Take It Away!

Takeaways aren't something I go in for a lot - largely for health reasons, (they are usually bloody unhealthy) - but occasionally  I indulge myself with something suitably greasy and non-nutritious.  Usually when, like yesterday, I get back home after a long drive, after an active day out, and feel that I can't be arsed to cook anything.  So it was that I found myself at the counter of a local takeaway specialising in post-pub fare like kebabs, but where, nonetheless, I've always found the food of excellent quality, ordering some chicken and chips.  This is where it all started going wrong as I realised that I'd ordered the wrong chicken - I actually wanted the nuggets - but the guy had already stuck it in the fryer and - being British - I was too polite to say anything.  But what the heck, I thought, chicken is chicken, isn't it?  A thought which lasted until I got home and opened the carton.  I don't know what is was about its contents, whether it was the sight or smell, or some combination of both, but I immediately found myself gagging and just knew that I wouldn't be able to eat it.  To be fair, I did try to cut off a piece to try and taste it, in the hope that I could digest it in small portions, but none of my cutlery could make a dent in it.  For some reason, that 'chicken' nauseated me so much, was just so repugnant, that I just knew that I didn't want it in the house, not even in the kitchen bin.  So, I decided to stick it outside the backdoor, thinking that maybe either the local rats or cats would eat it.

I did decide to give the chips a go, but they were definitely sub-standard too - some burned, others barely cooked.  I ended up throwing a fair proportion of them in the bin and found myself forced to cook something anyway.  But I couldn't stop thinking about that 'chicken' out in the back garden.  I mean, not even rats deserve to be exposed to the risk of food poisoning and while the only cat on the terrace at present holds a grudge against me, (it's a long story), I still wouldn't wish any harm on the furry bastard.  Worse still, one of the local urban foxes who sometimes put in appearances might eat it and I really couldn't face going out the next morning and finding a fox slumped against the wall of the alley at the end of the terrace, in a pool of its own vomit, groaning, 'Shoot me, please.  For pity's sake, just shoot me.'  I mean, I'd have had the RSPCA trying to prosecute me for animal cruelty, for sure.  So, I went back out and retrieved the 'chicken'.  It was completely unscathed - not even the rats had touched it.  From which we can safely conclude that they aren't cannibals.  But I still didn't want it in the house.  In fact, I didn't want it anywhere near my house.  So, having packaged it all up in the carton, I took it down to the nearest rubbish bin and dumped it there.  I was half expecting to see a load of guys in Hazmat suits cordoning it off this morning, but it apparently hasn't been found yet.  Either that, or it crawled out under its own volition and even as I write this, is lurking in the drains.  I'm not sure what the moral of all this is, other than that I have to strike another takeaway off the list, as it has clearly taken a catastrophic dip in standards and now relies on the fact that its clientele are all drunk and will blame any ill effects on those ten pints of cheap lager they had at Wetherspoons.  I'm still sore at the money I wasted on that inedible takeaway, but at least I didn't eat it.  Even so, just thinking about it still makes me nauseous.  

Dear Sir, I'd Like to Complain About Democracy...

Don't you just love it?  One day we have Nigel Farage whining about how we live in a 'complainant society', where an elected representative can suddenly find themselves under investigation just  because someone has unreasonably complained that you, I don't know, received an undeclared five million quid from some shady crypto bloke, say.  Outrageous.  Then a few days later, we have the self same Farage caught in an undercover investigation apparently endorsing his party taking donations from a foreign national, (which is illegal under UK electoral law).  You see, they're out to get him, those complaining bastards in the 'establishment'.  In fact, he's being harassed with meritless accusations, just the way his hero, convicted felon and adjudicated rapist Donald Trump, has been.  First up, trying to compare yourself to Trump is treading on thin ice if you are a UK politician - Trump has never been popular here and the 'Trump Premium' we find ourselves paying for petrol, diesel etc thanks to his war against Iran, hasn't done anything for his popularity.  Yet more evidence that our Nige is losing it, if he thinks that this an analogy that will resonate with the UK electorate?  Of course, the real issue here is his equation of being held to account, as all elected representatives must be in a democracy, to a 'complainant' culture.  In essence, he's saying that just because he's an MP and aspires to lead the country, he shouldn't be subject to scrutiny.

