Mister Micawber's Monetary Musings

No!  This Will Not Be A Treatise Upon Charles Dickens

Although Conrad can recommend him as an entertaining novelist, whom gives one an insight into the Victorian era and others besides.  I, myself, was hugely surprised when I read and enjoyed "Little Dorrit", which might be a bit of a handful for the novice, as it (and several of his other novels) are two inches thick in the paperback edition.  Art!

Who's that in the background?

Letitia James, keeping a proprietorial eye on things!

     This is not mere window-dressing.  Dickens spent years as a court reporter when a young journalist, which gave him an insight into how the British judiciary operated, and he came across an incredible cross-section of Victorian society.

     ANYWAY Conrad was about to recommend "David Copperfield" for readers curious about Dickens, simply because it is of reasonable length (so is "A Tale Of Two Cities", except it's much, much darker).  This novel - by a wild coincidence, I assure you - features the splendid character Mister Wilkins Micawber, and here I add his most famous quote: "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery."

     I probably need to explain that, up to decimalisation in the Seventies, British money came in pounds, shillings and pence, often abbreviated to LSD - WASH OUT YOUR FILTHY MINDS! - which is what Ol' Wilky refers to here.  Art!

That'll be $41.5 million each, ta!

     Yes, this all comes back to the verdict against Pimpkinhead for $83.3 million, on top of the previous award of $5 million.

     You see, there is a legal wrinkle here Conrad was unaware of.  In New York State, where the trial was held, if a defendant wants to appeal against a civil judgement they have to put up a bond.  So far, so good, as this is common practice in other South Canadian states, too.

     However - O! how I like that word - in NY the bond has to be 120% of the judgement total.  Which would come to $100 million (well, $99.96 million, so I rounded up).  

     Oooops.  Art!

     The bad news doesn't stop there, because I did a little more digging about interest owed on court judgements.  Remember that $5 million total?  Well, with the 120% bond it became $6,000,000.  Interest is charged at 9% annually on these sums, so by the time DJ Tango's appeal on the first case is heard, it will have added $540,000 to the total.

     So, if the second appeal is made, it will wends it's weary way through the South Canadian judicial system, again probably taking a year to resolve, by which time it will hit the $109,000 million mark.  As other, (slightly) smarter people have observed, this is an enormous amount of money that Donald Buck cannot possibly grift out of his MAGA base.  A South Candian attorney on Quora predicted that Grumpy Trumpy will froth and vent on social media, and then have his attorneys reach out to see if EJC is willing to settle for 80 cents on the dollar, in return for not trying to kick the can down the road for a year or two.

     It will be interesting to see what the lady decides!  Art!

No!  Not W C Fields.  Wilkins Micawber.

     The bit where Ol' Micci is relevant here is the looming judgement about Pimpkinhead's NY fraud trial.  You will probably remember that the original disgorgement requested by Letitia James came in at $250 million (which is an eye-popping amount in and of itself), and was amended upwards late last year to $370 million.  So, if Agent Orange does appeal the second EJC case, he's looking at $470 million, when he stated last year - to be taken with a metric ton of sodium chloride - that his organisation had lots of cash on hand, simply oodles of cash, no shortage of cash, all $400 million of it.  I also recall that a commenter, and I can't remember if this was Youtube or Quora, said that the court could award MULTIPLES of the disgorgement total.  $500 million?  $750 million?  

     It will be interesting to see what Judge Engoron decides!  Art?

Ol' Stevie predicts!

Edgar Rice Burroughs Would Approve

You would best know Ol' Eddie as the author of the "Tarzan" novels, and rather less so as the author of a whole clutch of fantasy novels about Mars, which his in-story Martians know as "Barsoom".  His lead character was originally John Carter.  Art!

Entertaining nonsense

     Now, if I were to say "Varsovia!" to you, then you could well be forgiven thinking that this was a city on Barsoom.  I mean, it sounds right, when you consider Barsoomian includes words like "Gathol", "Thuvia" and "Hellum"

     Except not.  Art!

     Yes, the fair city of Warsaw.  Where does "Varsovia" come from?

     Romanian.

     I have used the odd word of Romanian here and there, and find it oddly comprehensible, as it is similar to Italian, although it uses a whole lot of diacritical marks.  So, Varsovia is exotic in it's own right (unless you're a Pole) but not quite as exotic as Barsoom.

