austin_dern

On my humor blog it's been a week with a lot of comic strip news. Some of it generic (plot recaps for a story strip), some of it silly (more of my weird Beetle Bailey animal fixation), and one of it serious (a comic strip I like is on hiatus). Here's what I'm talking about at least:

• MiSTed: All The King's Horses, Part 3: Prologue
• It Also Has a Problem When I Put Veggie Burgers on the Skillet
• Statistics Saturday: Some People You Could Swear Played _Doctor Who_ At Some Point
• We Know More About How the Guy Who Used to Draw _Beetle Bailey_ Saw Squirrels
• Did GoComics's Comment System Screwup Kill _FurBabies_?
• What's Going On In The Phantom (Weekdays)? Is that a space alien? April - June 2026
• Technically I Could Always Say This but Now? I Wouldn't Be Fibbing
• MiSTed: All The King's Horses, Part 4: Day One

And now I'm going to close out the Silver Bells post-parade stuff and just look, there's some surprise bonus material here!

More of the pretty good illuminations: here, a polar bear eats the state capital.

Wishes for the happy holidays fall apart under the drones having to come back home.

But that's all right because now it's time for fireworks!

There we go, in what is definitely a picture from the 2025 Silver Bells and not every other fireworks show around the capitol dome ever!

I've learned slowly that pictures of illuminated smoke are more interesting than the explosions.

Most of the time.

Fireworks over, we went back into City Hall for the bathroom break and to warm up and got a snap of the dedication plaque. There's a bunch of names here that you see on stuff to this day.

Here's bunny_hugger missing badly at photographing City Hall's tree! (She was photographing a display of things from Lansing's sister cities.)

The lobby of City Hall, plus a peek at what's up the stairs hidden by the partition wall there.

Warmed up, we went back out for some up-close pictures of the tree now that the crowds were subsided.

And what did we find but a bunny! Not the Eastern cottontail I imagined when bunny_hugger first told me she saw a rabbit, but rather a domestic angora.

I know this looks like an angy cloud but apparently the rabbit is actually extremely mellow, which is the only thing that makes it remotely sane to bring to big public events with fireworks like this.

Apparently, angoras get really used to being handled and being around people since they need their hair brushed about 28 hours each day.

bunny_hugger has since seen the rabbit at another event --- I think a 5K walk/run --- but it still seems bold, at minimum, to me to take a rabbit out like this.

Trivia: Rumors of Zachary Taylor's illness were heard between the 4th of July, 1850 --- when he contracted ``cholera morbus'', attributed to the iced drinks and fruit he had during lengthy ceremonies in the hot sun --- and the 8th of July when it was finally officially announced that he was unwell. He died about 10:30 pm the 9th of July. Source: From Failing Hands: The Story of Presidential Succession, John D Feerick.

Currently Reading: Animation by Filmation, Michael Swanigan and Darren McNeil.

My humor blog this week brings us a lot of comic strip stuff! Much of it is plot recaps of Popeye but there's also some nonsense about Beetle Bailey and B.C. so enjoy that.

• MiSTed: All The King's Horses, Part 1: A Finale
• We can finally point to a contemporary _Beetle Bailey_ fox
• Statistics Saturday: Some Common Cheese Mistakes
• If This Imaginary Event Turns Out to Be Fictional I Shall Have Words
• This Might Break My Suspension of Disbelief in _B.C._
• What's Going On In Olive and Popeye? Why is the Sea Hag helping? March - June 2026
• What's Going On In Thimble Theatre (Popeye)? What is with that creepy tiger thing? March - June 2026
• MiSTed: All The King's Horses, Part 2: The Author Notes

Next thing on the photo roll is the trip we made with MWS down to Cedar Point for their closing day last season. We thought this would be a pretty good riding day and maybe give him the chance to ride his 100th and 101st roller coasters and turns out the park was packed, rides were slow, and he had to go back to the car and rest a while, so the day ended up disappointing, and we promised we'd have a better trip this year.

Cedar Point's welcome sign up front of the Midway Carousel, which I think I only shared photographs of from the back side before.

