A short early Tim Burton stop motion animation piece about Vincent Malloy who dreams about being Vincent Price… as narrated by Vincent Price.

US Patent 6,776,687, issued in 2004, covers a “haunting aid”:

Other Halloween patents.

Due to today’s 24 hour strike, there were a lot fewer cabs lined up in front of Union Station than usual this morning, but there were still a few scabs out there:

Previous strike coverage.

The New Yorker pointed me, about a year ago, to what has to be the most confusing book ever written. This weekend I finally got together enough gumption to buy Planet X, the Star Trek: The Next Generation/X-Men crossover book. You read that right, somehow the cast of ST:TNG, putzing about in the 24th century, manages to bump into the cast of the X-Men who are traditionally tied down to the much nearer future. There’s some sort of mutant alien planet or something.

Amazon’s description makes it seem exactly as unlikely as I would have expected:

On the planet Xhaldia, ordinary men and women are mutating into bizarre creatures with extraordinary powers. But is this a momentous evolutionary leap or an unparalleled catastrophe? The very fabric of Xhaldian society is threatened as fear and prejudice divide the transformed from their own kin.

Dispatched to cope with the growing crisis, Captain Picard and the crew of the Starship Enterprise™ receive some unexpected visitors from another reality — in the form of the group of mutant heroes known as the uncanny X-Men®. Storm, leader of the X-Men, offers their help in resolving a situation that is agonizingly similar to the human/mutant conflicts of their own time and space.

But when hostile aliens appear in orbit around Xhaldia to try and abduct the transformed for use as a superpowered force in an attack on the Federation, even the combined forces of the crew of Starfleet and the X-Men may be unable to prevent an inferno of death and destruction.

Starfleet’s finest crew and Earth’s greatest mutant heroes will need all their powers and abilities to save the Xhaldian people and stop a deadly threat to the Federation.

I often wish I could “receive some unexpected visitors from another reality” in order to solve my problems.

Obviously the biggest question is, what would happen if this book were made into a movie? Would Patrick Stewart play both Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Professor Charles Xavier? Man, I sure bet Riker would hate Wolverine… or something. This book seems like it was written on a dare at Comic-Con and subsequently published without anyone really considering the ludicrousness of the crossover proposition. This isn’t the Jetsons and the Flintstone we’re talking about here. I can’t wait to get to the page where Wolverine cuts his way out of a spaceship! You know it’s coming!

This book does provide some support for my long running theory that all characters in books and movies exist in the same single fictional universe. I finally have something to use in my lengthy essay’s footnotes!

The DC taxis are going on strike tomorrow over the upcoming transition from zones to meters. Here’s the leaflet they’re distributing to get all the cabbies on board:

click to big-ify

They list a few grievances:

1. “Meters are the first step to a cut in the number of licenses to 3,000 (limitations)”
2. “Medallions”
3. “Installing a point system which has already been passed but not implemented by the DC Taxicab Commission… When a cab driver commits a violation he/she will get a suspension until you have accumulated enough points to revoke your license.”
4. “For those who don’t know, the new drop will be $2.75 or $3.00 at most, not $6.50.”

Issue 1 is fair enough, they want more cabs on the road and so do I. We agree. I don’t know why meters have to lead to fewer cabs, though. That’s a mystery. Issue 2 seems to be referencing a New York style licensing system; I don’t understand the issue here. Issue 3 implies that cabbies will have their licenses taken away if they’re bad drivers. Good. Who’s against this? Also, why is this at all related to meters? Issue 4 is misleading. While the minimum charge will change from $6.50 to some as yet to be determined lower number, no cab is going to ever drive zero feet and receive the bare minimum fare.  And if they do drive someone zero feet, they should be glad to have been paid any amount of money for their service.  As they drive the minimum fare will tick up according to distance, which seems reasonable.

I still don’t understand the strong taxi driver resistance.

Leaflet via DC City Desk.

Ok, I’ve had enough.

It’s been going on for a long time and I haven’t said anything because I thought the problem would go away on its own, but it hasn’t. The problem has been growing for as long as I’ve been living in my current neighborhood and it’s time to take a stand; I’ve had enough of homeless people drinking martinis in my park!

It used to be that, oh, once in a while you’d see a homeless guy in the park with a snifter of brandy or a nice after dinner port, but these days our standards are slipping. It’s not a gentlemanly highball these homeless people are enjoying, no, it’s a no-good, trashy martini. Martinis are a gateway cocktail that could lead to all sorts of nightmare scenarios; I bet some have even moved on to dirty martinis! The shame.

It’s getting so you can’t walk through a park anymore without tripping over an oh-so-low-brow martini shaker set, or slipping on a pile of forgotten olives. Those olives go bad you know! It’s just plain unsanitary. I don’t even want to know where they’re leaving the toothpicks.

The time has come for men of honor to be counted, and I for one am standing up for the rights of those of who want to walk through our parks and find our homeless population enjoying a nice Courvoisier, or a good old slow gin fizz, not a freaking Martinis! Have we fallen so low?

And don’t even get me started on Apple-tinis!

Tufts students are always out for a good time, I tell you.

