austin_dern

How's my humor blog looking? Pretty good considering that my mathematics blog ate up like every bit of my thinking energy this week, really. Run the past week have been:

• What You Could Get Me To Read last week's big piece and a bunch of book pitches.
• Jules Rivera takes over Mark Trail in October so hey, good news!
• Statistics Saturday: Every Celebrity Encounter Story saving you the trouble of having one yourself.
• 60s Popeye: Seer-ring is Believer-ring, which isn't about Wimpy offering to pay somehow? It's a little weird.
• I'm sorry but had to be late today as my usual sort of procrastination posting
• What's Going On In Judge Parker? Did Judge Parker just reset everything? July – September 2020 A comic strip plot recap.
• This Week's Fun Activity Game with a very 80s video for you.
• In Which I Question The Adequacy Of Our Seasons because I have nothing else to worry about? I don't know.

Speaking of my mathematics blog. On it I ran My All 2020 Mathematics A to Z: Permutation, a day later than I'd have liked, but still, somehow still two thousand words. That's over six thousand words on my mathematics blog this week so I'm doing a great job keeping my writing to a reasonable workload here.

Now to Knoebels's other impressive and amazing roller coaster semi-rescues, as seen in July of 2019.

Crossing over one of the creeks within Knoebels. There are reasons the park floods every eighteen weeks.

And here's Twister, a near-mirror copy of the Mister Twister roller coaster at the original Elitch Gardens in Denver. And why did Knoebels decide to recreate a roller coaster beloved by the people of a city 1,600 miles due west on I-80? ... Anyway, so Knoebels, you know?

The ride-height sign for Twister, showing off Kozmo all dressed for his day-job work as a home contractor.

The Golden Bolt, a piece of the original Mister Twister brought over to give the new roller coaster historic continuity. The installation date of the 9th of October, 1999, puts it a couple months after the ride opened, the 24th of July that year. Mister Twister had closed the 1st of October, 1994, and was torn down in January 1999.

Exit path from Twister. Also someone was sitting underneath that sign on the left.

Another piece of the original Mister Twister on display.

Launch station, along with some decorations hung for the coaster's birthday year and it just now struck me we were there not a week past its 20th birthday.

Looking out from the front of the train. There's a nice little rolling exit for the train.

And the roller coaster has my all-time favorite kind of loading station: curved.

Swans hanging around in the creek outside the roller coaster and separating it from the main body of the park.

The Crystal Pool, in heavy use. The swimming pool was one of the first amusement-type features that lead Knoebels from being a campground to being an amusement park.

Here we get the pool explained. Opened 1926 and with a filter system added in 1933, so just think how dismal the water must have been.

Trivia: In Edmond Halley's 1678 Catalogue of the Southern Stars he created a constellation, Robur Carolina, referring to the oak tree in which Charles hid after the Battle of Worcester. King Charles in turn asked Oxford to give Halley his degree. Oxford did. Source: Compass: A Story of Exploration and Innovation, Alan Gurney.

Currently Reading: The Secret History of the Jersey Devil: How Quakers, Hucksters, and Benjamin Franklin Created A Monster, Brian Regal, Frank J Esposito.

Sorry to be late. Forgot to post the thing before heading out for the day, and spent more of the day out than I had figured on.

We knew the end of this year would be, more than usual, one of endings. Mackerel Sky, an art gallery/boutique in East Lansing that's been a reliable place for good cards and jewelry and stuff like bread warmers that can be given as gifts to people you don't really know, is closing for good New Year's Eve. But we had also heard unsettling rumors about a coffee place.

Biggby is a local coffee chain. It's grown from one shop, 24 years ago, to the sort of ubiquity in the mid-Michigan area that you expect from hacky jokes about Starbucks told in the 90s. I tell you without exaggeration that on the short distance from our house to the Biggby location I want to speak about, seven minutes and 2.5 miles away, we pass two other Biggbies. The location, the original Biggby Coffee, used to be one of those great 60s-style Arby's, and kept that look. But they wanted to move to a new location, one on the first floor of a mixed-use apartment building that has a drive-through window and everything. (The location was meant for a bank, and it turned out no bank actually wanted it.) But we trusted that was something that'd come up someday, you know, later.

This week, the local alt-weekly reported, they were moving. This Friday was their last day in that location; sometime in January they'll open up in the never-was bank location across the street. So we had to go for one last visit. It's not, oddly, a Biggby that we went to often. It's very convenient from the Michigan State University campus. But from our house, well, there's at least two that we pass on the way getting there, and there's a couple Biggbies pretty close in the other directions too. But it was my favorite since it kept the Old Arby's style, mid-century slate and the arched overhang and all.

So we went there for lunch Friday. We were shameless about photographing the place from outside; the newspaper article said that the owners of the apartment building had bought this lot, but claimed to not know what they're going to do with it, which is what they say when they're going to tear it down and put up the same mixed-use three- or four-storey building they've put in all over town. When we walked in the staff said they hoped we'd send them some pictures. They had run some contests, for people to send their photographs of Biggby Number One, but hadn't gotten as many as they wanted. And they had a great blank wall that they figured pictures of the original place would be good for. It's flattering to be asked. I'm sure that it built their confidence in us that both bunny_hugger and I were there with real cameras, and photographing seriously, like, several variant angles of the same item, like this modern-art sculpture to coffee community we'd never noticed was out front. Or just that we were taking pictures at all.