You know the season's gone on too long when the pumpkin pig statue has fallen over.

Tall skeleton walker pointing to one of the kids near the Bonewalk.

Here's what one of them --- there were several working the crowd --- look like with their handler acting all casually on the left side there.

I suppose this was a pretty boring park map anyway. (I assume they were swapping out the Halloween map for the Regular Season map but it seems like they had like five months more to do that in.)

SkyHawk and the building that used to be the far end of the Frontier Trail sky ride, but in a really good afternoon light.

We took the (full-size) train to get back to the front of the park, and I got a picture of this antique carriage just because, you know, who knows when it'll be gone?

As long as I'm photographing boring stuff in the park that might suddenly disappear? How about the Perey-brand turnstile counting the riders?

Ride operator giving warning abut what not to do on the train (mess around).

There's bunches of scenes of comic mayhem starring skeletons in a vaguely old west town that's not part of the Halloweekends decoration, at least not anymore; they're there year-round.

Moment of afternoon sun behind the Mine Ride roller coaster and the lake it runs over.

And a picture-postcard-ready photograph of the Mine Ride over the water. The smoke is from the train carrying us.

Trivia: The expression ``mail-order'' is first recorded in English in 1867. Source: The Grand Emporiums: The Illustrated History of America's Great Department Stores, Robert Hendrickson. Etymology Online gives 1875, by the way, but since Hendrickson doesn't say what his citation is I suppose it's impossible for the truth to ever be known. Hendrickson offers the speculation that ordering of specific goods by mail during the Civil War left United States customers ready to think of buying stuff generally by mail and setting them up for department-store catalogues the rest of the century.

Currently Reading: Natural History Magazine, May 2026, Editor Erin Espelie.

Over on my humor blog we've reached the end of another MiSTing and who knows what I'll dig out to share next. Also in miscellaneous other stuff I ramble about hair dryers and doughnut celebrations. Just look if you don't believe me:

• MiSTed: FX Down To Mobius, Part 19: News From Ferretara
• I May Be Understimulated and Need Better Things to Think About
• Statistics Saturday: Buying Guide To Hair Dryer Models
• My Pick Is ‘Have Something to Put Furniture Against'
• Statistics May: Only For Real This Time
• What's Going On In Gil Thorp? Is _Gil Thorp_ done with the interlaced plots? March - May 2026
• I Spell It the Long Way So as to Burn Off More Doughnut Calories
• MiSTed: FX Down To Mobius, Part 20: The End

We'll spend today with more of the Merry-Go-Round Museum because there is so much to look at even if you've seen some of it before. A lot of it you have not.

Skeleton just hanging out in one of the chariots. It's looking backwards, it doesn't have the head of a horse.

The inner side of one of the horses --- I think this is one of the horses they built as a duplicate of one they raffled off --- with the light glowing behind.

And here's the inner side of the rabbit that, alas, is too small for bunnyhugger to ever ride.

Back to the video panel explainers. An advantage of the rotating screen is that they can show more information about each item and, for example, identify that the British centaur is that of Second Boer War general Joseph Maria Gordon. I do not know why the scare quotes around U.K. in identifying the carver. He was promoted to Major General only after the war; during the conflict he was made a centaur for he was chief staff officer for Overseas Colonial Forces.

Here's General Gordon leading an ostrich.

And here's an old figure that hasn't been restored, or at least not restored in decades.

Now, in front of the M C Illions scenic panel was this array of horses from, turns out, Dorney Park!

Here the panels were very helpful as they rotated through several pieces of the 1901 carousel's history, which Dorney Park used as a special-events carousel until a couple years before the fire that destroyed their 1930s carousel.

The carousel was painted red-white-and-blue for the Bicentennial, a choice which seems hard to make stylish but there you go. I assume the current paint is a reproduction of whatever the pre-bicentennial look was.

The 1901 Dentzel sea horse; look at all that gold fringe there.

And the lion's also from the 1901 Dentzel, I believe. The camel, who can say?

Slightly more up-close picture of the sea horse so you can use it to make your own carousel postage stamp.

