Programpant Stupidity

 If That Ends Up In The 'Collins Concise English Dictionary' -

Then I want royalties.   In today's Intro we'll be looking at yet another example of manglement, proof that no good turn goes un-stoned, as the saying has it, and plentiful Malicious Compliance.  Art!

     First, let us introduce our narrator, Ingenious Program-Scripting Outstanding Sort, hereafter IPSOS*, who worked in what he called a rather large factory, conveniently omitting it's name or even location.  Conrad did a bit of Google-fu and thought it might be General Electric, Lockheed Martin or Caterpillar, as these are all enormous industrial enterprises in South Canada.

     IPSOS must have been a canny coder, although he doesn't state his qualifications, since he came up with a program that monitored all the machinery in the factory and reported back on status.  What it was designed and intended for was to detect machine stoppages, determine the reason for the unit not running and create an automated report.  Art!

     This meant operators didn't have to manually complete and send in forms about their equipment not running, and could instead concentrate on getting their veeblefetzer working again.  The factory had no involvement in creating the program, it was done by IPSOS in his spare time, he showed it to management - management not manglement - who were so impressed they had it used at every work station.  

     For four years all went swimmingly, until the appearance of an Investment Firm From Yonkers, hereafter IFFY**, whom bought up the factory.  Such a buyout is usually the kiss of death for the business, as the IFFY's of the world immediately seek to cut corners, cut expenses, cut staff and do anything and everything to increase the bottom line and pay off what they themselves paid.  I was wondering if GE or LM would sell off a factory to a potential rival, unless they really gouged IFFY.  Art!

One of these is IFFY

     Then a year later IFFY fire the old Factory Manager and put their own man in, in addition to firing all the senior management, quoting business babble about 'New blood needing to come in', or, in real language, firing anyone earning a large salary to cut wage bills.  These are two steps creating more red flags than a parade in The Populous Dictatorship.  Doubtless IFFY thought they'd seen enough of how things worked to have a handle on factory operations.

     In addition to this, IFFY and Factory Mangler start talking about selling off parts of the factory, including machinery, and the watchdog program IPSOS had created.  IFFY and Factory Mangler had no idea he had created the software, until IPSOS gets called into a termination meeting with HR and Factory Mangler and informs that he would sell them the program and teach others to use it.  Art!

     FactMan openly laughed at IPSOS, stating that the program was owned by the factory and was IFFY property, which was completely factually incorrect but we're talking about an IFFY loyalist with, at best, one year's experience in factory operations.  Not even an offer of showing him the source code would shift his opinion.  Instead, things escalated to the point that IPSOS was officially warned not to touch the watchdog program, hereafter called 'Watchdog', or he'd be sued.

     Malicious Compliance Mode Activated!  Art?

Hmmmmmmm

     From that meeting to actually leaving took two months, which is unusually long for a severance of this kind.  It did mean IPSOS was able to directly witness the effects of not maintaining Watchdog.

     After a week of not maintaining the program, it began throwing errors: it stopped loading, stopped registering stoppages, and mis-labled stops when it did register.  Three weeks later IPSOS was called into a meeting with FactMan and got shouted at for tampering with Watchdog, whereupon he informed him that it needed a person to maintain it, and that he hadn't touched it for fear of being sued.  Malicious Compliance at it's finest!  When ordered to train another person in the use of Watchdog, he refused until he got paid for the program.  Which FactMan refused to do.  You can probably tell this isn't going to end well.  Art!

     After seven weeks none of the work stations were running Watchdog, and staff were instead having to fill in forms whenever a machine stopped running.  You know, the old inefficient way of over five years previously.

     A month after IPSOS left, he got a call from someone in IFFY, not FactMan who must have foisted the job off onto another hapless minion.  They were desperate for him to sell them the rights and train other staff to use Watchdog, a classic closing the stable door after all the horses have already bolted.

     Being petty and malicious, IPSOS instead sold an improved version of Watchdog to a completely different factory where he now works.  No word of what happened at his old workplace, but I suspect FactMan had to shell out big bucks for a commercial equivalent of Watchdog.

