rubrquun | Reading

This time around, my humor blog spread out its topics and wasn't entirely about comic strips. Here's what it was:

Next big thing we got to in December was the Potter Park Zoo and its Wonderland of Lights. Let's look at hopefully the better pictures:

First, in the gift store, some soccer ball cheetahs that I feel like I've seen in the object-transformation corners of FurAffinity.

Here, people look over the first of several portals to other worlds.

Over by the farmyard animals location they set up a little gift shop. We got hot chocolate there this time, breaking our tradition of getting hot chocolate at the snack stand.

The rare Christmas Tree not decorated by a local dentist group.

Just a nice look at the snowy ground an the bare trees and the cloud-filled sky.

And now we venture into the Big Cats house, which also has other mammals.

Like here, I want to say it's a shrew?

Lemur is disgusted that I'm being so vague about this.

The bench that's long outlasted Theio's Restaurant now. Also, here's where the penny press machine is. I don't know when's the last time we saw it working.

The nice lighting arrangements near the refreshments stand. For such a long time I assumed this was a pond because usually we saw it after some snow had melted and refrozen into an ice sheet.

Finally, back on track with a dentist-supported tree.

The footprints sure suggest people gathering for specific picture purposes here.

Trivia: At 1:30 in the afternoon, the 24th of October, 1907, J P Morgan badgered $27 million out of local bank presidents to form a relief fund for stock brokers facing the two-day-old panic, in order to keep the stock exchange open to its scheduled hour of 3 pm. Source: The Money Men: Capitalism, Democracy, and the Hundred Years' War Over the American Dollar, H W Brands. This, and a sweetheart deal to sell New York City bonds, almost certainly prevented a string of bank closures that would have set off another depression, but it was also done by one guy strongarming Finance to his will.

Currently Reading: Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, Adam Higginbotham.

austin_dern

Way, way too much time doing things today; it's anyone's guess whether I'll even have this dozen photos wrapping up our final visit to Marvin's. Only one way to be sure!

King Cobra, once again not operating. I'm not sure when's the last time I got to stare down a robot snake.

That somewhat mysterious big head advertising Big Marvin's Used Furniture.

Marvin's Marvelous Monkey Band, which some of the old signs mention as an attraction. I don't know when's the last time it ever did anything. Nor what the Zoolympics With Sparky are all about.

Cartoon renditions of some of the animatronics they have on display ... say, I wonder if that's that lounge-singer hippo who's there for the adults?

Big Boy and Tattooed Woman. Plus a really big boot for some reason. The Three Stooges Go Around The World In A Daze was their fifth motion picture, featuring the classic team-up of Moe, Larry, and Curly Joe DeRita.

Finally, a decent shot of the Vibratory Doctor who is not electric but is pleasant.

bunnyhugger hanging around with Pinball Row.

A wooden chain that the sign claims Marvin's great-granddaddy carved out of a 48-foot-long piece of wood. Believe it ... or not?

bunnyhugger and I finally did leave, though, closing out our final visit to this place.

Last look back at the people inside playing pinball.

My car, all alone, I mean except for ...

Marvin's truck, ready to deliver bemusements and whatnot to you. And that, my friends, was Marvin's, Farmington Hills.

Trivia: From 1894 to 1897 the National League played a best-of-seven postseason contest for the Temple Cup, between the first- and second-place teams of the (twelve-team) league. All four series were decided in five or fewer games. Also each series included the Baltimore Orioles. Source: A Game of Inches: The Story Behind the Innovations that Shaped Baseball, Peter Morris. Morris also noted the second-place team won three of the four matchups, making people wonder if the regular season penant meant anything.

Currently Reading: Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, Adam Higginbotham.

austin_dern

Pinball tournament today, so please content yourself for now to reading What’s Going On In The Phantom (Weekdays)? It’s nothing, right? July – October 2025 and looking at a dozen pictures from our farewell visit to Marvin's in its historic home:

Press clippings on the door to what had been Marvin Yagoda's office. Though this door is the only place I ever saw him.