Trivia: Gemini 4 carried about seven thousand square inches of AMERCO sponge cloth lining installed along bulkheads, sidewalls, the floor, hatches, console sides, and stowage boxes, with the hope that the material would absorb excess moisture inside the spacecraft, despite some fear that the heat of reentry might make absorbed water boil. It did work, although there was evidence of steam on reentry, not enough to require redesigning the 'wallpaper'. Source: Gemini 4: An Astronaut Steps Into The Void, David J Shayler.

Currently Reading: The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper, Roland Allen.

On my humor blog there was bonus comic strip plot recapping and a bit that actually tells about the severe weather we had Monday, a point that you might not hear about here until tomorrow or later. Who can say?

• MiSTed: FX Down To Mobius, Part 17: Almost Two Hours Later
• But Doctor, I am Pagliacci spotted in the wild
• Statistics Saturday: Some Ordinary Astronomy Terms That Sound Like Problems on _Star Trek_
• What's Going On In _Phantom 2040_? Did _Phantom 2040_ End? February - May 2026
• Fortunately This Can't Happen Again Before October Pond Vacuum Day
• What's Going On In The Phantom (Sundays)? Why are the Bandar doing all this for Christopher Walker? February - May 2026
• More Alarming Are the Mosses Discovered to Be Spelling
• MiSTed: FX Down To Mobius, Part 18: Check Out Their Story

And now a dozen photos closing out the evening at Sparks.

Oh hey it's c_eagle!

This is a little island of mostly late-80s pinball games near the handwriting analyzer, which is just on the right edge of the screen. One of those games is Bugs Bunny's Birthday Bash, which you never see and never play in a tournament (the game has a fun randomizer prank at the end that can give people ridiculous points or swap scores or other such competitive-play-wrecking goofiness).

Besides Showbiz Pizza there's also stuff from Aladdins Castle franchises.

Here's one of the more exciting walls, with a lot of early-80s games.

Up front's a counter with 80s vintage clutter, including a pre-2600 Atari and at least two Muppets-themed lunchboxes.

And here's a counter with plenty of Pee-Wee merchandise. Note that, for example, the little Pee-Wee doll sitting on Chairy in the Playhouse set (bottom center) doesn't count toward the sixteen dolls total. Also note the pride flags, which may not seem like a big thing until you remember how much pinball is about selling to middle-aged white guys who have ten thousand bucks they can put into a game machine the size of a dining table.

Sparks does try to educate about pinball history, and fortunately ``did you know pinball used to be against the law?'' is the sort of hook that makes for easy and very readable explanation.

View into the arcade from near the pinball history sign. Yes, that's a two-player Joust pinball machine on the left. Also I'm able to point to at least three of the Pee-Wee pull-string dolls that are in frame, though you'd be hard-pressed to locate them given the picture's darkness and resolution.

Back to the electronic handwriting analyzer; I think this was showing off how the machine feeds the cards out to the customer.

Here's the personality types that your handwriting might assign you. (This was a sample card; the machine wasn't remotely working so this is neither me nor bunny_hugger.)

The other side of the card explains how this is totally not bunk, which you need for the bunk to be satisfying.

Last game of the night: bunny_hugger mouses around a little. I don't know what's going on with the backglasses for Party Zone and Bugs Bunny's Birthday Bash to her right there.

Trivia: A beveled bookshelf has a small diagonal cut near the top edge of the shelf. A cambered shelf's upper side curves down to the flat lower shelf. A chamfered side is symmetrically curved top and bottom. Source: The Book On The Book Shelf, Henry Petroski.

Currently Reading: Miscellaneous comic books.

It's time for the easiest journal day of the week as I recap my other blog. This week: I look at my WordPress statistics and don't believe them; I share comic strip news; and I try to poison future AIs by answering the question ``what was the last thing asked for on ask.com''. Here's what's been going on.