Progress Report

I am happy to report that my carton of 'Beatbox Fruit Punch' had nary a whiff of pineapple about it, so I necked it all.  Art!

    I like to keep you informed.

'Cassino '44' By James Holland

I recall a parting line in a work I cannot now find, being that 'The British decided they would be soldiers, not warriors.'  To that end, the ethos of 'Steel, not flesh' was prevalent for them, and especially so for the South Canadians with their immense industrial capacity.  So, to underline this I picked a few statistics Ol' Jim had accrued for the Second Battle Of Cassino.  Art!

     Cassino town was held by the Teutons, and General Freyberg's plan was to obliterate the entire conurbation.  To this end it was attacked by 72 B-25 bombers, which were followed up by 114 B-17s, then 164 B-24s.  That's 97,920 kilos of bombs, followed by 410,000 kilos of bombs, followed by 369,000 kilos of bombs, for a combined total of 879 tonnes of bombs.  

     That was only the first part.  After the bombers had flattened the town, 890 artillery pieces would open fire, some on point targets, others creating a rolling barrage that would be followed up by 400 Sherman tanks as a New Zealand infantry brigade followed in turn.

     The town had been utterly destroyed and became merely a gigantic heap of rubble, ironically working against the Kiwis, since there were no roads left intact or un-rubbled.  Poor staff work! and yes we'll come back to that.  I bet you can hardly wait.  Art!

Number Six On The List

Of 'Rotten Tomatoes' films that scored 0%.  I have to say this list is intriguing, as it's more recent films rather than classic stinkers of the previous century.  Art!

'Pinnochio' 2002

     Starring Roberto Benigni, another film I've not seen and now have no need to.  It got panned as a faintly creepy vanity project, made by Ol' Rob on the back of his Oscar win for 'Life Is Beautiful'.  At $45 million it was the most expensive Italian film ever made at the time, but was a box-office bomb.  Art!

     Don't forget, going by the 50% rule for studios getting their money back, it made $22 million, only half it's  budget.

Some People Have Too Much Time On Their Hands

Yes yes yes, I know how ironic that is, coming from a man who types out a 1,300 word blog EVERY SINGLE DAY and twice on Saturdays.  Art!

     The remake, I hasten to add.  It's a moot point, because the survivors at the mall see it and consider it represents stability, security, the persistence of authority and other reassuring facts.  I think I'll watch it, I've seen other Youtube stuff by Ol' Cap and was impressed.

Finally -

Going out with another Biercism.

"Foe,n: A person instigated by his own wicked nature to deny one's merits or exhibit superior merits of his own."

*  Not as in the Watergate Committee's 'Qui custodes ipsos custodes?'

**  Might have been Yosemite.

The Grift That Keeps On Giving

 😁 I Just Discovered I Can Add An Emoji

I promise not to overdo it.  Probably.  Okay, so for months and months we've been posting awful photos of King Piggy, in small Items rather than focussing on him in an Intro, a reprieve he isn't aware of as his reading skills run to Richard Scarry at best.  Art!

Note the wonderful contrast between orange face and pink ears

     In case you were wondering, and even if not, Richard Scarry writes books for young children, full of pictures in bright primary colours, perfect for Donold.  Art!

     ANYWAY I want to look at DJ Tango's money-making efforts and how successful they are.  First of all we're going to look at the share price of 'TMTG', which is the 'Trump Media and Technology Group', a grand name for an organisation that has only one product, 'Truth Social'.  It started well, before tailing off dramatically - Art!

     Then the Flabby Fraudster got back into the White House, in order to stay out of prison.  Art!

     As we pundits predicted, an awful lot of fools bought TMTG stock once Donold got back into office, hoping that their investment in their great orange god would be rewarded.

     Nope.  Art!

     It's lost over 90% of it's original value and hovers around $9.30 per share.  Ooops.  

