Once Upon A Time -

There Was An Evil Witch

Who went by the name 'Dolores', after that other evil witch in Harry Potter.  Dolores wasn't her real name, it was a nickname imposed by the long-suffering staff at the IT business she had landed in as Director Of Finance.

     But I get ahead of myself, for we are going to have a look at another woeful tale of manglement, at two levels.  Art!

Dolores.  "  - smile, and smile, and be a villain."

     This is another tale from Youtube's Malicious Compliance tales, set in a business that regularly attended trade shows with a promotional team from IT.  Yes, it was a bit of a jolly and a definite perk, but it was also important in networking with other companies and displaying company product in their booths, which were staffed with IT nerds and salesmen.  All those present were volunteers, including the Team Travel lead, who dealt with: equipment; rentals; expenses; travel plans; exhibition centre fees; shipping.  So not a sinecure at all.

     Then Dolores arrived.  

     She immediately imposed ridiculously strict rules on the travel team, seeking to put her brand on the organisation.  Art!

     She refused to allow the TT to have a corporate card and insisted they use gift cards instead.  Which weren't accepted by many vendors.  Finance only approved things at the very last millisecond, which immediately spiked expenses thanks to expedited shipping, costly air fares and same-day rental premiums.  The next TT lead ran up a bill of $40,000 on his own credit card since there was no other way to pay for anything, and of course - obviously! - Dolores tried to prevent him being reimbursed, until Legal got involved.  Senior management, when he appealed to them, were as much use as a ladder of tripe.  Art!

     This was all because Dolores was convinced the TT's were defrauding the company somehow, somewhere, in some way that she couldn't detect.  But she was positive about it!  This is one of the problems with what is known as an 'Ivory Tower Manager', who has all the business qualifications yet 0% real-world experience.  Finance continued to wait until the last microsecond before managing to mess up bookings, hotels and reservations.

     Eventually OP's boss, after a couple of disastrous events, decided to use the Malicious Compliance playbook, and warned everyone to stop volunteering for TT.  

     Ooops.

     Dolores saw to it that the TT was thus composed of inexperienced staff with no sales or IT background and the conventions were utter fiascos.  Art!

     When staff refused to 'volunteer' Dolores sent unpaid college-age interns, who managed to get themselves into even more trouble.  One additional expense was bailing the interns out of jail, as well as massive fines for breaking various laws.  And Finance still brought down heavy financial penalties by waiting until the very last picosecond to book equipment, booths, hotel rooms, etcetera.

     You may be wondering where the CFO, or CIO, or CEO were whilst this was going on.  Nowhere, is the answer.  I did say this was manglement on two levels, didn't I?  Nothing appears to have troubled their tiny minds.

     OP's boss, a canny soul, warned everybody to just be patient, despite things descending into expensive anarchy.  Actually, he was counting on things descending into expensive anarchy, because at financial year's end the numbers came in.

     Travel Team's expenses had increased by 4000%.  A typical event pre-Dolores had cost $3,500; now it cost $145,000*.  TT's annual expenses ballooned from $110,000 per annum to well over $2 million.  Art!

     At this point Dolores went full Kommercial Kompany Karen and cancelled the TT, because thanks to her mis-handling it had been a giant failure.  This was one of the business's prime methods of establishing sales - and she got rid.

    Finally upper management realised there was a problem.  It still took them a year to get rid of Dolores, who jumped before she was pushed - that old saw about 'retiring to spend time with her family', who must have been extremely unhappy with the business for such an infliction.  Presumably she had to retire because having "I cost my employer $1,956,000 dollars because I was a bottomhole" on a resumé does not look good.

     It took two years to undo the damage she had imposed and things for the Travel Team ended up better than before.  But, still!  Art!

Retirement the far better option

A Little Elucidation

Conrad finished off yesteryon's blog with a rather odd-looking ship, without having time to look up what it's provenance was.  Art!

     As you can see, it's the 'Makran 1', an Iranian "Hopper Dredger", which swaps one mystery for another.  What's a Hopper Dregder?  I shall enquire.

     Okay, technically it's a 'Trailing Suction Hopper Dredger'.  It tools along on the surface, hoovering up the seabed with a giant hose, the spoil from which is dumped aboard.  This allows it to keep waterways maintained, and it can tootle off and drop the spoils in the deep ocean.

     So now we all know more than we did five minutes ago.

Make Mine Mysterious!

Yes, Conrad is making "The Daily Beast" work for him.  They have yet more strange and un-identifiable goods on sale, which you can inform me about in the Comments.  Art!

     World's shortest-barrelled ray gun?  Instrument of torture?  Prototype aerosol injection device?  Only you can tell!  Art?