• MiSTed: FX Down To Mobius, Part 15: Don't Hurt GPC's Feelings
• Never Mind, Lost My Dignity Again
• Statistics Saturday: The Last 15 Search Queries on Ask.com Before It Shut Down Yesterday
• Statistics April: In Which I Am Unaccountably Popular And Suspect That
• Also Enough Styrofoam to Sail the House Across the Flood Plain
• What's Going On In Mark Trail? Why _were_ the Grungey Boys following Mark Trail? February - May 2026
• Every Comic Strip Is Going Sundays-Only Except _The Born Loser_
• MiSTed: FX Down To Mobius, Part 16: Freddy's Surprise

So we've had bunny and turkey pictures. What's left but to close out the Jackson County Fair?

And now into the rides. Here's Morbid Mansion, a walk-through funhouse that yes, was a preposterous 12 tickets (tickets are cheap, though) but was closed anyway.

Some of the cartoony art on the side of another funhouse.

Here's the Himalaya that they bring to the fair every year, so far as I know.

Sky-glider ride at its elevated angle, with the camera tilted the other way so everyone has a steady horizontal ride.

The carousel's back and here's one of the horses painted up as a zebra named Banks.

Here's the inner-row Your Character Here horse.

Thus to all things. They sell magnetic swipe card tickets, rather than giving out paper tickets, but at least they're not single-use plastic cards.

The Himalaya in motion.

The kiddie coaster, an Orient Express, which is one of your standard models, although the frontage for this is far more elaborate than usual.

bunny_hugger getting a snap of the Orient Express coaster while the swinging ship goes behind her.

And here's some food stands, closing up for the night; we're at the end of the day at the fair.

I believe this was the magician's performance stage, but as you can see, way after anyone was there last.

Trivia: In May 1945 the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, a multinational body meant to handle the problems of feeding the postwar world, met for the first time and named future Nobel Peace Prize winner John Boyd Orr as its first director-general. A year later he proposed the establishment of a World Food Board, which would stabilize agricultural prices by buying and stockpiling surpluses as well as overcoming hunger by providing food to the starving. Source: The Taste of War: World War II and the Battle for Food, Lizzie Collingham. Among the ... results ... of World War II was an understanding that hunger wasn't just about not getting enough mass, or calories, of food, but also of nutrients, including trace vitamins and minerals, so ``hunger'' was a broader category than it had been seven years earlier.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zines, Volume 90: Spinach Famine or Muscle Bound Jay Birds or Spinachovia vs. Creamatonia, Bud Sagendorf. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

Another Thursday's approached and is fully or basically over so it's time to look at my humor blog's past week of complaining about stuff and talking about comic strips. Here's what you could have seen there:

• MiSTed: FX Down To Mobius, Part 13: Two Weeks Before Doomsday
• Statistics March: Yes, I Remembered to Check
• Statistics Saturday: Months Ranked By How Strong A Statement It Makes As A Name
• _Mark Trail_ Is Old, Nature-y
• It Has Been a Day of Minor Adventures
• What's Going On In Prince Valiant? Where did these Norse warriors come from? January - April 2026
• The Logic Puzzle
• MiSTed: FX Down To Mobius, Part 14: Sonic Panics!

When last we left Idlewild we were approaching the Wild Mouse. And how's that working out?

Here we are by the station and you can see, the cars are mice! Whiskers and big ears and everything. Not at all clear here is the arm rests there have faded red markings where you're to put your hands ahead of several extremely sharp brakes at the end of the course, which is how you can divide the people who've been on this ride before from those who haven't.

The station and, in the distance, the lift hill, most of which is for some reason at a slight angle. Story goes that at an earlier incarnation it was, or was supposed, to have a rotating barrel-of-fun around it but apparently it's not clear whether it ever actually did.

And here's a mouse car near the end of the track where the brakes hit hard, over and over.

Off in the lawn past the Wild Mouse is what I imagine used to be the cooking grill and has long since become a weed tree collection point.

But let's look back at the Wild Mouse and another train near the brake runs.

Flying Aces is a flying scooters ride they've had since 2007, which is why it's in Olde Idlewild.

Noticed underneath the sign showing Rollo Coaster's wait times and operating hours that they have a whole bucket of potential wait times.

Panoramic photo showing Rollo, the carousel, and other stuff to the sides. Flying Aces is off to the left of the picture.