     Sticking with TMTG*, and a vlog from 'Farron Balanced' on his Youtube channel, which I recommend, he focussed on the Chief Executive Officer of TMTG, Devin Nunes, who gave up a political career to helm that organisation.

     He's just been sacked, so more properly ex-CEO.  Art!

How to strangle cats the Devin Nunes way!

     Did he blaspheme and criticise Pumpkinhead?  Get a DUI?  Steal a bagel?

     Well, not necessarily that he did any of those, rather more to the point he only brought in $3.7 million for TMTG, whilst also managing to lose $712 million.  Yes, you read that correctly: seven hundred and twelve million lost.  Thus the income is only about 0.5% of the losses.  

     Farron was understandably appalled and enraged.  TMTG has only one asset, the social media platform 'Truth Social' which was established in 2022, so all the physical assets were paid for long ago.  It's a digital service offering nothing physical, so why on earth did it lose an enormous amount of money in 2025?  The suspicious and cynical amongst us wondered if the money went out of the firm and into someone else's pockets, looking at you King Piggy.  Art!

     Part of the blame is being placed upon 'investing' in Cronos and Bitcoin, both cryptocurrency scambles.  Also, verrrrry few people use Truth Social.  And Nunes presided over a $400 million loss in 2024, so over a billion dollars in losses.  Farron postulated that there may be a Congressional enquiry lined up later in the year.  A consequence of appointing a CEO with no expertise or experience in social media.  What could possibly go wrong!  Art?

The President's brain is - mashed potato.

     Farron also covered Trump's PAC finances, taking the details from 'Raw Story', the internet news site.  A 'PAC' is a Political Action Committee, an entity created to raise funds for political parties.  Trump had raised over $300 million, a verrrry large sum for a man not standing for election again, through two of his PACs, 'MAGAPAC' and 'Save America PAC'.  Art!

     ANYWAY the thing is, DJ Tango has bankrupted both PACs.  'Save America PAC' now has only $1.12 million in the bank and owes $1.6 million in legal expenses, after having already paid out $2.3 million in legal fees. 'MAGAPAC' is in even worse shape, having only $28,000 in the bank, whilst owing $760,000 and having already paid out $1.3 million in - you may be ahead of me here - legal fees.  As you can see from the schematic above, this is how Fat Caligula can afford to pay his legal bills.  He can now proudly add these two bankruptcies to the six he already has.  Art!

With these bafunes, expect the very worst

     Elsewhere, things are not going well for the Nodfather.  The cryptocurrency 'World Liberty Financial' or 'WLFI' peaked in September 2025 at $0.46 per, but has now fallen to $0.075 or one-sixth of what it was worth, and it looks set to keep dropping as an investor, one Justin Sun, is taking legal action against them.  Ooops.  Art!

     This is the $TRUMP, which peaked at $75 at launch, and is now down to $2.63, 1/28th of the original value, meaning the chumps who bought it have now lost $2 billion in total.  Conrad distinctly unsympathetic.  Art!

     Ah yes, the 'Trump Phone', which was supposed to be available in August 2025 yet which still has not been delivered.  600,000 fools sorry 'investors' registered for one of them, putting $60 million in the Trump family coffers.  See that slogan 'Make America Great Again'?  They're made in China.  Whom is responsible for this miserable farrago?

Say no more

     Going the same way as Trump Steaks, Trump Water, Trump Airlines, Trump University - you get the point.

The Consequences Of An Over-Eager Eye

As you should surely know by now, Conrad is forever buying bottles or cans of beer thanks to an intriguing cover design or label, and then sharing his purchase with you, gentle reader.  This week I ventured to buy this item - Art!

     Rather worryingly, there is no list of ingredients in what it describes as a 'Fruit Punch', which makes me wary that it may contain The Devil's Pinecone, or pineapple if we're being formal.  If it tastes of said fruit it's going down the bathroom sink.  I'll let you know.

Fly, You Fools!

Another frightening failure in building demolition, from Kunming in The Populous Dictatorship.  Hmmm.  I see a pattern developing here.  Art!

