When Florida Was Horrider

We Are Getting Into Part Two Of FAFO's Revenge

Let me recap that our narrator, Florida Antagonist Feeling Offensive, hereafter FAFO, has fallen foul of his new-build estate's Home Owner Association, who have hit him with over $4,000 in fines for alleged violations, fees and legal expenses.

     FAFO was not one to take such capricious behaviour lightly.  In fact, they were provoked to gird their loins for battle, review all the HOA bylaws, book two days leave and begin plotting their vengeance.  Art!

Note allies in background

     They probably used electric lighting rather than candles, just to be clear.

     One of the salient features of FAFO's revenge was that all communication to and from the HOA had to be via certified mail, which cost circa $7 per missive.  Keep this sum in mind.

    Step Two was drafting a single-page memo that explained how a member of the HOA could request a copy of the bylaws, which the HOA had never issued in the past, because knowledge is power and they wanted all of it.  Art!

 

HOA hogging the bylaws.  A bit literal, this AI Art Generator.

     Not wanting to hog the spotlight, FAFO made sure these sheets were anonymous, because litigation.  This is South Canada we're talking about, after all.  He printed off 150 copies and with the help of a few neighbours who were privy to The Admin Avenger's secret identity, posted them to all homeowners on the estate.

     If that was Step Three, then Step Four was challenging the HOA to provide receipts for all the Certified Mail they had sent out, and he then sends 23 CM of his own challenging every single violation he'd been accused of.

       

     You see, under Florida law, any agency such as an HOA has to reply under the principle of 'Rebuttable Presumption' within 10 working days.  Via CM.

     A couple of days later the HOA sent an e-mail full of pus and vinegar in reply, hotly asserting that all the violations were valid and that FAFO has 25 days left to pay up.

     FAFO, acting as pettily as they can, yet also completely correctly, informs the HOA any communications need to be sent by CM.

     Silence on the HOA front.  By now they must be bitterly regretting ever having tangled with FAFO, having anticipated a nice easy windfall of $4,000 when they left that docket of violations taped to his front door.  Sadly not.  Art!

A Florida home perhaps not entirely unlike FAFO's

     Neglecting to reply gives FAFO grounds to threaten legal action against the HOA, as their lack of response under Rebuttable Presumption means they have breached the terms of the Florida HOA Act.  Ooo-errr, Matron!  In layman's terms, the HOA Board would become personally liable for any abuse of fiduciary duty, face civil penalties and possible criminal prosecution.

     The residents were later informed by way of the husband of a Board member about what happened after FAFO's little 150-page spree.  Over 100 members requested copies of the bylaws; 25 members with either an Intent To Lien or an actual Lien against their property also wanted receipts from the CMs that the HOA should have sent out.  Any member who had been charged with a violation also wanted to see the CM receipts that should have been sent out.  Art!

     The HOA rapidly ran out of money thanks to all the CMs they had to reply to, not to mention their legal fees, and resigned en masse rather than risk being sued into oblivion.  The incoming Board found that their predecessors had sent out exactly 0 CMs, hoping that the threat of an Intent To Lien would frighten people into just paying up. the junction  This is all kinds of illegal.

     Why risk prosecution or even prison carrying out such blatant dishonesty?

     Ah, thereby hangs a tale.  The Board members were trying to extort money in order to buy a vacant lot that sat in front of their homes, to prevent it from being sold and developed as a petrol station or mini-market or bar.

     A happy ending for FAFO, who had spent what they felt was an incredibly satisfying $350 on Certified Mail.  Not only that.  Art!

     D R Horton, the developer he'd been having a long dispute with about standing water on his property, discovered who had sunk the HOA Board so devastatingly, and abruptly stopped quibbling and delaying, catching a sudden dose of 'hurry-up'.  the junction  The grounds were re-graded, the sides of the property were re-sodded and French drains put in to cope with the standing water.  An excellent return on only $350!

More Financial Failures For The Flabby Fraudster

You'd need a good memory to remember this one, which Conrad barely does, as it goes back three years.  Art!

     Dozy Donold and his attorney at the time, Alina Habba, brought a lawsuit against Clinton and others, which was subsequently thrown out of court and a fine of $937,000 rendered about the pair.  The suit was seen as frivolous, which in legal terms means stupid, inconsequential and an utter waste of the court's time, hence the big fine.  Art!