They also asked us --- and anyone coming in --- to write something in the memory book and, you know, why not? I wrote a little one about a time I'd come in there for lunch after getting some books from the Michigan State University library, and had a quite pleasant time reading and having a bagel and tea. bunny_hugger wrote about her first visit to this Biggby, when she and some grad school friends were getting coffee around a movie-in-the-park showing of Lilo and Stitch. That one's a particularly tightly bound memory since she had gotten back then a White Teddy Bear --- many of their earliest coffees were named bears of some kind, and a few have even survived to the more respectable chain of today --- and so the memory's fused with Elvis's song Teddy Bear, and Elvis is fused with Lilo and Stitch.

And we also got asked by a woman eating there if we were staff, come to return for the last day of the place. No, just locals, bunny_hugger moreso than I. The woman told us that her daughter had been the second employee hired at this place, back when it was started. And how she could've stuck with it and been vice president of marketing or something, except that she wanted to be a teacher, which is after all how it always goes.

After all that, we went to Mackerel Sky, to do a last bit of Christmas shopping and also to have a possibly final visit. We can't say for sure it's final --- they will be open through to the 31st, they plan --- but we've got a busy week ahead ourselves. They had, as usual for the Christmas season, hot tea and cookies for snacking. I ended up stockpiling more cards for future events; I don't know how long I'll be rationing these out. We're running out of places to get good interesting cards now. bunny_hugger got some cards plus some kitchen stuff for her brother, for Christmas. And I took some pictures of the place, including of the last gallery installation, posters of all(?) of the newsletters they've published their 31 years of operation.

As I say, I don't know that this is the last time we'll be in Mackerel Sky. But it was a lot to take last photographs of in one day.

Trivia: The original charter for the New York and Erie railroad prohibited it connecting with any railroad leading into New Jersey, Pennsylvania, or Ohio, a provision intended to keep it from drawing trade away from New York City. Source: The Story of American Railroads, Stuart H Holbrook.

Currently Reading: Order, Order! The Rise and Fall of Political Drinking, Ben Wright.

PS: And here's the end of our trip to Elitch Gardens. Here's hoping we can get back.

Philadelphia Toboggan Company carousel #51 again, turned off for the night.

A last look at the chariot, and the chariot horses not for riding.

Looking up at the drop tower by night.

The humor blog had another fine week, I think, thanks in part to carrying some good news. What was it, and when did it appear? See if you can find in this roster of things published the past week:

• Returning To The Alarms, more of my running theme of stuff that makes me nervous.
• How Things Are Going In This 1983 Kool-Aid Man Comic Book, a picture I didn't even take.
• Statistics Saturday: Pennsylvania Municipalities With Other States' Names which shows off that well-known comic idea of ``funny place names''.
• What's Going On In Mark Trail? When does Mark Trail get to punch a yeti? September – December 2019 and no, he hasn't punched one yet. James Allen stories take a while to resolve.
• Also Alarming Me, These Days is my inability to find one pen cap. Send help.
• 60s Popeye has his Skyscraper Capers a cartoon that's not really animated well, but has a fair bit of amusing business along the side.
• Sorry to interrupt, but The Far Side web site is posting stuff in case you're interested in a comic strip from the 80s.
• Some Books You Can Get Me For Christmas, this week's big piece, that started out as me making fun of my reading interests and then went and turned into at least two book proposals that could actually sell.

And now we're coming to the end of Elitch Gardens pictures! Don't worry, there's more amazing spectacles of the Denver area to come.

And then in the last hours of the day, the Half Pipe coaster opened up! So we hopped in the line.

There's the one platform, given a skateboard styling. The seats are this free-rotating carousel; as the ride rocks back and forth, the people on this spin around the center axis. It's a weird motion.

So the ride's a perfect 10, I guess. Up front's the U shape of the Half Pipe track; in the background, a drop tower and a Ring of Fire-type ride.

Looking back at the Half Pipe's loading station.

Boomerang as seen by night. We didn't get a night ride, since it's such a low-priority coaster for us and there wasn't so much night time, but it does look great.

We did make time for a night ride on Twister II, which we weren't positive would be reopened after the weather.

The loading platform of Twister II by night.

We waited for a front-seat ride, since after all, who could say when we'll be back, or in what circumstances?

Peering up at the Twister II controls after our last ride of the day.

And looking back at the station as we left it.

Some of the park paths, and the swing ride, and the Ferris Wheel by night.

Up at the edge of the path we get to see the reflections in the water and the crane-class birds nesting around the side of the lake.

Trivia: The American Red Cross had more volunteers in World War I than in World War II, despite the nation's population growing about thirty percent by the time of the later war. Source: The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, John M Barry.

Currently Reading: Order, Order! The Rise and Fall of Political Drinking, Ben Wright. Primarily in the British political class (Wright's British), so this book was more fun to look at when I borrowed it from the library, before the General Election returned the worst possible result.

You may ask why there exist women's pinball leagues. Then you look at the playfield for Big Juicy Melons, manufactured (though not designed) by Stern, the lone major pinball company, four years ago, and apologize for wondering. If we're to have women enjoying competitive pinball we have to make women feel comfortable. Setting up women's leagues and women's tournaments does something for this.

There is a Grand Rapids chapter of Belles and Chimes, a network of women's pinball leagues from many cities. It's a small chapter. League organizer KEC has been getting weak turnouts to the monthly tournaments. But December's promised to be different. She was holding it as a holiday potluck, and the promise of food always helps. bunny_hugger wanted to attend, especially as it's been a year or so since she had been able to get to one. So in the wake of the Frankenmuth, we mixed up some potato chip dip, got salads from the neighborhood market with the good deli counter, and set out for Grand Rapids, last Sunday.

