I’m late because there was a John Candy comic book, that’s why

Yeah, I’d like to get a thing done today but a friend made me aware there was a comic book based on John Candy’s remembered animated series Camp Candy in the late 80s. And … just … like, I know they used to make comic books for just everybody, like Bob Hope or Jerry Lewis or … I’m going to guess Gene Autrey. But this? I had no idea and so that’s why I spent the whole day lying down and trying to figure this all out.

Comic Vine’s Wiki has the covers to all the issues. It has summaries of the stories for half the books, too, for example the one where “a lovestruck moose invades the camp and causes problems for everyone”.

I’m Sorry But This Toilet Paper Roll Is Distracting Me

Yeah, I apologize for not getting things done on time today but I want to know the story of this lone non-conformist toilet paper roll and I think you do too. It’ll be a heartwarming children’s book about being true to yourself that will escape being turned into a CGI-animated movie on the grounds that nobody can work out how to make toys of the characters that won’t end in sad conversations.

Yes, this is 12 Mega Rolls, which if I understand toilet paper mathematics correctly is the equivalent of 47 Ultra Rolls, which is the same as 92 Hyper Rolls, three guineas, two shillings and sixpence, which is the equivalent of when the bathroom’s steamed up from the shower walking into a ten-foot cube of paper foam.

The Most Wonderful Thing I’ve Seen About Equinoxes All Year

So I think I had the question everyone has about equinoxes, which is, how does the fact that the solar year is just about 365 days and six hours affect on which date the equinox happens? So this brought me to the web page about it on Calendarpedia (“Your source for calendars”, which is definitely marketing to me). And of course I’m glad to know that my guess about how leap days affected the equinoxes basically panned out. But more, the page offered this chart:

Table provided by Calendarpedia’s “When Is The Fall Equinox?” page. They also provide a chart of the equinoxes and the days of the week.

And I am sitting and thinking about its disclaimer, data provided `as is’ without warranty. Where would I go if I needed a projected fall equinox date with warranty? If I had the warranty and fall didn’t arrive on that date, who would I send the unused portion of the season to, and what kind of form would I fill out?

What I Can’t Stop Thinking About Today

So what I can’t stop thinking about today is a Wikipedia sentence, of course. It’s from the article about Pitt Fall, a drop tower ride formerly at Kennywood Amusement Park in Pittsburgh:

In June 2011, it was put for sale and bought in early September to an undisclosed buyer.

So … in 2011 — in this decade — someone just went to a major amusement park, bought a drop tower ride, carted it off, and we don’t know who? I mean, the owner’s neighbors have to have sometime said, like, “Hey, did the blue duplex down the street always have a 251-foot-tall metal tower in the front yard?” You’d think we could find who bought the Kennywood drop tower just by looking up more. I don’t know how it’s been kept a secret eight years now.

Not To Brag, But I Am A Truly Popular Person

And my cell phone is a very necessary thing to have which I rely upon often.

I know what you’re wondering and the reason I don’t have a call from Dad is that somehow his phone and my phone have decided to ignore the other, and Verizon’s advice is “I dunno, the both of you come to a store together and maybe we’ll think something out”. I’m in Michigan. My father lives in South Carolina. Verizon has yet to suggest what store the two of us might reasonably visit together. Well, I’m sure he’s doing all right.

I Have Questions

If you don’t find this funny, that’s all right. I don’t fault you. I’m not sure I can say why I found this funny enough to photograph. But it’s my blog and I’ll post what nonsense I feel fit here.

Fess Up

So. Reader. Look. I regard us as friends. Maybe not great friends, not, help-you-move-to-a-new-apartment level friends. But friends. Out meaning well for each other, even if we sometimes screw it up. Giving a heads up when we see a comic strip we’re sure the other is going to love. Warning when you see we’re marching unprepared into at least a Category Two Drama Storm. That kind of friend. OK? So that’s why I have to ask about this thing from the sidebar of a YouTube video I just watched.