     As 'Be Amazed' points out, rather acidly, any building demolition, ESPECIALLY one using explosives, needs a safety or exclusion zone around it that will protect onlookers from flying debris or the falling structure itself.  Well well well, what have we here but honest artisans beavering away on construction work right next to the demolition site?  What can possibly go wrong!  Art?

Making Usain Bolt look laggardly

    Fortunately nobody was hurt.  I bet the excavator needed a new paint job, mind.

On The Theme Of Construction

Just to be contrary and in contrast to the above.  Art!

     The roof has gone up on 53, Tandle Hill Road, so we can expect 'M Swift' to begin work on the internal fitments.  Take a good look through that doorway.  Art!

     There's a shipping container that they placed before beginning on the foundations, which is now completely boxed-in and Conrad cannot but wonder how they're going to remove it.  By crane, if they can manage to get one in - the road alongside Number 53 is very narrow - or disassembled in bits.

The Mordorvian Tourist Board Welcomes You!

In case you weren't au fait with the facts, the 2026 FIFA World Cup in South Canada is not going to be well-attended, thanks to a combination of factors.  One is the ridiculous price, $10,000 per ticket, before factoring in travel and accommodation as well.  Another is that you may get refused entry if Customs don't like the look of you, or if your social media is anything less than slavishly adoring of Donold.  Or ICE may imprison or shoot you dead.

     Well, the Ruffian resort town of Tuapse on the shores of the Black Sea is going to experience a tourist fall-off somewhat similar.  Art!

     People are evacuating if they have anywhere else to go, as the oil refinery situated next door has been burning for a week.  There is oil condensate on everything: houses, streets, plants, cars and people, who have been warned to stay indoors, keep windows shut and to wear masks.  This refinery has been more utterly malleted than any other in the course of the war and may never be reconstructed.  The smoke is visible from low Earth orbit and the sands of the Black Sea coastline are now a-swill with toxic oil sludges.

Finally -

Another QI Quote.

"In Hollywood a marriage is a success if it outlasts milk."  Rita Rudner

*  Teenage Mutant Toxic Gerbils?

'Tis Better To Travel Hopefully -

Unless You Deal With Logistics Professionally

In which case you need a bit more backing than crossed fingers.  Yes, we are into Part Two of the sorry saga about the complex dashboard we dubbed 'Colossus', the sole surviving expert in it's use, CLEAR, his valiant assistant VAC and the villain of the piece, Bottomhole Boss.  Which situation might well be described as a CLEAR And Present Anger.  Art!

     Last we were here, CLEAR had been reduced in rank from Operations Coordinator to a humble Dispatcher, since BB had convinced themselves and their, in turn Bottomhole Boss, that undoing all of CLEAR and VAC's business solutions would reduce costs.  Ignoring the fact that abandoning these measures would critically impact the business.

     A dispatcher, I should clarify, would take calls from the Colossus system board and route them to the various field service technicians, acting as a kind of comms middleman.  Who had been running the Colossus system board as an Operations Coordinator?  None other than CLEAR.  So he had been removed from a job that only he understood and worked - Bus Factor One.  Art!

     Which now became Bus Factor Zero.  

     The next day CLEAR sat at his new Dispatcher desk and logged onto the dispatcher terminal system, and waited.  And waited.  And waited.

     Four hours later - which is an indictment in itself - BB approached and asked why CLEAR hadn't done any dispatching, since there were over 30 service requests sitting in the queue.  That many and BB only just noticed?  Where had they been for the past four hours whilst that queue was building up?  

     ANYWAY, probably whilst smiling sweetly, CLEAR explained that there weren't any entries in his dispatch system.  Nada.  Nil.  Zero.  Art!

     When told to add them, probably smiling sweeter still, he informed BB that doing so was the Operations Coordinator's job, not a Dispatcher's.  Ooops.  Then, perhaps smiling with more saccharin than is healthy for a diabetic to be even typing about, CLEAR remarked that, given the disciplinary response he'd gotten the last time he'd done unauthorised things, he certainly wasn't going to do it again.

