That Lightbulb Moment

You Know, As In When Someone Realises A Really, Really Important Fact

It might be good, it might be bad, whichever it is, it will be illuminating.  Here's an interesting story taken from Quora, which skirts Politics.

     First, a bit of background.  As you should surely know, South Canada has 50 states, all of which have different laws, rules, regulations and state animals as seen on the local flag: Stephen King used to joke that the state animal for Maine was the midge.  Each state has a Governor, who is elected into the position, and they have an awful lot of clout in saying how things in the state run.  Art

     Our original poster was in either the Wizard Lizard Gizzards, or the Ice Cream Bandits, which comes into play later on.  One of their primary and seasonal responsibilities was arranging a multi-state conference, which met face-to-face.  They had arranged both a website and a database of their own to keep track of delegates and nominees and attendees and invitations and replies for hundreds of people, and OP also got to travel to liaise with these people in other states.

     Then a new governor is elected.  They are from the political party that OP is not in.  Surprise!  When her contract ended it was not renewed and somebody from the governor's party gets her job.

     O well, says OP, and gets another job elsewhere.

     A month later the woman who had taken her job rings and wants the pass code to the website and access to her databases, having had an unpleasant lightbulb moment, because the conference is now only two months away and she has no idea what to do nor how to do it.

     Ooops.

    OP calls back the woman who took over her job and informs her to send over the list of work and she'll send back a quote.  Cue crickets and tumbleweed.  "You're not going to just give it to me?" comes the croaked reply.  OP saliently points out that she doesn't work there any more and any work she does will cost.

     "Never mind, we'll figure it out," replies Little Miss Entitled.

     Guess what?  Yes!  The angles inside a triangle add up to 1800 - sorry, I meant that they didn't manage to figure anything out, because two days later LMI's supervisor rings up and demands, then threatens, to get the required info.  Same response from OP, who used to supervise contracts and contractual obligations, and whom thus knows exactly how much the state pays consultants.

      By the next time the supervisor calls back another five days have passed and - still nothing, and the conference is only seven weeks away.  They cave in and pay OP £12,000 for ten days work, which even she admits was a ridiculously large sum for what training she delivered.

     The smile she wore whilst doing that training, however, had the positive passion of a supernova behind it.

     That, children, demonstrates both a lightbulb moment and sweet sweet revenge.  Art!

     Also, schadenfreude.

 

"If Only They Didn't Speak English" By Jon Sopel

Jon, in case you were unaware, was the BBC's North America correspondent for years and his work above looks at the first couple of years of the Trump presidency.  I've recently finished it and found a parodic verse that came out when Prez Trump Tweeted that he was " - a very stable genius'.  Only in his own head.  Jon liked some of the verses that modelled themselves on Gilbert & Sullivan's "I am the very model of a modern Major-General".

"I am the very model of a Very Stable Genius,

I love McDonald's Special Sauce, I take it intravenous.

I hate the failing New York Times,  their fake news makes me bilious.

And the BBC reporting from Jon Sopel, supercilious."

     Jon also mentioned a book I already have and started to read, not sure where it's gotten to - probably underneath a pile of other books, Michael Wolff's "Fire And Fury".  I need to dig it out of the book mountain.  Art!

Jon plus family

"The Sea Of Sand"

When we left off, the sinister and plain evil Detachment Leader Icono was brooding on the nature of the TARDIS, as described by one of his technicians.

‘This couldn’t be an example of trans-mat gone wrong?’

          The technician waved his hands.

          ‘No, Leader.  Without a reception platform, an object could not be sent.  The gravity-lens technique used for the Infiltration Complex will only work for objects of similar dimensions.’

          ‘Who else knows of this?’

          ‘Nobody yet, Leader – AH!’ grunted the technician as Icono Eviscerated him, draining the hapless minion until his dessicated husk lay shrivelled on the sands.

          ‘Useless drone!’ shouted Icono, to create the wrong impression.  ‘Dismantle that generator.  Reel in that cable.  Send out a Transport Car to haul in one of the immobilised alien vehicles for recycling!’

         

 

Twenty Two:  A Bigger Bang

 The ten human survivors at Mersa Martuba spent an uneasy night, one person taking it in turns to be on sentry duty.  This amounted to standing on the platform mounted over the mud huts, looking to the east.