The spot was RLM Entertainments, the suite where Grand Rapids Pinball League organizer RLM routes his games from. He's set up the place and held two general tournaments this year; we were only able to get to the first of them. The tournament would be women only, although many of the people competing brought their partners and we had a nice friendly energy. Us guys just hung around, some playing the arcade games, some playing pinball games that were not needed for the current round of the tournament.

The tournament was progressive, nine strikes, uncannily like what we'd played the night before at Frankenmuth. The big difference was there being only nine players, and I wondered how that would affect tournament length. It more than halved the time it took: the last round was only two hours after the start of things. And as the tournament started with nine people, the first several rounds were all groups of three people, so it was impossible to get more than two strikes in a round.

bunny_hugger did not get any strikes her first round. Nor her second. Nor the third. She's got a streak at these Belles and Chimes events: the last two that she attended she won without ever taking a single strike. (Those were slightly different strike formats, though, giving a strike only to the last two finishers in a group.) She briefly harbored thoughts about going through this tournament without a strike either, but that would be asking a lot. She took her first losses --- last-place finishes --- on Shrek, in a game where she had the correct strategy, of getting the Donkey Mini-Pinball game going. She just didn't realize that after that, she had to shoot different targets, spelling out character names (FIONA, SHREK, [Gingerbread] MAN, PUSS [in Boots], that kind of thing). She kept repeating the shot she could make, the already-completed FIONA, and so got weak points for that performance.

She recovered from the last-place finish, though, coming in first the next two rounds and far outpacing everyone. She stumbled the next two rounds, on Dracula and on Iron Maiden, both games she doesn't ever want to play. This brought her to a tie for first place with a couple other people. But she recovered, finishing in first place three more games, and knocking everyone else out of the tournament.

The tournament won't help bunny_hugger get into the state's top-24 championship. Only open tournaments, that (in principle) anyone can attend, can count for that. Though next year they're to start having a Women's State Championship, which tournaments like this would count for. Both bunny_hugger and KEC have volunteered to the International Flipper Pinball Association to organize the Women's State Championship. The tournament did also get bunny_hugger a lovely trophy: an ornament. It's a large plastic ball, filled with a few jingle bells and styrofoam balls simulating snow. It's hanging from our tree now. There were similar ornaments for second and third place; medals, for fourth through sixth; and little LED-light strands for seventh through ninth.

And me? I just hung around, sometimes offering bunny_hugger advice and explaining what went wrong on Shrek. And had the slightly odd circumstance of being in a place with pinball and no particular thing to do. I used some time to practice strategy on Dracula, the only game at RLM Entertainments that's also at AJR's house, where the state championship's scheduled to be held. Not that the tables will play quite the same, but that working out rules and strategies can be done on any table. Also on Iron Maiden, since the game has a billion rules and I know like four of them. Iron Maiden I kept threatening to learn something about, only to not be able to put it together. Although it does seem that a particular shot, of the left spinner, is less dangerous than I had always thought it was. Dracula, mostly, I confirmed that the left ramp is the most important single shot in the game. Well, good to know.

We hung out a while longer, with the dwindling crowd, but still left around 6:00 or so. This felt weirdly early: we're used to pinball events that go on forever, that end so late we get home around midnight. We're not used to ones that let us get back to town early enough to stop at Michael's and buy colored markers.

KEC isn't going to have a Belles and Chimes tournament next month, citing how busy it's going to be so near the State Championship Series. (bunny_hugger is the only woman who could make it; MKS, the second-highest rated woman playing in Michigan, is nearly twenty positions behind bunny_hugger.) When it resumes? Well, I'd be glad to ride along to watch my love compete.

It's not the case that bunny_hugger has won every Belles and Chimes event she's been to. But she has got a pretty good streak going.

Trivia: By the mid-14th century artisans were accepted into the 300-person General Council of Genoa. Source: Gold and Spices: The Rise of Commerce in the Middle Ages, Jean Favier.

Currently Reading: Hoax: Hitler's Diaries, Lincoln's Assassins, and Other Famous Frauds, Edward Steers Jr.

PS: Reading the Comics, December 9, 2019: It's A Slow Week Edition, Part II, which is why it's basically just a list of comic strips here.

PPS: More of the rain delay at Elitch Gardens.

Minderaser shut down for the weather --- the circle of light in the center of the sign is a clock face --- along with the treasured cover of the Ghost Blasters interactive dark ride on the right there.

Midway game offering you the chance to be stared at by a rainbow of raccoons.

A Plinko-style midway game that just has the right lighting to really catch my imagination here.

It's the first week since summer that I didn't have something every day of the week on my mathematics blog. I didn't quite do absolutely nothing, but it came close and I'm happy with this little break-like pause. So here's what you missed if you aren't following these posts as they're published:

• Reading the Comics, December 6, 2019: The Glances Edition
• Why does the Quantum Mechanics Momentum Operator look like that? which is mostly me wondering why there's an asymmetry in things that reflect two different coordinates and that's probably not an answerable question, really.
• Reading the Comics, December 2, 2019: Laconic Week Edition
• Reading the Comics, December 9, 2019: It's A Slow Week Edition, Part I

In the story strip updates. Want to know What's Going On In Mark Trail? When does Mark Trail get to punch a yeti? September - December 2019 unfolds before your eyes and in only 1,098 words, counting comic strip captions.

Now back to Elitch Gardens!