     I can make a stab at this one - it's a testing device to check on the scale model of King Ghidora that Toho Studios use, making sure that the wings flap, the heads shoot fire and the necks writhe convincingly.  Art!

It's so obvious

      - and talking of science fiction -

"City In The Sky"

Ace and Nat are examining the 'Arc-ipelago' of Bernal Spheres in orbit around Earth, via computer display.

There was also a modest EU Bernal Sphere, and one put up by the UN, which Nat shook her head over.

     ‘They had a power-struggle in that one.  A couple of hundred dead before it got resolved.  And they keep losing atmosphere.  A real rush job.’

     Predictably Ace wanted to know what the smaller images were.

     ‘Those are the ASEAN and Argentina-Brazil-Chile ones – still under construction.  I guess they’ll never get completed now.’

     It struck Ace that all the spheres were exactly the same in design, if differing in size.  That couldn’t be a coincidence and she made an assumption that the Doctor would have nodded approvingly at.

     ‘All these space stations look the same, don’t they - do they all come from Arcology One’s design?’

     Nat beamed proudly.

     ‘Yes!  After the Little Crash every government around the world started bleating for our Bernal Sphere design and all the test data, the trial-and-error stuff, what we’d discovered whilst up here – everything.  So we gave it all away, for free.  Now here we all are.’

     She closed that application and stared at the screen.

     ‘There’s no telling what’ll happen to M3, either.’

     There, thought Ace, again, that mention of “M3” as if she ought to know what it was.

     ‘What’s this “M3” you talked about?  You mentioned it to the Doctor before.’

     Ah, that's Ace for you.  An answer begets two more questions**.

A Cautionary Tale

There is a sidebar story on the BBC News website about a family in Australia who suffered three deaths from eating death cap mushrooms.  The whole case is rather murky and unresolved, so I shan't go into the legal background.

     What it does illustrate is how toxic the death cap is, and that people who consume them nowadays are not always on a delayed death sentence.  Art!

     That's Amanita Phalloides right there.  We've covered this in the blog ages ago.  One of the problems is that they apparently taste quite nice when eaten.  However, they are hepatotoxic and once a lethal dose has been ingested, they quietly get to work destroying your liver.  Symptoms don't appear for hours or even days after eating, by which time it's much too late and you're a deader. 

     Or so it used to be.  If the victim can be kept intubated in hospital, and (quite a big 'and') be given a liver transplant, they may survive, which is where one of the family finds himself.

Finally -

Just to inform you that I'm up to page 850 of "Jonathan Strange And Mister Norrell", so within strangling distance of the end.

* That's actually 4100% but let's not quibble.

** Just trying a larger font to see if it's more legible, and it is.

Over The Moon

Yes!  Conrad Likes To Be Ambiguous

Also, he likes to court contumely.  Now, some of you may be thinking to yourselves "Ah!  This is colloquial British for being 'extremely happy', which is a bit peculiar, since Conrad is a miserable old sod at the best of times."

     You are entirely correct.  Conrad is not exactly chirpy at present; you could say he's two doors over and three streets down from chirpy, thanks to getting to page 800 in "Jonathan Strange And Mister Norrell", with another five comic trade paperbacks to get through as well.  Art!

Come on, you can't say you're not intrigued.  I was.

     What might have elevated the slightly-chirpy to almost-enthused is the above, "For All Mankind", which is an alternate history where the Space Race not only continued unabated, it hotted up until it was positively incandescent.  The Sinister Union and South Canada take the Cold War into space - over the Moon.  Things don't play out in this history as they do in our timeline.  Art!

     What you see here is the almost-disastrous landing of Apollo 11; the skid marks are clearly visible and the Lunar Module is visibly and irretrievably tilted from the horizontal.  They had run out of fuel trying to find a landing site free from boulders.

     Is this far-fetched?  Not at all.  In real life the Apollo 11 LM "Eagle" made it onto the lunar regolith on fumes, with 15 seconds of fuel left.  Meanwhile Mike Collins, in the Columbia, the Command/Service Module, was left to traverse the far side of the Moon solo, in what has to be one of the loneliest jobs ever.  Art!

     In FAM he informs the Cape that he's not going to abandon the mission and head for home when it's thought the Eagle had crash-landed.  In real life his job was considerably less stressful, and all he had to do was fly <ahem> over the Moon.  Don't judge me.

     This is all apropos a Tweet I commented on a few days ago, where an old video was posted showing a fracas between an elderly gentleman and a considerably larger, younger man.  People were intrigued, because there was no context given, nor even an explanation.  Let me see if I can dig up a little footage.  Art!