Also: what, precisely, is “easy” about thinking to trowel cement on three rolls of toilet paper? Just trying to think about doing this makes my head hurt in a way that, like, covariant tensors do not. The doing of this might be physically easy but imagining a world in which I would is I promise you not.

Exactly which one of you is telling Google, “You know what Joseph needs? The suggestion he line up three rolls of toilet paper only to trowel cement over them. Plus 34 other things to do with cement, each explained in an average of 26 seconds. But he’ll be so fascinated by that he won’t even notice this Five-Minute Crafts video is fifteen minutes long”? What is it you think you know about me? What are you drawing these conclusions from?

Statistics Saturday: Reasons To Believe The Person in Charge Of Quaker Oats’s Cereal Mascots In 1996 Had Already Taken A New Job

Characters introduced to the Quaker Oats lineup in 1996:

• For Marshmallow Safari: “Rhinocular is a pink-colored Rhino. He wears a pith helmet, and looks ready for safari.”
• For Sweet Crunch: “Schnoz is a pink-colored shark. He wears a yellow sun hat and glasses. He surfs standing up on a surfboard.”
• For Sweet Puffs: “Cat-Man-Do is a cool brown cat (who looks a lot like a fox). This cool cat wears sunglasses, a green suit and hat, and a red tie with white polka-dots. He plays a mean sax.”
• For Apple Zaps: “Duckbert is a red-haired duck who loves soccer. He’s wears a red soccer uniform complete with soccer cleats. He’s shown kicking a soccer ball.”
• For Frosted Flakers: “Brewster MacIvory is a walrus. He wears a ski cap and sunglasses. He surfs belly down on his surfboard.”
• For Fruitangy Oh!s: “Koolio is a brown swinging monkey. He wears a backwards red baseball cap, untied red sneakers, and sunglasses.”
• For Cocoa Blasts: “Kamicowzi is a brown and white flying cow with horns and wings. She wears an old-style brown aviators cap and sunglasses.”

All of these texts, and mascots, are as quoted from Topher’s Castle’s magnificent, and genuinely delightful old-school-Internet compilation of breakfast cereal characters.

Also, reasons to believe that Topher’s Castle is making up some breakfast cereal mascots in order to prove copyright infringement by disreputable web sites like mine:

• For Apple Zaps: “Duckbert is a red-haired duck who loves soccer. He’s wears a red soccer uniform complete with soccer cleats. He’s shown kicking a soccer ball.”

But to be sincere, the site has a heartening number of characters tracked down and described, with pictures for a lot of them. It really makes you appreciate how many breakfast cereals have tried to make a kangaroo mascot and how somehow it just never takes. I am so happy this person put this work into this project.

Rory Raccoon says that yeah, mascotting for store-brand cereal isn’t as glamorous as his 1960s work for Post Sugar Sparkled Flakes, but it’s much lower-stress and honestly more enjoyable. The low stakes mean he’s able to put more of himself into the performance. But he would like to work with Claudius Crow again, if the project presented itself.

Yeah, But What *Is* The Deal With The Comic Strip Graffiti Anyway?

Yes, yes, I too read today’s Alley Oop. And, like you, I worry about this strange interpretation of the Moo Universe. I mean, King Guz actually doing a thing? But, new writers, new start for the strip. I don’t need to have an opinion about this for eight weeks yet. I can hold.

What I’m on about today is Gene Mora’s comic strip Graffiti. If it is a comic strip. I don’t know. It’s always just text on a wall, so maybe it’s a comic panel. It’s not usually a funny wall. Whether it’s funny text depends on your sense of humor. Anyway, here’s Saturday’s installment.

Gene Mora’s Graffiti for the 5th of January, 2019. And in a not really related question, the strip from the 11th of December makes me ask: the heck?

So, like, what the heck? Like, is Gene Mora even alive? Is the comic strip still in production? I’m also not sure what the joke is supposed to be here. Playing on the similarity in sounds between “brown” as in cow and “Dow” as in Jones? Referencing the hit Broadway musical of 1968? Where does this come from and where does it go? These are all questions I feel I cannot answer.