This should be yet another alarm bell for the idiots inclined to vote for Reform: their leadership clearly has either no understanding of how a democratic, pluralist system works or, more likely, they do know and don't care.  If it isn't obvious to everyone by now that they don't believe that they should be accountable to anyone, least of all the electorate, then I'm not quite sure what else they have to do - slip on the swastika armbands, perhaps?  I mean, they've already started banning journalist that they feel are too critical of them from their party conference.  Indeed, this policy goes right the way down to local level, where some local journalists have found themselves being denied access to meetings and press conferences in Reform controlled councils.   Yet still there are idiots out there prepared to support them.  Do they not take note of all of Reform's opposition to concepts like accountability and oversight?  Or do they not care?  Just so long as they deport all those darkies, I don't care if they suppress democratic debate and human rights, it's a small price to pay for making Britain white again, eh?  The latter is probably the attitude that Farage and co are banking on - that people are sufficiently discontent with the status quo that they'll be prepared to overlook his and his party's dubious activities and downright dangerous attitudes.  After all, he probably reasons, those American idiots re-elected Trump, despite his criminal convictions and the fact that he instigated an attempted insurrection when he'd lost the previous election.

Seasonal Alarmism

El Nino - not somebody that Spurs were trying to sign on deadline day, but actually a weather phenomena.  That said, the number of times the BBC, in particular, have mentioned El Nino of late, you could be forgiven for thinking that they were referring to a footballer who had had great World Cup and was attracting record breaking bids from Premier League clubs.  But, in reality, El Nino is the latest weather bogeyman (remember the 'Beast From the East'?) being brought up to cause public panic.  After a long, hot and record breaking Summer, courtesy of global warming, we're now slipping into Autumn, with the fine weather starting to break up in favour of cloudy skies, showers and thunderstorms.  Which is actually a pretty normal weather pattern for this time of year.  But that's not good enough for the media - they want to be able to capitalise upon the chaos caused by the record breaking temperatures set this Summer, by raising the spectre of an Autumn dominated by El Nino-inspired storms.  Because, apparently a 'record-breaking' El Nino is forming and this could result in a record breakingly bad Autumn and Winter with the aforementioned storms plus plunging temperatures causing yet more misery and chaos.  But that word 'could' is doing a lot of work there, because, despite what the headlines are screaming, there is no clear link between El Nino, no matter how strong it might be, and weather patterns in the UK and Europe.

Indeed, I read an article on the BBC News website that started off with all the alarmism outlined above, but which then had to qualify all of it.  Apparently, there is no established strong correlation between El Nino activity and storm activity in the UK, no strong correlation between it and Winter temperatures in the UK.  No, correlation, in fact, with any UK weather phenomena.  All of which rather undermined all of the dire picture of the coming Autumn and Winter that article had started off with.  In fact, it just emphasised the fact that it was largely sensationalist alarmism designed to get attention.  Not to mention generating interest in the BBC's long range weather forecasts.  In truth, all of this El Nino alarmism seems to be a convenient way to try and give some kind of credence to what is effectively superstition: the idea that good Summers are inevitably followed by harsh Winters because nature, you know, has to 'balance things'.   Except that it doesn't.  I can't say that I've ever seen any correlation between dry Summers and Cold Winters or vice versa.  Things just don't work that way.  The truth is that, right now, nobody has any clear idea of how Autumn, let alone Winter, are going to play out.  Maybe they will be characterised by storms, gales and freezing temperatures, not to mention blizzards.  But then again, they might turn out to be mild.  But hey, we're British, so we're obsessed with the weather, which means that the media will just keep on spinning this sort of alarmist speculation.