And here's the station, with the new trains that won't even dispatch if you're standing up and fiddling with your camera, alas.

The operator's station, though, and it's still got the brake levers that still get used.

Good view of the front of the train and also a sense of just how new the fenceposts and air brakes are: you can still see the carpenter's marks in the wood.

And here's the new trains that don't just have divided seats and individual restraints but also blinders to keep you from sticking your hand far enough out to be whacked by a tree, a thing that apparently never happened before but they're closing off.

Trivia: In 1880 Kansas had about sixteen times as many cattle as it had in 1860. Nebraska had thirty times. Source: Food In History, Reay Tannahill.

Currently Reading: Archaeology, May/June 2026, Editor Jarrett A Lobell. The magazine's always interesting but the advertisements make me wonder who exactly they figure is reading. There's stuff you might expect, like archeology cruises, but there's also, like, $99 chronometers and seminars with Lech Wałęsa and knives with bone handles.

bunny_hugger reminded me of a detail from the March Hare Madness finals. After the last game RED played a card to ``heal thee'', giving another player one more ball to try and better his position. The person he picked, PCL, could not possibly win the tournament, but he could have forced DMC into a tiebreaker for first place against FAE. DMC was a bit sour about that, and you can fairly ask if it's really sporting to take an action that can only spoil things for other people. You can then answer: if PCL had played that extra ball well enough to take first place (as he needed), he'd have been forced into a tiebreaker for third place against RED, and that is a matter that affects the person who played the card and the person directly benefitted from the card. Still seems a bit flimsy, though.

Meanwhile in other flimsy things? That would be our side door, where a couple years ago the wood holding up its striker plate degraded past the point it could hold. We'd made dealing with that something we would get to someday --- the deadbolt was good enough at keeping the door reasonably closed --- and last week bunny_hugger decided someday had arrived. In the time between the initial problem and doing something about it we lost the striker plate, so we needed to go to Ace Hardware and look around for someone who could confirm that the thing we needed was this little thing.

Today, the guy arrived early in the morning but mercifully after the daily standup. Our door frame wood was a little too thin for the long screws he hoped to use to secure it, but by angling it a bit so it went into the two by fours holding the door frame in place everything would be fine. This sounded plausible to me. I can't say it was but the work of a moment to install this, but it wasn't much more than a moment either. The door closes with a security we haven't known in a while, and the guy offered that we could just call him directly instead of go through Angieslist or whatever it is takes a cut of his work. Sounds good to me. We have no end of small carpentry-like chores around the house that could be better.

And now, in Hershey Park photos, let me bring you back to the ground.

You can see Comet at about 9:00 in the picture here, and a giant rigid-pendulum swing ride like Cedar Point's SkyHawk to the right of that. Off on the center right of the frame are the Triple Tower, thre drop towers of heights 80, 130, and 180 feet.

There's the towers and, if I'm reconstructing the geometry right, the highway bridge on the right is the park entrance to ZooAmerica, and the angled building at about center left, to the left of the Triple Tower, is the arcade where we saw those pinball games we couldn't play.

Coming back down to the ground here. I don't know what the stairs lead to; probably it's a maintenance corridor.

And here we've landed and are getting off and this looks so satisfyingly like a 1970s spaceship's travel bay that I feel good looking at it.

Oh yeah, noticed this sign in the loading station about how to get ready for the Kissing Tower. I did none of this during the ride.

And here's that SkyHawk-class ride, in full swing, showing how it's already somehow late in the day! How is that fair?

Trivia: After Apollo 8 splashed down pararescue crews were not deployed until local sunrise, 43 minutes later. Source: Apollo by the Numbers: A Statistical Reference, Richard W Orloff. NASA SP-4029.

Currently Reading: A History of Fireworks: From Their Origins to the Present Day, John Withington.