     Let me clarify a little.  The big bloke in dark jacket is one Bart Sibrel.  He got sacked from his television broadcasting job for trespassing on an astronaut's property, which left him with a massive chip on his shoulder and a grudge against all astronauts.  In order to make money, he asserted that the Moon landings were faked, and he'd been chasing, obstructing and harassing the elderly gent, getting in his face and telling him he had to swear on a conveniently-carried Bible that the Moon landings weren't faked.  I know what you're asking - who  is this old guy?

     Only 72-year old Buzz Aldrin.

     Yeah, that Buzz Aldrin.  Second Apollo astronaut to walk on the Moon.  Art!

     Buzz had been lured there under false pretences and tried to walk away when he found out he'd been ambushed.  Sibrel wasn't having any of it.  Buzz, eventually getting fed up and worried about his stepdaughter, gave Sibrel a right hook.  Art!

     Of course we here at BOOJUM! never condone violence, but Damn! that was a punch and a half, from a man half the size and thrice the age of Sibrel.  It really knocked him off his perch.

     Sibrel, who makes loathsome scum look wholesome and comestible, sued in court, which may well be what he intended all along.  Ho ho, the courts immediately threw the case out.  You could say <ahem> that they weren't liberal with Mister Sibrel.

     And all over the Moon.

Asymptotic Progression

Or, "Give Indy 5 A Good Kicking Because Doing So Is Maliciously Entertaining".

Conrad yesteryon described the blog as a 'farrago of foof', and indeed it resembles Indy 5 in this respect, except about 350 million times less expensive.  Let me append a screenshot from Box Office Mojo.  Art!

     As you can see, this film is never going to make even $400 million.  The number of theatres it's being shown in has gone down from 4,600, to 3,865, to 2,885 and now 1,190, so the box office take is going to keep diminishing as the number of screens also diminishes.  Consider that they spent $100 million in promotion and advertising on top of a budget of at least $330 million and it looks as if it's not even going to recoup half the budget.  Contrast this with the Pointy Bird herself claiming that this film was going to be better than the original trilogy all put together, blah blah etcetera.  She seems to have gone quiet the past month.  I wonder why?

     O for the interested: an asymptotic progression is a mathematics term, where a value increases incrementally yet never manages to reach 1.0, which remains infinitely unreachable.  Art!

You want entertainment?  THIS is how you make entertainment!

Conrad Is ANGRY!
I know what you're thinking: water = wet; sky = blue; curmudgeonly old white-haired bloke = angry.  It's just that I've not been expressing my incandescent ire of late, because of long, long posts that take up lots of room.  Don't worry, I'm still horrid to the core.  And yes, this is about Codewords.

JOCOSE: Sounds pretty Biblical, doesn't it?  'Jocose, son of Hermose, son of Lachrymose of the Tribe Of Gum' or somesuch.

     Except no.  It means 'light-hearted, good-humoured or whimsical', (a variant of 'Over the moon'?) and thus the polar opposite of both the blog and myself, so it's not really fair expecting me to get it.  Not only that, it's been obsolete since 1820.  Art!

They use it in these tales.  Which are over a century old.

.MATINS: You may be a little lost here.  Not so Conrad, as he is widely read and has a skip for a memory.  This, lest ye be unaware, is one of the times when clerics worshipped.  According to the Collins Concise: "The first of the seven canonical hours of prayer."  WHAT, ARE WE ALL QUALIFIED THEOLOGICAL ECCLESIASTICALS NOW?  I think it crops up in "Sir Nigel" by Conan Doyle, in association with a monastery.  Art!

In satins at Matins

DILUVIAL:  Say what?  From context Conrad suspects that this is to do with soil mechanics, but that is a guess.  Let us banish all doubt and consult the Collins Concise: "Of or connected with a deluge, especially the great flood described in Genesis".

     Well, that told me.  You might point out that soil mechanics are affected by floods but that is, frankly, reaching.  However, talking of Genesis - Art!

     Ex-lead singer of Genesis.  I bet you're over the Moon at how clever I am.

"City In The Sky!

Ace is being shown how people aboard Arcology One live, with a lifestyle that reflects their proscribed orbital environment.

‘Er – a bit sparse,’ commented the young woman, cautiously, in case the Warden took offence.

     The older woman shrugged. 

     ‘I’m not big on possessions.  And I spend a lot of time in our Common Room.’   She turned on the computer and waved her hand over a pad in front of the device.  The screen came to life and ran an application that showed local space, with nine objects labelled and numbered.  Nat pointed at one labelled “BranMan01”.

     ‘That’s us.  Arcology One.’  She pointed out two more distant spheres, both smaller than Arcology One.  ‘Those are the American ones, California and Washington.  Smaller than us, about nine thousand people in each.  Unlike us they took a whole lot of politicians along, but we still get along for all that.  Regular shuttle exchanges once a quarter.’