After Hours: Voodoo Drums Over England

We’re After Hours again, where the mysterious ‘Night Caller’ is disturbing the sleep of people who didn’t even know he was listening. Who is he? Is he really from ‘Radio Midnight’, the talk station that calls you? Meanwhile, Dagenham’s top citizen journalist investigates strange goings-on at the local supermarket which could lead to the sound of Voodoo drums being heard all across England. The-Man-in-the-Pub declares war on street performers after an unfortunate encounter with a ‘living statue’, while ‘Camera Obscura’ is back, discussing an obscure bondage-themed beach movie. The WNKR late movie is previewed before we find out whether ‘Immigrants Ate My Granny!’ as political candidate claims widespread cannibalism amongst illegal immigrants.

Listen Here: After Hours: Voodoo Drums Over England 

‘After Hours’ was created using Google AI Studio, ChatGPT with sound effects by Freesound Community via Pixababy.com. Opening theme ‘Twilight Static’ and closing theme ‘Twilight Sunder’ by Doc Sleaze via Freemusic.ai.

Officially the first episode of Series Two, this seventh edition of 'After Hours' turned out to be something of a trial to produce.  By last Friday, I thought that I'd got it all in the can, but then I started to try and put it all together and realised that the segments just felt unbalanced and didn't establish any kind of rhythm. So, it was back to the drawing board - three already recorded items were discarded and I hurriedly wrote and recorded three replacements.  By Saturday, I had something I was happier with - better balanced and with a better rhythm to it, so I could finally add the sound effects.  The three discarded items will, doubtless, turn up in the next episode.  The main difference you will here between this and previous episodes is the theme music, with new opening and closing themes.  Hopefully, with three segments already 'in the can', the next episode can come together a bit more easily! 

New Media, Same Old Cobblers...

Being the time of year when I find myself driving around quite a lot, as I try to get the most out of the good weather with trips all over the place, I end up listening to Radio Four in the car more than usual, (I'm too old for Radio One and have been boycotting Radio Two since they sacked Scott Mills).  Which means that I hear all sorts of stuff that might otherwise have passed me by - the suggestion, for instance, that broadcasters like the BBC and ITV putting material onto You Tube should have it boosted in their algorithms.  A suggestion which, not surprisingly, has been met with hostility by a lot of those You Tube 'creators' who bang out endless crappy videos.  Especially those self-styled 'citizen journalists'.  There was one such example raging against the idea that the news output of BBC News or ITV News should be given priority over his 'reports'.  Yeah, I'll just bet you don't want something as outrageous as reporting that attempts to be balanced and neutral, actually basing itself on facts and created by professionals, competing with your paranoid, conspiracy driven lunacy, eh?  Quite frankly, a bit more in the way of real factual reporting is what You Tube and social media in general needs, bearing in mind that a scary number of people seem to glean all of their ideas and opinions from stuff put out by these 'citizen journalist' types - basically completely unqualified amateurs, usually with extreme right political agendas.

I also heard the head honcho of You Tube playing down this idea of prioritising legitimate content, claiming that You Tube is all about 'choice' and how their wonderful algorithm will always serve you up appropriate viewing suggestions.  Which, as the interviewer pointed out, simply wasn't true.  From personal experience I can attest to the fact that it frequently serves me up all manner of irrelevant and sometimes offensive viewing options.  Getting back to those 'creators', though, I also had to endure hearing one of the people behind creating and distributing their content across You Tube telling us how wonderful they were and how much better and in tune with public demand than mainstream TV is.  Really?  Their argument always seemed to be based upon the idea that, thanks to being across social media, they have 'reach', which means that 'everyone' is aware of them.  Well, I'm not.  I have no interest in the amateurish, egotistical output of these exhibitionist cocks.  Aha! is the response - but you  aren't in the target age group.  Which is exactly the point - the entire entertainment audience in the UK, let alone globally, doesn't consist of adolescent, easily impressed and influenced, males.  Moreover, even those who fall into this demographic will age and within ten years will no longer be interested in this shit any more.  Just because something is getting 'clicks' is no indication of actual popularity, let alone quality.  On You Tube, for instance, someone just has to hit 'play' on a video for it count as a 'hit', even if they only watch the first couple of seconds.  For all we know, people might simply be clicking on these videos by 'creators', realising after a few seconds that they are shit and turning off.  Hardly an endorsement.  We really do need to be very careful about the supposed 'reach' and popularity of platforms like You Tube, as the stats used to back up the claims of their supporters are highly suspect.