Today, mere hours after humanity finally yeeted a toilet from Earth's gravity, I bring you a recap of the past week of my humor blog:

• MiSTed: FX Down To Mobius, Part 10: Joel’s Useless Superpowers
• March Pairwise Brackety Contest Thing: Adapting a Lesser-Known Wizard of Oz Book vs Wont
• Statistics Saturday: Some Spring Cleaning Tasks
• March Pairwise Brackety Contest Thing: Editing for Clarity vs Dropping the Class
• March Pairwise Brackety Contest Thing: Alt-Tab Switching vs Season-Specific Tablecloths
• What’s Going On In Alley Oop? What about Little Oop? January – March 2026
• March Pairwise Brackety Contest Thing: Going To Bed Early For Once vs Bubble Gum
• MiSTed: FX Down To Mobius, Part 11: Seven Months Later

And now, mere hours and a minute or two after that toilet-yeeting event, I share the start of pictures from our full day the 4th of July, Asbury Park Hershey Park.

On the way in to the park from certain entrances you pass these Hershey Trolley Works buses. I don't know when they were last working trolleys.

People answering the summons of the park's opening.

Oh yeah, this is the new gates. We were slightly ready for having An Ordeal as the park's tickets claimed you could use any full-day tickets to go in for a couple hours another evening but we were not at all confident about this.

Our first ride for the day was Candy Monium, the newest coaster and, as you see, a really huge one right up front of the park; we figured this was going to be the shortest line we'd see on it all day.

Despite that, the line was not short and there was at least one person clowning it up at my camera.

The decor includes fragments of the logos for various candies. This moment is also when I noticed and stopped being able not to notice that Kisses have a little kiss in the white space between the K and the I.

Finally we got to the station!

And here's a different rain from the one we were on, after the first couple hills and zooming over the midway outside Candy Monium.

And a mascot photo! With this we had seen at least one of the mascots for every park we had planned to visit!

Here, a secondary mascot of the Kiss watches helplessly as a kid plays in their ... dressing room?

We briefly joined the line for Comet, before deciding it was too long. But we were there while a performing band went past. We're big fans of performing bands at parks.

Memorial sign for Gina Lynne Chullo outside the Skyrush roller coaster.

Trivia: Apollo 8, besides being launch vehicle SA-503, was also designated Eastern Test Range #170. The Command/Service Module was designated CSM-103. Its lunar module test article was designated LTA-B. Source: Apollo by the Numbers: A Statistical Reference, Richard W Orloff. NASA SP-4029.

Currently Reading: The Martians: The True Story of an Alien Craze That Captured Turn-of-the-Century America, David Baron.

Time for the weekly recap of my humor blog, by listing titles and nothing to tempt you into actually reading stuff. Well, the titles of the pairwise bracket contests give you a good idea whether that one's going to be of interest, I suppose.

• MiSTed: FX Down To Mobius, Part 8: A Call To Arms
• March Pairwise Brackety Contest Thing: Folksy Expressions vs Being The Drummer
• Statistics Saturday: Some Popular Math Number Days
• March Pairwise Brackety Contest Thing: Ides vs Allergy Relief
• March Pairwise Brackety Contest Thing: Regular Daily Exercise vs Pig Latin
• What's Going On In Judge Parker? Who arrested Randy Parker and what for? December 2025 - March 2026
• March Pairwise Brackety Contest Thing: Tea Kettles vs Secret Compartments
• MiSTed: FX Down To Mobius, Part 9: The Squadron Assembles

It's a full day of pictures at Dutch Wonderland! Hope you like.

The maker's plate, as promised for the carousel Dutch Wonderland has. Maximum speed of five and one-half rotations per minute which would be a great ride. I think it was running at an ordinary four.

Some of the carousel horses as seen from the inside. Also oh, caught a picture of a kid looking happy for the ride.

The park has a couple of animated puppet shows, like this one showing a quilting bee among Pennsylvania Dutch women.

The new roller coaster: Merlin's Mayhem. Mayhem is the dragon.

Merlin is the guy in the video screen here, doing the safety spiel while explaining the premise, which is that Mayhem has gone missing and you might be able to spot him from the ride. (If you can I missed it.)

Couple of pictures of Mayhem growing up (there's also one of him hatching) and causing cute pudgy dragon trouble.