     Naturally nosey, Ace pointed to the biggest sphere.

     ‘Who owns that?’

     ‘That’s the Chinese one.  Nobody knows anything about it, or how many people are aboard.  The Americans sent over a robot camera and – well, it got blown up.  No signals in or out.  We don’t even know if their population is still alive.’

     Both digested this information silently.  Nat pointed out the most distant sphere.

     ‘That’s the joint Russian-Japanese-Taiwanese sphere.  Structure built by the Russians, so it’ll withstand an atomic blast, and the interior fitted out by the Japs, so it makes us look stone-age.’

    Apparently there is still a Russia in this future.  Don't you feel a warm glow of satisfaction at that?

Finally -

Because I've been excessively verbose, all I need to finish with is a picture, and I choose this one, which you cannot deny is an odd-looking ship.  Art!

     I have no idea what this thing is or what it does, and since I'm frantically typing during my break, Conrad doesn't have time to pursue this topic.  Perhaps tomorrow.

A Double-Edged Bowl Of Water

Firstly, Of Course - Obviously! - We Need To Find The Original Saying

Which was about double-edged swords.  A hasty trawl around teh Interwebz reveals that double-edged swords used to prevail, as they tended to be better at skewering the opposition.  They might also be two-handed, as well, because of their sheer size, meaning that they couldn't be wielded single-handed.  Art!

     Conrad also supposes that you didn't have to worry about which side was sharp in the heat of battle, merely giving your orcish opponent a bruise and sore neck instead of decapitating them completely.

    The saying means that <insert entity here> may be for good or ill, i.e. it cuts both ways and one has to be very careful not to suffer the negative consequences.

     Here an aside.  The single-edged sword has largely supplanted the double-edged sword, thanks to it's better handling (since they are generally shorter and lighter) and their efficacy in slashing attacks.  Art!

CAUTION!  Less effective as a metaphor

     Obviously - of course! - this has passing little to do with today's title, which in fact derives from subject matter Your Humble Scribe has been pondering for a few days now.  Quite how it came to be present front and centre in my mind is a complete mystery, but thank you Steve.  Art!

     No!  Not the world's biggest pitcher of gin.  Philistine!  This is the Mirror Of Galadriel, she being the co-ruler of Lothlorien in 'Lord Of The Rings' and an elf of might and power.  To scry things far off, she poured water into  the basin and the reflective surface acted as a mirror, allowing a select few to witness distant  scenes.

     Here an aside.  Jonathan Strange and Mister Norrell carry out exactly the same magic in "Jonathan Strange And Mister Norrell", just with silver plates rather than a granite plinth weighing three-quarters of a ton.  A lot handier.

     Now, Conrad can tell what you're thinking.  "Wow, you could look into the girl's ch-" WASH OUT YOUR FILTHY MINDS!  What you should have been thinking is "Wow, a method of spying on Mordor that doesn't rely on having to get close to that unlovely country."  Art!

    

    Hold on there.  It's not that simple.  If we let Ol' Gally pimp her bird-bath:

‘Many things I can command the Mirror to reveal,’ she answered, ‘and to some I can show what they desire to see.  But the Mirror will also show things unbidden, and those are often more profitable than things which we wish to behold.  What you will see, if you leave the Mirror free to work, I cannot tell.  For it shows things that were, and things that are, and things that yet may be.  But which it is that he sees, even the wisest cannot always tell.’

     Conrad is less than impressed.  So, there's no date display to indicate that year you're watching?  It could be a thousand years ago and on this very spot, or today a thousand miles away?  <mutters grimly>.  Well at least it's accurate, isn't it Gally old gel!  A splendidly-detailed - what's that?  O.

‘Remember that the Mirror shows many things, and not all have yet come to pass.  Some never come to be, unless those that behold the visions turn aside from their path to prevent them.  The Mirror is dangerous as a guide of deeds.’

     Isn't this the old clash between free will and determinism?  I wonder what Nietzche would say about the phil

     ANYWAY that kind of defeats the whole purpose of looking into the Mirror.  You've got no idea if what you're seeing is going to happen, or if it already has happened, or whether it won't happen until you try to prevent it. Art!

It put Sam on the horns of a dilemma*

     All in all, a most mercurial mirror, and one that is definitely double-edged.  I wonder - could Ol' Gally command it to see next week's Lottery numbers? 

With That Backdrop Of A Cornfield-

What do you put in a field to keep the birds away from your crops, in order to prevent spoliation and loss?  Art?

ART!  NO!