          Perhaps the “ten humans” could have been amended to “nine humans and one Gallifreyan”.  The Doctor forbade anyone to enter his appropriated mud hut, citing the need to keep conditions as near sterile as possible.  He also wanted to prevent any twentieth century inhabitant witnessing scientific methodology from several centuries in the future.  Sarah’s inspired suggestion about dental tools bore fissile fruit by dawn the next morning as a gritty-eyed Doctor downed his tools, taking care not to scratch or rub his eyes.

     Yeah, you don't want radioactive compounds in your orbs.  And to those who say you can't create an atomic bomb from radium - not yet you can't.

Lord Peter's Wretched Crossword

Don't fret so, there are only three clues left now, and then we can get back to Conrad being enraged by Codeword compilers and not Ol' Dot any more.  The 'clue' is: "At sunset see the labourer now, Loose all his oxen from the plough (6)."

     And the answer is: UNTEAM

     Conrad's not sure that's even a proper word.  Hmmmmmm nothing in my Collin's Concise between UNTAUGHT and UNTENABLE.  Art!

A UN Team

     Close enough.  Watch the UN have a hissy fit because Conrad saw fit to mention U.N.I.T.*

Finally -

You'll remember IF YOU KNOW WHAT'S GOOD FOR YOU that Conrad mentions the Youtube vlogger Joe Blogs on occasion.  Joe puts out excellent, legible explanations about the economic consequences of the Ruffian invasion of Ukraine, and I see he's put up a new one.  Art!

     I can't listen to these whilst creating these words of wit, wisdom and wonder, because there are often charts and graphs involved, and besides I cannot multi-task sufficiently well; creating BOOJUM! would take three hours were I to have JB on in the background.  So!  Once I post this, get some lunch and brew another pot of tea, I will watch Joe smilingly introduce another slice of financial Amageddon.  Just for your information and from that title, 500,000 barrels of oil being over 70,000 tons of oil, that's a big cutback, and at $58 per barrel, the Ruffians are losing $29 million PER DAY.  Or, annually, $10 billion.

     "Sanctions have no effect on Ruffia, only on the West," boasted Peter The Average.  Also "Stop the sanctions!"

     And with that, Vulnavia, we are done.

*  They get really, really bent out of shape about this.  Tee Hee!

Corruption!

Also, Tyranny And Mutation

Okay, okay, now I have to come up with both of those in the Intro, BUT it does give me a reason to throw a bit of Blue Oyster Cult out there.  Art!

Note use of definite article

     Firstly, though, let's look at Corruption, just not at Ruffian corruption, because 1) Everyone must be bored of it by now and 2) It would take up the rest of the blog and the next five, too.

     I was inspired to cover this topic by Jake Broe, who wanted to prove that yes, the South Canadian military does have corruption, if on a far smaller scale than in Ruffia.  

Is Ukraine's Military Corrupt? - YouTube

     That's the link to his vlog about corruption, both in Ukraine and South Canada.  His first example was an airman who stole USAF equipment and sold it on E-bay, to the value of $50,000.  Another instance was an airman stealing what we here in This Sceptred Isle call a 'Jimpy'.  Art!

     These puppies will put out 15 rounds a second, can kill at a mile and will demolish brick walls that get in the way.  Matey had it squirreled away at home; 'It was for shooting vermin' is unlikely to play well in court.

     More serious was the case of Stephanie Charboneau, an Army Specialist in Afghanistan, who became part of a ring selling Army petrol to the Afghans and pocketing the money, to the tune of $15 million.  This 'Fraud, Waste And Abuse' (the formal description as Jake explained) was uncovered after 2014, by which time it had been running for years.  Charboneau was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2014 so she's now at liberty - and probably working a minimum-wage job.  Art!

Probably a lot less happy now

     Then there was Army Major Cockerham, who took huge bribes in order to land contracts for supplying water to the South Canadian Army in Iraq.  He was arrested following an investigation, fined $9 million and is still serving a 17 year sentence.  He'd squirreled away $30 million - as detailed in a ledger he kept recording details of his bribes, which was convenient for the prosecution - so he might be expecting to retrieve the remaining $21 million when he gets out next year.  As if - once released every police agency in the South Canadian armed forces will be following him.

     Jake pointed out that the South Canadian Department of Defence is one of the largest employers in the world, with 2.8 million employees, so, Hom. Sap. being what they are, you are always going to get some people being bad.

