I Can Guess Where Your Thoughts Will Go
Yes, you slobbering perverts, I can see you imagining Lara Croft, whom seems to be a chimera composed of boobs, shorts and guns, the star of the computer game 'Tomb Raider', which I have never played and don't feel any worse off for not doing so. There is also a film and I am now allowed to put up an illo of same. Art!
No, I haven't seen it and, once again, don't feel disadvantaged in any way. I am happy to say that Brit actor Chris Barrie is featured in it, and Conrad hopes he made a wheelbarrowful of money from his role. Art!
Chris thinking deep thoughts. Possibly.
Of course - obviously! - none of this has anything to do with what this Intro is about, because allow me to introduce you to the Chinese festival of 'Qingming'. This actually falls on this weekend, making it almost timely as I'm typing this on a Friday for Saturday's first blog, when Qingming is on Sunday. Art!
The festival is celebrated across the Chinese diaspora, and is taken very seriously. It combines honouring ancestors with the arrival of Spring, where families visit relatives tombs, cleaning, weeding and repairing or repainting them, leaving presents of joss sticks and 'ghost money' alongside food. No, they do not take anything back home. I wonder what they do about flies and vermin? Oh and only muted-coloured clothing is to be worn and definitely NOT anything red.
Where are we going with this? I hear you quibble. Bear with me, for we are going to swerve violently off-course and visit the 'South East Cement Corporation' on the island nation of Taiwan, in the Nanzih distrixt. Art!
As with all industrial processes, architectural features become obsolete and need demolition. As with a 170 foot tall concrete storage silo on a SECC site. The irony of a cement company having to destroy an item made with it's own cement does not escape me. Another clip from the 'Be Amazed' Youtube channel. Art!
You can see that they've resorted to the time-honoured method of gapping-out part of the silo's base, and they have a - frankly feeble - cable attached to the upper silo to help it tilt in the direction of the gap. Hopefully. Yes, that word again, and a word that should never be associated with that other word 'demolition'. Also just visible at lower port is the wrecking ball mounted on an excavator which is currently pummelling the living daylights out of the silo.
What can possibly go wrong? Art!
Collapse begins. For all of two seconds things go as planned. Then - Art!
The silo begins to lean in the other direction and the frankly feeble cable does absolutely 0% to prevent it. Art!
Visible just north of dead centre is the flash of an electricity transmission tower being demolished, in what was very definitely not supposed to happen. This is the consequence of the company carrying out the demolition, 'Chiung Te Construction', ignoring the officially-approved 3-stage demo process instead opting for the quicker, cheaper wrecking ball route.
Ooops. Art!
Transmission tower transformed
You may also have noticed that the silo collapsed in the direction of the excavator and be concerned at the fate of the driver. There is footage of the collapse from another angle, which 'Be Amazed' thoughtfully added. Art!
He got away successfully, and good thing too, as Your Humble Scribe discovered a local newspaper website that arrived after the collapse. Art!
It took me a minute to realise that you're looking at the excavator on it's side. The date of this incident was 4th April 2022, and guess what festival it affected? No! Not Cheese-Rolling - Tomb Sweeping. That transmission tower going down affected over 100 train services for 7 hours, delaying 126,000 people. Let's be clear here, this was a national holiday and these were people travelling for the festival, NOT work. It took 163 engineers and electrical staff to erect another transmission tower. Art!
The local paper
Four people from CTC were arrested and later bailed: the owner, released on $35,000 bail; the manager, again on $35,000 bail; the Occupational Safety (!) rep, released on $10,000 bail and a subcontractor - probably for the demolition company - released on $20,000 bail.
BA came up with a punchline I couldn't corroborate: CTC were fined $200,000. I can't trace any outcomes on teh Interwebz after the initial incident, but this sounds credible, especially given the company's spotty safety record in previous years. Be advised, gentle reader, that taking shortcuts in the demolition business can have catastrophic consequences. Here endeth the lesson for today.
Saluting A Real Trooper
I'm pretty sure I covered my Indestructible Lightbulb in a post possibly six months ago, or even longer, and cannot identify the relevant blog post. Searching for 'Lamp' or 'Lightbulb' didn't narrow the field at all. Art!
It's been like that for all this time, still functioning when I dropped the lamp on the floor at least twice. Finally, it gave up the ghost on Wednesday night. You can tell how old it is by that curious three-lobed design, which became obsolete years ago.
Let's Have A Bit Of Ol' Tel
Terence Cuneo, that is. We've not had one of his artworks for a while. Art!
Dated 1944
The unglamourous side of waging war: industrial production. These are Churchill tanks, probably the Mark VII version given the date Tel painted this. At lower port you can see the tracks being fitted, a laborious process as they are immensely heavy - around two tons each - and flex instead of staying rigid. At centre and starboard you can see a turret being installed and one one waiting to be installed. Note the 'cage' that the turret crew sit on when it rotates, rather than having to shuffle around themselves. Good detail from Tel. Total production of Churchills during the Second Unpleasantness = 5,640. Compare this with the total Teuton amount of 30,000 and that the Churchill only went into production in 1941. Again, rationalised and efficient industrial production: unglamourous but essential.
You What?
Conrad came across another bizarre South Canadianism that utterly baffled him. Art!
I shall make like a mole and dig. Wait one.
Aha!
The Yoshinobu Yamamoto giveaway is a limited-edition Los Angeles Dodgers promotional item from March 31, 2026, featuring a bobblehead of the Nintendo character Yoshi wearing a Dodgers jersey with Yamamoto’s number 18.
Art!
Not going to fight you for one.
More Of Our Gallery Of Grotesque Grandad
I hope you like looking at awful pictures of Pumpkinhead, because given how badly he's deteriorating, they aren't going to stop coming any time soon. Art!
You can't really appreciate this one as his slurring, squelchy, sputum-laden speech forms another trope of it's own. The photo has been taken from an elevated angle so we're not faced with the hideously contorted neck wattles that would make a turkey envious.
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