Alina 'Hubba-Hubba' Habba

     There are two reasons she was Trump's attorney WASH OUT YOUR FILTHY MINDS! in that she was cheap, not being a very experienced or qualified attorney, and she kept bumping into him at his golf club.  The appeal judge's observation about her is pretty cutting -

"No reasonable lawyer would have filed it"

     Since BOOH hates losing, he will now push for the Supreme Court to review the case and if they either refuse or go along with the lower court's ruling, he will try to stall payment for as long as possible, most likely by dropping down dead.

A Load Of Bull

Dozer, that is.  You may never have paused to consider what engineering troops need to be able to carry out their construction, repair or demolition duties whilst under fire, which is a wickedly ignorant way to cruise through life.  Art!

Bulldozer at Bovvie

     Give a street greet to the Centaur armoured bulldozer.  The 'Centaur' was another cruiser tank, given away by the name beginning with 'C'.  Externally it was identical to the Cromwell, but had been made-do with the inferior Liberty engine instead of a Meteor.  What's missing with this vehicle are the cables that ought to extend from that jib to the dozer blade.  These cables kept the blade off the ground until it was needed.  Let me see if I can dig up an illo.  Art!

    There you go!

Another Unsatisfying Anti-Apocalypse

Dog Buns!  Have these bafunes never heard of 'Exit Mundi'?  It was an excellent Dutch website listing all the many dozens and dozens of ways that the world might end.  Sadly no longer with us, they went defunct, ironically enough, over a decade ago.  Art!

     You can make out the titles if you get up close enough.

     ANYWAY the somewhat lacklustre 'Espresso' webpage we've been looking at is now onto Apocalypse Four: Extreme Global Warming.  Art!

     They manage to undersell it hugely, don't they?  Nor do they mention wildfires, which have been plaguing South Canada, Ockerland and the hinterlands of Mordorvia this year.  The Allotment Of Eden could do with a few more heatwaves and droughts, thank you very much.  And, no, I'm not going to explain which countries those are, you ought to know by now.

Let Me Play You A Video Nasty

You'll see what I mean when I publish a few still from the vlog about SHREDDERS! Art?

A big blue bin bulging with books

     Judging by the fact that they are now lurking in a bin, Conrad is guessing that these tomes no longer have homes.  Poor benighted things.  Art!

The horror!  The horror!

     I would guess that big fat paperback books are quite difficult to recycle in anything less than one of these Teeth Of Terror shredding machines.  Art!

     Congratulations, you now have ten cubic metres of confetti. This lot will probably end up as a roll of 20-ply hanging on a bathroom wall.  How have the mighty fallen.

And with that we are finished for Friday!

Up The Junction With 'Rebuttable Presumption"

We'll Get There In Due Time

First, we need to explicate what 'Up the junction' means, as those benighted heathens who are not native to the Allotment Of Eden may not understand quite what I mean.  The phrase means 'To be in a problematic or troubled situation' and is alleged to refer to Clapham Junction, one of This Sceptred Isle's busiest railway intersections.  Art!

     'Twas also a film, which is a lot more photogenic to open with than a nest of metal spaghetti.  Which I will put up as an illo if you insist?  O very well.  Art!

Hot rails to -
Chadwell

     There was also a song by Squeeze, which I'm not going to elucidate at there's quite enough to get through in this Intro.

     Okay, first cast your optics o'er The Pond, as this traumatic - nearly typed 'tramatic' which would have been an hilarious typo given all those rails! - tale of treachery, Florida and the South Canadian Postal Service.  The narrator of this Youtube Reddit re-telling explains that Certified Mail has to be used by Home Owner Associations <spit hack> in Florida to notify members of anything ongoing.  For Your Information, a CM provides proof of posting, allows tracking en route and gives the recipient a receipt.  One has to pay for the privilege, at least $5.30 for the basic version with additional charges for extra bells and whistles.  Art!

I lied.  Sue me.

     Our narrator, Florida Antagonist Feeling Offensive, hereafter FAFO NO SNIGGERING AT THE BACK! said that his HOA required members to communicate with them via CM only.