     Okay, that's the corruption.  Tyranny?  Art!

     Well, Peter The Average is frankly a lightweight compared to the company he's keeping here, and others have wittily described his 'Special Military Operation' as a 'Bargain-bin Barbarossa' (referring to Unternehmen Barbarossa, the Teuton invasion of the Sinister Union), and also the 'Great Idiotic War', a spoof on the 'Great Patriotic War' as the Sinisters liked to describe their Second Unpleasantness experience.  There you go, writing that in Russia would get me sent to jail for a decade.

     Mutation?  Art!

     This is the outcome of Cordyceps mutating and jumping the species barrier, from "The Girl With All The Gifts".  There is a brief speculation in the novel that it was artificially mutated in a lab, which smacks of madness as once it gets into the world there is no way to stop it's spread.  Fungal spores do not respect political boundaries, nor do rampaging hordes of maniacal fungus-riddled zombies.

     I think that's enough of this Intro.

The Terror Of Statistics

With a nod of the head to vlogger Joe Blogs, who has been putting out daily content on the economic consequences of Ruffia invading Ukraine.  I made notes from his most recent vlog, which can be found at:

RUSSIAN Economy COLLAPSES to Worst Deficit in Russian History as Revenues Crash & Costs Soar in Jan - YouTube

      It's 26 minutes long, so I shall précis it here.  

    Firstly, as Joe points out - O hang on a mo - Art!

That neon sign is new

      - the information is being provided directly from the Ruffian Ministry Of Finance, so from the horse's mouth to your eyes, gentle reader.  The financial performance in January 2023 is in, and it's BAD.  The deficit is R1.758 billion, against a projected annual total deficit of R2.93 trillion, meaning January alone accounts for 60% of the overall deficit.

     Overall income is down 35% from January 2022, and the Finance Ministry's explanation is not allowed to mention the word 'sanctions', so instead it's the fault of the Sanjak Of Novi Pazar's pistachio harvest.

     Income Tax is at a negative total - R72 billion, meaning that the government has been paying people, not getting taxes out of them.  This is a fall of minus 137% from January 2022.

     Government expenses (no details on what these are) for January 2023 are already at 10.6% of the annual projected figure.  This means hitting the annual figure by mid-September, which is when the FOREX funds, a.k.a. 'Putin's Piggybank', will also run out.  Art!

Cheer up, Dimya!  It could be worse!

     Bloaty Gas Tout has said he wants to see more 'positive' financial statements, so this may be the only time we get to see how badly the Ruffian economy is doing.  February's figures will be even worse, because that's when the ban on EU refined-fuel imports from Ruffia came in, as well as a price cap.

     Better get that private jet loaded with gold warmed up on the tarmac, Dimya.

"The Sea Of Sand"

The repellent Detachment Leader Icono is being briefed by a hapless technician about their ineffectual analysis of the TARDIS.

‘Yes, yes, carry on.’  Icono knew what infrasonics were used for – to process minerals by the kilotonne.  Under infrasonic stimulation different ores and minerals could be separated out from sand.

          The technician pointed over to the artefact, with cables trailing to the big, cone-shaped ultrasonic generator butted up against it.

          ‘A pulse would penetrate the object, and be reflected back from the internal structure, allowing us to plot the layout.’  Another hesitation.  ‘The pulse took an hour to return.’

          Icono had anticipated a revelation about the object being solid, or full of liquid, or perhaps live aliens.  Hearing “an hour” he stared hard at his minion.

          ‘An hour?  Why so long?  How long ought a reflected pulse to take?’

          ‘Ah – approximately eighty milliseconds, Leader.  By implication, this object is far larger on the inside than it is on the outside.  By a factor of several hundred thousand.’

          An astonished Icono walked over to the artefact.  There it was, upright, innocent, and apparently made of that compacted fibrous material used to obstruct the approach to the HQ building.

          Yet to be larger on the inside! 

          ‘Er – these aliens do not have the technology to create a five-dimensional object, Leader.  They are mechanically ingenious, yes, yet still millenia away from such an artefact.’

          Icono nodded, thinking. 

          Dark thoughts, undoubtedly.

