What Am I Wittering On About Now?
O I thought you'd never ask! Just to be clear, we're not talking about the 1971 film 'Unman, Wittering And Zigo', which I have never seen, but the knowledge it's existence has been hanging around in my rubbish-skip mind for 54 years until today. Art!
Just to be even clearer, UWAZ - where Zigo never appears in the film at all - is also not making a reference to 'UN-Man', the novella written by Poul Anderson in 1953, which features a United Nations very much stronger than today, which h
Yes I have read it
ANYWAY before we get even further down the reductionary rabbit-hole, let me say that this Intro is a bit of an experiment, brought about by an inexplicable burst of energy by Conrad, a cup of mint tea and the film "Greenland". I sat and watched it all the way through, making notes along the way, with timestamps, which have proved very useful in getting screenshots. Art!
You'll have to forgive my camera shots of the on-screen action, because Netflix automatically blanks the monitor if you try and use Snip while the film is playing or even if paused. There may be a method to work around this; for the time being my photos will have to do.
Okay then, on with the dog and eohippus show. 'Greenland', as you may or may not be aware, is an apocalyptic thriller starring Gerard Butler and Morena Baccarin, with crusty old Scott Glen appearing later on.
The scene is set in Atlanta, Georgia, in South Canada, where we meet John Garrity, a structural engineer. Art!
Okay, so we establish that John is no mere hick, because to become a Structural Engineer you need a degree, then to pass an exam in the Fundamentals of Engineering, four years work experience and then pass another Engineering Principles exam. These people know how to construct and build, or perhaps re-construct and rebuild CHEKHOV'S GUN EXAMPLE RIGHT THERE. Art!
After work, John drives to a house in the suburbs, where his estranged wife Alison and his son Nathan live. Call me inattentive, but Your Humble Scribe doesn't remember a single reason given for this separation. Art!
This is plainly so that there can be an emotional reconnection with a story arc developing their relationship, instead of having it be happy, together and normal.
During his drive, John has the radio on and is listening to the witless babbling of a radio host, who is gushing about the imminent arrival of the comet 'Clarke', ' - the closest comet flyby in history!' babbles the witless one. Well, I hate to monsoon on your procession, but I think you'll find the Chuxulub impact crater as evidence there have been closer flybys in history. Art!
The dinosaurs were not happy
To further establish John as a splendid chap, he spends time with Nathan, who had been gifted with a child's version of the drawing table we see his dad at in the opening scene. We are treated to his child version of Clarke. Art!
We get a bit of clunky exposition about what comets are, and in all this radio, television and family commentary, nobody mentions the dinosaurs. Almost as if they didn't want to give the plot away. Well, John is frolicking with Nathan and we catch a glimpse of A Medical Device attached to his son. Art!
 |
| An insulin pump |
MORE CHEKHOV'S GUN RIGHT THERE, PAL.
Then comes an info-dump as presented by a couple of television hosts, whom address the approach of Clarke, ' - which was only discovered weeks ago'. They also state that it's not a unitary body, being split into hundreds of fragments ' - millions of years ago'. Art!
Sorry to typhoon on your travels, but this is not how astronomy works. Much later we are told that one of the Clarke fragments is nine miles across, which is large enough for the whole cometary constellation to have been discovered years previously by the thousands of amateur astronomers who scan our heavens nightly.
Nor is that all. Art!
This is the planet Jupiter, the largest planet in the Solar System, and those are explosions taking place. Just scale them to Jovian size. What caused them? The comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 did. On a previous encounter with Jupiter's gravity, the comet split apart and on it's next pass, it's orbit intersected with that of Jupiter, all 21 fragments hitting the gas giant. They caused explosions with an estimated yield of 300 gigatons. That's 300 billions tons of TNT.
The thing is, SL9 was not that large a comet; it's total size may have been, at most, six miles across, before it broke up. The largest fragment, 1.2 miles across, caused an explosion on the Jovian atmosphere as big as planet Earth itself. Art!
Planet Earth is going to get an absolute pummelling, and these anodyne idiots have no idea what's coming. ' - fragments will burn up in the atmosphere' they glibly quote. O no they won't!
ANYWAY AGAIN enough of Conrad the amateur astronomical buzz-killer. Art!
Alison sleeps alone. No reconciliation tonight, people!
Okay, we're about 10 minutes in and I think that's enough of Conrad's narrow-eyed analysis. More to come!
NO! Get It Right!
Grrrr from your hair-splitting pedant. I was perusing my news feed when I came across this item. Art!
Whichever sub-editor put this together needs a lesson in both history and grammar. It's 'Operation CITADEL' OR 'The End of the Citadel Operation' and I wag my finger at them most sternly.
Bah!
More Manglement And Ripe Revenge
Picture the scene: a niche business where only one worker and a supervisor have the skills, knowledge and experience to do The Job. Bus Factor Two, which is not a good place for an employer to be. The employer and business were left very vague because it seems to specific an industry that it could have been easily identified.
This tale was related by a relative of the Skilled Experienced Worker, hereafter SEW. Also of relevance was the Scummy Nepotistic Overbearing Twod Supervisor's Personal Assistant, whom SNOTS treated 'like pond scum'. Art!
PA went to SEW and filled her in on SNOTS plans for the next few weeks, which involved going on holiday to Hawaii on her dream vacation, coming back and firing SEW so that her idiot niece could have SEW's job.
So, SEW - do you see what O you do - wrote out a letter of resignation, waited until the day SNOTS was due to leave and then quit on the spot. The organisation was large enough that it had a Chief Executive Officer, who freaked out that his Bus Factor had been reduced to 1, with that 1 being the only person being able to do The Job and about to leave for 3 weeks. He called up SNOTS and told her to cancel the vacation if she wanted to keep her job, so she caved. Art!
She lost all the money paid for hotels, sightseeing and airfares and never ended up being able to get to Hawaii. Her niece was, as mentioned already, a dimwit who couldn't do the job and was fired.
I Did See A Brief Item About This
Earlier today, but I was in work and didn't have time to investigate. There was mention of an 'island' and a blockage in the River Thames and now my attention has been caught by this. Art!
Erk. Five million of them?
Not being a resident of The Smoke, Conrad had no idea that there was a 'Wet Wipe Island' in the River Thames. It infested the river near Hammersmith Bridge and cleared the river by up to three feet in places. Estimated size is about two tennis courts, massing 180 tons (!) and it has taken three weeks to get rid of the disgusting eyot. Art
Tourist repulsion
Oddly, there is no mention of why WWI formed, which is what Conrad wondered in the first place. Art!
Aha. It seems that wet wipes, being made of plastic fibre, do not decompose when flushed down the toilet. They accumulate in the sewers, combine with oils and form 'fatbergs', which are propelled into the river when heavy rains occur. They then clump together on the riverbed, and acquire more fatbergs over time. WWI seems to have coalesced at a bend in the Thames, where sediments and fatbergs would tend to accumulate.
Now we know.
The Thunder And Lightning Edna Finds Frightening
The poor wee thing was quivering with fright this afternoon, as a giant thunderstorm sat over Royton for hours. Conrad was not keen himself, as it's a bit of a distraction when you're on the phone to a claimant and there's what sounds like an artillery barrage going off outside. Art
Yeah, yeah, blame the weather. I bet Bee Network tried the same excuse.
With that, we are done!
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