No! This Is Nothing To Do With Toucans
Get your species right! This is more of matters in marine mobility, and there is a touch of serendipity about my acronym, which made me happier than it ought to have done. Yeah, truly I am a very sad man.
Today's Intro ventures into an area we have not covered before, and which was new to me, so allow me to provide an illo. Art!
Two tugs in harbour. I did try to gimmick them up with atomic power and missiles, but the end result was quite poor, so you have bald reality.
So! From 'rSlash' on Youtube allow me to introduce TUgboat CAptaiN, hereafter TUCAN, and surprise surprise, the Tucan is a species of fish, very appropriately. Art!
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| Tucans two |
TUCAN ran a tugboat business of two boats and three other crewmen. His primary work was doing 'Ship assist work', meaning his tugs would shift 'dead' ships around harbours, 'dead' meaning without a crew and not under power, thus being unable to manoeuvre. Art!
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| The tug: small but mighty |
For those unfamiliar, a tugboat, usually abbreviated to tug, is a small yet powerful vessel used to manoeuvre much larger ships in confined spaces like ports and harbours, alone or in tandem. With one tug pushing the stern port of a ship, and the other the port bow, they could turn it clockwise far more easily than one tug alone. Hence today's title.
One of TUCAN's more important customers was the LArge Dysfunctional Shipyard, hereafter LADS, a whacking big place that had five drydocks - Art!
To port is a 'wet' pier, to starboard are two drydocks. These are basins where a ship can be floated in, the gates secured and all the water pumped out, to allow maintenance or repair to be carried out.
There were 12 cranes, which TUCAN called 'Whirleys', because they were able to move through 360ยบ. Art!
Plus several thousand feet of piers. TUCAN would get instructions for his boats such as 'Boat 32Y needs to be under Whirley 4 at 07:00' or 'Ship XPV needs to , be in Drydock 1 at 10:45'. Sounds simple and logical, right?
O if only 'twere so. You see, according to TUCAN, the Shipyard Superintendents did not talk to the shop foremen, nor did the shop foremen bother to talk to each other. Organisation ranged from chaotic to non-existent.
Thus TUCAN stepped into the breach, suggesting far more rational marshalling orders that cut down time and costs. After all, this was not his sole customer and his brace of boats needed to be at other shipyards, not just LADS. Art!
This de facto coordinator role oiled the waters for years, until SUDDENLY! what happened but LADS hired an Awful Shipyard Superintendent, hereafter ASS. Within 3 weeks he focussed on TUCAN, pilloried him and ordered him to stay in his lane: no more coordinating.
'Yes massah,' thought TUCAN, merely tugging his forelock - do you see wh- O you do - and returning to his boat. As he gloatingly relates, he then spent 8 hours doing 2 hours work. To quote him "I figured this was going to get real expensive real fast". This was because his two tugboats hire cost $900 per hour, and that was the total 15 years ago, I'd imagine it's at least $1,000+ by now. Thus the invoice for that first non-coordinated day's work came in at $7,200 instead of $1,800. Art!
Rather to his surprise, there was no pushback from either LADS or ASS. Conrad feels that ASS had proved a complete bust by the fourth week if he was there to either improve communication or profitability. TUCAN lists a job his business carried out where the initial task prevented the second from being carried out in a timely manner, adding in a 5-hour delay, billable at $4,500.
TUCAN's boat crews learned that, once they'd done a particular job, they could relax with a book or a fishing rod until the next job came round hours later, hours they were billing at $900 per.
This went on, not for weeks, nor months, but FIFTEEN YEARS. We are not told if ASS was still in charge of LADS during this time, so we can assume he was, as I'm sure TUCAN would have gleefully related his being 'let go'. Art!
Then LADS went bust.
Amongst the Commenters were some who wondered how such a wasteful and inefficient yard could manage for more than a few months before shuttering. Others speculated it might have been a government shipyard, where losses would be written off, up to a point, as making a profit was more a distant hope than a reality.
rSlash got out their calculator after the tale ended, working out the hourly rate, how many hours worked per day, how many working days there were in a year and came up with a figure that TUCAN's business had made $1,875,000 out of LADS over the duration, or $125,000 per annum. You could say that TUCAN really soaked the yard*.
There you go, a fascinating insight into marine operations. And you're welcome.
Well, I Was Going To Look At More 'Daractenus' Food Satire
You know, our Romanian friend on Twitter who hilariously canned South Canadian food - Art!
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| Do you see what I did there? |
HOWEVER, we're not going to get any more beyond the canned chicken, additive mash in a packet and artificial blueberries, because the thread has seen an irruption of very, very angry MAGA cult members, who have ballooned the thread to epic proportions. Art
Aha! I remembered 'third arm' as a phrase. Wait one.
Art!
The word 'Pure' is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, as Darac points out South Canadian pigs are shot full of Ractopamine, which boosts the growth of muscle and thus meat and thus profits, and also promotes cancer in Hom. Sap. consuming this meaty melange, thus boosting hospital profits, a win-win all round - in South Canada - this stuff is banned in Europe.
Ole King Cole Is In A Hole
Or, more misery in Mordorvia. Normally the oil and gas industry steals the headlines, so to balance things out here's a bit of bad news for their coal industry. Art!
The orcs have the second largest coal reserves on the planet, which isn't doing them much good, as the industry is in an ever-deepening crisis, the worst since the Bad Old Days of the Nineties. Sanctions, a failing industrial base and clients turning to alternate sources have all had a baleful influence. Currently, it costs $1,000 more to extract a ton of coal than it sells for. There are now 62 coal business in critical condition, 14 of which are now in the process of being wound-up and liquidated, and another 20 of which have suspended operations.
Figures for Q1 of 2026 are not out yet, but the projected total loss for the year is $7 billion. Art!
FIRE THAT SUB-EDITOR!
Do they still have sub-editors now? Let me check. Yes, apparently they are still a thing, now being fewer in number but with a wider brief than before, although still being relied upon to ensure legal compliance and avoid their medium getting it's bottom sued off. Art!
Where does Pumpkinhead feature in a domestic UK issue about increasing charges on homes in the UK, stated in pounds sterling, as published by a British newspaper (albeit a bit of a yellow rag)?
Nor am I going to click on their link. First of all, I spurn their clickbaity headline, and secondly, this is from days ago and the item is no longer there.
Finally -
Another quotation. A short one, as we are well over Count.
"Most editors are failed writers, but so are most writers" - T. S. Eliot.
* Ouch.
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