Despite everything, and there'll be a report on that coming, I had the full list of stuff done on my humor blog this week. If you missed it, etc etc:
- In Which I Offer To Help Fix Australia’s Political Crisis
- In Which I Respond To Australia Selecting A Prime Minister Who Is Not Me
- Statistics Saturday: Trivia Night Questions, By Kind
- What’s Going On In Gil Thorp? Cheating? In GOLF? June – August 2018
- Looking Back: As Much Coin-Collecting Stuff As I Really Do
- The Popeye Two-Reelers Used: Popeye’s Premiere, Given A New Look
- The Mystery
- The Long-Term Forecast
So here's pictures from the day we spent in Northport last year.
Until the fall of 2016 this was a rock shop, with lots of the Traverse Bay area's geology available for sale or just admiring. But it closed, to ![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunny_hugger's shock, and the week we visited in 2017 was just before its official(?) opening as the Porcupine gift store.
Poor little petrified raccoon standing outside the Porcupine store.
The building dates back to impossibly distant past ages, when I guess it was the winter shack of someone who actually lived there in what must have been absolutely frigid conditions. Even with the windows closed there's just, like, no insulation in the building. I don't know how they take it today.s
Old-time garage converted into a chi-chi restaurant, the fate of every building in Northport that doesn't turn into a gift shop.
Restaurant that charmed us by having a bunch of dogprints in the sidewalk leading into it. It turns out this is a tiny local chain and the dogprints is part of their look, but if you don't know that it just looks charming.
Non-chain dog at the used bookstore in Northport. He's quite friendly and flop-ready.
Spotted in the wild: a copy of Rich Shapero's crazypants self-published book about being a ram, Wild Animus. Was the subject of a great episode of the I Don't Even Own A Television podcast. The author's self-promotional work has become the stuff of Internet legend.
Oddly derelict shopping complex in Northport: The Pier Group has been abandoned since, I believe, 1983, and not just on the basis of when that sign would have been graphically appropriate. I think bunny_hugger found an article about the place's decline and how it's been caught in weird crazypants legal quicksand since then.
Coffee and tea with bunny_hugger, looking over the patio connected to the waterwheel-restaurant. (The restaurant's for private functions only these days, and these seats are owned or managed by a nearby but separate coffee shop.)
Trivia: By 1649 the English excise on salt and meat raised around £380,000 per annum to pay for the military. Source: To Rule The Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World, Arthur Herman.
Currently Reading: America's Humor: From Poor Richard to Doonesbury, Walter Blair, Hamlin Hill. It was written in the 70s which is why it sees Doonesbury as the most hip, with-it contemporary referent available.
PS: The Mathematics Carnival is Coming which isn't much of a post, but I need to get back in the game.