Exiting Twister II in the evening sun. The Star Flyer's nicely lit up in the background and catch those dabs of pink in the sky.

Another evening look at Twister II and catch that nice pink arc in the sky.

Another look at Thunder Bolt, letting the light better show how the bulbs aren't quite all working.

And then there was this unsettling sign at the ride's entrance, when we got back to that. There were more storms rolling in and parts of the park would close for the weather.

Twister II's sign lights turned off ahead of the weather closure.

The Tilt-A-Whirl, as one of the rides with cover, was able to keep running through the rain which hadn't yet arrived at the taking of this photo.

Storms rolling in behind the Half Pipe roller coaster.

Here we go! Rain coming in as seen behind Twister II.

Lighthouse decorative structure that's part of the theming to the Shipwreck Falls Shoot-the-Chutes rapids ride.

The Shipwreck Falls Shoot-the-Chutes ride closed for either the hour or the weather.

Sea Dragon, the rocking ship ride, along with the Shipwreck Falls Shoot-the-Chutes at rest.

``So back in the old Six Flags days the DragonWing ride was called Batwing, huh? You'd never know it!''

Trivia: The day before being sworn in for his second term Abraham Lincoln signed legislation allowing the Union Pacific, Central Pacific, and Kansas Pacific to borrow money on bonds for up to a hundred miles of land ahead of the completed, continuous track. Source: Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad, David Haward Bain. (This opened much more money up to construction.)

Currently Reading: Apollo Pilot: The Memoir of Astronaut Donn Eisele, Donn Eisele, Editor Francis French.

So, it happened again: my post about the Survivor Series pinball tournament got rated as one of LiveJournal's top-25 most popular posts. Also for whatever reason LiveJournal sent me a ``statistic daily digest'' for the day, telling me the eloquent word that:

Yesterday, December 7, your posts received 21 hits and 2 comments.

And then went on to list the one most popular post of the day. So, yeah, things have gone amazingly wrong somewhere along the line.

Also I'm once again caught up on events. So here's a nice mess of Elitch Gardens pictures. We stopped to take in a show, for example.

Magic show on stage at the Trocadero.

Looking out the back door, and the vestibule.

Pictures of performers who'd been at the original Elitch Gardens Trocadero when it hosted shows, including summer stock. Among them: Sarah Bernhardt, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Frederick March (leading man of the 1927 theater company, lower left picture), Edward G Robinson ...

... more pictures, including Raymond Burr (bottom center) and stock company photographs and, in the upper right, an actress whose name I can no longer make out ...

... and hey, Cloris Leachman and William Shatner of 1973 portraying David Letterman of about 1986 ...

... top row, can't read it, Doris Day, Guy Lombardo, Gene Krupa (above and to the right of Lombardo), Harry James, can't make that out; bottom row, Lawrence Welk, Tommy Dorsey, the Ozzie Nelson Orchestra, thermostat, and can't make it out but apparently Will Back is important to understanding it.

Back outside. Here's the Troika on the right and the Sidewinder roller coaster in the middle of a loop, as observed by bunny_hugger.

Looking up to the launch station of Sidewinder. Believe it or not I have photographs that don't include Sidewinder.

And we're already into the evening! We stop to admire the late sun over some water.

We got a pile of cheese fries that we did not realize would be a huge pile of fries with seven inches of shredded cheese on top. Totally worth it.

We stopped for lunch at a table beside a bit of open grassland. We didn't realize what a beautiful spot it was until we were partway through eating.

More of the early-evening sun over the 'wild' parts of the park. (I assume that the landscape here was crafted to look wild, is all.)

Trivia: Auglaize County, Ohio, announced the building of a $200,000 airport to be named for Neil Armstrong following his Gemini VIII flight in 1966. Source: First Man: The Life of Neil A Armstrong, James R Hansen.

Currently Reading: Apollo Pilot: The Memoir of Astronaut Donn Eisele, Donn Eisele, Editor Francis French. And, uh, wow. You don't expect astronauts to write snarky, but especially ... like ... OK, he snarks on Joe Shea saying ``we'll take care of you, don't worry'', in a quarrel about attitude control propellant amounts, and then says, ``He took care of us all right. Ask Gus, Roger and Ed of the Apollo 1 crew. Oops, sorry about that test, fellows.'' Wow.

This past Saturday had the last of the really high-value tournaments for the year. There's still some good pinball opportunities ahead. But nothing like Frosty Fest, which last year gave the top four finishers more than ten International Flipper Pinball Association points --- enough to make a position --- and gave the top fifteen finishers more than two points, enough to at least count for most people. It's forty people, playing progressive strikes. It would always draw a lot of the people who expect to make the state championship series. More, this year, since host AND is also hosting the state championship series. This would be the first chance in a year that many of us would have to play the games that'll be so important the third weekend in January.

bunny_hugger and I went, of course. So did MWS. ADM, who's decided this month to try and make state after not really competing all year, and just might do it, I had thought was attending but did not. COE, who's suspiciously vocal about how the system allows bunny_hugger to be in the state championship series year after year when he is never close, said he would attend and then didn't show up.

The Progressive Strikes format is simple enough. You play in groups of four or three people (or, at the very end, two). If you win a match you take zero strikes. Come in second --- lose to one person --- you take one strike. Come in third --- lose to two people --- you take two strikes. Guess what happens if you come in third, as I did on the first game, Transformers? That's all right, though; you get to accumulate, in this case, fifteen strikes total before you're knocked out. It's just one game. You can recover. My second game was Title Fight, a weird early-90s Gottleib, but I repeat myself. I played it some last year and learned the basic trick --- shoot it into the ring of this boxing-themed game over and over --- and house-balled three times. One time I plunged and the ball hit something and rocketed down the right outlane before I or anyone could even see what happened. Another last.