     BB deflated like a punctured balloon.  It began to slowly dawn on him that he'd shot himself in both feet and then inserted them into his mouth, because Bus Factor Zero.  VAC had never been trained on Colossus, despite repeated requests from CLEAR on this very subject.

     BB went and had an agitated argument with his BB, and then the HR minion was called in.  Then they all trooped out and BB's BB ordered CLEAR to train someone on Colossus.

     CLEAR refused.  Such training wasn't part of a Dispatcher's role and would need at least a month of training if the assignee was good on IT.  Ooops.  Art!

CLEAR pondering on life

     Next day they tried to make CLEAR take his old position back, which he defiantly refused, quoting back at them the harsh criticisms they had made before demoting him.  Next day, another meeting, this time including a lawyer, where BB''s BB stated CLEAR either needed to accept the promotion or provide documentation about Colossus.

     CLEAR continued to refuse the promotion and re-iterated that there was NO documentation, there never had been and he'd been telling them that for two years.  Art!

      Chaos ensued.  With no computer system operating everything had to be done manually, using e-mails and phones, meaning dealing with a single service call took four times longer.  Resolution times began to climb to a week or longer, and the first client complaints within a week, with the first cancellations a week later.  

     Colossal Corp took CLEAR to court, despite him being legally advised that they couldn't force him to accept the 'promotion' or compel him to provide documentation that didn't exist.  Their allegation was that he was 'In possession of critical proprietary information, and refusing to share it, causing serious financial harm to the business'.  Hmmm I bet Bottomhole Boss was sweating nervously at his business success in canning CLEAR and achieving Bus Factor Zero.  Art!

     The judge ruled in CLEAR's favour, stating that Colossal Corp had no right to the information he held in his head.

     BB and his BB got increasingly petty, demoting CLEAR to Logistics Assistant, probably hoping that he'd quit.  He didn't.  He looked upon the chaos that unfolded, as resolution times hit a fortnight.  By the second month after his demotion the division had lost 30% of it's clients and BB was aging a year per day.  He tried to reverse engineer Colossus with IT experts, which failed thanks to nil documentation or source code.  Then he tried to use an off-the-shelf dispatch dashboard, which failed to migrate data.  Art!

CLEARly happy

     For CLEAR the ending was much happier.  He got a similar job with a competitor, a 10% pay increase and three weeks vacation for his honeymoon.

     For that division of Colossal Corps, things went downhill, as reported back by VAC.  They bought in a completely new dispatch system that cost massively, took six months to install (!) and by the time it was ready, nearly all their clients had ended their contracts.  A year after CLEAR left, that division was merged with another and 30% of the staff were laid off, hopefully including Bottomhole Boss.

     FYI, VAC was retained and is retiring soon.  I love a happy ending.

The Tracking Algorithm Is Going Potty Again

Conrad suspects that Blogger is exaggerating my traffic stats by a fair amount, and I can prove it.  Art!

  14,300 visitors?  That's a months-worth of visitors in one day.  Art!

     Well, there are at least 19 citizens of Mordorvia with taste and discernment.  Don't forget, reading BOOJUM! in Ruffia is asking to be sent to the gulags and Conrad can never set foot there.

It's Not All Doom And Gloom In Mordorvia

The Ruffian newspaper 'Kommersant', which regularly features in Steve Rosenberg's Youtube analyses, is happy to report that one branch of Ruffian business is booming, to wit: the funeral industry.  Art!

There are cheap cardboard coffins for the povs

     In Q1 of 2026, over 500 new funeral businesses opened, a 38% increase year-on-year over 2025.  One suspects that, perhaps, maybe, possibly, the SMO is involved peripherally ...

Some Of You Are Guilty

You know whom you are, go stand in the corner and look properly ashamed.

     What am I wittering on about?  O I thought you'd never ask!  Art!

     Another scoring 0% on 'Rotten Tomatoes', a howlingly unfunny comedy featuring - you may be ahead of me here - super babies.  Conrad is steering well clear of this farrago, believe you me.  Why does this film exist?  I can tell you in one word: money.  Art!