Heaps of things over ... you know, I can't figure where this was. Somewhere near Marvin's office makes the most sense.

Aircraft and another sign reading Tally ... which implies somewhere to its right must be ...

Aircraft and a sign reading Hall! I wonder how many of these they saved.

Dolli Dimples, I am told by the Chuck E Cheese Wiki, was the piano-playing hippo in the cabaret side dining rooms. She was, you know, for the adults.

Looking down one of many rows of coin-op games, this one starting with --- well, there's an anteater toy right up front, and then the Love Shack guy next.

And the reverse of that view, looking over at the story of the World's Largest Stephen Colbert.

Here's the famed Tic Tac Toe chicken.

And more of the coin-ops. The Mr Vacuum thing is a vacuum-based crane game that I won a 50 cent piece from, and for just a quarter, making it a rare profit center for me.

A broader view of the area, showing particularly the tables where you'd eat or have your party or whatever. So if you couldn't figure out what the wooden things at the bottom of the previous picture were, here they are. The big black metal thing had ballyhoo claiming it had been at the Tower of London.

More of the dining area, plus the coin-op piano capable of doing a whole lot of songs.

Another Marvin's clock, another incorrect time.

Trivia: The Apollo 4 test of the Command Module's heat shield --- on a trajectory planned as the worst-case scenario shallow reentry, with a maximum total heat load --- saw surface temperatures exceed 5,000 Fahrenheit, but the maximum char penetration was 0.88 inches, compared to the 1.25 inches expected. Source: Coming Home: Reentry and Recovery from Space, Roger D Launius and Dennis R Jenkins.

Currently Reading: Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, Adam Higginbotham.

austin_dern

Saturday we hoped to do a couple fun things. mystee was going to be in the area and we'd hoped to meet up sometime, but finding a date and time we'd be free was hard. But there was already a furry meetup planned for that day, first at an orchard/cider mill we'd never heard of before, and then going over to The Arcade in Brighton. This seemed like a good destination to mystee and to us as well and we figured to get together then.

So it won't surprise you that we got off late to this get-together we wanted to attend with a friend we haven't seen in ages. I should have asked when to set an alarm for before going to bed the night before but I didn't, and we got started later than we should, and slower than we should because somehow we forgot the whole world is construction anymore. Also we had to park farther from the cider mill than we expected.

Happily, finding furries was no real problem, and mystee and her posse were almost as easy. There were a lot of regular people delighted to see strange mascots wandering around the midst of an already busy, cheerful day at a packed cider mill. It was in the 70s and rain was forecast for sometime much later in the day, so everyone in eastern Michigan was there.

So we settled in and had some cider and some mill^W doughnuts, and talked a fair bit, especially about all the interesting things there were to see and do around here. We did none of them, because almost on the dot as we finished our cider and doughnuts the storm clouds we had all agreed looked like rain in a couple hours turned out to be lots of rain right now, right on us, and we fled for our cars. This proved to be a mistake as the rain was only pouring for a couple minutes and by the time we were in the car, spongee-ing off my coati tail and bunnyhugger's jackalope costume it had settled to a gentler mist. We'd have done better to stay under cover, if there were nearly enough for crowds like were there.

But this broke up the cider mill gathering, right about at the 3:00 that we were supposed to go over to The Arcade anyway. We cursed ourselves, me lighter than bunnyhugger, for getting there so late, especially after we learned that mystee wasn't going to go to the Arcade after all.

So at The Arcade while we knew Vix who was there we didn't know hardly anybody, which didn't stop people from coming up to admire bunnyhugger's costume, including one guy at the supermarket next door where we parked and who didn't know there were furries in the area, cool. (A smaller number of people admired my tail, which was of course a gift from bunnyhugger.) This wasn't bad, particularly, although it was very loud and crowded. We were able to work out the rules for a couple objectives for an upcoming pin-golf tournament bunnyhugger is running --- watch this space --- and to play the Pinball Brothers' new game Abba, which was fun but prone to draining, like, a lot.