The next game was Dirty Harry, a mid-90s Williams game with a strategy I know and can follow easily: shoot the headquarters scoop at left, which feeds to shoot the Magnum Force lane on the right, which feeds to the side flipper that sends the ball to a ramp which brings it to the right flipper, ready for the headquarter scoop again. Do this regularly and you'll win, at the slight risk of playing a boring game. That's fine; boring is good. I don't play a boring game. I barely play a game at all. I don't get last place, but by a whisker-thin margin. After three rounds I'm halfway to being knocked out. The next round for me is a three-player group, mercifully; I can't get more than two strikes. The mercy doesn't last: I'm up against bunny_hugger. It's on the Data East Jurassic Park pinball game from the 90s, which is one of those games you either get the flow of (shoot the scoop in the middle that starts a mode, shoot the right ramp to relight that scoop, and then shoot that scoop again) or you don't. I never do. bunny_hugger is fussing her way towards getting it, but makes a mistake at the end of the second ball, wasting the valuable Smart Missile that she could have used third ball to collect multiball jackpots instead. No matter; she still beats me. She and I both lose to MSS, though, and I'm on ten strikes of the fifteen allowed.

bunny_hugger is meanwhile in a lousy mood. She sees this correctly as a chance to secure her position for state. If she does as well as she did last year --- tenth place --- she'll earn something like three and a half IFPA points, helping her fend off ADM's surge. She can do that if she takes about one strike a round. She won her first round, took one strike in the second, but came in last place in the third, on Transformers. Her second-place finish on Jurassic Park leaves her with five strikes, still doing well and in the top eight of people playing. If she can hold this pace she might even make final four, which would leave ADM in the dust. But things get worse for her. The next game, the single-player electromechanical (her traditional strength!) is Neptune, and she takes last place. Next round, Aerobatics, a European single-player electromechanical, brutally punishes her, with another last-place finish after three house balls.

Me? I got put in Graunaids of the Galaxy, against MWS, DAD, and WS2, a guy I barely know. The game was a disaster for me the day before. Today? It's magnificent. The goal is to complete modes for each of the main characters of the first movie. Everyone starts with the most lucrative, but challenging, of them, Quill's Quest. I'm the only one to finish this, and on the first ball. Which is powerful because if you finish a mode, you get a bonus, based on how much of the mode you completed and how quickly you did it, every ball from then on. When I finished Quill's Quest, I won the game, although we wouldn't know it until everyone else finished their third balls.

This is almost a moment of destinies changing. MWS has had good rounds so far, accumulating three strikes in four rounds. This round is his first last-place finish. He has last-place finishes each of the next three rounds, too, knocking him out after such a strong start. He goes out to his car to sulk it off, and leaves instead, apologizing the next day for his foul mood.

Me, though? This promises to be a new start. The next game is Hotdoggin', a ski-themed early solid state. I'm in a group with AJG, but also with two people who aren't so comfortable with early solid state games. And I can poach from AJG the key strategy. This is a bonus-heavy game. There's a set of targets that increase the bonus multiplier. I learn from AJG how to shoot those targets. I don't manage to overtake AJG, but I do pretty darned good, considering. One strike is not ideal, but if I can hang out in first or second place a few rounds? I'll have a good day.

My next game is Jackbot, which I know extremely well. I do absolutely nothing on it, and come in a distant last place. I have fourteen strikes; every game is now win-or-go-home. The next game: Barracora, which I know tolerably well from Fremont. My opponents: AJR, who's most likely going to win state, GRV, who can win any early solid state game if he doesn't lose his temper and tilt it out, and RC, who's at least as good as me but just doesn't play much anymore. Doesn't matter. AJR and GRV put up incredible games, ones that go on forever and that reach three million points on a game that's usually won with a half-million. Not that I come near a half-million; I play a lousy game and am knocked out, finishing at 32nd in a field of 38. MWS, by the way, finished 31st.

bunny_hugger, meanwhile? After two last-place finishes in a row she manages a first-place finish on the early-solid-state Playboy (helping MWS get another last place). She makes a shot that's supposed to earn an extra ball, which isn't awarded, and other players point out how unfair this is until she's ready to kick something. On Flash Gordon she takes second place, in a three-player group, but doesn't feel good about this finish as she's still averaging 1.5 strikes per round. She needs some wins to get her target of one per round. On another Aerobatic round, this against AJR, she takes second place again. She nearly takes third; the gap between her and AJR is so tiny that at first we misread the results and think he edged her out. On Attack From Mars, playing MJS --- who up to this point I hadn't realized was there, making me wonder if I missed ADM and COE after all --- she has a middling score that holds out for second place. This is her fourteenth strike. Her next game: Hotdoggin'. Win or go home.

I take her to the table and explain what I know, including where on the right flipper to shoot to get the bonus-multiplier targets. The game starts. GRV's player one. He loses the ball early, and shakes the game, tilting, as he'll do. RLM, the second player, starts to play but tilts almost right away. The game's sensitive but he hadn't been doing that much. My suspicion is the tilt bob was still swaying from GRV's first ball, and RLM was punished for not waiting long enough to start play. (But you can't wait forever, either, even after someone tilts.) And then it gets really weird. VR, another player we vaguely know, plunges but the flippers are dead. He has a tilt. He's anxious about this. It looks like a tilt-through, where one player tilted the machine so hard that the tilt bob was still swaying when the next player's turn started. Modern games are designed not to do this, mostly. But an early solid state? It can happen. The penalties are clear. RLM will take a last place for the match. VR will get a full game, played after everyone else's. This cheats bunny_hugger of her coveted player-four position; going last is usually an advantage, since you can better calibrate what risky shots to take.