Lord Peter's Crossword

In defence of my refusal to complete this crossword, I would like to point out that Lord Peter had the assistance of three other people and a library.  Here's another 'clue': "Shall learning die amid war's alarms?  I, at my birth, was clasped in iron arms (6)"

     There's no way I'd have gotten this one: ATHENE

     Hist!  But let me check my Brewer's.  Aha!  Athene, patron goddess of Athens and the arts and crafts, who allegedly sprang, fully armed, from the head of Zeus.  That must have been one heck of a headache.  Art!

"Get me some Ibuprofen!"

Finally -

Your Humble Scribe is feeling rather stubbly, so after posting this scrivel I shall go get a scraping, which always helps boost the self-esteem.  O, I have also worked out how to print é and á and ú and í and ó.  But no umlauts, so I can't type out BOC properly <sad face>.

Pip pip!

Alexander Dog Buns! Graham Bell

I Know D.A.R.P..A. Are Working On A Time-Machine

Quite beside the fact that time travel is possible, as proven by the BBC's premier dramamentary 'Doctor Who'.  When they get a working model Conrad is going to "Long-Term Borrow" it (which the uncouth slanderously call "Stealing"), pop back in time and arrange for Mister Bell to have a fatal accident.  Art!

Yes, the Doctor can be a bit prickly at times

     Conrad, you see, has never been a fan of the telephone.  In my opinion it means that people you don't like or want to communicate can pester you 24/7/52, and I only use mine to take photographs in order to upload to BOOJUM!  So if they were all to vanish then I'd simply get a digital camera.  O and buy physical bus tickets, because you can do that via contactless payment. 

     On the other hand, they do winnow the herd somewhat, as the stupid and feckless are often to be caught crossing the road whilst their attention is fixed to their Devil's Digital Device.  Also, "Person Of Interest" would have trouble tracking people.  Art!

     ANYWAY that has merely tangential relevance to what this Intro is about, which is another case of Manglement in action.  Thanks Quora for providing content!  Right, there is a South Canadian franchise called 'Servpro', and if Art will put down his bowl of coal -

     Our Original Poster worked there purely for the $$$ as the owner was, to stereotype wildly, A Lot Of A Bottomhole, and one of those people who don't want to hear the "N" word.  Consequently, when his office manager warned him that the business could not afford to move into a huge new warehouse, ALOAB fired him.  This was an office manager with over a decade's experience in the job, but he had said the "N" word, so he was 'let go', because after all what does a decade's worth of experience matter?

     In place of the experienced manager, ALOAB hired an horrendous woman from his church, who appeared to have graduated from the Putin Charm School Of Management, at the bottom of the class at that.  Art!

"The curriculum will include -"

     OP was not alone in hating her, the entire staff hated her.  Managers like this help to tank their own business as they drive staff to leave, morale and productivity fall and turnover goes through the roof.  Retention?  What's that?

     ANYWAY Harridan Manager clashed with OP repeatedly and plotted to get rid of her, finally coming up to her and saying there was a new mobile phone policy, which OP had to sign.

     OP was instantly suspicious.  Rather than simply sign her name, she added the date in the middle of her signature ("Original 23/08/2009 Poster"), then took a photocopy for herself.

     Surprise!  HM then informed OP she was fired for violating the new policy, so OP, still being canny, e-mailed a friend outside the business about this nonsense.

     This being South Canada, she then filed for unemployment, because over there if your employer fires you, they have to pay your unemployment benefit.  HM, of course - obviously! - fought this tooth and nail, having sent in the signed cell-phone document with the date covered up by liquid paper.  OP kindly supplied the Employment Office her original document, proving malicious deceit on HM's part, and that confirmatory e-mail, which demolished HM's fictitious timeline.

     Hooray!  Justice is served.  OP got full benefits, applied retroactively.

     But wait - it gets better.  HM had been hired into a position she was clearly unfit for, because a few months later the Servpro franchise closed permanently.  It transpires that the original office manager was right, they couldn't afford the gigantic warehouse, a salient fact HM never realised.  Or, if she understood, was too cowardly to bring to the owner's attention.  Ooopsie!

     Mobile phones.  Have as little to do with them as you can.

"The War Illustrated"

We've not had one of these for a while, so here's Issue 169, December 1943.  Art!