     Which, I would like to point out, was created in 1911.  Imaginative chap, Ol' Eddie.

Conrad: He's The Audience You Do NOT Want

Your Humble Scribe has been watching and enjoying the first four episodes in the "Foyle's War" series, which was a very well-produced and nuanced story set from early 1940 onwards, during the Second Unpleasantness.  Since this is a subject I have considerable knowledge of, it's nice to see the script (by Anthony Horowitz) hitting the right notes and getting it right.

     The last - it's not realllly accurate calling them episodes as they're 90 minutes long, which is more like a film - was "Eagle Day" which is rendered "Adlertag" in Teuton, which was the first day of the Luftwaffe's all-out offensive on This Sceptred Isle.  Art!

     Conrad is by no means an aviation expert.  I do know the basics of the Supermarine Spitfire, and the four-bladed propellor was not around at the time of the Battle Of Britain.  Those Big Pokey Things protruding from the wings are 20 mm cannon, which again were not present on Spits during the BOB.  This means we are probably looking at a Mk IX Spit.  Art!

     This is the Mk I version the Brylcreem Boys were flying in mid-1940, being re-armed and re-fuelled.  Art!

     Note absence of Big Pokey Things.  These are 0.303" calibre Browning machine guns, having their ammo belts replaced.

     HOWEVER! it is quite unfair and ridiculous to expect a television program of modest means to find an authentic 60-year old Spitfire still in flying condition.  You go with what you've got.  Besides which, not one person in a thousand would notice or know the difference.

     Still, I wear my Hair-Splitting Pedant medal with pride.

"City In The Sky"

So far, the Toxic Ants have merely bitten the unfortunate alien Mirkan 93 as he endeavours to escape from humans and discovery.  They have driven him far off course, mind.

     Giving up on trying to destroy them and with his pocket battery down to near empty, Mirkan 93 slithered on at a killing pace, all of two miles per hour.  He tried the radio again – still jammed.  And what was that ahead?  A writhing mass of hair – no, a mass of the ants, clustered on top of an object completely obscured by their bodies.  When he closed on it the hidden thing turned out to be a stinking piece of carrion, dragged there by some outback animal.

     Danger!  Free-standing water! chirped his computer, indicating straight ahead.  The ground sloped down beyond that rotting piece of meat, probably into a running collection of water that the indigenes called a “river”.  Mirkan 93 looked around uneasily, feeling that he’d been forced into a bottleneck.  He carefully edged forward, intending to crawl along the ant-free ground beyond that meat -

     The ground gave way beneath him in a cloud of dust and stones, gravity pitching him forward and downward, into a pool of shallow muddy water, cool and gritty underneath the riverbank.  Mirkan 93 screamed in mortal fear, inhaled ounces of water and began to haemorrhage internally whilst blistering and peeling externally.  His death-throes were strangely slow, more a gentle quivering than an expected thrashing, and the last thing he saw was the ambush group of dingoes that had dug away the riverbank underfoot to drop him into water.  One of them retrieved the piece of carrion they had used as bait to attract the toxic ants, once they had damaged their nests and provoked a predictable enraged response.  Slowly chewing, the dingo looked on the dying Not-Good with satisfaction.  A dead Not-Good with no dingo suffering as much as a singed whisker.  The pack exchanged satisfied barks and growls.

     Dingos 1  Aliens 0

Nice doggie!

Finally -

It looks like the constitutional into Lesser Sodom is on for later this afternoon, the rains having stopped.  Printing this may jinx me.  Wish me dry-shod luck!

When Aphorisms LIE!

I Know, I Know

It's not as dramatic as "When Averbs ATTACK!" or "Revenge of the Zeugma from Hades!!" but you work with what you've got.  For your information, an aphorism is defined in my "Collins Concise" as a 'short pithy saying that encapsulates a general truth' and is derived from the Latin <hack spit> 'Aphorismos'.  Art!

     This illustrates exactly what I want to get around to later in the Intro.  You folks who are unfamiliar with TANK probably haven't the foggiest idea what the vehicle above is, and may, thanks to that bunting, think this is one of the latest hot models off the Ruffian production lines at Uralvagonzavod.  NO!  Read that date.  An easy mistake to make; they are actually serving with Paraguay.