Still, she has a great game, one that would have ... nearly beaten AJG in the round I played. Plenty to crush GRV, who gives up, plunging and walking away himself. RLM is awarded a game score of zero, giving him three strikes and ending the tournament for him. VR takes his turn, at the end, and ... gads but he just has a fantastic game. It's as though he learned everything I had communicated to bunny_hugger, and with the experience of everyone else's play, was able to beat her score. Also AJG's. It's an amazing performance, but it also knocks bunny_hugger out. She finishes in a six-way tie for 14th place (which the IFPA will rate as 16th place). And goes out in a fowl mood.

GRV will be knocked out next round. VR makes it through four more rounds and ends in a tie for fifth place. I try to spend some time consoling bunny_hugger, which I can never do, while nursing my own hurt feelings, and frustration that even playing these games afterward on my own isn't revealing anything that good. I can see disaster ahead in the state championship series, unless I can play Grauniads four times each round, which I can't.

There's some consolations. JJ has provided food, much of it vegetarian, through the day, including vegetarian taco filling that's so good bunny_hugger makes one between each round for a while there. JJ packs what's left over for us to take home, and we forget to do so. They have cupcakes with animal rings, so I get one with a little plastic raccoon figure. There's a raffle, and in it I win a translite, the backglass art from a pinball game. It's World Poker Tour, an early-2000s Stern game that they printed up 7.8 billion backglasses for. Anyone who's entered, run, or walked past a pinball tournament has been awarded one. And JJ (who with AND keeps chickens) brought one in, just before she was to bed down for the night, giving bunny_hugger the chance to pet her head and shake her claw. bunny_hugger loves chickens, and fantasizes some about having a couple. The serious fantasy is keeping a turkey, but a couple chickens could nest in our garage pretty well. And, really, getting to fuss over a chicken for a little while without any of the responsibilities of ownership is maybe best of all.

And there's still IFPA points. Based on last year's results, bunny_hugger will probably earn around two points. Not a big help, but something at least. And since ADM didn't compete, this is his missed chance. She is at least not falling behind.

Except.

The person finishing in second place this tournament? (First place is AJG, the person anyone would guess if they had to say 'anyone but AJR'. AND didn't compete.) TY, a guy who plays in some tournaments in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti and not much else. These are low-value things, but they've come together to put him in 28th place, about ten IFPA points behind bunny_hugger. Second-place finish in FrostyFest, based on last year's result, is something like 18 points. This one day brought him from being last of the alternates to being around 20th place. It's a great story for him. It squeezes bunny_hugger all the harder.

It's not impossible for her to make state, even yet. But there's no more high-value tournaments in the year. There's two medium-value tournaments, in Fremont, and if she finishes top-four in both she's in, but that's asking a lot. There's several low-value tournaments that would help if she won, such as Silver Bells or the New Year's Eve tournament. But going down to the last hours of the year, having to pull out a win or else? That's miserable.

We drove home feeling rotten, and thinking over how we didn't make ourselves any worse off for all this time and trouble. But we sure didn't make a single thing better for us.

Trivia: In May 2008 alone one in every 96 Las Vegas householders had received a foreclosure filing against them. Source: How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities, John Cassidy.

Currently Reading: Apollo: The Lost And Forgotten Missions, David J Shayler.

PS: Walking around Elitch Gardens some more.

Back towards the midway up front of Elitch Gardens. That's the Trocadero theater on the left again.

More of the midway, and a pizza place that looks impressively large and that we didn't eat at. We were there a bit ahead of any of the bands that rate posters, too.

The entrance to Elitch Gardens's KiddieLand.

We were about to leave for the Christmas tree farm yesterday when bunny_hugger got a Facebook message from her aunt who never messages her. She couldn't get bunny_hugger's mother on the phone; did we know where she was? ... And that's never a good way to start a day.

We knew where she was supposed to be. She was going to the Tannenbaum Farms, there also to get a Christmas tree. bunny_hugger's aunt had grim news. She needed her sister to call.

We have a tradition of going to the Tannebaum farms, where bunny_hugger and I cut down two trees, one for our living room and one for the bedroom. Her parents drive up, intending to cut down a tree, and then buy the first precut one they see and then fret about how dead it is. We had figured this year to head them off: claim we were meeting at the tree farm at noon, like always, and then actually get there at 11:30 and head them off. We got there at 11:30 as planned. This was before they got there, and we had time for hot chocolate and a doughnut and to watch for their new car which we don't really know on sight yet. They got in a couple minutes before noon.

bunny_hugger's uncle died. The one living in London, whom we visited in 2012, right after our wedding, and 2015, shortly after his wife had died. The only of her aunts and uncles that I've met.

We gave bunny_hugger's parents the news right after they parked. There's probably no good place to do it but we just couldn't figure that delaying would be anything but horrible. Her mother looked devastated, much worse than I had expected. He was 89, and had been frail for ages, and never recovered from the blow of his wife dying. bunny_hugger and I had kind of expected that he might die anytime. Her mother knew that he expected to die anytime, but that after so long of his expecting it anytime it had become something that wouldn't happen anytime.