     When he purchased his house, he had been sent the 'CC& R' without stating whatever these were.  Leave it to Conrad; it means 'Covenants, Conditions and Restrictions', meaning a listing of what you can or cannot do under the aegis of the HOA.  Critically, this docket did not include the bylaws, which would list violations and complaints procedures.  Ooops.  Nor was this an accident, as we shall see.  Art!

A house in Florida

     Three months into his tenure in this new estate, FAFO came home to find an envelope taped to his door, left there by the HOA, who lacked the spine to present it in person.  Because it contained a list of alleged violations and an 'Intent To Lien' notification.  Listed were:

• Rubbish bins not concealed from public view
• Standing water on property - a bodge by the developer FAFO was fighting
• Bushes not trimmed properly
• Ring doorbell installed

     Several of these violations had occurred multiple times, presumably because the HOA had taken 3 months to get round to notifying him.

     Total fines, fees and legal costs = $4,032.12.  The 'Intent To Lien' is warning that a lien is going to be placed on the house, making it legally impossible to sell until all monies owed are paid.  Art!

     FAFO saw red (see above). He sent a series of e-mails that were ignored until finally told to comply with the method of communicating as per bylaws.

     Which he didn't have.

     Which they wouldn't provide a copy of.

     Other people might have been disheartened.  Not FAFO! He badgered the developers (D R Horton) who instantly caved and sent him a copy of said mysterious and exotic bylaws, because they were already fed up with his battle about the standing water, which had been going on for three months with no let up. the junction

     Surprise!  The bylaws explicitly state that the HOA should have notified him by separate CM for every violation, numbering 22 at $7 each, meaning the HOA had ducked out of paying $154.  They were going to rue the day they ever cut corners with this HOA member, believe me.

     Here is where FAFO began to plot their Malicious Compliance, because they defined their personality as one where they are willing to go to ridiculous lengths to be as incredibly petty as imaginable.  Art!

     Yes, an aside.  FAFO's character reminds me of a lead protagonist in the novel above: Mark Hazleton, City Manager of the Okie city New York, a job which requires tact, diplomacy, animal cunning and being able to think thirty moves ahead in games of chess.  Hazleton is described as taking 'Lazy folk's pains' when he commits himself to a path of action, even if it begins inconsequentially and then escalates, he remains committed. So too our foe of the HOA.

     ANYWAY I'm only about half-way through this toxic thaumaturgy, and were I to continue then we'd be at Count with no other content.  So I am going to stop here, as FAFO takes 2 days leave in order to plot and plan pulchritudinously.  This chap is going to hatch a basilisk.  Art!

Basil.  Close enough.

Another Unsatisfying Apocalypse
Perhaps 'Apocalypse Prediction' is closer to the truth, as yes, we are now on Number Three of those assorted '6 Catastrophes That Could End Our World'.  Conrad has already poo-poohed the first two and before you complain, do you want me to be WRONG?  Art!

     Talk about underselling.  If the Yellowstone super-volcano blows, it will devastate the entire Northern Hemisphere, shrouding it with ash for years and destroying agriculture, causing global famine.  However - first use today! - that 'IF' here is written in letters ten feet tall as the probability is about one in three-quarters of a million.  Being cautious, you might want to order a stock of tinned goods and bottled water just in case it blows up. the junction

Talking Of An Appetite For Destruction

More of the SHREDDERS!  This one is a bit of a mystery, as the 'Discovery Tech' narrator doesn't mention either the maker or the model of these champing mechanical jaws.  Art!

     The only ID is a suffix for an e-mail, which leads exactly nowhere on teh Interwebz.  You can't see any marque or logo on the crusher.  You do get to see it destroying an inert gas cylinder, mind.  Art!

     The extremely sober voice-over warns us that gas cylinders have to be specially de-pressurised before being crushed, or there might be a catastrophic explosion as they get punctured by the crushing teeth.  The shredded end product is, we are told, high-quality steel that can now be used for secondary metal processing.  Art!

     Matey here is gambling that all these cylinders have been rendered completely safe, which they have been so far as he still has both hands.  All it takes, mind you, is a single slip-up. the junction

They Finally Got It Right!

Conrad is happy to see that 'Tank Encyclopaedia' have finally listened to the criticisms of BOOJUM! and gone ahead with a properly sourced photograph for an item we've lambasted them for in the past.  Art!