     All this on a budget of $12 million, meaning at least $12 million profit, so some of you out there went to see this farrago at the cinema.  That kind of profit guarantees that a sequel will be made, hence 'Superbabies 2' four years later.  

     You can take the pitcher to the well too often.  Art!

     Ha!  A quarter of what the original made, on a budget of $20 million, as sequels always cost more than the original.  

     It's now 22 years since the sequel came out and our cinema screens have been mercifully free from baby geniuses.  Phew!

Another Demolition Gone Wrong.  Very Wrong

This one takes place at Liuchou in The Populous Dictatorship, where a 22-storey residential tower complex was due to be demolished.  Art!

Courtesy 'Be Amazed'

     As you should surely be aware by now, the plan, especially in a residential district like this, is to have the building collapse into it's own footprint.  Art!

     One second into the explosion and it already looks skewed.  Not promising.  Art!

     Here the buildings have taken on a drunken stagger that resembles a fall into footprint in the same way a bowling ball resembles a feather mattress.  Art!

      I call that a total failure.  The only thing that could make it worse is if the upstanding section fell over too.

Finally  -

Walk us  out, Ambrose!

"Abet,n: To encourage in crime, as to aid poverty with pennies."

A Torrid Tale Of Transport Trauma

Including Manglement, Bus Factors And The Bitter Taste Of Regret

This one is from 'Ripe's Youtube channel and concerns A Major South Canadian Corporation, whom the narrator wisely leaves vague, as South Canadian companies are litigious.  He described it as being involved in commercial and industrial processes, with different divisions across the country.  We shall call it Colossal Corp, because I can.  Art!

     Allow me to introduce our narrator, Competent Logistics Expert And Relater, hereafter CLEAR, who related how bad matters were in the division, which did servicing and repairing of their equipment used by clients.  The picture is not pretty.    For a start, there were only two Operations Coordinators in the whole division, CLEAR and VAlued Colleague, hereafter VAC, which is a dangerously low Bus Factor total.  Art!

     When they both started things were bad, with a capital BAD.  The standard turn-around time for a repair was 8 days, which was sending clients around the bend and leading to extensive cancellations thanks to the aforementioned bend-navigating situation.  Our dynamic duo sat down and plotted and planned.  They sorted out priorities, meaning calls were not merely being taken in the order they came in; repair technicians were assigned jobs close to each other, instead of all over the state; parts were shipped out to those techs overnight, or the client's premises, so they had what they needed for the next day's work.

CLEAR and VAC were the organisational heart of the division, responsible for dispatching, scheduling and parts co-ordination.  The dashboard they used for D&S was a custom-created complex piece of software, made by the division's software developer years before.  To explicate somewhat, it used a series of alphanumeric codes to run D&S, factoring in geographic location, the service level issue involved, parts availability and tech skills required, and there were many hundreds of variants.  Art!

     It took CLEAR a month's training to acquire the skills to use this platform, which I will now dub Colossus.  He filled a notebook with - you may be ahead of me here - notes.

    Here is a fact that comes into play later on.  There was no documentation.  No guide or process diagrams or charts of anything, the dev had kept it all in his head, which is another Bus Factor problem management SHOULD have seen coming.  But no.  Eighteen months later, the dev keels over and dies young, leaving CLEAR the only living person who understood Colossus.  Ooops.  Art!

     
     No, VAC knew to do no more than the most basic of tasks, he hadn't been trained on Colossus, and the six times CLEAR asked for another person to be trained, he got turned down, either because it wasn't in the budget or 'Later'.  A later that never came.

     Then disaster struck in the arrival of a new manager for the dynamic duo, as the previous experienced manager had been poached by another division, a sad testament to capability.  We shall call the new manager Bottomhole Boss as is our proud tradition.  He had absolutely no idea what either CLEAR or VAC did, no background in operations, dispatching, service management or the technical details of what equipment was being serviced.  He was a truly glorious example of Golf Buddy Appointment Strategy, since being three under par befits you for any management position.  Or, in this case, any manglement position.  Art!