Dated 10/12/1943

     "The Little Sod With The Moustache" as he was known to inhabitants of the Sinister gulags.  The frankly nauseating fluff beneath Stalin's photograph lays the Sinister victories at his feet, when in fact it was the STAVKA who were responsible (the Sinister equivalent of a General Staff).  Except they knew better than to try and claim any glory, because they'd get gulaged if they were lucky and executed if not.  Stalin, after interfering disastrously with the conduct of war in 1941 and 1942, had learned to keep his sweaty paws off military operations.  Art!

     At upper port, you see Canadian troops in Campochiaro, about to deliver the good news via hand-grenade.  At upper starboard a British soldier is using his rifle left-handed in order to remain under cover and at bottom you can see a fighting patrol making it's way in Teano - note that all weapons are unslung and nobody's weighed down with a backpack.  Art!

A far less battered Teano today

Lord Peter's Very Crossword

It is, I have to tell you as one who regularly completes the M.E.N.'s Cryptic in 20 minutes or so.  Let's have today's - er - 'clue': "When you've guessed it, with one voice, You'll say it was a golden choice (2)."

     You'd get it eventually because there are only 676 possible combinations of the alphabet.  The answer is OR.

     No, not the word indicating that there is an alternative, remember Ol' Dotty used 'Golden' so this is in fact the French for 'Gold'.  She'd never stoop so low as to mean 'an alternative option exists'!  Art!

"The Sea Of Sand"

We've jumped back to the invading bio-vores, their leader simultaneously gloating yet puzzled at having laid hands on the TARDIS.

Uncomfortably aware that the aliens of this world did not have matter transmission technology, Icono immediately knew the artefact was important.  So, he brought it along.  It could be analysed at the Infiltration Complex.

          More good news awaited him when he returned to the HQ building; the trans-mat was operational once more, test packages having been successfully sent from Homeworld and back there.

          ‘Excellent!’  Which was mostly true.  Lord Excellency Sur might not appreciate the losses suffered by the Warriors under Icono’s leadership, and Evisceration might be on the horizon.  Only “might”.  With all the ingested life energies acquired from this planet’s fodder, over sixty of the surviving Warriors were budding.  A dozen new Warrior offspring, small and reedy yet, were being rehearsed and drilled.  So the losses weren’t as bad as seemed to begin with – or at least that’s how Icono hoped Lord Excellency Sur, would feel.

          He went to look at the artefact.

          ‘It has no openings in the outer shell, Leader,’ said a Warrior technician.  ‘A completely sealed unit.’

          The Technician’s posture, leaning backwards, expressed more surprise.

          ‘And?’

          ‘I’m not entirely sure of this, Leader, but we used an infrasonic generator to try and determine the artefact’s internal layout.’

     You can guess what comes next, because as any fule no, the TARDIS is as big as a skyscraper on the inside.

Finally -

Your Humble Scribe is back on the job market, which meant tickling up my CV to prove I've not been on holiday for the past three months, and looking for suitable jobs.  Unlike previously, I've been looking for work in Rochdale, because it's far easier to reach than Manchester; a mere ten minutes on the bus instead of perhaps an hour and a half if First are busy being Worst.  

     We shall see, we shall seee.

If I Were To Say "The Secret Service"

You Would No Doubt Think -

 - because you're aware of my recent viewing of "Slow Horses" - that this refers to MI5 or even MI6.

     Incidentally, don't confuse the secret services of Perfidious Albion with the South Canadian Secret Service; note the capitalisation.  The SCSS are primarily known for their protection services as provided to The Prez, and they are not in the least secret, since you can see them clustered around The Prez, eyes looking everywhere but at him.  Art!

     This is an example of a presidential motorcade, except they'd probably include surveillance drones nowadays, in the Electronic Support unit, and some kamikaze ones in the Counter Assault vehicle.  In the past the SCSS would be running alongside Limo One and a decoy Fake one, just to keep the bad guys guessing.

     But of course - obviously! - that's nothing to do with what this Intro is about.  O, as an aside, I did buy the novel "Slow Horses" and have read it.  The television series is pretty close to the novel for the most part except

SPOILER ALERT!

  - there's no mad dash to rescue Hassan Ahmed, the Slow Horses find out where 'Curly' has finally parked - 'Larry' just runs off wanting nothing to do with murder - and notify the police.  As for Curly, he's chasing Hassan with an axe - guns being rather hard to get hold of in This Sceptred Isle - until he's tripped by a tree-root, faceplants and breaks his ankle, badly.  Hassan ends up with the axe.  Art!