     The tank is an M3 Stuart, a light South Canadian tank that was one of their first attempts at creating a tank.  If you want, think of it as one of the Seven Rings, as opposed to The One Ring, which would be a Challenger II in this analogy.

     ANYWAY the aphorism in question is "If it isn't broken, don't fix it".  Art!

     Now, the M3 was a very reliable tank, certainly compared to the British models in service at the time.  You could get it up to 50 m.p.h. if your commander ignored the engine screeching a bit, and it could do stunt turns without throwing the tracks.  However - first use of that word today! - you can see the M1 Abrams to starboard, which plainly outclasses the Stuart by several quantum levels, and which also exemplifies the relentless onward march of technology.

     Okay, having strained this analogy to it's elastic limit, I think it's time to take Edna for a trot, to give me Thinking Time.  Art!

The sleep of reason breeds strange things

     Okay, you may be aware from enough of my Manglement stories that many South Canadian employers think their employees are little more than indentured slaves, and will cut any corner if it saves them a penny.  To them, the aphorism ought to be IF IT AIN'T BROKE DON'T FIX IT except in neon and six feet high.

     Thus it was that Original Poster was working on old, outdated hardware that his managers refused to replace because IF IT AIN'T BROKE DON'T FIX IT  and the software running on it was politely described as 'legacy', which means it ought to have been replaced a decade ago, but once again let's all shout it IF IT AIN'T BROKE DON'T FIX IT. Art!

     Sadly for the business, they had a 'Bus Factor' of 0 when it came to OP, as they had fired him.  In case you were wondering, Bus Factor is how many other workers you possess that can cover a critical task if the normal employee gets hit by a bus.  In a properly run business the Bus Factor would stand at 4 or 5, to cover for leave and training.

      Then the business discovered that nobody else in the company knew how to operate either the hardware or software.

     Oooops.  This is the primary consequence of IF IT AIN'T BROKE DON'T FIX IT.   Yeah, I bet they weren't shouting that from the rooftops any longer.

     So, like any chiselling cheeseparing manglement, they tried to re-employ OP at his old rate.  He countered with an offer to work as a contractor.  Foolishly, and in keeping with their previous stupidity, they refused.  Art!

Office contractors are deadly dull.  Have a Happy Harry HIMAR launch instead.

     They hired in an outside contractor, who refused to work with the obsolete hardware or the obsolete software, rather disproving the IF IT AIN'T BROKE DON'T FIX IT 

assertions.  In fact they gouged the company, only working during business hours, stretching the work out over 10 days and charging $47,000, which works out at nearly $550 per hour.

     The business was, obviously - of course! - frothing with rage and took legal counsel about suing OP.  They were told to shut up and accept that they'd been charged a Bottomhole Tax, as OP had been fired without cause.  He'd also offered to fix the problem over a weekend, working 20 hours at $250 per hour, for a total of $5,000.

     Replacing all the obsolete kit and programs would have cost a fraction of their eventual outlay.  As I said in the title, When Aphorisms LIE!

One-Seventh Scale?

Yes Indeedy Ally Sheedy.  You will, I hope, have been following Conrad's gradual uncovering of SpitBrix's 20 Most Incredible Lego World Records, and we've now reached Number 2.  Art!

     This is a one-seventh scale replica of Air Force One, standing thirty-six feet long.  There's no info on how long they took to build it, but it would have taken weeks, and doubtless on a metal skeleton to sustain the weight, too.  Art!

     I did discover that the build team are Polish, and that they call it 11 metres long, 3 metres high and 10 metres wide, but we'll forgive them because of 303 Squadron.

     If this is Number 2, I wonder what Number 1 is? because I've forgotten after viewing this video only once.

     If you want a better sense of scale, I believe "Action Man" is one-sixth scale, so ponder on that for a minute or two.

Going Rogue

Yes, more about "Rogue Trooper", because there is more to tell.  You will recall that the Genetic Infantry were essentially super-soldiers in comparison to puny normie Hom. Sap. soldiers.  So much time, effort and money had been invested in their creation that an element of redundancy was also included in their design: each of them had a microchip implanted in their brain.  At the moment of death their entire personality and memory would be encoded on the chip.  Art!

     This allowed them to be re-cloned and have the old person re-implanted to be born again.  All GIs had slots for microchips on their rifle, helmet and backpack, and the microchips could activate said kit.  Art!