The day ended up short of what we'd hoped it would be, but at least driving home we got to see lightning tearing the sky open, which was very exciting to drive though.

Now, some more pictures of Marvin's from our farewell visit.

CST collecting his second trophy of the night, for Jaws. Ah, but who would win the third and final, The Uncanny X-Men?

Wait a second ... me? I won it? ... Oh yeah! (The 2nd there is the playing order; I pick second when I have the chance. My score is the highest.)

Old furnace clock that I noticed for the first time on the floor between the Venom and Deadpool tables.

And a Popeye the Sailor clock I've seen many times before. I don't know why his shirt is white except maybe to give the center something to look at.

Peering slightly upward at the coin-op merry-go-round and some of the many planes in the area. Also another copy of that Mickey Mouse candy factory where turtles are covered in chocolate and sent out as food.

Warning sign for the merry-go-round that seems like it could use one more - mark. Also some of the coin ops, like the teddy bears at the center bottom, or the 'Love Shack' cherub nearby it.

Trivia: The inaugural broadcast of WLW's 500,000 Watt transmitter on 2 May 1934 was officially turned on at 9:03 pm by President Franklin Roosevelt in the White House, tapping the same golden telegraph key that Wilson had used to signal the opening of the Panama Canal. Source: Crosley: Two Brothers and a Business Empire that Transformed the Nation, Rusty McClure with David Stern and Michael A Banks. It took a long while for the tubes to warm up to that much power and they were still warming up when Roosevelt hit his key.

Currently Reading: Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, Adam Higginbotham.

alierak posting in

dw_maintenance

DW is seeing some issues due to today's Amazon outage. For right now it looks like the site is loading, but it may be slow. Some of our processes like notifications and journal search don't appear to be running and can't be started due to rate limiting or capacity issues. DW could go down later if Amazon isn't able to improve things soon, but our services should return to normal when Amazon has cleared up the outage.

Edit: all services are running as of 16:12 CDT, but there is definitely still a backlog of notifications to get through.

Edit 2: and at 18:20 CDT everything's been running normally for about the last hour.

austin_dern

Got waylaid by things today, including sleeping in a whole lot, so I'm afraid you'll have to make do with pictures instead of stories. Sorry.

And now, some Marvin's'ception: pictures in Marvin's of Marvin's.

Here's a picture of Marvin's from when Tally Hall was still its thing.

Old advertising poster for Marvin's at Tally Hall, with the promise of bemusement. They didn't have any one-armed bandits at any time we ever visited the place, not even non-working ones.

bunnyhugger getting a photo of the Cardiff Giant, and a view from the back of the redemption counter all the way to, if you look just above bunnyhugger's head, the pinball machines.

Oh yeah, and the sign explaining just what this Cardiff Giant was about.

Some small signs near the snack counter.

And a Mutoscope, this one I think with the footage of the Hindenburg crash.

Looking up from there, the Matt Groening autograph and the promise of a Penny Arcade.

Tournament still going on; we didn't qualify for the John Wick or the Jaws playoffs so just watched from afar.

CST collecting his first win of the night!

Score sheets and the official spreadsheet recording who was on top.

People playing for fun while the Jaws playoffs were going on, which is why John Wick --- next to Jaws --- is turned off here. Limits the distractions of the players.

Trivia: 67 of the 75 cars which started the 500-mile ``reliability run'' of October 1902 finished it. Only one of the seven European cars finished. Source: The King's Best Highway: The Lost History Of The Boston Post Road, The Route That Made America, Eric Jaffe.

Currently Reading: Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, Adam Higginbotham.

austin_dern

While we did stuff today there wasn't the time to write it up, so, please enjoy a lot of Marvin's pictures from our final visit to its historical location.