     These are, indeed, tanks of the Sinister Union that were designed to be amphibious from the get-go, not merely by virtue of a quick field-conversion to ford a river.  Art!

'Light' at 14 tons

     They were intended to be used for reconnaissance, being very lightly armoured to keep their weight down, which meant they couldn't indulge in stand-up the junction fights with heavier metal.  Their main gun, a 76 mm weapon, was also on the feeble side for Cold War combat.  On the other hand, they were robust, reliable and able to swim, an innate ability of considerable use in the European theatre, where rivers crossed the continent north to south, meaning the Sinisters would have to bridge or ford them to advance.

Brief Mischief

Time for a bit of gloating about how Dozy Don The Nappy Chappy* and his media empire are getting on in terms of stock market performance.  Art!

     That downward slope with a slight recovery is how DJT's share price has been faring over the past month.  Not very well, is pretty obvious.  As mentioned in the title, this is a very small snapshot of a much larger phenomenon where the Orange Land Whale's investments have lost a lot of value of late.  Don't weep for him, he still has about $6.7 billion left.

     So far.
     We shall indubitably come back to this topic.  I bet you can hardly wait.

Finally -

Going out with another Biercism.  Honestly, consider how much better South Canada would be now if he'd gone into politics and become Prez Bierce.

     Hmmmm.  That's a potential Intro for another day.  ANYWAY -

'Apologise, v.  To lay the foundation for a future offence'

*  Deliberately ambiguous

If I Were To Say 'The Enforcer'

You Might Well Believe I Was Talking Of The Clint Eastwood Film

Which I have seen, many many years ago, and a right rollicking riot it is too, not stinting on the action, with Clint reprising his role as 'Dirty' Harry Callahan, a detective who shoots first, shoots second and pretty much just shoots.  His method of negotiating a hostage release is a little - shall we say, unconventional.  Art!

     Here the liquor-store robbers with four hostages demand a car from our man Harry, making him dirty his best sports jacket.  Well, they demanded a car - Art!

Car, as requested

    No prizes for guessing where Harry shot him.  Remember what I said about stair stunts earlier this week?  Art!

     There the stuntman is, protecting his head and balling-up to better roll not fall, which is p

     ANYWAY of course - obviously! - none of that has anything to do with what the rest of the Intro is about, although note that Harry caused over $14,000 worth of damage with his car and shooting.

     No, you see what I want to put to you today is an annotation I made of 'Jason Jay Smart' and his vlog of two weeks ago, some of which is now looking rather dated as events in Mordorvia are spiralling ever-faster.  JJS's title was 'Ruffia's $350 Billion Defence Catastrophe' which is a misnomer, yet which gives you an idea of the gigantic sums of money involved in Mordorvia's military-industrial complex.  Art!

     Imagine this metaphorical pie as one a mile deep and three hundred miles across, made up of dollars, which the FSB, the military, Rosgvardia and the oligarchs are all trying to acquire.  Pre-war, there was enough to go around; three years and nine months into the Special Idiotic Operation, there isn't enough and thus there is competition and what JJS called 'clans' are now robbing each other, instead of staying in their lane.  Art!

    Jason made the point that only oligarchs were competing with each other for a share of the shadow fleet profits to begin with.  Then, as extortion and shakedown yielded less money, the FSB stuck it's long, inquisitive nose into tanker operations, fighting for control of ports and customs.  This was before the cataclysmic South Canadian oil sanctions, which have immobilised the shadow fleet on the high seas.  Nobody can reap profits from oil sitting in ships not being offloaded.  Art!

     Currently the oligarchs are split into two mutually-opposing factions: 'The Bankers' and 'The Hammers'.  Art!

    This is Igor Sechin, head of Rosneft, before his business was sanctioned up the wazoo. His clan are The Hammers, so-called because they have a reputation for violence and will happily defenestrate anyone whose business they want to steal.  Very direct and Ruffian.  Art!

     Meet Yuri Kovalchuk (Ukrainian surname!) who heads 'The Bankers', the faction that uses 'soft' methods of acquiring businesses, by using the judicial system against them.  

     There is not enough pie for both these factions, which is why they keep falling out of windows or hanging themselves with their hands tied behind their back.  Art!