Dangerous Plant

Back in the day, I used to have a bad habit of just glancing at headlines on newspaper or web stories, misreading them and coming up, in my head, with some elaborate and bizarre story to justify my misreading.  Well, for the first time in years, I did it the other day, when I thought that a headline on an online aggregator read along the lines of 'Musk Plants Threaten Local Community'.  Naturally, my first reaction was to think 'Jesus, not satisfied with using his shitty social media platform boosting fascists around the world, firing off dangerous rockets that explode shortly after take off and trying to make robots powered by his crap AI, that crazy bastard has now started creating flesh eating ambulatory mutant plants!'  Worse than that, I speculated, he's unleashing them against unsuspecting small towns in the US - doubtless those that didn't vote for Trump in the last election.  Even as I think this, I thought, innocent people are being chased down streets by slavering plant monsters, with tooth-lined blossoms, oozing green sap.  Or maybe they are trained only to eat suspected illegal immigrants?  Of course, upon actually looking at the story, I found that the 'plants' referred to were of a completely different kind - the story was actually about how a small town was opposed to the building of giant data centres needed to power Musk's AI in their vicinity.  And who could blame them?  They are probably far more dangerous than ambulatory killer vegetation in terms of the vast quantities of energy and water they use and their potential contribution to global warming. 

But, I certainly can't deny my contribution to the problem.  I try very hard to restrict my use of AI, always aiming to try and get it to fulfil whatever task I'm asking of it in a single take, so to speak.  I always have that slight twinge of guilt when I think about the resources I've just burned up doing something trivial like creating an image or a podcast segment.  But then I'd shrug and think hell, the data centre processing my task is probably in Wisconsin or Ohio, so why should I care?  I mean, if Ohio, say, was to be burned to a crisp, the civilised world might not hear about it for years.  But those data centres are creeping closer - there's one fairly close to me, in Slough, where it is being blamed for a rise in temperatures in the area.  Mind you, that simply prompted me to paraphrase Sir John Betjeman: 'Come friendly data centres, burn up Slough'.  Levity aside, the expansion of these data centres does pose a serious problem.  Apparently, approval has been given for the construction of large numbers of them in the UK, despite the fact that the UK has neither the electricity generating capacities, nor the water supplies, required for their operation, if all were to be built.  'Just build more power stations and reservoirs', is the glib response that I heard recently in a radio debate.  But, leaving aside the slow rate at which we build power stations, what about the environmental effects of this?  As for the water situation - well, we are, finally, building more reservoirs, but this is to meet domestic demand for water, with this Summer's drought showing how inadequate our current supplies are.  If we let the data centres start guzzling these new supplies instead, then we're back to square one.

Of course, the obvious solution is to come up with a way for AI to operate without being so resource-intensive.  Has anyone thought of asking ChatGPT or Claude how this might be done?  After all, we keep getting told that they can answer just about anything... 