     Needless to say, Friday's microchipped mates don't get on together, because in conflict there is drama.

"City In The Sky"

The evil snake-like alien Mirkan 93 is finding the outback hard going, thanks to have a metabolism that makes a slug look like a hummingbird.

     This unpleasant diversion forced him away from the direct route to the flying-eye pickup point.  He didn’t dare venture back to the track in case the ants were still following.

     Thirty minutes later he encountered more toxic ants, and yes, they were following the track.  He veered off again, to the west.  This time he kept clear of the ants, but again had to keep far from his most efficient route.

     The radio was no use.  When he tried a squalling storm of static threatened to shatter his eardrums.  Jamming by the Baseship – to what end? he wondered.

     Impossibly, more giant ferocious ants began to appear from his right.  At first they only came in ones and twos, running in circles without any apparent aim.  Within minutes the singles and pairs became tens and dozens.  Now beginning to feel alarmed, Mirkan 93 veered away from them, and discovered more ants not ten metres away to his left.  In a fit of rage he blasted whole square metres of ground into smoldering blackness, dotted with tiny charred spots where the ants died in hundreds.

     And came on in their hundreds. 

     How completely coincidental that the ants have appeared and are driving Mirkan 93 away from the track, hmmmmm?

"Gabba Habba Hey, We Don't Accept You"

With apologies to The Ramones.  It's a lyric from their song "Pinhead".  I refer, lest ye be unaware, of Pimpkinhead's legal counsel Alina Habba.  She is, by the standards of those in the South Canadian legal profession, rather a rubbish lawyer.  She's woefully inexperienced in criminal law, civil law, procedures, legal process and anything else she's come across in the courtroom.  Art!

     Rumpy Trumpy fancies the pants off her, which is why she hasn't been fired, despite being paid $2,000,000 to lose him $83,300,000.  He doesn't trust her, either, as it's just been revealed that he paid $400,000 to private investigators to look into how competent his lawyers were, and if they were doing their job.

     Well, no.  No she wasn't.  Donald Buck has been making noises about hiring another law firm.  "Private Eye"'s legal eagles of Sue, Grabbit and Run might be available.

Finally -

Still watching "Foyle's War" and I've noticed that, because it's so old, there are younger versions of established stars in each story.  So far we've seen James McAvoy, David Tennant and now Danny Dyer.  Who's next?

A Mass Of Candles

NOTE THE DATE!

Your diligent and conscientious - hang on, Diligent And Conscientious Scribe - is actually typing up this Intro on the SECOND OF FEBRUARY, which is important, despite whichever date it actually sees the light of day on.

     Now, let us jump abruptly to "Barry Lyndon", because I say so, and get used to these mental gymnastics, it's good for the mind.  Art!

     The film is set during the Seven Year's War, which was a kind of proto-world war as it spilled onto all corners of the globe, even unto America, as it was then before the tr<several hundred unflattering words redacted by Mister Hand> "French and Indian Wars".  It was adapted from a minor Thackeray novel, and is about as distant in genre from Stanley Kubrick's previous film as it's possible to be*.

     ANYWAY one thing about Ol' Stan, he liked to be authentic.  That scene of redcoats advancing, muskets levelled with fixed bayonets, is pretty accurate.  He also wanted to have interiors lit authentically, which meant - Art!

     Candles.  Candles everywhere.  There must be an audit somewhere about how many thousands of candles they went through, because I'll guarantee they didn't film scenes in a single take.  Art!

     Ol' Stan and his lead cinematographer had to come up with new camera lenses to film at this light level.  Using only a mass of candles.

     Which brings us to the Second of February.  Which, you may not be aware, is also known, according to my Brewer's by the name: CANDLEMAS.

     This also links in to the origins of the month "FEBRUARY", which of course has a Latin origin <boo hiss hack spit>, that being "Februum" which means 'purgation' or getting purified.  Conrad is looking askance at this as he suspects Roman 'purification' involved matters unpleasant that I won't go into.  Art!

     The Anglo-Saxons, quite possibly cocking a linguistic snook at the Romans, called it "Solomonath", or "Mud Month".  This may be due to the ending of winter and the coming of spring, where the ground thaws across This Sceptred Isle and stops being iron-hard, metamorphosing into brown porridge six inches deep.