     Just to complicate matters, enter the FSB, who seem to dedicate quite as much of their time to fraud, theft, embezzlement, extortion, blackmail, passing the port to the right hand side and other hideous crimes, as they do to carrying out intelligence work.  Their 'Department M' places their agents inside other government agencies in order to find out how much money they make, so they can steal it.  Art!

Ivan Tkachev - a.k.a. -

     THE ENFORCER!  Tkachev is head of Military Counter-Intelligence (FSB Department K) and is powerful enough, with sufficient clout to arrest generals and get away with it.  All Ruffian generals are utterly corrupt as you only get to that rank by being so crooked as to make a pretzel look all ninety-degree angles.  Th standard practice is to arrest all their minions first, before moving in on the general themself, which happened to Shoigu and which is happening to Gerasimov.  Thus far, 17 generals have been arrested, and By Wild Coincidence, all their positions have now been assumed by Tkachev's clan members.  Art!

     Just to complicate things, here's Rosgvardia, the 'National Guard' of Ruffia, whose skillset is primarily arresting, beating and torturing unarmed civilian protestors.  They acquired a whole lot of heavy weapons when Wagner were wound up, including tank companies, which are not, as you may expect, to prevent demonstrations or protests.  No, they are there to provide a 'third force' to challenge either the military or the FSB if there is another coup attempt in Barad-Dur.  Art!

'Herr Schickelgruber could never quite master karate'

     This chaotic in-fighting, corruption, back-stabbing and competition reminds me of nothing so much as the Third Reich, where Herr Schickelgruber encouraged such practices, as it meant his minions were too busy fighting each other to bother trying to oust him.

Get Along Little DOGEs

With apologies to the South Canadian cowboy song.  Of late Conrad has been wondering what happened to the Elong Tusk-inspired 'Department Of Government Efficiency' a.k.a. DOGE, which has been notable by it's absence from the headlines.  Art!

'Elong's right arm suffered from a bout of "Doctor Strangeloveitis"

     Art!

     No drums, no trumpets.  The downfall of DOGE may lie in the bitter falling-out between Tusk and the Orange Land Whale; possibly not as Donold would probably go boasting on Truth Social 16 times in the space of an hour about how he 'totally fired Tusk' and other rants.

     Another reason is as follows:

DOGE did not provide any details of what they had cut, when they had cut it, or how much they had effectively saved

     In fact administration officials had to be re-hired because of the utter chaos their sacking had caused, and some lower-level DOGE minions are now worrying about being prosecuted for what they did, especially as Tusk has vanished from any more political involvement in South Canada.  O dearie me.

Elong getting high.

BaDalek

Yes, back to the Daleks, those hateful motorised dustbins with an unquenchable lust for power and a hatred of stairs and 45º slopes.  Conrad noticed an extremely bad rendering of them on the back pages of 'TV 21', where they had their very own strip, in colour, too.  Art!

     I think the artist belatedly realised he'd done a bit of a bodge job on the foremost pepperpot, and used it's blaster and ray to conceal the rear two.  Art!

     Better if not quite there.

     Ron Turner delivers.

Number Five Is Unalive

If you have a memory better than that of a goldfish, you ought to recall that Conrad was gradually going through the contents of a 'Spacedock' video about 'Five Realistic Spaceship Designs' and didn't get past Number Four.  This is because Spaceship Five as chosen was a 'Lighthugger' from Alastair Reynolds' 'Revelation Space' series.  Art!

    These things are so advanced they might as well use black, white and coloured magic to operate, meaning that they are not 'realistic' at all.  They observe the laws of physics is about the most generous thing I can say about them in terms of realism.

They Shrunk A Tree Trunk

Back to that incredibly satisfying collage of shredding, crushing, mauling and generally DESTROYING clips courtesy of 'Discovery Tech - US', on this occasion using a 'Woodcracker W 1000' to split logs apart.  Art!

     The hydraulically-driven jaws split logs apart in seconds, then split the split logs further, as you can tell by all the timber carcasses lying around above.  Art!

     Would it work on a nut, I wonder?

Finally -

Let us end with another Biercism, of which I have thousands, contained within 'The Devil's Dictionary', a tome dedicated to citric wit not worship of Old Nick.

"Lawyer n; One skilled in circumvention of the law."

     Can't argue with that.