Kolchak: The Night Stalker - Seventies Weirdness on a Budget

Over the past few days I've watched a number of episodes of Kolchak: The Night Stalker.  For a series that only ran for a single truncated season of twenty episodes in the mid-seventies, it has proven remarkably influential.  Indeed, it is pretty much the epitome of a cult TV series, in that it was short-lived, had low ratings on its original network run, remains fairly obscure with regard to the general public, yet has maintained a devoted and loyal fanbase.  Watching episodes now, one is left feeling amazed that it ever went to series, being a spin off of two highly rated TV movies, (The Night Stalker (1972) and The Night Strangler (1973)), whose formats and subject matter would have seemed to be too restrictive for development into a typical prime time network show of the era.  But they gave it a go.  They just didn't give it much of a budget - the episodes are generally scrappy looking, with lots of over-familiar studio sets standing in for exteriors, threadbare production values and some pretty ropey looking monsters.  It is largely carried by the two main cast members, Darren McGavin (as Carl Kolchak) and Simon Oakland (as his harassed boss Tony Vincenzo) and some truly wild scripts which found ingenious ways to try and avoid making the format feel too repetitive.  Although, in truth, every episode was simply a slight variation on the formula of dogged reported uncovers some supernatural threat and has to battle police and authorities to resolve it, but high level cover ups ensure that nobody believes him and his stories never see the light of day.  In the first four episodes broadcast, for instance, he dealt with a reincarnation of Jack the Ripper, a zombie, a vampire and a werewolf (on a cruise ship) in quick succession.  It's to the great credit of the writers that, after running through the traditional monsters, they managed to keep coming up with ever more bizarre creations of their own to keep the series going, including an energy eating monster, a shape-shifting vengeful Native American spirit, a Spanish Moss creature conjured up by the subject of a sleep experiment, a rogue robot and a humanoid reptile.  

At times, despite the restrictions of network TV in the seventies, everything came together - the claustrophobic sets, the limited lighting used to disguise their shoddiness, some truly bonkers scripts, the often larger-than-life performances and some surprisingly good direction - to give episodes, in parts, a truly feverish, even nightmarish, feel.  The only thing that I could never suspend my disbelief over was the fact that Kolchak still had a job, despite his boss's weekly threats to sack him, as, not only were his supernatural stories all spiked, but he never seemed to file any other copy.  Overall, though, you don't come away thinking that this is something that requires a remake of any kind, as it's charm is very much the result of a particular period in time, combined with some crazy writing and fortuitous casting.  Yet, about twenty years ago, somebody tried to do just that.  I say 'somebody', but it was actually ABC, the network that screened the original TV movies and series.  It was hamstrung from the outset by copyright issues: the literary rights to the Kolchak character lie with Jeff rice, upon whose then unpublished novel the first TV movie was based, while Universal retain rights to the TV series - ABC, thanks to its continued ownership of the TV movies,still had dramatic rights to the character.  What this meant in practice was that the new series could only use elements established in those two TV movies, nothing from the TV series.  The resulting series, titled simply The Night Stalker, had only a cursory relationship with the original.  Kolchak was now an investigative reporter with a murdered wife, who looks into other unsolved murders, trying to link them to his wife's and establish some kind of pattern.  Gone was the 'monster-of-the-week' format and with it, the fun.  Not surprisingly, it lasted only six weeks on air, with four episodes left unaired.

On the face of it, the remake series seems to be another example of someone trying to exploit a property without actually understanding where the appeal of the original lay.  They doubtless saw the old series and thought, 'Hey, people like that even though it is really rickety and whacky with no budget - we could remake it 'properly', with a proper budget and actors and then more people will love it!'  Which, of course, isn't the way nostalgia works - devotees of the original series loved it precisely because it was scrappily made on backlot sets, yet delivered in the weird thrills department through ingenious scripts and performances which could carry you past those shortcomings.  But the problem is that to understand that, you have to see Kolchak in its proper context of being a seventies US network product, born of a time when networks were becoming aware that they had to find ways to break out of the indentikit formats for TV shows of that era, but were too timid to really go the whole hog and back something really different.  This resulted in shows like Kolchak, that brought in ideas from outside of the mainstream, but then tried to force them into a familiar, cosy, format, in the belief that audiences wouldn't be able to handle them otherwise.  But people nowadays, it seems, are unable to contextualise stuff, (hence all those warning you get before screenings of old TV shows that they 'reflect the values of their era' - well, of course they do, that surely goes without saying), with the idea that the past might be different from the present seemingly being too mind-blowing for them to grasp.  Anyway, if you like the weird and offbeat seventies style, then Kolchak: The Night Stalker is for you - the episodes vary wildly in terms of quality, but overall, it's an enjoyable experience, often harking back to the good old days of B-movies and pulp magazines in tone and execution.