     Why is it "Candlemas"?  O I thought you'd never ask!  It is a bit Religious, so you may want to skip this bit THOUGH I WILL SURELY KNOW.  In Roman Catholic churches, you see, they bring together all the candles that will be used across the year on this day and bless them, so that there will always be a candle burning, keeping night and evil at bay.  This is probably the inspiration for that Smith's song.  Art!

     You'd better hope they're referring to candles, otherwise your electricity bill is going to be substantially higher than it ought to be.

     To bring things full circle, the Romans used to light candles in order to banish evil spirits.  Ol' Stan and his crew must have been blessed beyond belief, in that case.  Pip pip!

 

"The War Illustrated"

Conrad is unsure if there are any current photographs on file from the most recent edition.  Let us prod Art with this handy glass skewer and see.

     We had an Intro featuring the Matilda Scorpion, the grandfather of the mine-sweeping flail you see here.  The principle is that the rotating flails will set off any mines they encounter, although after about five mines have been set off in this way more flails need to be attached to make up for the ones blown to bits in sacrificial manner.  You can see from the photo to port that these flails clear soil to a considerable depth, and that the tank's hull is now covered in flailed soil.  This is why the gun is traversed to the rear, lest it become fouled.

     The infantry in the top picture are waiting for the Sherman Crab to do it's job, and at bottom you see the successful end result; a cleared path wide enough for vehicles and men to cross unscathed.

"City In The Sky"

Australian wildlife versus alien invader, or ants against lasers.  Who's going to run out of bodies or battery first?

Out of nowhere, a strange itching sensation ran across his nethers.  He rolled to one side to remove the irritating feeling – and hissed in pain when a searing dart pricked his soft skin.  Tensing like a cable, Mirkan 93 slowly turned his head, suffering more invisible arrows of pain.

     To The Above!  he hissed into the air.  Six-legged insects swarmed across the track and several had crawled onto him, where they began to bite with a blind ferocity.  His computer-controlled lasers didn’t fire thanks to the safety cut-out or he’d have fried himself.  He rolled over as speedily as a Lithoi could, crushing the insects, only for more to come racing across the track towards him.  He clumsily began to crawl away at an angle, seeking to put distance between him and the – toxic ants.  That’s what they were; dangerous in numbers if they managed to swamp a victim.

     Driven by panic, he barely managed to outpace the eyeless questing insects and desperately resorted to flaying them with laser bolts.  This ran down his pocket battery.  One insolent insect managed to reach his belly and gave him the most painful bite of all.  That one he despatched with his own fangs – regretting the act instantly since toxic ants tasted vile.

     I'll take that on trust.

"Litigation Finance Firm"

Conrad came across this term in a recent browse on Youtube, and was so intrigued I noted it down.

     Serendipity, because here comes Pimpkinhead and the $83.3 million liability against him.  I don't think it can be called a 'fine' as it's the E. Jean Carroll trial was a civil one, not a criminal trial.  Art!

Compare hands to face

     You may remember him getting a liability of $5 million last year in the first EJC case.  Of course he appealed - but in New York that doesn't mean you get off scot-free by kicking the can a mile down the road.  If you appeal you have to put up a bond for the WHOLE AMOUNT in question, and if you win you get it back.

     If you lose it's gone, baby, gone.

     Thing is, if it were you or I in such a circumstance, we'd approach a litigation finance firm, who would put up the bond and take a hefty slice of it in commission whether you win or lose.

     None of these firms would entertain DJ Tango.  He had to raise the money himself.  Art!

EJC in her younger days

     Now, Donald Buck is facing the prospect of having to raise $83.3 million to back an appeal.  His problem is - get Conrad the finance expert - his money is tied up in assets such as property, which are not liquid, meaning it's not easy to raise money on them.  Besides which, Agent Orange has already raised loans on everything it was possible to raise loans on, meaning he might have to sell real estate to acquire funds.  And - it really keeps on getting worse for him, tee hee!- in New York his finances are being overseen, monitored and audited by a court-appointed supervisor, making it extra-specially difficult for him to manage any shady dealings.  They appear to have already uncovered evidence of tax fraud.  Art!