Someone actually using the Vibratory Doctor. It might look a little weird from this angle but there's really no other way to photograph it.

Prize redemptions counter, with the ring-bell-for-service sitting in the lap of a figure I don't remember seeing before.

Another look up; there's a disused Tally Hall neon up there.

This was up near the front, near the pants of the World's Heaviest Man.

A couple of movie posters and the promise of Spider-Woman being here sometime in August.

The poster for 'What's Your Excuse' was echoed by something they really had, a booth you could put your coin in and get background sound of whatever you wanted, there to use however your phone would benefit from it sounding like you were on a busy city street or surrounded by crickets or whatever.

Oh yeah, the tournament was still going on too. Here prizes are given out to some lucky raffle winners.

Here, spread out on Revenge From Mars, are plaques for the three launch parties. Plus miscellaneous giveaways, including 3-D glasses for playing Jaws. (It has a video mode that you can play in 3-D effects.)

Back to our petrified giant pretend friend from Cardiff (New York).

Here you can see the Giant looks out over a 'guitar' made of the word Pop.

Back wall had this old store name sign on it, and a bunch of nickelodeon short subject posters.

Picture of the map of the former Tally Hall Food Court. Marvin's has two places listed here, number 20 (upper, center-right) and 45 (upper left). How this relates to Marvin's final location I don't know. Yes, I too want to know about Incredible Spud.

Trivia: Among the new policies written into the law authorising the second Bank of the United States was that stockholders would be limited to a maximum of 30 votes no matter how many shares in excess of thirty they had. One merchant is recorded as buying 1,172 shares of stock and registering them under 1,172 different names. Source: A Nation of Deadbeats: An Uncommon History of America's Financial Disasters, Scott Reynolds Nelson. Nelson doesn't name the 1,172-share stockholder but does provide a citation for the incident, but it's a PhD dissertation so I'll never, ever be able to tell you who it was.

Currently Reading: Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, Adam Higginbotham.

austin_dern

Little that's fresh or exciting for me to share with you today so instead you get a bunch of pictures of Marvin's from our December visit, the last time we saw the place.

The entrance to the place, promising nothing nicer anywhere. Unfortunately the night photography always washes out the colors of the Marvin's sign.

Final operating hours and the promise that they'll be reopening in a couple months at a new location not too far away.

The pinball game playfields on top of the entrance vestibule.

And looking back at the exit. Note how they use electric meters that might even have done anything as a way to appeal to you to just give them some money for nothing particular.

Some kid's plea to the place.

Lollipop-style scale that the signage explains never really got much use, however popular they might be in cartoons and movie comedies. Too embarrassing having your weight where everyone could read. Also, a Dance Dance Revolution game that I believe warned it wasn't legal to operate in the United States. Don't tell!

Pinball Row in its final configuration.

Simpsons sign written out and signed by Matt Groening, I assume on a visit but who can say what really happened?

Our last visit was for a triple launch party, everyone getting to put up their best score on three tables (X-Men, Jaws, and John Wick) and the best players of those going on to finals. Here's a screen showing the standings as they were when we arrived.

Revenge From Mars, one of the two Pinball 2000 games. My high score was still on it, which is astounding because I set this score before the pandemic began.

Brooklyn Academy of something with some cartoon art of a guy being way too zany in how he fires the Bam! Flag gun.

More signs, here one for Tally Hall and what seems to be an old design for the Marvin's logo.

Trivia: The National Institute of Standards and Technology's refernce sample #4351, powdered radioactive human lung, was created form seventy kilograms of human lung donated by Los Alamos National Laboratory employees. Source: Beyond Measurement: The Hidden History of Measurement from Cubits to Quantum Constants, James Vincent.

Currently Reading: Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, Adam Higginbotham.

austin_dern

This past week my humor blog wrapped up a Popeyeapalooza, saw me complain about LLM scrapers later in the month than usual, saw Robert Benchley fear dolphin meteors that I don't believe exist, and shared a story of personal rejection from our pet mice. Read on:

And now, some more bunny pictures plus stuff that was going on in late November/early December. Say, time is flying all of a sudden, right?