Her phone wouldn't call her sister, so we just went on tree-shopping then. Our plan to intercept them so we could cut down a fresh tree for them was a success. We found an adorable one right near the front of the lot. And with our hacksaw, brought from home, were able to cut it down in about ten seconds. Also near to this was another tree that bunny_hugger and I got for our own upstairs. While her parents sat indoors, having hot chocolate or such, we walked into the wilderness to find our tree for downstairs. This, too, we found in surprisingly little time. We got our trees bundled up, and drilled for our spike-based tree stands, and drove back to our house with them.

We set coffee going and started a fire. And bunny_hugger's mother got some word on what happened. Apparently her brother had gone out after dark Monday, tending something in the yard. Possibly the bird feeder. He fell, apparently, and couldn't get up, and it was a terrible long while before someone heard and called an ambulance. They found him and he refused hospitalization. This we can't understand, except that he may have been afraid of a psychological evaluation. He's always been a bit dotty, but add to that the cognitive problems of age, and depression ever since his wife died and ... well. bunny_hugger and I don't see how he wasn't taken to hospital anyway, given that he could plausibly have had a head trauma when he fell. If he did fall and didn't have a heart attack instead. But they were convinced he was safe to leave alone, and they were there and saw him, and were the professionals.

The next morning the neighbor who'd heard his cries for help tried phoning him, and again and again, and he didn't answer, and it transpired he had died in bed.

We are told that his executors have found a home for his cat.

bunny_hugger's mother has been thinking over her last call with him, and trying to remember just what he said. bunny_hugger had mentioned just the other day how he went through and clicked like on a bunch of her Facebook posts, going back months, as he would do.

The trees are lovely, although the one for downstairs doesn't have a real leader. We're thinking of what to use to top the tree.

Trivia: The Apollo 12 astronauts were released from quarantine the 10th of December 1969, about 36 hours ahead of the original schedule. Source: Where No Man Has Gone Before: A History of NASA's Apollo Lunar Expeditions, William David Compton.

Currently Reading: Apollo: The Lost And Forgotten Missions, David J Shayler.

PS: Why does the Quantum Mechanics Momentum Operator look like that? An open-ended thing where I genuinely just wonder about something from mathematical physics.

PPS: Have almost gotten around to riding Sidewinder and Elitch Gardens.

Here's a good up-close look at the front train of Sidewinder, and its snake paint job.

Looking out at the other end of the park, with the drop tower and, in front of that, the carousel. The park's parking lot is off on the right. See if you can spot the rental Dodge Challenger we had!

The next train load full of people getting on the roller coaster. ... You know, I wonder how they get the train off the track for maintenance or winter storage.

Also this Wednesday bunny_hugger ran another pinball tournament. She stumbled into this one by accident. Earlier this year she ran a little tournament, Summerslam, mostly so that league regular DMC could put up scores for Stern Pinball's Deadpool tournament. This was a silly little worldwide leader board, for people to put up scores on their local venue's Deadpool game during a tournament. After that one ended, the locals were really excited by the format and wanted more.

After waiting and waiting for Stern to announce their next similar tournament bunny_hugger gave up and just did one herself, the Fall Survivor Series. This caused MWS to ask if she was aware there was a pro wrestling Fall Survivor Series too. This caused bunny_hugger to realize MWS hadn't caught on to the theme being riffed on with the Tuesday Night Smackdown and Summerslam pinball tournaments she'd already run.

She also realized that she could set up the format to let people put in games in more than just the local hipster bar. We picked games at the local hipster bar to count, yes. But also pinball games at Pinball Pete's East Lansing, where they have a Hobbit, a Pirates of the Caribbean (Stern), and a Guns N Roses game. We figured people don't play those enough so we'd encourage them to do more. The guy who fixes games at Pinball Pete's didn't understand why we picked Guns N Roses since it has a lot of problems. Well, we thought a surge of people playing it would encourage them to fix the game better.

We also picked a couple games at the Royal Scot Bowling Alley, because that's where our hipster bar's Beatles pinball game had been sent, and bunny_hugger wanted people to play Beatles. (It's a controversial game. A lot of people don't like how it hasn't got ramps. And it does play like an early-80s solid state game, surprisingly fast most of the time.) This backfired in part: two people put up scores that beat bunny_hugger's hard-won grand championship. And the game left the Royal Scot to return to our hipster bar, when they opened up some more space for pinball games.

Also along the way Stern finally announced their new worldwide leader-board game, Black Knight: Sword of Rage. All right. bunny_hugger set up a mini tournament that would just be for that, which is ridiculous but should let Lansing Pinball League players populate that leader board too. (Maybe dominate it: this tournament's proving surprisingly unpopular.)

Wednesday evening came the playoffs, which are the part of the tournament that actually count for anything. The A Division playoffs would be two rounds of four-player groups. The B Division would be playoffs between however many people were left over, which turned out to be just two people. For a long while it looked like there'd be just the one, driving up bunny_hugger's pinball-event management anxieties, but mercifully MWS rolled in at the last minute so there'd be at least some competition for the B Division pin. And she got in A Division, in the eighth seed, herself.

She did not get through the first round, which is annoying but understandable: she was in a group with DMC, RED, and PAT, and that's a tough set. I was in the other group, with MWS, JB, and IAS, and ... you know, that's not really a less bad group. But IAS had a couple lousy games in a row. And on Batman 66, ordinarily a JB specialty, I had a shockingly good game. The secret to high scoring in the game is Minor Villains, modes that represent characters like Shame and Egghead, and I played those and for a wonder won them. So I was in place for finals.