If you know, or know someone who knows, please let someone know.

This One Is Mostly For Roy Kassinger

Really? So the zoo has these red-panda-head-shaped “Animal Friction Truck” toys in the gift shop? I mean, if you used the same idea but made it some kind of medical vehicle you could have … a wahmbulance.

Mostly I wanted to set expectations for 2019 as my dumbest year ever. Here, have some actual content if you figure that will help.

In Which I Admit My Disappointment At The Weather

I was hoping there’d be more than a 20% chance of noodles today.

Mind, I am happy that we aren’t facing another shower of ravioli the size of golf balls. That stuff’s hard on the car body. Plus you either use up all your marinara or your whole butter budget for the month in clearing the sidewalk. And that’s before you consider the parmesan needs.

I’m Sorry, This Is Sitting On My … Oh, Wait.

So I’m sorry I’m not being productive at all today, but I got to looking up some villains from a comic book I read in like 1990 and it lead me to the Marvel Comics Wikia and these sentences:

The Headmen continued on with their machinations to rule the world through non-violent means, through the use of social, political and economic scheming. Morgan went to France, while Nagan went to India using Morgan’s shrinking particles to shrink important political figures. Back in the United States, Ruby Thursday was running for president.

And there’s a lot that’s screwed up in comic book worlds. But I like this vision of a politics where evildoers are going around making each other small. Also there’s some part where one of the characters gets his mind put in the body of a baby deer, but I don’t see where they say what happens to the baby deer’s mind.

All Right, Wikipedia, I Dare You

My love got on to reading about Midget Car Racing. If this seems quirky to you please understand the context: we visited the amusement parks of Denver last month. All right, the context doesn’t help but trust me, it makes sense in it. Anyway, my love ran across this declaration which has to be the boldest dare I have seen from Wikipedia in a long while:

It’s right there at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midget_car_racing#Notable_midget_car_races if you want to double-check my work.

OK. So go ahead, Wikipedia. I dare you to list the notable midget car races.

Wikipedia’s entry about Rodger Ward explains “he began racing midget cars in 1946 after he was discharged from the Army. He finished poorly. His skills improved in 1947 and by 1948 he won the San Diego Grand Prix”. I agree this is quite the improvement and I’m only a little sorry nobody’s demanded a citation for the claim that he improved in 1947.

They have one, and it’s a free-style race that happened to have a midget car in it.

Please know that I do not mean to mock people just because have interests that just aren’t mine. I mean, all my interests are weird and idiosyncratic and half-wrong. Just, like, I’m a pinball enthusiast and I don’t think I could honestly say there were more than two significant individual pinball games ever played, and one of them was the fictional one from the movie Tommy. And do not get me started on my questions about the legitimacy of the match between Tommy and Elton John. You will be torn between laughing and being bored.

Time For A Serious Talk With LinkedIn’s Algorithm

(Reading.)

Also I do not know what Patten University is. I assume that it is an educational facility specializing in the needs of the patten industry. Pattens, you’ll remember from reading the Wikipedia article about them right this minute, are those things Middle Ages people would strap to their shoes so they could walk around in town without covering their actual shoes with all the mud and raw sewage they dumped into the street back then. I trust there is still a patten industry and that like any specialized trade there are things that have to be learned to be expert in said trade that you can get at Patten University of Oakland, California.

(A long, serious sigh. And I send a note to ask for a little chat, “when you have the time”. But before the close of business.)

---

(The meeting.)

(I turn a chair around and sit with my chest pressing into its back. I put on a baseball cap, and then turn it around.) So! Linkedin Algorithm. Alg. Alg, I like that. You know, I used to know someone named Algus. No, that wasn’t his name, but he felt very positive about that instead. Well, I’m drifting from my point. Look, thanks for coming in for a little honest “rap session” like the kids say today in Imaginary 1967. I want to let you know, I appreciate how hard you’re working, looking out for me like this. I appreciate the idea that I should have a job that is not the one I have now. Really, great, thoughtful stuff. There’s nothing like having a friend who at random times bursts out with the declaration that I should be a part-time copy editor at a weekly newspaper in Rossville, Georgia. It gives me this strong sense of needing to be somewhere. Yes, even somewhere near Lake Winnepesaukah amusement park.