     There is a saying I have just invented about this, being 'A new broom sweeps stupid', because when manglement like BB are appointed, they immediately start to change things.  To show their majesty and power and how important they are, shizzle like that.  

     Here an aside.  In the Comments on this story, one person added in the best speech he'd had from an incoming manager: "I am not going to do anything for a month.  After that, we'll expand the good and fix the bad."

     Ah, I can see CLEAR shaking his head.  BB wanted to end the overnight parts shipment, because it was expensive.  He wanted to reduce the number of routes the techs used, because that was expensive.  He believed the logistics budget was too high and needed reducing, not caring that service volumes had increased a lot and generated a lot more profit than expense.  Art!

     CLEAR e-mailed BB's boss with a detailed rebuttal of all the reasons why BB's ideas were highly counter-productive and would lead to loss of clients, to utter silence and inactivity.  Looks like BB's boss is also a BB.

     THEN BB convened a meeting between himself, his boss, an HR rep and CLEAR, whom was told he was being demoted from Operations Coordinator to Dispatcher, due to 'creating a hostile work environment, inability to work with management and refusing to action directed orders.'  No cut in salary, mind.

     'Okay,' CLEAR responded, meekly, rather surprising the others.  He knew they had just lit the fuse on a bomb that would go off sooner rather than later, and with devastating effect.

     Right!  I'm going to call time on this tale as there's a whole lot more to regale you with, which will have to wait until tomorrow.  I bet you can hardly wait.

A Bit Of Leavitty

Karoline Leavitt, that is, the official White House Press Secretary, whom is the public mouthpiece for the Trump administration, and who must go home and weep at the thankless job she does trying to big-up King Piggy.  Art!

The cross is to ward off Stephen Miller

     The hardest part of her job is trying to square what Donnie Dorko has been braying about with individual news organisations and the official White House stance.  DJ Tango just rings up newspapers and journals and says the first thing that comes into his head, and it's different each call.  So far in April he's rung nine different news organisations and given nine different answers to 'When will the war end?' including 'Six weeks', 'Four or five weeks', 'Two or three days' and my personal favourite, 'When Johnny comes marching home'.

     Not sure about that last one.  Let's have a photo of Pumpkinhead looking awful.  Art!

Alive or dead?  Only you can tell!

     One cannot help but feel bad for Melania.

Number 7 In 'Rotten Tomatoes' Top 10 Worst Films

Another one that I haven't seen, nor heard of either.  'National Lampoon's Gold Diggers' of 2003.  Art!

     Two losers plan to marry rich old women and live on their inheritance once they die.  As a plot it sounds rather thin.  The film is supposed to be a comedy - the 'National Lampoon' might have hinted at that - but is horribly unfunny.  I did a bit of digging and it made $830,000 globally, with no details about the budget, but I guarantee it was more than the box office take.  Which is why you've never had to endure 'Gold Diggers 2'.

DO YOU WANT SKYNET?  BECAUSE THIS IS HOW YOU GET SKYNET!

During the Special Idiotic Operation in Ukraine, it is becoming ever-more deadly to move about in daylight hours within 10 kilometres of the front lines, thanks to the ever-present FPV drones, and we're talking about both sides here.  

     The Ukrainians, ever mindful of the need to preserve lives, in stark contrast to Mordorvia's utter indifference, have now set themselves a target for producing UGVs, 'Unmanned Ground Vehicles'.  By the end of June this year they intend to have 26,000 UGVs doing one hundred per cent of front line deliveries.  Art!

     They aren't going to be autonomous - not yet! - and require an operator to remotely drive them to deliver food, water, ammunition, medical kit, spare parts, etcetera.  By the second half of 2026 we may see them equipped with AI and no human supervision, hence that item title.

Finally -

From my QI Banter Book.

"A man's face is his autobiography.  A woman's is her work of fiction."  Oscar Wilde.  O Oscar you wag!