Lies, Malice, False Reporting, Hacks and Google

You know, I hate starting the week with a mega moan.  (Who am I kidding?  I love a bloody good moan).  But my Saturday turned into an online nightmare thanks to Google.  I was just settling down to watch some crappy TV, (a favourite Saturday early evening pastime), with half an eye on checking my emails, when I see an email from Google saying that they've removed a post from this blog because it has been reported as contravening their content guidelines.  Now, Google's regular censorship on the nebulous grounds of contravening content guidelines is like a red flag to a bull to me at any time, but even more so when the post in question was simply the one promoting the latest episode of the 'After Hours' podcast.  I mean, it simply comprised the promotional artwork for the episode, a brief synopsis, a link to where it can be heard and some brief notes on the creative process behind it.  Nothing that contravened any kind of content guidelines - certainly no promotion of violence, child pornography, illegal activities or anything else they list.  Of course, trying to resolve this sort of thing is made next to impossible by Google's penchant for secrecy, in that they won't tell you exactly what contravenes which of their guidelines, nor will they tell you who or what reported your content in the first place.  So, your only recourse is to use the link provided to request an immediate review.  Within half an hour of my having made my request, the post had been reinstated, with a cursory email saying that 'upon review' they had found that it didn't contravene any guidelines after all.  Well, no shit, Sherlock!  

Nevertheless, that quick turnabout on Google's part gives us a valuable clue as to what passes for their review process when it comes to handling alleged reports of material contravening their guidelines.  I think it is obvious that if someone decides to press that button to report content on a blog, they automatically sanction it, without question, without actually checking the content in question.  If a report is made, then the content is assumed to be in contravention. Which rather goes against the accepted principles of justice, under which one is innocent until proven guilty.  If you request a review then, it seems, your content actually gets looked at by a human being, at which point it becomes obvious as to whether the original report was valid or instead malicious. Which, in this case, in view of subsequent events, it most certainly was.  Because shortly after I dealt with this problem, I had Google blaring to the world that The Sleaze was a 'dangerous' site hosting malware, resulting in red screens and dire warnings on every browser when you tried to access the site, (unless you have the good sense to disable the 'extreme paranoia security settings).  I was effectively being blacklisted across the internet.  Bizarrely, Google had sent me an email, but I didn't see it because, as they had deemed The Sleaze a 'dangerous site' and blacklisted its URL, the message, containing the URL, immediately went into Gmail's spam folder, where i didn't find it until hours later!  Anyway, a malware check via my web host revealed some suspect files, (there seemed to have been a hack, which I haven't yet got to the bottom of), which were quickly dealt  with, followed by a reinstallation on the Wordpress code for good measure.

Once again, I had to request a review of the site from Google to get those warnings removed, which I had to do through the Google Search console, something I haven't bothered using since Google started systematically de-listing my site from their search engine, (I'm just one of many, many victims of this policy).  Now, here's the bit which really pissed me off - while Google is very quick to brand sites as 'a threat' and accuse them of peddling malware, 'social engineering', stealing credit card details and God knows what else, (all stuff they accused The Sleaze of, without foundation), they certainly drag their feet when it comes to withdrawing all that shit.  I was left, for the better part of a day, with Google spreading what were, effectively, slanderous misinformation about a perfectly legitimate site.  Going back to that false report about the blog post, I'm now pretty sure that that was intended as a diversion of sorts - while I was dealing with that, I was distracted from anything going on with The Sleaze.  So, while the real villains here are the hackers, they are aided and abetted by Google's own policies.  Moreover, Google now clearly considers itself as some sort of 'Guardian of the Web' and has taken it upon itself to act as judge, jury and executioner when it comes to supposed 'security' issues.  Who appointed them?  Who are they accountable to?  It is also deeply ironic that they have taken on this role when they have spent so much time over the past few years trying to destroy the web as we know it, putting vast numbers of sites out of business by denying them visibility in web searches, (basically, they have unilaterally decided that things like satire and humour sites, niche sites, informational sites and the like (anything non-commercial, in other words) have no value and that they therefore won't serve them up to users in searches, even when they may be the most relevant resource).  I'm left hugely frustrated by this whole business.  I mean, sure, if Google doesn't want to give me traffic, fine, but I get pissed off when they pull stunts like this to deny me traffic from other sources (which I still get - other, better, search engines exist).  Really, they are complete bastards who think that they have the right to decide which sites should or shouldn't be on the web.