But — yes, this is the compliment sandwich technique, well-spotted — I want to ask you what are the points of commonality in these four jobs that totally exist and are not spammers trying to hack the LinkedIn Algorithm. You, Alg. What about me makes you think I’m equally ready to be a part-time temporary online instructor for some 7th grade class somewhere or maybe, what the heck, Facebook’s Director of Global Law Enforcement Outreach?

Now, now, no. I do not mean to put you on the spot. You don’t have to answer now, or really, at all. What’s important to me is that you sit though and think out what you see in common here. Find some tighter definition about what you see as similarities. This will help you algorithmate better in the future.

Yes, very good. You’ve seized on one right away. Of all these jobs, none of them need me to be in Michigan, which is the one place where I am. As a commonality that’s as useful as noticing that none of these jobs will routinely require that I smear myself head-to-toe with honey mustard. Not needing to be in Michigan is something common to 84 percent of all jobs, worldwide. It’s not productive to sort things on that basis. The mustard thing, that’s 94 percent of all jobs, yes.

Two of these jobs are described as adjunct faculty positions. I think this reflects a misunderstanding on your part about what adjunct faculty positions are. Adjunct faculty positions are for people who haven’t yet been cured of the daft idea of working in academia. Most adjunct positions require long hours in stressful roles. There’s little respect. The pay is low. There’s some community colleges where the English adjuncts are compensated entirely by being kicked behind the library loading bay until their kidneys bleed. And that’s after the adjuncts formed a union. Before the strike they were just shoved off the third-storey balcony until their skulls fractured. No, no, of course I wouldn’t just turn down an adjunct position. I’d just have it not be in a business school. Those people make you talk about business all the time, even if you’ve said you’d rather take the “jabbed with sharp sticks” benefit instead.

Also I don’t know what exactly Global Law Enforcement Outreach is. It sounds like my job would be travelling to exotic countries and hugging the cops. I admit I’m a huggy person. By preemptively hugging I can cut down the amount of handshaking I’m expected to do. But, jeez. Do I look like I want a life where I’m constantly jetting to exciting places like Johor Bahru, opening my arms wide at someone writing traffic citations, smiling as if I apparently weren’t pained by showing enthusiasm, and saying, “Come on over here, buddy!”? Do they look like they want that?

So. I appreciate your energy, I appreciate your enthusiasm. I like your willingness to think outside my career box. And let me give you this little tip. None of these are the job I would have if I could pick anything at all. Nor is my current job. What I’d really like, if you could find an opening, is to be the astronaut who draws Popeye. But don’t worry if you can’t swing that. I’m just glad you’re out there looking.

(I stand up, confident I’ve got this all worked out and there’ll be no unwanted side-effects to my honesty with Alg.)

This Is Mostly For My Sister And Her Husband

Because how would I possibly send either of them a message except on Twitter, e-mail, texting their phones, or calling them, or maybe mentioning to my father so he could send them a note on Facebook? Anyway, the noon news had a quick report about the new-ish roller coaster at Cedar Point amusement park. (They built it using the bones of an old roller coaster is why the “ish”.) In going to break, the news anchor mentioned that the park opens for the season May 5th. And then, teasing the weather report coming up, said that it looks this could be a great weekend to go to Cedar Point. And I don’t know whether they mean because it’d be fun to spend 48 hours with our faces pressed up against the glass window, making sad noises at a gardener who’s just trying to get some azaleas up and running beside the Midway Carousel.

Also they sent a reporter there for some publicity event. It’s the reporter they mention in their house ads as liking roller coasters, so, good use of your staff there. They had video of him on the new roller coaster, but the only person they actually quoted on-camera saying anything about it was somebody I don’t know who said of the ride, “It’s breathtaking. It takes your breath away,” which I admire for clearing the matter up once and for all.