  Good lord aloft, can you imagine?  No, Art, I was thinking along the lines of Worzel Gummidge, not 30 millimetre armour-piercing explosive cannon shells.  Art!

     That's right, a strawman.

     Which, by wild coincidence, is the kind of argument D J Tango and his lawyers have been using as a defence against his recent indictment.  "They're preventing free speech!" they all blather.  "I have First Amendment rights!"  and "I have nuclear weapons, you know" they prate, in - O sorry, that last one was Bloaty Gas Tout.  One lawyer in particular, surname Louto or similar, went on five separate talk shows at the weekend pushing this line of guff.

     The thing is, Conrad has looked at the indictment.  It states that Benedict Donald is perfectly entitled to claim 'they stole my election win', because that's his right under the First Amendment.

     What he's being charged with are three counts of CONSPIRACY and another of OBSTRUCTION, which have 0% to do with the First Amendment.  Nil.  Nada.  Bupkes.  Sweet Dancing Jesus On A Petrol-Powered Pogo Stick, Conrad is 1) not a lawyer and 2) not a South Canadian and even I worked this out.

     Darth Marmalade on toast?  Sounds tasty.  Art!

"City In The Sky"

Ace, inquisitive as a herd of cats, is getting a tour of Arcology One from the Warden, Nat.

     ‘To find out what’s been happening on Earth.  You have a different perspective from up here.’

     Nat nodded.  Yes, they certainly did.  A permanent awareness of how fragile their arcology really was, let alone how fragile Earth and all upon it really were.

     Ace looked out at the Earth as it swooped across the transparent panels above, feeling a lurch in her stomach – when you saw that big blue planet swirling across the heavens, it brought home to you that the sphere was rotating.

     ‘Can I see the other space stations?’ she asked.  Nat looked unsure.

     ‘Not literally,’ she warned.  ‘Only via remote pickups on the outer hull.  The astronomy section have our only real telescopes and guard them jealously.  Wait – come with me.’

     She led them off at a tangent, over the spongy plastic paths and to a cluster of buildings decorated in green and white swathes of colour, a miniature low-rise township introduced as “Tadcaster”, home to the Wardens.  Then up a narrow flight of stairs to a doorway obscured by a draped sheet of thin textile.  Throwing a switch brought hidden lights to life.

     Ace scanned the small room, which housed basic amenities – a frame bed, shelves, a cupboard, a desk and a computer with screen.  

     ‘My home from home,’ explained Nat.  Ace looked at the coloured disks stacked on the shelves, in substitution for real books.

     Conrad not impressed by disk substitution for books.  This future is lacking.

If I Were To Say "Hank The Tank" -

You would immediately roll your eyes and make snide comments about Conrad and Armoured Fighting Vehicles.  Art!

     Nope.  This is 'Hank'.  Hank is a very naughty black bear who has no fear of humans.  Hank likes breaking into people's homes.  Hank likes gorging on human food.

     Hank has been identified as the culprit in 21 home invasions, as I believe they are called, where she (yes 'she') used her quarter-ton mass to physically break down doors to get at the goodies.

     She is now to be sent to a sanctuary (for which read 'Bear Prison') in Colorado, forbidden to eat Twinkies and Oreos.  Or tourists.

Finally -

Time to put this blog to bed and go make tea.  A pot of loose-leaf Darjeeling and some solid scran, I feel, with perhaps a bag of popcorn to munch whilst cruising Youtube and seeing what clips have been posted of Citizen Trump.

* Go home and save the Gaffer from poverty and homelessness or continue the quest?

The BOPping Blade

No!  This Is Nothing To Do With Wesley Snipes

Nor dancing, either.  Nor yet dancing vampires<winces>, even if I have a dim and distant memory of "Buffy" trying this on, which may be a figment of my imagination.  Or not.  Still, it does allow Conrad to throw in a bit of click-baity photography, if Art can bear to put down his bowl of coal.

     There seems to be talk of a remake, because of course - obviously! - nobody in Hollywood is capable of writing an original script or plotting anything novel or interesting <96 pages of ill-tempered rant excised>.

     No, what I want to refer to in this Intro is, once again, the Deepwater Horizon disaster, and what led to it.  Like other such catastrophes, and 'Piper Alpha' instantly springs to mind, there was no single item of failure that caused the explosion or resultant deaths, rather it was a chain of events, each one leading to the other.  Art!

     That, ladies and germs, is the Blow Out Preventer as utilised by BP for the Deepwater Horizon, and as you can see it is freaking massive.  The intent is to have it sit on the well cap, and go into action should anything go wrong, preventing the uncontrolled release of oil, gas and water into the rising pipe.

     However - a word you were expecting all along - the Commenters on the CSB video I found on Youtube had several very pertinent points to make, since one was involved in the industry and another did safety checks for oil rigs.  Art!

