Think of banana splits and licorice and you'll feel fine

[austin_dern]

For Thursday and/or Friday depending on your time zone I again nag you to put my humor blog on your Friends page. Or to put it on your RSS feed. And then I give in and list the past week's articles. Such are the rhythms of our lives:

• In Which I Explain The Nathan-Nebus Conversation, last week's major piece, and a piece of historical interest. Really.
• And In Elephant Traffic Control News I ponder orthodoxy.
• Statistics Saturday: 33 WordPress Tags I Have Even Though They Match No Articles I’ve Written, a list no less baffling to me.
• Comic Strips Worth Reading: Norm Feuti’s _Retail_ and in researching this I learned the strip was set in New England, and since then the strip dropped in one of those heavy doses of New Englandishness.
• The Most Wonderful Thing In The Comics And Outer Space Last Week and yes, it involves Space Bagels. Just a wonderful vision of our old future.
• Fortunately Either Way I Know Unix as a bit of trivia about Jurassic Park makes me think, naturally, of Johnny Mnemonic, and a scene I just bet is in there.
• Is Anyone Checking On Reader’s Digest These Days? It's OK if you're not, I'm just wondering a bit about them.
• From the August 2016 Scraps File And Yard Sale Bureau, this week's major piece and the stuff I didn't use but might be trying to get rid of this weekend.

And now to close out the day at Kentucky Kingdom. Coming Sunday: Holiday World!

Kentucky Kingdom's Antique Cars ride, the Tin Lizzies, includes this strange bit of signage at its exit.

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Bird's nest spotted in the speakers by one of the indoor pizza restaurants. So I suppose these Kentucky Kingdom sparrows will grow up with a natural appreciation for Journey's ``Don't Stop Believing''.

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Wooden roller coaster Thunder Run being put to bed at the close of the day.

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From a bit of backstage-park visible as we walked way back to our car. I think these used to be cars for the Twisted Twins (originally Twisted Sisters) roller coaster, which was partly torn down and partly renovated into Storm Chaser. No idea what they've kept the cars for besides that you don't want to just waste them. There's surely something can be done with them.

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The amusement park closed an hour after the National Rifle Association convention, sharing its parking lot, did. I had joked it would be easy to find our car then as it would be the only one left in the lot. The more fool me. There were actually three cars left in the lot, although one of them the driver was in and the engine was running.

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Trivia: The only known molybdenum mine in 1915 was that of Bartlett Mountain in Colorado. When a new extraction technique allowed owner Otis King to place 5800 pounds of the metal on the market it drowned the price: this was more than fifty percent above the world annual demand for the metal. Source: The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tables Of Madness, love, and the History of the World From The Periodic Table of the Elements, Sam Kean.

Currently Reading: Pogo: Evidence To The Contrary. The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips, Volume 3, Walt Kelly. Editors Carolyn Kelly, Eric Reynolds.

Comments

[resonant.livejournal.com]

So little Mo available! The poor engineers of the time must have suffered from the lack of good alloys.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

They were very primitive times! It's hard to imagine how different the world of material science was back then. It puts that old crack about the nation controlling manganese controlling the world into a slightly less absurd context. (Well, Diet Smith was originally on about magnetism, for which there is a strong case, but still.)

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

No idea what they've kept the cars for besides that you don't want to just waste them. There's surely something can be done with them.

I'm thinking plastics themed restaurant. Could have a network of log flumes, completely enclosed in clear tubing, holding a variety of cocktails, already mixed, which could just be tapped at will. The logs.. hm. How about chilled ceramic, providing the spectacle and cooling?

You see why I should not be let loose with a few million to set up a bar?

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

As themed restaurants go, ``theme park'' might not be the worst. There was, in the outskirts of Sandusky, Ohio, an old airplane fuselage which the owners at one point hoped to make into a restaurant, offering dining inside a 747(?) hull, albeit with better seating than you get even in first class.

I do see amusement parks using old trains like this for Halloween decorations or the like, and that's practical enough. And Indiana Beach (qv) converted old cars from its Scrambler ride into flower planters, which looked surprisingly natural in that role.