Special Bonus Content!

So I wanted to use an inappropriate metaphor to describe a gardener putting in a funny-named plant. I wrote it out as “a gardener who’s trying to get some new azaleas debugged”, and then I realized, oh, wait. I stand by my decision to treat “azalea” as a funny enough name for a plant since for all I know it would be an appropriate decorative plant in an amusement park. I’m like 85% sure it’s a plant.

The Most Perfect Sentence I Have Ever Seen In Print This Week

So I was reading Seymour I Schwartz’s The Mismapping of America, which as you inferred from the title is all about the challenges in making an integrated-circuit design and surrounding circuit board that would be lightweight and reliable enough to serve as the Apollo Guidance Computer for the moon landings. In the last full chapter Schwartz discusses the history of mapping the Great Lakes and how we got around to having two Lake Superior islands — Isle Phelipeaux and Isle Pontchartain — which define part of the boundary between the United States and Canada despite neither actually in fact existing. Here “neither” refers to Lake Superior and to the United States, which should be a considerable relief to everyone but the mapmakers. And now consider this following sentence, about the late-1680s exploration reports by Louis, Baron de Lahontan et Hesleche, of the Fox River in what we now think of as Wisconsin.

Lahontan’s text includes an extensive, although improbable, description of domesticated beavers in the area.

And now try to tell me that sentence hasn’t caused you to pause in your day’s worries and allow a gentle, delighted smile to cross your face. You can’t do it, and for good reason. I thank whatever twists and turns of fate led Seymour I Schwartz to the point of writing such a delightful sentence. It’s rare for fourteen words to do so much for the human condition.

As Long As Someone’s Got Me Started With Wikipedia’s Article About Fangface

So I’m still thinking about that article on Wikipedia about the 1979-80 Ruby/Spears cartoon Fangface. If I were younger and stupider I would quibble with the article’s assertion that Fangface was “highly derivative of Scooby-Doo”. I mean, the whole point of Scooby-Doo was the protagonists solving a mystery, clues coming to the viewer as they did the characters. With Fangface there wasn’t any particular mystery; there was some nefarious evildoer, established right away, and the point of the episode was figuring out how to overcome his schemes. There is a much clearer line from Josie and the Pussycats to Speed Buggy to Fangface and oh what point has my life brought me to now? Someone please wrestle me away from the computer.

The Most Aptly Placed Appearance Of “But, of course,” I Have Ever Seen On Wikipedia This Week

From Wikipedia’s description of the 1979-80 Ruby/Spears cartoon Fangface which I was reading because life brings us all to points we did not expect:

In 1979, the second season titled Fangface and Fangpuss aired as a segment on The Plastic Man Comedy/Adventure Show and introduced a new character: Baby Fangs, Fangs’ infant cousin who turns into a baby werewolf called Fangpuss (which contradicts the opening narration stating that only one werewolf is born into the family every 400 years, but, of course, that werewolf could be born through another family which may be married to the Fangsworth family).

But, of course.

But, of course.

Without Denying That we Have More Urgent Problems

And I know I’ve got other stuff I need to do, but have you seen the WikiHow page How To Make A Rat Harness? Because it has more pictures than I would have ever imagined of people holding up string and thread to the body parts of a rat who is absolutely and completely furious than I had ever imagined I’d see all at once. (There’s like four pictures of this. I hadn’t thought about the topic much before and so my expectations were low.) You can see the withering contempt the cartoon rat has for someone who wants to put it in a harness. (Step Four is the most withering, but they’re all impressive displays of contained cartoon rat fury.) Anyone attempting this should know, they are never going to get one of those adorable pictures where the rat is sitting on their shoulder and grooming their hair. The poor rat is going to come over and kick you on the big toe. This won’t hurt physically. But it’s emotionally devastating.