     What you see here are a pair of 'blind shear rams', one highlighted in yellow and the other remaining in grey.  These were the last-resort mechanisms to cut the drill pipe completely, thus preventing any more oil, gas, water, mud and cement heading back up the pipe.  They would be moved forward hydraulically and sever the pipe, the second pair being for a redundant back-up.

     Except not.  According to the Commenter, the second BSR had been converted to a 'test ram' that would measure pipe flow and pressure without needing to shut down drilling.   When it actually came time to close the ram, the drill pipe had buckled due to the extreme difference between internal and external pressure, and the ram didn't cut the pipe properly.  Art!

BOP with puny tugs for scale

     There were other problems caused by cutting corners to save costs; the cement slurry used was cheap and unfit for use at the depths involved - 18,000 feet in the borehole.  Only a third of the number of 'centralisers' were used, which contributed to the pipe buckling.  And no onshore refurbishment was undertaken if things could be bodged together on the rig, because that was cheaper.  Art!

     That there is a centraliser.

     Okay, you may think that this litany of failure is bad, but - it's not over yet.  In the interest of mercifulness I shall leave further details for a future date.

     The challenging world of deep-sea oil-drilling!

From The Profound To Look What I Found

As you should surely remember, Conrad recently got 8 jars of Marmite-flavoured peanut butter for half price.  There's a reason this happens.  Art!

     What tends to happen is that these jars simply sit on the shelves and don't get sold, so the stuff in the warehouse never gets rotated into store.  Instead it sits there in a pack and the oil slowly separates from the peanut pulp, and mixing the two back together is a right pain, I can tell you.  Fortunately this lot aren't too far gone and I'm switching them between being right way up and upside down to mix them up again.

"City In The Sky"

Ace and one of Arcology One's 'Wardens' have taken themselves away from the TARDIS, since it's attracting a crowd.

Ten minutes later they stood on the far side of the sphere, able to see a minute blue dot that attracted other minute black dots the way ripe fruit drew flies.

     ‘Just tell me this.  You don’t wish us harm?’ asked Nat.

     ‘Blimey!  Of course not!’ gasped Ace.  The whole ethos of the Doctor, his travels, and his companions, was to do the right thing.  Even, Do The Right Thing.  ‘There’s this lot of space-refugees in the thirty-first century who were inspired by you people, which is where the Doctor first encountered you before meeting me and me asking him about the Wirrn - ’

     Nat tuned out the supposed explanation as being more bizarre exposition from the newly arrived stranger.  Privately she felt that this pair were genuine.  Nobody could invent a story so silly and expect to be taken seriously!  The question was, were they genuine lunatics or genuine helpers?

     ‘What are you here for?’

     This put Ace on the spot.  She knew that an hideous intercontinental war had broken out below them, where millions died every hour, so how could she explain that she and the Doctor were here to better understand how the holocaust came to be?

   And if she tells the truth, is she going to impact the future?

"The War Illustrated"

As ever, remember that the pictures for this publication that were taken overseas didn't manage to get back to This Sceptred Isle anytime soon, thanks to being either on undeveloped film or as negatives.  They could go by air mail but would still take days to arrive, weeks if they went by sea.  Art!

     This somewhat Heath-Robinson weapon is the 'Projector, Infantry, Anti-Tank', a variety of spigot mortar, when the bomb is placed on a spindle that fits into a hollow axial channel in the bomb itself.  The weapon was fired by compressing the butt against the force of a huge spring, which was released when the trigger was pulled.  It looks like a bit of drainpipe yet it was an effective weapon up to about a hundred yards. Unlike every other anti-tank weapon of the time, it made no flash when fired, nor did the bomb leave a smoke trail, so the opposition had no idea where the fire was coming from.  

     This is one of the defensive marine forts that dotted the Thames estuary, preventing any Axis aircraft from flying up the channel thinking it would be free of anti-aircraft guns.  They were known as 'Maunsell Forts' and a lot are still around, if in somewhat crumbling condition.  These two-column concrete versions are probably slightly safer to walk on than their metallic brethren, who are dangerously unsafe by now.  Art!

Looking a bit sad now

Channelling The Spirit Of Buster Keaton

Buster, genius comic film actor,, writer and director of the Twenties, was nicknamed "The Great Stone Face" - not to be confused with Judge Dredd, who is nicknamed "Old Stonyface" except not actually to his face - because he so very, very rarely smiled in his films.  Art!

Okay, maybe Judge Dredd

     This is Kyrylo Budanov, Chief of the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine.  He is renowned for not cracking a smile, either, and for delivering deadpan messages such as "Russians trying to kill me is like a medal for my work."  He is also extremely sly.  Art!