     This humourless hatchet-hacker Harry is in fact Judge Kaplan, the chap who gave Trump 0% shrift in court.  Why is he relevant here?  Well, apart from Conrad wanting to shake his hand, give him a slap on the back, a high five and a round of drinks, Ol' Kappy started the clock on Trump's liability.

     The Tiny-Handed Tinpot had 30 days to appeal or pay up from the sentence being imposed.  If he does not, then the courts will forcibly sell off his property to raise the $83.3 million, going for fire-sale prices to get the money as quickly as possible.

     Even if he does accumulate enough moolah to make the appeal, there's a sting in the tale, since interest is due on the liability to the tune of about $500,000 per month.  If he strings the case out for a couple of years, as he tends to do, he's going to end up paying at least $12 million extra.

     Bring on the wheelie-bin of popcorn and a one-pound bag of sugar!

When South Canadians Get Going -

We frequently mock the South Canadians, in a mild enough way that they don't abandon BOOJUM! for things like their ignorance of Marmite, over-emphasis on coffee and putting corn syrup in everything.  However - I don't think we've used that word today - when they roll up their shirt sleeves and get stuck in, the R git done.  Art!

Oroville dam spillway, with puny humans upper port for scale

See?

     That was 2021.  Let us see what it looks like as of right now.  Art!

     Dam Yankees.

Finally -

Nearly five o'clock and not dark yet.  Time for tea!

Laterz, ya filthy animals.

*  Previous film - Art!

Conrad Is Angry

Yes, Again!

You may have missed my splenetic invective about Codeword compilers of late, because I've been working through a book of them, rather than the rancour-inducing ones in the "Manchester Evening News", which has been good for my blood pressure if not for blog content.

ANYWAY I have been saving a picture until I could to justice to it, and as a preface I want to include another picture, tangentially related.  Art!

     Operation Sealion or "Unternehmen Seelowe" in Teuton, was a 'planned' Teuton invasion of This Sceptred Isle in the Second Unpleasantness.  I use quotation marks because it was barely planned in any meaningful way, with the Kriegsmarine and Wehrmacht completely at odds about it, neither of whom wanted anything to do with the Luftwaffe.  The Wehrmacht thought an amphibious invasion against a defended shore would be just like a river crossing, just a bit wider.  The Kriegsmarine considered it to be a suicide mission for them, as they were heavily outnumbered by just the light Royal Navy forces along the south coast.  The Luftwaffe went into action with all the confidence of a drunk.

     It did not end well.  You may have guessed this as Conrad is not typing in German.  So, what am I angry about today?  O I thought you'd never ask!  Art?

This is where cunning old Philip K. Dick avoided getting bogged down, as he just drops the reader squarely into the end result in "The Man In The High Castle".

     Conrad's response to the question above?  Uncontrollable laughter.  The Germans couldn't get across the English Channel, which is only 26 miles wide.  And some bumbletuck thinks they could have crossed the Atlantic and invaded South Canada?  In the words of the inimitable Marcus Aurelius, dream on, sunshine.  Art!

Plankton.  Not to be mistaken for another diminutive dictator.

     I bet that episode of "Spongebob Squarepants" won't get aired whilst a certain Special Idiotic Operation is ongoing.

     ANYWAY the Teutons did have a 'Plan Z' as of 1939, which was to create an enormous navy that would be able to take on the Royal Navy.  which was the biggest navy in the world.  The plan would have taken until 1948 to achieve, which timeline has flaws you may already detect.  The whole plan was scuppered in 1939, when Herr Schickelgruber declared war on everyone, instead of waiting, as he'd swore he would do to the Kriegsmarine.

     Imagine that, a totalitarian dictator lying to his minions - who would believe it!

This would earn me five years in the Gulag in Ruffia

     ANYWAY that question, "What If Germany Crossed The Atlantic" presupposes so many criteria that it would be science fiction.  Art!

     These things are aircraft carriers.  They take years to construct and the Teutons had one still under construction in 1945 when the Second Unpleasantness ended.  How would they and a fleet of surface ships manage to escape the beady eye of the RN?  Don't forget, barring the singular and exceptional case of the 'Hood', whenever the Kriegsmarine came up against Perfidious Albion's capital ships, they lost and lost badly.