A Couple Of Things Found

So, first, I found that Twitter bot that spoofs that HGTV show about people buying the second house they’re shown. Well, someone else found it and tweeted it where I could see it, but that still counts. An example of its work:

WIFE: I run a startup for weasels
HUSBAND: And I sell underwear for squirrels
WIFE: Our budget is $1.8 million

— House Hunters Plot (@HouseBudgets) February 18, 2018

I’m not saying this is going to amuse you endlessly, but poking at it once or twice a week? Sure, that’s good. (“I’m a mongoose engineer” is a solid career move.)

Also I was poking around deep in the Comics Kingdom archives of Bud Sagendorf’s Popeye to try working out why the lettering in the last couple days’ reprints were strange, because that’s the result of many decisions I’ve made in my life. And it’s always dangerous to read a single installment from a story strip because without context anything looks unnecessarily baffling but then how do you respond to this?

Bud Sagendorf’s Popeye as rerun the 2nd of June, 2008. So I just assumed reading this that Popeye was underwater and Olive Oyl had given up hope because she hadn’t learned anything from forty years of knowing this guy, but no, he was on a raft on the water just below the end of the pier which makes her throwing an anchor off the pier without seeing him all the more baffling.

And the answer is, of course: Popeye is absolutely correct. There shouldn’t be argument about this point.

There’s some more stuff to talk about, but I promised only a “couple” of things so I’ll have to hold off some.

And a Christmas Thought I Forgot To Have Like Two Weeks Ago

I really should’ve had this thought the 15th but I lost the slip of paper its inspiration was written on. My love and I went to Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland. It’s a grand, wonderful place. It’s a huge building, the kind you could host a good-sized flea market in, and it’s filled with Christmas decorations (plus some bits for other holidays). If you ever need a variety of guinea pig ornaments this is the place to go. If you ever need to fill a tree with different peacock ornaments, this is the place to go. I’m not saying a large tree filled with unique peacocks. But still, a tree of any size with only peacock ornaments is amazing.

They pass out a little trivia card about how big the place is and how much Christmas it merchandises and how many people it employs and how far away they advertise and everything. (They advertise all over Michigan, including Florida.) Here’s the one that would have been great to think about like two weeks ago:

Movie star John Wayne ordered a Santa suit from Bronner’s by telephone on December 15, 1976.

I don’t fault them clinging to a celebrity encounter from four-plus decades ago; I’m still telling people about that pizza party I attended alongside Don “Father Guido Sarducci” Novello in 1995. And I absolutely love this piece of trivia because the claim is both exact and vague. What were the machinations of Fate which caused John Wayne to wake one day and say, “I’m movie star John Wayne! Today, the 15th of December, 1976, I want a Santa suit! I should phone Bronner’s in Frankenmuth, Michigan, to order one”? I assume this is a direct quote. How could the Hollywood-area costume and holiday shops be out of Santa suits already? Or was he just in Michigan for something, maybe poking around Bay City to see if he had to do anything about it, and realized he was Santa suit-less? Did he know someone at Bronner’s who could get him a discount? If so, how much? So those are the exciting thoughts racing around me and I’m just sorry I didn’t schedule them for the 15th when they would have been kind of timely-ish.

Bronner’s doesn’t give out enough trivia for me, but I don’t blame you for thinking Broner’s gives me too much trivia.

Thoughts While Pondering The Year Without A Santa Claus, Plus Trains

What if Santa isn’t always cancelling Christmas because he’s kind of a jerk and instead he’s just wracked with the sort of Imposter Syndrome that my whole generation is dealing with all the time? Like, “This mouse wrote something mean in an upstate New York newspaper in September! A competent Santa doesn’t have to deal with issues like that! … And it’s snowing too? Oh I can’t even.”

Which I’ll grant is not all that deep an observation, but the alternative is to fret about the ways the rules of that snowfall magic seem to get tossed willy-nilly about in Frosty’s Winter Wonderland. I mean there’s something about just tossing in a snow-parson into things that seems dangerous. So let me conclude with this observation from Wikipedia’s page on Frost’s Winter Wonderland:

The engine on the train is a 2–4–2 or an American type steam locomotive. Locomotives of this wheel arrangement were used most common during the 1800s on American railroads, and from the 1830s until 1928, were given the name “American” in 1872, because of how they did all the work of every railroad in the United States. These types of engines have eight wheels (two leading wheels, four driving wheels, and two trailing wheels).