There, I just flopped. DMC got to pick the games, and the one I'm strongest on, Willy Wonka, I stank on. I did worse on Elivra. And I was just getting something together on Batman when suddenly my game was over. The game ended with the match a tie between RED and DMC, possibly because RED thought he had already secured first place in the tournament and gave up too easy.

So they went to a playoff game, and happily, chose Beatles. Here both these players, both really good, RED already slated to go to the state championship, put up lousy games. Beatles is a low-scoring game but they're both people who should average about three million points. RED went first and barely wrestled the game to giving him about 1.4 million points. DMC wasn't doing much better, barely getting anything together, and at the end of his last ball --- well, we thought he had it on bonus, if he didn't tilt, but when the ball rocketed for the outlane he gave the game a good hard shove, sliding the front a foot out of place. And then, I suppose figuring his game was lost, the shoved the game another three feet to the side, leaving it sitting at a 45 degree angle to the other games in the row. All the onlookers gasped.

And the game did not tilt.

I think it only gave a single warning.

His bonus counted up and, as we thought, he had plenty to win the match and the tournament. And the medal made up for the winner, which was made using a fancy decorative ribbon that DMC himself had donated to bunny_hugger for trophy-making.

We joked that he must have shoved the game so hard that the tilt bob fell off, but --- even though RED had the keys to open the game -- we didn't check.

This tournament got a weaker attendance than SummerSlam, although it also ran for less time, mostly because of our wait for Stern to announce things. But it was also an easy tournament to run, and we took some glee in making people play games such as Wrestlemania and Guns N Roses that they'd otherwise never touch. bunny_hugger will likely run one again, and I'll support her as best I can, when she's had the time to recover her energy.

Trivia: New Jersey became, in 1880, the third state to fund an agricultural experiment station. Source: New Jersey: A History of the Garden State, Editors Maxine N Lurie, Richard Veit.

Currently Reading: Apollo: The Lost And Forgotten Missions, David J Shayler.

PS: Here Are All My Past A To Z Sequences, in case you missed any.

PPS: Another nother day, another nother roller coaster at Elitch Gardens.

The vertical loop of Elitch Garden's Sidewinder, a launched roller coaster and twin to the Lightnin' Loops, formerly the ride at Great Adventure.

Looking up at Sidewinder's main track, high above there. Look at that clean, simple line and eye-catching path. Gosh, how could Gosh, Lightnin' Loops --- an intersecting pair of these --- have ever lost popularity?

... Oh. Yeah. You have to walk up about six storey's worth of stairs to get to the ride. And back down as much when you're done with the ride. Right.

What's happening on my humor blog? Oh, you know, the usual stuff, such as this:

• Some Things Which Are Not Alarming, last week's big piece, that started out being about a hypothetical alarm we might want to have and then got off point.
• I’m late because there was a John Candy comic book, that’s why, part of an exploration into stuff distracting me away from any useful work.
• Statistics Saturday: November Birthdays Per Year more of this formalist nonsense; please ignore.
• What’s Going On In Dick Tracy? What’s Detective Frisk doing not being dead? September – November 2019 And it's a story that dares you to believe it.
• Statistics Monday: How November 2019 treated my humor blog which was, oh, almost but not quite as good as October.
• 60s Popeye Watching: Irate Pirate, a cartoon you can tell bored me because I had so many questions about it.
• A Quick Post-Holiday Realization, and my Family Circus spec script.
• A Great Alarm, From My Dreams, this week's alarm stuff and drawn from a real actual dreams that I really actually had. Promise.

Now back to look at Elitch Gardens. The most important ride, by our lights, was the big wooden roller coaster.

Entrance to Twister II, ``Build Wilder the Second Time Around'', to replace the original Elitch Garden's Mister Twister. The Twister roller coaster at Knoebels is a near-mirror of the Original Elitch Mister Twister. Twister II is not much like the original or like the mirror copy either.

Also ... yes, this little roofed entrance for Twister II seems adorable yet unnecessary. I suppose it's just a themed sitting area, really?

And here's the real entrance to Twister II, which includes a nice long walk through the coaster's infield. Notice the sign at the end telling you where to go to get to the ride.

Pausing a moment to watch the roller coaster at the base of a hill.

And here's the roller coaster going up above us again.

The base of another hill on Twister II's path. Notice the little wooden step path used to get onto the track for inspections. Or, I suppose, passenger evacuation in case the train should come to a stop mid-ride here.

New Elitch Gardens is still in the midst of town; here, just past the approach to the station, is a service road and the train tracks outside.

Turntable Studios, which is just my kind of building architecture, visible in the distance from Twister II. Studio apartments available from $1,205 monthly.

Unfortunately a storm rolled in, forcing the stopping of the train until the lightning passed by. So here's the train waiting out the weather with the rest of us.

Looking out over the departure path to some miscellaneous structure sprawled out on park grounds?, and the highway beyond it. In front is the official measuring stick for rider height.

And finally! The weather's good enough to send trains out again.

Exit path, with the roller coaster lift hill at the top of the photograph.

Trivia: By 1900 only about one-tenth of Britain's labor force was involved in agriculture. Source: An Edible History of Humanity, To Standage.

Currently Reading: Apollo: The Lost And Forgotten Missions, David J Shayler.

PS: What I Learned Doing My Fall 2019 Mathematics A To Z, seven hundred words of thoughts about that.