The Shocking Truth

So, these gloves that can give electric shocks to people touched by their wearers which the Trump regime wants to issue to ICE agents, don't they sound like the sort of thing that you used to see advertised in the back pages of porn magazines?  You'd find them alongside the ads for dodgy masturbation devices like the 'Wanky-Doodle-Dandy', (I kid you not, that was a real product), blow up sex dolls and the like.  They'd be promoted with something along the lines of 'how to make your love life electric', or 'give your woman an electrifying sex experience when you stroke her with these'.  Believe me, there are a lot of people into mild S&M who go in for this sort of thing - giving electric shocks to their partners' erogenous zones would, for them, be considered a major erotic turn on.  Especially if they shackled to iron bedstead at the time.  Or so I'm told.  But to get back to the point I was originally intending to make, this raises the question of whether ICE is now having its equipment supplied by the sex industry?  What next, you wonder: nipple clamps to restrain detainees, making it easier for ICE agents to pull them, by the nipples, into custody?  Or perhaps whips for crowd control?  Maybe they could use vibrators, claiming that they are powerful weapons to harmlessly subdue female targets?  How about swapping their current ski-masks for more durable leather gimp masks to keep their identities secret while they go about their illegal business?

Now, I know this sounds bizarre, ridiculous even.  But let's not forget the levels of corruption in the Trump administration.  In particular, the way in which various lucrative government contracts keep getting awarded to Trump cronies and family members.  Also bear in mind Trump's associations with porn industry figures like Stormy Daniels.  Is it so far-fetched to imagine that some hooker, madame, stripper or porn actress of his acquaintance  has set up some kind of sex equipment supplies company and has managed, via their contacts with him, to land a contract to supply ICE with equipment?   Perhaps she's also got the contract to outfit their detention centres, with the holding areas now styled like bondage dungeons, featuring detainees shackled to the walls.  The interrogation rooms could be equipped with wooden chairs fitted with manacles, or maybe even cages and racks, where detainees are spreadeagled naked while they have hot wax dripped on them until they give up the names of all their equally illegal immigrant associates.  If that doesn't work, then perhaps having a gimp-masked ICE agent bend them across his knee and give them a good hard bare-arsed spanking would do the trick.  After all, if Trump can give the White House a makeover so that it's interior now looks like a bordello, it seems perfectly reasonable that he'd hire someone to turn ICE's buildings into bondage parlours. 

More Milk Deliveries

I've had a busy couple of days, on the road a lot, culminating in an evening in the pub.  So, I'm too knackered to actually come up with a proper post - I'm sure that I had an idea for a post, but I'm too tired to remember what it was.  Instead, here's a picture of a couple of recent model railway acquisitions.  These are a pair of Wrenn six wheeled milk tankers, which will join the other ten (a mix of Wrenn. Lima and Hornby) in my milk train.  I think that I probably have more than enough milk tankers now, having acquired another couple of Wrenn tankers a few months ago, (they can be seen behind the latest two). 

I must admit, that I had no intention of buying another two, but these were very cheap at the local Toy and Train Fair, (Wrenn wagons, even unboxed are still usually relatively expensive).  Plus, they are in the St Ivel livery I already have two of the Lima tankers in a version of this livery, but the Wrenn version is fairly unusual.  Whilst Wrenn were notorious for putting out rolling stock in colourful, but fictional liveries, this colour scheme is actually genuine.  In the sixties, the newly formed Unigate had a number of tankers refurbished and repainted in order to promote their new yoghurt brand.  Which means that they might have been hauled by steam locomotives, meaning that they aren't necessarily anachronistic with regard to my layout.