     He explained why he admitted this.  Because, apparently, he likes to camp out in Putin's head.  Pre-war, the Ruffians suspected someone was leaking information out of the FSB to Ukraine and eventually via the grapevine to Budanov.  They carried out an investigation, imprisoned three people and fired or relocated thirty others, thus causing more damage than the leaker ever did.

     If this chap ever laughs, begin to worry.

Finally -

Only just started on "Judge Dredd: The Darkest Judge" which holds out the promise of zombies.  Takes all sorts.

Tere õhtust

 Which, As Any Fule No, Is Estonian For "Good Evening"

Because here we are again on a Sunday - actually about an hour too early for evening, but I like to get ready in advance - and we have another retrospective to look back on.  Ten years of tenuous trifles.  And nothing says 'retrospective' than Art finding a bit of sleazy click-bait to tempt the tourists in.  Art!

     Well, Art really has outdone himself here, with a gossip mag cover.  Conrad has to confess he has no idea who this 'Kris' is, though I guess she's South Canadian because I think 'Star' is their responsibility.  Nor do I know who 'Bruce' is, except by inference he must he her husband? Notice how the 'Unconscious by 5 pm' is in quotation marks, so they can't be sued for libel, as this phrase will have been used by the Star's "anonymous source who is a close friend", a.k.a. press hacks making it up as they go along.  I can't even see a definite date on this cover.  Plus, they seem to assume you and I will automatically know who they mean when referring to 'Snooki', 'Miranda' and 'Blake'.

     ANYWAY we could be here for hours, so let's crack on with the links.

2022

BOOJUM!: The Sweet, Sweet Taste Of Schadenfreude (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2021

BOOJUM!: Giant Black Polos From Space (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2020

BOOJUM!: Crommy The Pop Star (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2019

BOOJUM!: The Sands Of Valour (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2018

BOOJUM!: That'll Teach Me (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2017

BOOJUM!: Trust Me On This (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

BOOJUM!: The Oolongest Day (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2016

BOOJUM!: Dangerous Vizions (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

BOOJUM!: When Words Flew Like Bullets - (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2015

BOOJUM!: I'm Turning Over A New Leaf (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2014

BOOJUM!: BOOJUM! Announces A Slight Delay ... (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

2013

BOOJUM!: Curiosity Drilled the MaT (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)

"Do You Know Who I Am?" Syndrome

This Is A Regular Question On Quora

"Have You Ever Had Someone Ask 'Do You Know Who I Am'?" and there are several different iterations of why this question gets asked.  Often it is asked by people pulled over by the police who suspect Driving While Intoxicated, the implication being that Self-Important Idiot In Car is SO IMPORTANT that they cannot possibly be detained or prosecuted.  Art!

For example, but un-prosecutable because dead

Or, they are a minor celebrity convinced they are actually a major celebrity.  Or, they are a major celebrity, who is simply being an arrogant bottomhole.  

     Here an aside.  Art!

Yes, he has indeed put foot in mouth

     This is Robin Thicke, whom Conrad wouldn't know if he tripped over him.  He had his fifteen minutes of fame with a song about dirty washing or some such shizzle, which instantly inflated his head and ego to the size of the Hindenburg.  Original Poster on Quora was one of the wait staff at a Hollywood party that RT was present at, and he snapped at them when they came near: "Don't expect an autograph."

     OP proved to be quicker of with that Mr. Thick, because they responded "I'm sorry, sir, I would need to know who you were in the first place to want an autograph."

     ANYWAY, rather than Quora, this Intro comes from Youtube and actually a Comment on a story, which was quite pithy in itself.

     Okay, take the East End of London, if you will.  There are lots of textile factories here, which are incredibly modern on the inside - Art!

     But the area they exist in was designed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, when a wagon and horses was the means of transportation, well before the advent of motor vehicles.  Art!

     Lots of narrow streets, as you can see.  This is relevant as the Commentary Poster's husband drove a 'wagon and drag', which is an articulated lorry towing a trailer of considerable size, usually several tens of tons capacity.  The lorry and trailer were full of bales of fabrics to be delivered to the factories, WHICH HAD TO BE SIGNED FOR.  Capitalized because this plays later.

     Hubbo used to drop the trailer at the entrance to these cramped thoroughfares, then back his wagon down to the factory, park and have the staff come out and unload.  Until -

Self-Important Idiot In Car Strikes!