     NO!  The Teutons couldn't have 'just captured' the French fleet and used that.  When they tried this in mid-1943, the French fleet did an outstanding job of scuttling it's ships by explosive demolition.  NO! they can't just send the Italian Regia Nautica out into the Atlantic, because it was entirely bottled-up in the Med by the RN and geography.

     THERE IS NO WAY THIS WORKS, unless you bring in Gandalf and Harry Potter.

     Which is why I'm venting my Frothing Nitric Ire, as it needs an outing every so often.  Art!

Extra-specially cross

The Bricks, They Do Tricks

Or at least they do if present in sufficient numbers and with an ingenious designer behind them.  Art!

     This is the Lego House that James May and over 1,000 volunteers constructed out of 3,300,000 bricks.  Scaffolding.  This is serious.  Nor was it merely a hollow shell, it had a complete interior.  Art!

Looks a bit Bauhaus

Unfortunately they couldn't afford to have it transported to a permanent location and so it was dismantled <sad face> Art!

     Conrad wonders how they could have moved it from A to B, because I strongly suspect it would have come apart at the seams if lifted to mount on a low-loader; that or they'd have to take it apart brick by brick and transport all three million bricks and re-assemble it.  Which would be a bit of a pain.

Great Balls Of Lego

Whilst on the subject of the sharp-edged objects that hurt if you step on them, allow me to add a bit of background to that Giant Ball Of Lego that Mythbusters created.

     They constructed their beast in response to a viral video that claimed to have used 5 million bricks to make their Great Ball Of Lego.  Art!

     The MB team busted this one immediately, because they only needed 1 million bricks.  Which is a sentence I didn't think I'd ever be typing.  When they set their ball a-rolling, it left a trail of loose pieces behind immediately.  Art!

     Curiously absent from the Great Ball Of Lego video.  Conrad suspects that, at the heart of the viral vid, there's a very large inflatable ball, to which the Lego has been superglued - if it's even Lego and not just big blocks of coloured plastic.  Yeah, yeah, call me cynical.

"City In The Sky"

Hunting Spiders, meet the hypo-metabolic alien Lithoi.

     - and he slowly raised his torso upwards to look directly overhead and check for rainclouds.  This surprised the five hunting spiders; they hadn’t detected the smell of anything recognisably edible on the wind.  Still, their rudimentary eyes told them that the thing in the ditch was moving, that it emitted heat and four of them gamely squared up to the long, leathery creature.

     Three of them abruptly exploded into gouts of hair, chitin and sloppy innards, burst by the lasers that Mirkan’s computer directed at them before his sluggish mind managed to grasp that they were a threat.  The two remaining spiders danced away into dry weeds alongside the road to be seen no more.  Mirkan 93’s computer tracked them as they went, then determined that they were no longer a threat, directing the sensor net forward again, all in the time it took the Lithoi to swivel his head to follow the spiders retreat.

     Slowly, achingly so by the standards of terrestrial life, the alien creature lowered itself down into the ditch again, and began to crawl intently forward.  It’s average speed was less than a mile per hour.  Mirkan 93calculated he would take five hours to reach the flying eye rendezvous, a time that gradually wound down to four hours.  By then the ditch and road were no more than a beaten path barely discernible from the rolling countryside and he could move a little faster at the cost of being more visible.

     Australian wildlife has not finished with him yet.  O noes.

"Shall We Beat Him Orban Him?"

Ha!  Sometimes I amuse even myself.  As for those wondering about BOOJUM!s flirtation with Politics, this is less about politics than tit-for-tat, and carrying a bigger stick than your opponent.  Art!

     You see, Viktor Orban, elected Dictator Of Hungary And Peter The Average's Best Mate, had been blocking this aid package, because Charlie Chipmunk Cheeks told him to.

     The other EU powers, getting mightily fed up with him, then blocked €20 billion of funds for Hungary, at which the were-toad realised he was going to get really stiffed and his Best Mate couldn't afford to bank roll him enough money to purchase a roll of toilet paper.  Suddenly the stonewalling stopped. Art!

     He wasn't the victor in this one, and he may be recalculating his position vis-a-vis Harry Hamster Head, who can only offer personal bribes and not funding for the whole country.  Tee hee!

Finally -

I am only recently back from walking Edna, thus earning 500 Brownie Points, and noticed that here we were at 16:30 and it was still quite light.  Nastily cold, mind, with a damp edge to the windchill.

  C Ya Fokes!