With A Bit Of Spicy In There, Too
Okay, today's Intro is going to look at another tale of torrid trauma from South Canada, this one concerning an entity known as a 'Midas garage', which I've had to Google so you don't need to. Art!
I can think of more apt names for a garage chain, because gold is not structurally sound when used in a car's bodywork or load-bearing parts.
Here an aside. Yes, already! You ought to be familiar with the legend of King Midas, a king of Phrygia whom petitioned the gods to turn all he touched into gold. This was a spectacularly bad idea, which is probably why the gods had it happen, because it would have devalued gold, there being so much of it. Art!
This illustration is proof that Ol' Middy hadn't quite thought through his request about gold; you can see the food on the table has been turned to gold - what did I say about wholesale mineral pricing? - and his daughter, too.
Well, you know Conrad. A pedantic hair-splitter of the very best kind. You see, Ol' Middy would have been dead within seconds if everything he touched turned to gold, on account of the air in his lungs turning to gold and asphyxiating him, not to mention the sclera of his eyes also turning, rendering him blind.
Wow, that turned darker than expected. Art!
Not in good taste
ANYWAY back to the Midas garage tale. The narrator, Honest Engineering ARtisan, hereafter HEAR, worked to the pattern of inspect, estimate and sell repair jobs, until a new Service (Customer Undermining) Manager, hereafter SCUM*, arrived on the scene. SCUM wanted to inspect the cars to be repaired and check the estimates himself, which is a walking red flag. Art!
The part where shove comes to pushy came on a busy Saturday morning, the garage being full of cars being repaired, and HEAR deals with a young woman in her 20s with a baby. Her car's brakes were making noises, she stated. HEAR, showing what a thorough mechanic does, test drove the car, miked the brake drum to test for wear, inspected the vehicle and determined that the left rear - stop me if I get too technical - brake shoe had worn down and needed replacing. That was it, sum total $150 total.
HOWEVER enter SCUM stage right, who looked at HEAR's estimate, did a quick once-over of the car and informed him that he needed to add wheel cylinders - these are cylinders that go on wheels - hardware kit - presumably the opposite of software kit? - and two new drums. That is, adding in 100s of dollars completely UNECCESSARILY and FRAUDULENTLY and WICKEDLY and also confirming what every motorist at a garage fears will happen. Art!
Well, HEAR proved he was a man of mettle, also metal (just not gold as it is stru-) by striding back into the waiting area, which was packed as this was a Saturday when motorists take their sick cars to be doctored. He stood on a table and explained what SCUM wanted him to do.
Instant chaos!
You might be familiar with the phrase 'pear-shaped'. This was a whole orchard of pear-shaped, with irate customers demanding that their expensively-estimated cars be returned to them, whilst HEAR got his toolbox to return it to his truck, effectively quitting without notice. The police were called, as was the owner, since things got so intense. Methinks 'Midas' is a franchise if there is an owner.
ANYWAY AGAIN the owner fired SCUM, which did not impress HEAR, as who else had given him orders to massively defraud customers?
There is a charming coda to this tale of honesty and corruption, for that Young Lady With Baby approached HEAR to thank him and asked if there was another garage he could recommend?
Hear hear for HEAR, whom went to a parts store, got the parts and fixed the brake shoe himself.
That was 1989 and he and YLWB have been married for 25 years. Art!
The spicy bit here is that SCUM was effectively black-balled within the garage business and HEAR occasionally sees him collecting shopping trolleys at the local mall. JUSTICE IS SERVED!
From Cutting Tyres To Cutting Wires
I can only offer that, at some point in a car's lifetime, mechanics will incise the tyres for an arcane engineering reason. Besides which, 'Cutting an inner wheel well -' doesn't rhyme.
ANYWAY I came across an interesting - to me, anyway - item in 'Official History Of Australia In The War 1914 - 1918' concerning barbed wire and how to cut it. Art!
A very apt picture, for reasons I shall entertain or bore you with.
"The method then employed by the field artillery in breaking down the enemy's wire was to thresh it with low-burst shrapnel - a practice based on British experience and experiment in 1915." Art!
That's an 18-pounder shrapnel shell. The reason these were effective against Teuton wire was because at the date this comment is made, July 1916, the Teutons were still using wooden stakes to hold up their barbed wire. The shrapnel balls would shatter and destroy these stakes, and cut some of the wires, too, removing the obstacle.
Trouble was, both sides replaced wooden stakes with metal piquets, which were shrapnel-proof, which is a story for the 106 fuse later on.
There's more of this account about wire and wire-cutting, so we may come back to it later on. I'll bet you can hardly wait.
That Explains It
Over the past month Your Humble Scribe has been enduring extra, intrusive, PITA request to 'Verify yourself' when on his work laptop, sometimes three times per day. It's very irritating!
It transpires that this is neither accidental nor targeting me, not that I have a guilty conscience or anything <looks over shoulder>. Rather, it is My Still Coyly Anonymous Employer being more proactive in the wake of the hacking scandals at Marks & Spencer and the Co-Op. They want to be 110% certain that it's Conrad signing on, not an interloper with sinister intent. Art!
What do a few millions matter if it inconveniences ME?
I suppose I've answered my own question there.
"The War Illustrated Edition 212 3rd August 1945"
I've typed that item title in without knowing for certain that there are any more photographs to come. Let me check and fingers crossed -
The faux-coloured back cover, with caption. This is quite the telling shot, because the Sinister soldier here is on duty at the Brandenburg Gate, the very heart of Berlin, and absolute proof of the Nazi regime's extirpation. The British chap to starboard is a war correspondent, and that chap hovering in the background is guaranteed to be NKVD, there to keep an eye on what's being said. Incidentally, the caption is wrong; it labels the lady soldier as 'Ruffian' when her name is Feodora Bondenko. Which is <drum roll> Ukrainian.
Toxic Tangerine Toad Terminated - NOT!
Yes, Donald Judas Trump is still alive - if only just - much to the annoyance of Vice Prez Vance, who is no doubt encouraging Dimwit to 'Just jog that fifty yards, Donald, never mind the golf buggy, it'll be good for you', whilst stroking the ends of his moustache and rubbing his hands. Art!
Apparently the Orange Land Whale had difficulty breathing and ranting in sequence, and the conference was stage managed so he didn't have to do anything difficult like standing up or walking. Or thinking. The subject matter was a complete nothingburger, with D J Tango rabbiting on about windmills and magnets.
Apropos Of Nothing
We occasionally mention Steve Rosenberg, the BBC's Ruffian Editor, who is fluent in spoken and written Ruffian and whom cannot be fobbed off by translators 'accidentally' censoring or editing questions or replies. Art!
That's Steve playing the piano, accompanied by Mikhail Gorbachev - yes, that Mikhail Gorbachev - doing the singing.
A man of many talents.
And with that we are done!
* Foreshadowing a bit there
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