This means something. (It means I’m very tired.)

Can Someone Please Give Twitter A Good Shove?

Not looking to sound ungrateful here for a free web site that keeps me in touch with like four people I knew on Usenet in the 90s and a lot of reasons to call my Congressman and tell him how disgusted I am. But it’s still, today, trying to feed me the line that “Veterans Day” is a trending topic six days after the holiday. All I can say to that that is “you’re a rotten liar”.

Taken at like noon the 17th of November, 2017. I don’t know what the ESPN thing is all about, but I figure that’s all right, the people who need to know understand it well enough. I’m not worried about that and I am willing to trust there is still such a thing as ESPN.

The kindest I can work out is maybe Twitter is stuck in the mud and can’t get traction. If someone could get it out I’d appreciate the help. I rely on Twitter’s Trending report to let me know what I won’t be reading about on Twitter Moments under any circumstances.

Statistics Saturday: Wikipedia Categories Classifying Maureen O’Sullivan

• 1911 births (5,526 entries)
• 1998 deaths (5,019 entries)
• 20th Century Fox contract players (140 entries, one subcategory, Shirley Temple)
• 20th-century Irish actresses (64 entries, one subcategory, “20th century actresses from Northern Ireland”)
• American film actresses (8,036 entries, three subcategories)
• American stage actresses
• American television actresses (6,876 entries, three subcategories)
• Irish emigrants to the United States (146 entries, three subcategories, plus some extra links whose purpose I don’t understand)
• Irish film actresses (148 entries, two subcategories)
• Irish stage actresses (141 entries, four subcategories)
• Irish television actresses (164 entries, two subcategories)
• Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract players (251 entries, one subcategory, Shirley Temple)
• People educated at Woldingham School (23 entries)
• People from Boyle, County Roscommon (6 entries)
• People with acquired American citizenship (400 entries, one subcategory, “Fictional people with acquired American citizenship”, which doesn’t list Nero Wolfe who I thought was born in Montenegro?)

In Which I Wonder A Bit Less About The Pretend Baseball Game

I’m not saying I’m not still wondering about that pretend football game’s scoreboard. This is the one at the Cherry Republic store in Traverse City, Michigan. Fun place, lots of cherry-based food things you can put in your mouth if you so desire.

Anyway besides the football scoreboard and a bunch of mocked up movie posters with bear or cherry stuff inserted into it, they’ve got a pretend old-timey baseball scoreboard and it looks like this, because this is a picture of it:

Yes, I’m sure that this is the Cherries’ rather than the Apples’ scoreboard. The bear thing is part of the whole Cherry Republic motif and besides, you don’t paint the visiting team’s name on the scoreboard while hanging the home team’s name up with a little sign. We have to be realistic here.

So. Yes, I am incredibly disturbed that the home-team Cherries are put on the top of the scoreboard there. I’ve seen this sort of thing done in like high school ballparks and football … parks … and stuff and it always looks unsetting and wrong. Never mind that. Here’s my question.

After eight innings the visiting Apples had nine runs, and the home-team Cherries had 11. That’s a plausible enough score and it sure looks like it was a fun game to that point. But then, and this has been bothering me for four months now, is: why did the Cherries play their ninth inning?

Yes, yes, I know. Up until the 1950 revisions of the rules of baseball the home team could choose whether to bat first or second. And maybe this scoreboard’s just been up there since that time in 1946 when the Cherries manager figured going first would be a great way to throw the Apples’ manager off. Of course I thought of that. But even I don’t buy it. What is going on?

In Which I Wonder About The Pretend Football Game

I’ve had this sitting around a while but it’s still making me think. It’s at the Cherry Republic store in Traverse City. The store is great, a fine spot if you’re in Traverse City, Michigan, and need somewhere to stop in to get a quick snack, because they have chips and samples of several hundred thousand cherry-based jams and jellies and salsas and … consumable food products. It’s great. The place is decorated in an aesthetic style of “Americana, only it’s all about cherries and bears and stuff”. And they’ve got a couple of mock sports scoreboards, and there’s this one I’ve been thinking about.