Say now, here's a bunny who thinks something might be up. I don't know where she got the dollar from.

She stops to examine my hand.

I don't see what's leap-in-the-air startling about that but she has always been a very bink-prone rabbit.

Did I mention we got a dusting of snow for Thanksgiving? Not enough to accumulate on the sidewalks, arguably the best kind.

And our house once again flies the pumpkin flag.

And now, a cut, because behind this are spoilers for the Magic Puzzle Company's board The Puzzled Patron, revealing a crowded tavern and what's going on inside. ( Read more... )

And now we're into early December! ... Well, later than we really wanted but still early-ish December. Here's one of the trees that would come home with us.

And here's another (on the left). There wasn't much in the sorts of trees we really like these days, but we soldiered on.

Trivia: Because the Mathematical Tables Project, begun in 1938, was a Works Progress Administration project it had to use the more labor-intensive method where possible for its work producing tables of logarithms, exponentials, probabilities, and trigonometric functions, and so few of its workers had the mechanical calculators available. Source: Empire of the Sum: The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator, Keith Houston.

Currently Reading: American Scientist, July - August 2025, Editor Fenella Saunders.

austin_dern

So, the good news: the Lansing City County unanimously voted this week to declare us an ``LGBTQ+ Welcoming City'', passing a resolution condemning all violence, harassment, or intimidation against the community and reaffirming the right for everyone to live freely and safely in the city. It's also resolved to protect gender-affirming care, to prohibit the use of city resources to interfere with people seeking that care, and to develop pro-LGBTQ+ ordinances and policies. It's a good declaration, the sort of thing you need to be a healthy community.

The bad news is why they were moved to make such a resolution, even past the criminal behavior of the disgraced national government. I'm hiding that behind a cut because you can imagine what might have gone on, but not why it's something that comes to me specifically.

( Read more... )

But, a small and better thing now. One of the members of our pinball league had been changing into dresses partway through, or after, the night, and this past week asked the league standings to reflect their new name, going from a male-coded to a female-coded name. Yeah, no trouble; it wasn't any work updating the spreadsheet for that, and calling her by the new name when drawing up groups for the night. And, goodness, but she was so grateful that we could be normal about this. It feels great right up until you examine why someone would think it worth saying how nice it is you call them by what they say is their name.

We're now getting into late November in photos and you know what that means: the eating holidays!

We had Thanksgiving at bunnyhugger's parents', so I'm sharing fewer pictures than usual to not give out too much of their lives like this. But here's the spread as we were getting ready for dinner. You understand why we brought A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. I forget why we brought the disc of 70s Charlie Brown specials, though. Maybe to have a backup copy of Thanksgiving.

Dinner started with potatoes!

Back home, Athena was curious what all this fuss was about.

She looks good loafing on the ground.

Or maybe she's decided there's something else she wants to do?

Yes: she wants to get underneath the sofa. She did not at this moment, nor for a while to come, but it's in her thoughts.

Trivia: ``Inane'' first appeared in English around 1662 as a serious term meaning ``empty, void'', as in the formless void of space; the word was borrowed from the Latin inānis ``empty, useless'', and often used as a noun meaning ``infinite space'' that century. Source: Semantic Antics: How and Why Words Change Meaning, Sol Steinmetz.

Currently Reading: American Scientist, July - August 2025, Editor Fenella Saunders.

austin_dern

And today I close out Silver Bells pictures but I promise you there's narrative of recent events to come.

Good view here of the camera stand and professional photographers, and I guess one of the camera guys just had his iPhone with him too.

Oh, now, focusing on a dark tree, wonder what could be next ...

Yes, it's lit up! The tree was red that year to observe the ruby anniversary of Silver Bells. Took me a bit to realize that too.

The drone show helped underscore the 40 years-ness of this, though.