So slow they've stopped

     We here in the Sekrit Layr are now on the second season, "Dead Lions", which briefly features the incomparable Phil Davis, British character actor who's been in everything under the sun for the past twenty years.  Art!

     The very embodiment of seediness, hmmmm?

     ANYWAY of course - indisputably! - none of that has to do with what Your Humble Scribe meant by "The Secret Service", because I refer to one of the more bonkers series produced by futurologist Gerry Anderson.  It was a kind of waypoint in his series as it mixed both live action long-shots with puppetry.  Art!

     The premise is that Father Unwin, as seen above, is a vicar working for <ahem> Operation B.I.S.H.O.P. and that's "British Intelligence Service Headquarters Operation Priest".  They deal with terrorism and counter-terrorism, in case you were wondering.  The good father is modelled on and voiced by comedian Stanley Unwin - Art!

     Unwin's comic schtick was speaking a kind of verbal gobbledygook dubbed 'Unwinese', which kind of made sense if you tried hard enough, and sure enough his puppet character did just that.

     Father Unwin'd 'gardener' was a hale and strapping young man called Matthew, except he was also a BISHOP agent.  The series gimmick was that Unwin was in possession of a miniaturing gadget that could shrink Matthew to one-sixth normal height, so he could handily fit into a briefcase carried by Unwin.  Art!

     Conrad also had a paperback novel based on the series, and I think I've found the cover illustration.  Art!

     This one was about South Canadian gangsters being hot on the trail of another South Canadian criminal who'd stolen an incredibly dangerous laser weapon.  O, and I've just remembered that the shrinking process was done via The Minimizer, a McGuffin concealed in a large leather-bound book that I don't think they dared call "The Bible".  Art!

     You may never have heard of it since it only ran for one season.  Lord Grade, the chap responsible for green-lighting Anderson's stuff, wasn't happy about the Unwinese dialogue, since he felt it killed the series' ability to sell to the South Canadian market.  So cherish it whilst ye may.

Validated!

Just a short item here.  One of the vloggers I follow is The Critical Drinker, whom actually did his vlogs as a side-gig, since he was a full-time author of spy thrillers.  However, his drunken curmudgeonly persona has proved a winner and he has a substantial following.

     He also hates EVERYTHING.

     Wellllll not everything, but he is very parsimonious with praise.

     Hence it was great to see that he, too, loved "Everything Everywhere All At Once", definitely my favourite film of last year.  Art!

Lord! Lord Peter's Crossword

Don't fret if you don't like this, we're just over three-quarters done, and it's an item that will put a nice gloss on your intellect.  Herein the clue: "The priest uplifts his voice on high, The choristers make their reply (9)."

     I'll give you the solution, neither of us would have solved it.

     VERSICLES.

      If anything, it sounds like a term from biology.  In reality: a short sentence said or sung by the minister in a church service, to which the congregation gives a response.

      Art!

"The Sea Of Sand" 

Sarah has come up with a solution to the problem of conventional workshop tools not being sufficiently precise.

‘Remember Roger showing us around when we’d just got here?  There was a dentists drill on display.’

          ‘Brilliant!’ grinned the Doctor, shaking Sarah’s hand madly.  He tracked down the depot inventory and read the flimsies until finding what he wanted, then dashed off.

          ‘I suppose he know’s what he’s doing?’ asked Roger.  The seemingly-demented Doctor Smith had proved to be extremely clever and quick, but cooking up a bomb that only existed in pulp magazines – that was a bit of a stretch, even for an imagination that had been stretched considerably already.

          ‘Oh yes,’ replied Sarah with absolute assurance.  ‘If he says he can, then he can.’

         

Detachment Leader Icono deposited the mystery Artefact alongside a Science Support building at the Infiltration Complex, sliding it off the Transport Car via the manipulators. 

          Incredible!  The blue box simply appeared out of nowhere in the path of the interception convoy moving to meet that life-signs trace.  First the desert stretched in front of them, barren,endless and empty, the next – there the big box stood.  The fodder had moved to investigate the new arrival, until they all dropped where they stood under the stun rays.

     Yup, the TARDIS is in entirely the wrong hands.

Take Aim At Feet -

It's a consistent theme on Quora and Youtube that South Canadian businesses try to cut corners in order to save pennies (or cents) and end up costing themselves enormous sums as a consequence of karma.