     An oik in a BMW turns up behind the wagon, ranting and tanting about how he's being blocked in and he's so important and he's the business owner and how dare he block him in because he's so important and did he mention how important he was?  "DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM!?"  SIIIC wasn't willing to wait until the wagon was unloaded, so hubbo gives him the 'Delivery Refused' form to sign, which SIIIC does, apparently not being able to read.  Hubbo drives off, SIIIC can get his shiny BNW on it's way, and hubbo returns to depot after doing the rest of his deliveries.

     When he gets back the boss is 'doing his nut', as we in This Sceptred Isle call a person in a fit of anger.  The business owner had been ringing every 20 minutes shouting about his fabric bales not being delivered, and where the <insert swear here> were they?

     Ooops.

     

     It emerged the next week that the bumbletuck who signed the Delivery Refused form wasn't the owner, he was the owner's son.  Owner had son personally pay for an expedited weekend fabric delivery and they still got an order out late, losing lots of money.  Yes, but son got to race his shiny car, didn't he?  Probably not much of a compensation.

     So, this is one of those questions you need to be very careful about asking, because it can come back like a boomerang and bite your butt.

Citizen Trump, The Gift That Keeps On Giving

Honestly, for the sake of the endless blog content this chap keeps generating, Conrad hopes he stays at liberty as long as possible.  The instructions that he was given at his arraignment last week included the admonitions "Do not commit crimes" and "Do not attempt to influence jurors".  This is rather like telling you or I not to breathe or have our blood stop circulating: impossible.  What did Citizen Trump immediately do?  That's right, post threats on 'Truth Social'.  Art!

     Jack 'Shark' Smith immediately asked for a protective order thanks to this post, at which Darth Marmalade panicked, deleted his Truth and had a bland statement about it substituted.  His name was not to be associated with the climb-down, apparently.  Can't look like a loser, y'know.  Of course - obviously!! - now I cannot find that rebuttal statement.  Why, it's almost as if it had been deleted itself ...

Just A Bite-Size Piece -

If you follow the blog, AND YOU OUGHT TO, then you know the Ruffian currency, the ruble, is in a consistent and sustained decline, and has been since this time last year.  It is now at - Art!

     About the only silver lining here is that the decline has slowed.  Which may not last long.

The Ring

No!  Nothing to do with Ol' Tolky.  No, this refers to the 'Ring Nebula', which is one of the mis-nomered 'Planetary Nebula', from when eighteenth-century astronomers thought that they were a planetary astronomical formation.  Well, they're not.  They are formed by stars undergoing a late-life crisis.  Let us have one of the old standard photographs of this sight.  Art!

     Enter the James Webb Space Telescope.  This brings a level of clarity and detail that renders everything previous dull and akin to that Robin Thicke track - blurred.  Art!

     This phenomena is caused by a star in the last stages of it's life, when it blasts off layers of it's surface, which then move outward as gas, which is consequently impacted by further explosions as well as other stellar formations.

     Yes, it is very pretty.  No, you can't go visit it close up for a selfie; it's 2,600 light years away.  Even at the speed of light it'd take you 5,200 years on a round trip and, knowing Hom. Sap., there wouldn't be a human civilisation left when you returned.

"City In The Sky"

Arc One, baby, Arc One!  Ace is trying to defend the sanctity, if not the integrity of the TARDIS, which need not fear the latter yet needs treating with a bit of the former.

‘Stop attacking it and move away,’ warned the Warden.  ‘All of you.  Move away!’

     Up close, the TARDIS displayed no unusual signs of assault with edged tools.  The big man gestured with a shovel.

     ‘Nat, I tried to knock a piece off for analysis.  You can’t knock anything off!  This thing looks like painted wood but it’s more like – I don’t know - a kind of fantastically hard ceramic.’

     Ace rested on her laurels as the bewildered Warden inspected the timeship at close range.  A good ten minutes of inspection resulted in Nat returning to her with less disbelief apparent.

     ‘Okay, okay, this thing is clearly beyond human technology.  Clearly.  So I believe what you said about you and your boyfriend not being from – from -  what? What?  What is it!’

     Ace doubled over at the crack about her and the Doctor, a long laugh that carried on beyond what she initially felt.  When the laughter stopped and her eyes started working again, she looked up at the annoyed Warden.

     ‘Boyfriend!  Right tent, wrong desert.  Ah.  Okay, okay, you want a sensible answer.  I already gave you one and you thought I was taking the mickey.’

     ‘Let’s move on,’ hissed Nat.  ‘We’re drawing an audience.’

     They were, indeed.  

     The definition of 'hysterical laughter'?

Finally -

I have shed my somewhat grubby jeans and am now wearing my long shorts, so hopefully the weather isn't going to be either too cold or rainy on my constitutional into Lesser Sodom.  Why, there are even some thin streaks of blue sky outside!

     Wish me well*.

*  You don't have to.  But I have a long memory.