And another appearance by ruby slippers.

Santa appearing in the drones with his famous catchphrase, 'ho ho' (ding dongs were unavailable).

And now to the good part, the fireworks!

Just enough fireworks here to make it look like the capitol is sprinkling.

And here's a better white explosion behind the dome.

And a nice bursting of several fireworks. Also, can't help noticing the people on the third floor balcony of the capitol where they can't see a thing.

Close-up picture of the tree, seen from near the base.

The tree needed a less elaborate set of shims and supports to stay more or less upright this time!

Trivia: Bavaria and Austria switched to the Gregorian Calendar in October 1583, a year after the Pope had directed. Wurzburg, Münster, and Mainz all changed in November 1583, but picking different ten-day blocks to drop. Source: The Calendar: The 5000-Year Struggle to Align the Clock with the Heavens --- And What Happened to the Missing Ten Days, David Ewing Duncan.

Currently Reading: American Scientist, July - August 2025, Editor Fenella Saunders.

PS: What's Going On In Alley Oop? Why are they getting rid of the dinosaurs? July - October 2025 and it's a great question, why ever get rid of the dinosaur people?

austin_dern

The dye that we hoped might help us tell the brown mice apart has worn off, so we're back to thinking one of them kind of looks bigger than the other so that's going to tell us which is which? Maybe it'll be more obvious as we have more time with them.

Meanwhile Crystal, the elder mouse, I watched monkeying around climbing the wire mesh of their cage so she's at least feeling young yet.

That's not a lot to say about what's going on today so please take a double helping of pictures from the Silver Bells Electric Light Parade.

Hager Fox, which does heating and air conditioning, was one of multiple floats to have a Grinch.

And here's the big inflatable Hager Fox!

And here's a festival queen of something or other with plenty of lights around.

The giant rotating head of Ransom E Olds watches the crowd.

And then here's a Wizard of Oz float for whoever did that.

The slippers seem bigger than they appear on-screen.

And this robotty figure is somehow tied to ZapZone, which the pinball map tells me is the nearest place to play the Hot Wheels pinball machine.

Here's eternal favorites the Petoskey Steel Drum Band moving in! You can tell I took a video because the aspect ratio is changed here.

Now imagine this picture but the whole truck is bouncing up and down with the beat.

A small flurry blows through and does nothing to impair anything but maybe one picture of the night.

Sad to say Metro Lansing's only got the one roller derby team but at least it has a purple roller skate float.

And here's a glowing cow. I think this is the one for local convenience store chain Quality Dairy.

Trivia: Señor Wences performed as a juggler until the management of his theater (the Casino Theatre in Buenos Aires) decreed that only acts not requiring musical accompaniment could appear, so he adapted a ventriloquy routine he had last performed in school eighteen years before. Source: The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville, Anthony Slide. He'd picked up juggling as a way to rebuild his hand strength after a bullfighting accident.

Currently Reading: BBC History, July 2025. Editor Rob Attar.

austin_dern

Got my panel submission in for Motor City Furry Con 2026, so, let's celebrate with a dozen pictures of the next event in my photo reel, which is, Silver Bells In The City. The nighttime parade and fireworks show and lighting of the State Tree, not the pinball tournament. That's Silver Balls in the City and you'll see that later.

Walking up to the parade spot. The tiger there is mascot for the Detroit Tigers, doing some crowd work before things started. (The tower on the right of the photo is about where the local ballpark is.)

Pedestrian bridge and lights over the Grand River. Note the building that looks like it should be in a Batman opening sequence behind it.

Local news guy teasing the parade for the 5 pm newscast. Behind him (from our point of view) is the plaque marking the 1937 Lansing 'Labor Holiday', that is, general strike.

Parade started! Here's the Grand Marshall, who I guess was in the Olympics.

And after that, the Detroit Tiger!

Marching band, here with the flag-twirlers in reindeer costumes. Can you spot the kid having a Furry Awakening just behind the yellow tape?

