I Apologise If You're Not Especially Sporty
Nor up to speed on the latter years of the Vietnam Unpleasantness, because we are going to be covering both as we meander our way towards the actual core of today's Intro. I bet you can hardly wait*.
This image is of a KC-135 Stratotanker, derived from the Boeing 707 passenger airliner, refuelling F-105 Thunderchiefs - a notably clean-lined jet - and F-4 Phantoms, once tellingly described as 'an aircraft so ugly it looked as if it got caught in the hangar doors'.
Which is perhaps more detail than you need or want to know. 'Operation LINEBACKER' was the South Canadian response to the North Vietnamese invasion of South Vietnam in early 1972. The South Canadian military presence had been drawn down to 10,000 men (and 13 women), with only a couple of hundred planes still based there, and the SV response was to mostly turn to jelly. Art!
"This is how you press a doorbell"
Prez Nixon, in power at the time, turned the dogs loose, proving that he might well have done that Push The Button move he threatened. A massive and immediate transfer of South Canadian aircraft from across South East Asia took place and the NVs were bombed back to their original boundaries. The Air Power school gloasted about this to such an extent that Conrad might have to chase this here Operation LINEBACKER up at a later date.
ANYWAY 'Linebacker' is in reality a position in the South Canadian's cultural appropriation of rugby, which we will now exhaustively analyse for 8,500 words in order to
Only joking! No, it's 17,000 words.
Only joking! As if Your Humble Scribe would waste 1.7 words on describing sport for the sheer enjoyment of it. Art!
This impressively-muscled lump is one James Harrison, who used to play for a South Canadian football team as a linebacker, namely the 'Pittsburgh Steelers', a nickname that came from the city's history of iron and steel production. A linebacker, lest ye be unaware, has several functions on the field, prime amongst them being stopping the opposition's ball-carrier moving forward. Thus, whilst he is only 6' tall, he weighs 240 pounds and is an impressive example of Immovable Object. Were you his physician, you would indeed not date to operate unless with his express permission. In triplicate.
ANYWAY we come back to the last example I am going to use from Youtube's Reddit 'I'm Out Of Here - Have Fun Fixing It' because the rest of the stories are far too short to make a difference. Art!
I used the prompt 'Badly-run restaurant' and we can only presume this is one such thanks to the lack of customers. The original anonymous narrator, who avoided mentioning the restaurant name, going by the handle of Peripherally Observing Interpolator, hereafter POI, mentioned that they had joined a restaurant on the recommendation of a head-chef friend who started there at the same time. Art!
Sadly, the owner turned out to be a bottomhole from Hades, who chewed out H-CF, in front of a restaurant full of customers, causing their immediate cessation of employment, in that they quit on the spot. Ooops. BFH then brought in a new head chef, whom POI described as a 'Nazi', who was always shouting at the staff, finding fault and generally being BFH #2. POI heard that his HCF had gotten a position at what sounds like a bar with guitar, took a half day off for a fictional doctor's appointment, interviewed for a job with HCF and got the job. He then rang his old job and said he wasn't coming in for his shift. Ever. Which must have felt ever so satisfying. Art!
BFH #2 tried to intimidate POI when they returned for their last paycheck, saying he was going to ring up Bar-With-Guitar and drop POI in it for being so unprofessional, and who was his supervisor?
"Head Chef Friend" replied a grinning POI, to the immediate collapse of BFH #2 akin to a punctured balloon.
There is a coda to this, which was told to POI by his girlfriend at the time. BFH #2 refused to pay the restaurant's dishwasher for a day worked, as the dishwasher hadn't clocked in. BFH #2 blithely stated 'You learned a lesson'.
Here is where the Steelers lineback comes in, because this is what the big black dishwasher looked like. He got BFH #2 in a bear-hug and proceeded to slam him against the wall, repeatedly, so forcefully that the front-of-house staff heard a 'dull thumping' all the way from the kitchen.
We are not told of the aftermath, which is a shame, except perhaps as a result of both Bottomholes the restaurant shut a few weeks later. Conrad guesses both Bottomholes learned a lesson. Art!
Go on, dock his pay, I dare you
Another Sitrep On "The 100"
Conrad is well into Season 2, where of course 'The Weathermen', the inhabitants of the Mount Weather underground refuge (which is enormous) are hiding dark secrets, which we are only just finding out.
Then there is Chancellor Jaha, who is the last person left aboard the core of Ark Station, having stayed behind to initiate the launch sequence that broke it up into component parts. Art!
This is his method of getting back to Earth: a repurposed nuclear missile fired from the Ark, warhead removed.
Skipping over why the Ark needed nuclear missiles in the first place, or that it would take several technicians with specialist equipment and a couple of hours, not one man with his bare hands in less than three minutes to remove said warhead, these things are NOT designed to carry a human payload. Accelerating up to Mach 20 would leave the Chancellor as a runny red liquid all over the interior. Also, these things are designed to crash, not to land. Do they come with steerable controls that work from inside. I rather think not.
Of course, I could be overthinking this .....
Conrad Begs To Differ
The news feed on MSN frequently comes up with items that contort grammar in the interests of brevity, or blatantly click-bait the viewer. Here's one. Art!
Arrant nonsense! Conrad is not an expert on naval matters but is profoundly aware that, at the Battle Of Midway, 1942 in the Pacific, the sons of Nippon lost FOUR aircraft carriers, which was verrrry careless of them, and the South Canadian Navy lost one. Art!
Further evidence
No description is given of these Japanese carriers, but they are being dive-bombed to Hades by South Canadian aircraft from the USS Yorktown and Enterprise. They learned a lesson.
I Am Not Going To Overthink This One
Here's one of the sidebar items on the BBC's News webpage. Art!
Unless - is it a trick question? Are they referring to the shambolic hordes of the living dead and a Zon
Dog Buns! I said I wasn't going to overthink this one!
Ladling The Invective Again
For Lo! we are looking at the recent ballfoot game between mighty Bent Ford and the minnows of Manchester United Dairies, which the latter lost. As ever, when this happens and the moderators open a 'Have Your Say' there is a flood of intriguing insults, because swearing is forbidden.
ourLongAgoTitles
21:08 27 Sep
seasidesteve
15:02 27 Sep
The 'Simon' here is Simon Stone, one of the BBC Sports correspondents who is widely seen as being ridiculously biased in favour of MUD, a conspiracy theory of long standing yet doubtful provenance.
* This expression is cropping up a lot of late. I need to find new material.
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