     Here's one tale.  Original Poster was an engineer, and had 10 years experience in the plant he worked at.  This involved processes, procedures, work-arounds, materials, product, expenses, profit margins, the whole lot.  Art!

     Then he and 4 sales people were sacked, OP suspects because they were the oldest and most experienced staff and thus on the highest wages.

     OP WAS DELIGHTED!  You see, they were enrolled on a Law course here in the UK, and needed to be there for the start of term - 2nd January.  However, they also needed to be present at their job in South Canada on 2nd Jan to qualify for holiday pay and enrolment in the pension plan.  Getting sacked meant 6 months pay, all their holiday pay and automatic enrolment.

     Then, of course - inevitably! - karma struck.  OP had been working for several years on scaling-up an industrial production process, presumably from a proof-of-concept plant to a full-sized industrial one on a commercial scale.  This was a tricky project that needed to be babied lest things go dramatically wrong.

     Manglement assigned an inexperienced junior engineer to the job after OP got fired.  IJE promptly disables a reactor for over a year and caused the cancellation of a $2,000,000 production project.  Art!

     Probably not quite as bad as the above.

Finally -

The weekly shop tonight, better go check out my 'Seoultown Cookbook' for what ingredients are needed.  No dairy or potato products, I would guess.

Eye See Eye A.K.A. Balloonantics

Bear With Me, I'm Making This One Up As I Go Along

You'll get the allusion about 'eyes' and 'seeing' later on, just wanted to also point out that you're also pronouncing the initials of This Sceptred Isle's multinational giant I.C.I. which used to mean 'Imperial Chemical Industries'.  

     Oddly enough, it was also the target for a bit of criticism from the artist Barney Bubbles, who did interior work for the band Hawkwind on their "Saga Of Doremi Fasol Latido' album, where he inks in the phrase 'machine logic god' for ICI.  Art!

     One for all the space-rockers out there.

     ANYWAY let us abruptly jumps back in time to the First Unpleasantness, when artillery dominated the battlefield and you were much more likely to hit your target if you could see it.  In France and Flanders the ground was mostly flat, with a few small ridges, so you needed an elevated coign of vantage to be able to spot the enemy's rear.  After interim measures with Really Tall Ladders - Art!

     - what all sides realised they wanted were Observation Balloons.  These came as great big sacks of fabric, filled with hydrogen for lightness, and if we can cattle-prod Art awake -

British and French model

Teuton version

     You can just see in both cases the observation basket underneath the balloon, in which would sit a couple of observers with maps and binoculars, connected to the ground via a telephone.  At several thousand feet elevation, they could see far and wide, and consequently call down artillery fire on potential targets.

     Things were not especially peachy for the observers in these windbags, for their lighter-than-air status came about courtesy of the extremely flammable hydrogen they were filled with.  One round of 'Buckingham' incendiary ammunition and the bag would burn.  Art!

     The crew did have parachutes to escape with, which were fixed to the basket and were dangerous enough that you'd only use them on pain of death.

     It wasn't fun for any pilots attacking these balloons, either, as they were protected by anti-aircraft guns on the ground and occasional standing air patrols, meaning a high risk of low life-expectancy.

     Enter Biggles.  The author Captain W. E. Johns had served in the RAF in the First Unpleasantness as a pilot, so he knew whereof he wrote.  In 1917 young Bigglesworth wasn't yet under the crippling stress of the next year, still being hale and hearty and appreciative of French champagne.  Art!

     You see, he and his rival Wilks, of 287 Squadron, had both discovered a French estaminet with an incredible supply of wonderful whisky.  In the bowdlerised version for Young Adults that I had, all reference to 'whisky' was substituted with 'Lemonade', which made the following events somewhat absurd -

     ANYWAY Biggles and Wilks both get into a scuffle outside the estaminet, each grimly determined to get their hands on those crates of spirits, and are rolling in the roadway when Colonel Raymond drives up and catches them.

     "Officers!  Gentlemen!" he comments, with 'soft but deadly sarcasm' - that bit I remember.  As a neutral observer, he suggests a competition: the recently-established Teuton observation balloon at Duneville has been causing the very devil in terms of the accuracy and volume of artillery fire it can direct.