But what we really want in Silver Bells are the vehicles made up like bugs, so here's one of them.

And here's the new-model Cata-Pillar bus.

The Old Newsboys, who as ever do ... something or other ... raising enough money each year with their spoof newspaper to put out next year's spoof newspaper? I guess?

Some of the parade floats get nicely overbuilt like this.

Airport rescue vehicle surrounded in lights. As ever, I'm glad there wasn't a problem at the airport that needed them.

And here's a nice float with a reindeer depicted as the size of the house, like you hope to see.

Trivia: Michael Ventris's 1952 deciphering of Linear B is the first and only case of ``internal decipherment'' of a language's writing, based wholly on the statistical analysis of a script's signs, without reliance on bilingual or trilingual texts. Ventris was an architect. Source: The Greatest Invention: A History of the World in Nine Mysterious Scripts, Silvia Ferrara.

Currently Reading: BBC History, July 2025. Editor Rob Attar. It's a magazine I picked up for whenever we got to the beach, which we kept putting off, and then when we actually spent our day at the beach I didn't read anything.

elynne

Next chapter will be delayed for a week, and will be posted Sunday, October 26th.

( Read more... )

austin_dern

Athena has a trait we haven't had to deal with in pet rabbits for a long while. She chews cords. Stephen outgrew this as his body declined. Columbo was indifferent to them. Penelope we never worked out her policy about cords and wires. Sunshine would move them out of her way. Roger ignored them unless they were in his way. But Athena, she chews them. This has damaged a lamp cord and an extension cord and we're not looking forward to how we'll have to protect the wire into our new fireplace's fan. But it's been mostly a minor hassle. And then last week she got hold of one of the wires leading to a TV speaker, a wire that ran behind her cage for the speaker on top of her hutch, and snipped it.

So first question, where to get more audio cable now that Radio Shack is a bunch of fading YouTube clips? Meijer's, turns out, so that's okay. There was the annoyance of moving the rabbit's pen, and the TV, and the stereo tower to get at where things connect. We set this up and bundled the wires in a way that doesn't really have enough slack for this sort of change-out. Also there was the annoyance of finding a wire stripper; I would give up on this and just use a straight razor. But with a little trying I got enough rubber off the wires and a solid enough connection between the wires that I could put everything back where it belonged. Apart from draping the wire away from bunny's cage.

With that done, the other speaker died.

So, first diagnostic. Taking the speaker over, the one on the bookshelf, and plugging it into the hutch's wires showed the speaker worked. The problem was, apparently, the wires leading to that and I had to work up the gumption to pull everything back out again where I could get at it. Swapping the wires for the two outputs swapped what speaker gave me sound, so it was the wire's fault. This particular wire goes through the floorboards, runs through the basement a bit, gets spliced into another wire, and that wire goes back up through the floorboard to the bookshelf speaker. Did I have enough cable to replace all that wire? Yes. Did I want to? Very much no.

So I tried snipping a little off the wires and giving the hutch speaker a fresh connection into the stereo output. That didn't work, but snipping a bit more off did, which is very good because I was on the brink of trying to figure how to replace the cable going into the basement at least and that would not have been any fun at all. And, now, we've got working stereo speakers again, which is nice.

Also nice? Today I close out our Bronner's trip. Want to make guesses about what's to come next in my photo roll?

Also in the museum are a collection of Nativity figures from around the world.

There's only a selection of them on display --- the sign promises they have over five hundred from fifty nations --- but I can't help seeing that bottom left figure except as Woodstock.

Yes, we closed the place out, but we paused for photos near the exit with Santa and Illuminated Reindeer.

And then we went to the Cheese Haus, where this pun made bunnyhugger declare they were never friends.

Here's the big cheese figure outside Cheese Haus, though.

And finally, when we got home, bunnyhugger opened presents, the most delicate of them being this turkey sculpture to replace one my parents sent, hoping to replace terra-cotta turkey that broke in storage years ago.