Ask me about the Traverse City Cherry Republic’s baseball scoreboard too!

So. Cherries just smashing the Bananas, that’s fine. I expect the cherry people to be enthusiastic about a game like that. The thing is, the score is Cherries 86, Bananas 3. There have been, at minimum, twelve scoring events in this game so far. And now look at the time. They’re four minutes, 42 seconds into the first quarter. And the Bananas have given up, no less than ten touchdowns with two-point conversions each and one more without? And if they gave up one-point conversions, or field goals, instead, then they’ve let even crazily more scoring chances go during this game. What has their ball possession time got to look at? And given that, I’m amazed the Bananas have at least put up three points. They’ve got to have had the ball in their control for at most, I figure, 0.4 seconds to allow the Cherries to get a score like that.

So all I mean to say is, wow but the Bananas coach is going to have an unpleasant telephone call from the head office come Monday, or possibly Sunday, or possibly at halftime. Or possibly the team owner is going to run down there and kick him in the shin right now.

The Most Wonderful Wikipedia Sentence Ever Of The Week

And it was just sitting there ready to be noticed.

Also it turns out the singular of “ravioli” is “raviolo”, just like my love and I were saying to each other, only we were joking.

In Which I Am Once Again Dumbfounded

So I was reading Jonathan Green’s The Vulgar Tongue, about the history of slang so far as that can be worked out. And it got to a section about minstrel shows and blackface jokes and what slang we get from that. Surprisingly little, it turns out. Between a whole bunch of pages that left my jaw hanging open, speechless, was this bit from Charles Townsend’s circa-1891 guide for minstrel performers, along with tips like how to get blackface:

End Men should carefully avoid anything approaching vulgarity and no offensive personalities should be introduced. Avoid slang.

I understand, intellectually, that everything that ever touches race ever is deeply screwed up in all kinds of bizarre and stupid ways. But … “don’t use slang, you want to keep your minstrel show classy and inoffensive” is why I spend more and more of every day curled up in a ball in the corner of the room.

In Which I Am Tasked In The Pet Store

I was just getting some rabbit food at the pet store, but I paused to watch the guinea pigs, because they’re always soothing and fun. Someone was there with a little kid, and she was pointing out and naming the animals to him. “There are some rats,” she said, “fancy rats.” And the kid asked, “Why?”

And I understand the kid was just at that age where “why” is the response to any question, including “would you like this extra chocolate we happened to have hanging around?” But I also feel like I’ve been given the responsibility of writing a charming, slightly twee children’s book explaining why some animals are rats.

And I gotta say, I’m not the person to ask that. The best I can come up with, and this is after literally dozens of minutes thinking about it, is that there are some animals who just did awesomely well in Mouse College, and they went on to earn their Masters of Rodent Arts. But they got ultimately sound advice to not go on to a doctorate in Possum Studies or something like that, so that’s left them as well-equipped and highly trained rats prowling around the world and adding to it that charming Halloween touch and also those great pictures online where one’s looking right at you with big, sweet, innocent eyes and grabbing a hindpaw with both front paws. Anyway, this is why my nieces refer to me as “Silly Uncle Joseph”. I’m sorry.

In Which I Stall For The Reasons

I’m sorry. I saw the lawyer for the Insane Clown Posse, or the “Juggalawyer” as apparently they call him, while watching Samantha Bee’s show last night and I don’t really know what things are anymore.

So uh, here. Something from a park we visited last weekend. The question: Was the sign placed there fortuitously … or did they wait until a tree collapsed and figured that’s where to put the sign … or did someone fell a tree as a warning to the others? And if a warning, has this driven the other trees to greater productivity? Or has it driven the ice to try for more?

Also not looking to joke about the icy conditions since even though yes, it was 95 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday that doesn’t mean we aren’t going to get snow as early as 8:42 tonight.