     FORCING THE BALLOON DOWN:  10 POINTS

   DESTROYING THE BALLOON IN THE AIR: 20 POINTS

   CAPTURING THE BALLOON: 100 POINTS

   Both Biggles and Wilks make several partly-successful attacks, until Biggles tries a hedge-hopping approach to get close enough and drops a couple of bombs on the ground winch.

     Purely by luck, a splinter from his bomb cuts the winch cable and the balloon is carried by the winds over into Allied lines, where it collapses and is captured.  The winds are such and Allied lines so close that even if the observation crew pulled the emergency ripcord, they'd still crash behind enemy lines.  Art!

     There you go, a story about hostile balloons being foiled by the gallant chaps of the air force.

     That reminds me of something ...

Kopecking Their Melon

The Kopek, FYI, is a unit of currency in Ruffia.  It's such a small denomination I'm not sure if it's used any longer and cannot be bothered to find out.

     You see, in addition to the actual blood-and-thunder war going on in Ukraine, there's also an insidious economic war being waged against Peter The Average, which he is not winning.

     Here's a few figures put out by the Ruffians themselves.  Their oil and gas exports for January 2023 are down by $6 billion compared to last year.  Art!

     The whole Ruffian GDP was down 35% in January this year, whilst spending had increased by $43 billion on this time last year.  This, mind you, is before the cap on refined fuel products and the EU ban on the import of same came in on Sunday last.  Projecting forward, at this rate the Ruffians will hit their planned deficit for the whole of 2023 by the end of September.

     One wonders, one wonders.  These figures are awful enough - but are the Ruffians telling the whole truth?  They've been cherry-picking data and putting out complete fiction as statistics, so reality could be even worse.

"No, no - I've just got something in my eye."

"The Sea Of Sand"

You might call this bit "How To Mantle An Atomic Bomb" as the Doctor is getting ready to constructively create chaos.

The Doctor rapidly took over one of the mud huts, one which had been used by the depot staff to store tools.  He cleared a space on the floor, laid out a tarpaulin with a rock at each corner, then returned to the crate containing the x-ray equipment. 

          ‘Now I miss the sonic screwdriver,’ he grumbled to the night, having to very carefully lever the lid off the crate.  The delicate equipment within had been wrapped in muslin, then linen, then restrained with wooden braces and the crate filled with sawdust.  A lining of thick foil held the sawdust in place.

          ‘Oh.  Radium.  Well, we’ll just have to work with that,’ he said, seeing the symbol stencilled on the outer casing of the equipment and leaving it on the tarpaulin.

          His next problem came when he snooped around the hut, failing to find any tools sufficiently small or precise, so he went to find Roger, who was smoking a cigarette and pointing out constellations to Sarah.

          ‘I could get you screwdrivers and an adjustable wrench.’

          ‘No!  That just won’t do!  I need precision instruments, not – yes, Sarah?’

          ‘Would a dentist’s stuff be any good?’

          ‘Yes! Yes it would!’ enthused her mentor.  

     There you go, Chekhov's Gun at play.  I did warn you.

A Bit Of Literary Feedback

As you may recall, I am currently re-reading "The Short Stories Of Sherlock Homes", which are terrific fun as it's been so long I don't recall the solution to some of them.  Or, with some, I recall the solution yet not the set up to the pay-off.  

     In "The Speckled Band" Holmes holds forth at length on how dangerous a doctor can be when brought to a life of crime, and he mentioned William Palmer.  This chap had been a doctor, which he found a dull career, so he took up the exciting career of gambling on horse-races, which ruined him financially.  Art!

     He had his brother insured, upon which his brother conveniently died.  The insurance company, smelling a whole warren of rats, refused to pay up, which they tend to do even if a case is entirely rat-free.

     Enter John Cook, another gambler who was rich enough to be able to race horses himself, and a good friend of Palmer's.  After winning a substantial amount of prize money, he fell ill, and got steadily worse under Doctor Palmer's tender ministrations.

     You can guess the end.  Cook's goose was done and he died in mortal agony.  Palmer was tried, found guilty of murder and hung, because they didn't mess about in those days.  He is also suspected of killing his brother, mother and four of his own children (!), which might make him seem like a monster - yet he was by all accounts a kind and gentle man with his patients.

     Hmmmm not if your surname was 'Cook', he wasn't.

Finally -

Right, Conrad needs a scrape and scrub, so that's this dog-and-pony show on the road, after which it'll be time for lunch.

Chin chin!