Trivia: In the maps for his 1513 edition of Ptolemy's Geography, Martin Waldseemüller, who had given the name ``America'' to the two new continents in his 1507 world map, did not give the continents names (labelling them ``Terra Incognita'') or show them clearly separated from Asia (as he had in 1507). In his 1516 map he labelled North America ``The Land of Cuba --- Part of Asia'' and South America ``Brasilia, or the Land of the Parrots''. Source: The Fourth Part of the World: The Race to the Ends of the Earth, and the Epic Story of the Map That Gave America Its Name, Toby Lester.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 74: The Slippisippi Riverboat Race, Ralph Stein, Bill Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle. So for the big race Poopdeck Pappy sneaks a rocket engine on board an old-timey riverboat but it's okay because the people they're racing snuck jet engines on theirs. Just so you know the level the stories are at here.

austin_dern

It's been a couple weeks since we got the three mouse sisters so we finally had time to take them to the vet. By we I mean bunnyhugger, although I did help in catching the mice to put them in their travel carrier. Work, you know. Also in the failed attempt to mark one of two near-twins with a bit of food dye so we'd have a hope of telling them apart. We got our fingers food-dyed green.

We also caught and brought in Crystal, the oldest mouse whom we've had since February. If the pet store was right about her year-old age she's now nineteen months which is getting into old age and while she seemed overwhelmed by three barely-mature mice she doesn't seem quite doddering. But we were also worried she was scratching suspiciously much. And bunnyhugger briefly worried she might be pregnant because of how fat she looked one night. Nope; she's just a little fatter than when we got her in February and compared to the small young mice she just looked big. And we can be confident the young mice are female; we've seen their nipples (which male mice do not get).

So, the mice are all healthy, the oldest included. There's no specific reason to suspect mites or anything, but they're getting a dose of parasite-killer as best we can deliver. Which is not easy because it's about putting 0.1 ml on the skin of their shoulders and do you know how hard it is to get access to mouse shoulders? We did our best and hope it's okay enough.

Also, our older mouse is, despite her advanced age, showing no signs of cancer. That's a great stroke of luck; maybe we'll get to have her a full year yet.

You've heard about our pets, so now, you get a half-dozen pictures of Bronner's. You're welcome!

In case you're wondering if you have enough porcelain figures in your life, here's the Bronner's collection.

The collection only promises to be figures through 2003 which maybe reflects when the original collector died (or lost interest) but I choose to believe it reflects the original collector being so disgusted with what Precious Moments was doing they had to stop.

In the little museum they have this original, 1955, catalogue of Christmas stuff. No, your eyes don't deceive you: none of the brochure's photographs say 'Christmas' anywhere on them. (The snowmen are holding books that read 'Noël', though.)

One of their old pianos along with their 1951 Peace On Earth - Good Will To Men shield, billed as their first outdoor decoration. The sign next to it reads 'Please! Do not ask for appointments by telephone', which is a strange thing to request of people.

And a Detroit-made organ plus some other outdoor signs celebrating the holiday.

A little nativity scene and the cash register that taught Wally Bronner how to cash. That sliding handle for the pennies is wild.

Trivia: After a cholera outbreak in 1849, blamed on filthy living conditions including feral animals, New York City (then just Manhattan) ordered free-roaming pigs off the city's streets. By 1860 the area below 86th Street had been cleared as a pig-free zone. Source: Down To Earth: Nature's Role in American History, Ted Steinberg. Upperclass New Yorkers had been trying for a half-century-plus to get pigs off the streets, although that the pigs cleaned up food waste and became food for their often-impoverished owners made it hard for prohibitions to stick.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 74: The Slippisippi Riverboat Race, Ralph Stein, Bill Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

PS: What's Going On In Thimble Theatre? Why did Sea Hag send Popeye to Mississippi? August - October 2025 for some even more Popeye writing-about.