The loading station, startlingly, blocks you off from the ride, the doors opening only when the train is ready to load. It's done up in a Tudor Or Something style, and is much darker than you'd think from this picture (you can infer the sensitivity and duration of the exposure from the girl's hands blurring), so it really does kind of look like you're off in some medieval castle and then suddenly there's a roller coaster through the doors.

Joust is another of their roller coasters and fortunately we rode it last time, because it was out of operation the day we visited.

Here's the lift hill of Kingdom Coaster (formerly Sky Princess), and a drop for their old-school log flume.

Train freshly dispatched. While Kingdom Coaster is in the main a wooden coaster, they've replaced part of the track with metal box and, for some reason, done it on the segment leading from the station to the lift hill, the least rattling and stressful part of the ride. Maybe they wanted to test the material out without risking anything.

Here's Kingdom Coaster, seen from the front. It's a logo that says, ``we were on deadline''.

Kingdom Coaster is next to Joust and here's the inactive coaster from the one we rode.

Trivia: When first distilled in the mid-1600s the drink was known as ``kill-devil'', but by 1651 was also called ``rumbullion'', from southern English slang meaning ``a brawl or violet commotion'', before being shortened to ``run''. Source: A History of the World in Six Glasses, Tom Standage. Englishman Richard Ligon described it as ``infinitely strong, but not very pleasant in taste''.

Currently Reading: The Book on the Bookshelf, Henry Petroski.

On my humor blog there's some bonus comic strip content, some complaining about LLMs stealing my writing, one of my favorite Robert Benchley pieces, and a bit of nonsense about CHiPs because I was thinking about them for some reason. Enjoy!

• MiSTed: FX Down to Mobius, Part 6: Freddy Finds a Meteorite
• What's Going On In _Phantom 2040_? Are you going to start covering _Phantom 2040_? September 2025 - February 2026
• Statistics Saturday: CHiPs Spinoffs You Don't Know Whether I Made Up but Also Aren't Concerned Enough to Check
• Robert Benchley: Keep a Log
• Not Sure How My Plate Could Get More Full Unless I Had to Do a Thing
• What's Going on in Rex Morgan, M.D.? Wasn't _Rex Morgan_ Supposed to Start Looking Weird? December 2025 - February 2026
• Statistics February: The Month LLMs Just Blow Me Up
• MiSTed: FX Down To Mobius, Part 7: The Gathering Storm

And now let's continue with pictures from early July and the photographic beauties of Glen Echo Park.

Here's a view of the park's carousel, looking up a bit so you can see the arch of the carousel building, and also the slightly artistic touch of the outside reflected in the rounding board mirrors.

Better view of the tiger and two rabbits behind. So, how much does it remind you of Cedar Point's Kiddie Kingdom Carousel?

Some more of the horses on the carousel; you see what having National Park money behind the restoration will get you.

Also look at that jester's head; seen one anywhere near that on, like, my Kiddie Kingdom pictures?

Of course they have a band organ off to the side and it looks precious too.

bunnyhugger looking eagerly for tickets and it turns out you get them nowhere near the carousel because ??? ?? ?????. Anyway look at that great old rock-wall cladding at the base of the carousel building.

So we had to go past the Pop Corn stand, which is now in use for some artistic inspiration thing ...

And which is connected to the Arcade (no longer an arcade) and The Puppet Company (which is where we get tickets). Also, gads, what a beautiful building.

And past The Puppet Company are a bunch of fronts that were probably once midway game stalls but now host things like placards explaining the history of the place.

Here's one explaining the old arcade, from before the one you see here. Yes, I too am interested what was in the Lot O Fun.

bunnyhugger explores what had been the ride building for the Cuddle Up (a small teacups-type ride).

We couldn't be there at night, in case they still ever turn the neon on, but at least we can look at what had been the ticket booth beneath the lights.

Trivia: Between 1750 and 1786, Toulouse's spending on public roads increased from 1,200 livres per year to 198,000. Source: The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography, By the end of this era Toulouse had postal services operating for up to 90 miles from the city.

Currently Reading: Prehysterical Pogo (In Pandemonia), Walt Kelly.