put is ' - in the Sun's neighbourhood' because this is a 'Hot Jupiter' in the Alpha Centauri system, four and a half light-years distant. Yes, this is an incredibly long way if you're travelling by foot, or even by bicycle, but in astronomy terms it is indeed in the neighbourhood.
As for alien life? Not on the gas giant itself, yet if it has moons then perhaps on one of them.
Oooh! Oooh! Another 'Plot Point'
Yes, this one occurred to me as a general background point rather than being pinpointed to any particular episode of 'The 100'. Art!
As an illo that shows the rather grungy environment that the teenage delinquents operate in. No running water, electricity or social media. Art!
Bucolic but buggy
Earth in all it's post-apocalyptic greenery. Now, contrast this with the living conditions aboard the Ark, which are as sterile and aseptic as possible. Art!
So - the 100 canaries have been sent from an environment where they have had ABSOLUTELY NO CONTACT with terrestrial pathogens, for 97 years, and yet they can walk around, breathe the air and ingest food (barbequed panther actually) and drink the water with no consequences? Not even a little loose bowel syndrome?
The scriptwriters might be forgiven for not wanting to be too realistic, as in that case the 100 would rapidly dwindle to the 6, and the first season would be two episodes long.
Of course, I could be overthinking this .....
My Other Birthday Present
I am typing this on Wednesday for publication Thursday, and am expecting my Amazon package later today, probably in the afternoon. As with my early birthday present, Conrad isn't going to inform you what it is until my actual birthday, har har, because that's the kind of person I am. Let's just say that it will confirm the habits of my mis-spent youth. A book? A bike? A bit of Beelzebub? I'll bet you can hardly wait.
* Look closely.
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