Two enterprising Tufts students have undertaken an homage to the Stinkymeat Project, a twenty day experiment to determine what would happen if you left a plate full of unrefrigerated meat in an unsuspecting neighbor’s backyard. The results, while tantalizing, were fairly predictable. The two anonymous Tufts students have undertaken a slightly different challenge:

we will be conducting our experiment above a shower stall in a Tufts dorm. This particular shower is located in a building adjacent to our own, in a suite populated by our arch-enemies. In this way, we will not only be examining the rate of decay of various meats. We will also be testing the amount of time it takes before a group of unwitting residents try to seek out the source of an unbearable odor in their bathroom.

They’re currently up to day 5 day 6 and the meat is just starting to turn fragrant.

Man, this is great, it feels just like the RumorsDaily of yore. Can anyone figure out from the pictures which dorm it is?

Via Neatorama and Joel’s Blog.

Today we continue our quest through the 1981 Knifemakers Guild Directory with a look at our second knifemaker, William E. Ankrom of Cody, Wyoming. William Ankrom looks kind of like what Jon Lovitz dressed as a cowboy. But he’s not a cowboy, he’s a unionized knifemaker, and don’t you forget it.

As you can see below, his biography indicates that, like Bill Amoureux, William Ankrom has a knifemaker philosophy: “Second best won’t cut it.” Notice the knifemaking pun, I already like this guy better than Bill Amoureux and his less adventurous philosophy.

And, like most knifemakers at the time, Ankrom had a brochure available for $1. I’m considering attempting to mail out for all these guys’ brochures to see if they’ll (a) get the mail, and (b) honor the 1981 brochure pricing structure.

Click to big-ify.

Sadly, my efforts to locate more information about William E. Ankrom’s current activities were ineffective. While his name is popular genealogically (check out this intriguing storiey about exploding whiskey barrels from the turn of the century), there’s simply not a lot of information about this most recent William Ankrom. The only tidbit that I can come up with is that he is, apparently, still living in Cody, Wyoming.

Previous knifemaker: Bill Amoureux.
Next knifemaker: James R. (Dick) Atkinson.

Other 1981 Knifemaker’s Guild Directory Pages: first page, all pages, all pictures.

Read more »

I’ve commented in the past that Ron Paul’s supporters, when they swarm, can be a little bit difficult to deal with. It seems that actual political sites have felt this effect much more strongly than I have. MSNBC asked the Ron Paul people to stop emailing them. RedState (like Kos for the right) has gone so far as to ban them from participating.

I like how a quasi-mainstream libertarian candidate can create havoc in a campaign.

As I’ve previously indicated, I have a running interest in the board game Guess Who?  It turns out that I’m not the only one. Check out this high school computer science student’s efforts to develop a Guess Who? AI engine to compete against humans. He worked on it for at least 19 weeks and was never able to produce a playable version, but it’s a start.

I’m desperately awaiting the playable web Guess Who? game. Can my readers who know how to build robots please get cracking on this?

Earlier we asked “what does God need with a starship?” Today we ask a slightly different question:

Again, if only I were a video editor, this could have actually looked decent.

This past Friday was Nevada Day.  I wonder how CrazyMonk celebrated.

As of October 9th, every state in the United States was facing drought conditions ranging from “dry” to “exceptional” except one.  Who wants to guess?

It’s not Hawaii.

I’d never seen this before.  I’m relieved that the news producer was smart enough to figure it out.

The Maryland Transit Administration’s “Frequently Asked Questions for MARC Train” page is exceedingly whiny (or implies exceedingly whiny customers):

• Why can’t my train have more equipment?
• I don’t like the single level cars. Why can’t my train operate with the bi-level cars?
• Why did you buy these old gallery cars from Chicago?
• Why does my train come in so far out from the station at Washington?
• Why doesn’t MARC do something about CSX running freight trains ahead of MARC trains?
• MARC ridership is high and I pay a lot for my ticket, why isn’t the service better?
• Why didn’t I hear an announcement about my late train on the radio or TV?

On the topic of Communism, here’s my current background (via Threadless):

Tom Lehrer offers up some advice for foreigners visiting the United States in Pollution:

The computer animated 10 Commandments remake looks horrible.  Who wants to hear Christian Slater’s wheedling “Let my people go”?  They have Ben Kingsley in the movie, and yet they cast Christian Slater as Moses?  I don’t understand.

Today we start the journey through the 1981 Knifemakers Guild Directory with Bill Amoureux. As you can tell from Bill’s picture, he appears to have been a fairly happy-go-lucky fellow with an endearing Bob Ross look about him. Don’t let that fool you, the man can make a knife!

Click to big-ify

You can read Bill’s blurb describing his knifemaking life in Alaska in the images above, or you can scroll to the end of the post (past the jump) to read a transcription. It is worth noting that Amoureux does in fact have a knifemaking philosophy. I don’t have one of those. I wonder how many of our future knifemakers will? I’ll have to keep an eye on that.

Bill Amoureux Today

UPDATED: At the request of Mr. Amoureux, all information discussing his present life has been removed from the site and any previously posted information may have been inaccurate.

Other 1981 Knifemaker’s Guild Directory Pages: first page, all pages.

Read more »

Tom Lehrer crafted this song when he realized that if we’re going to write songs about World War III, we’re really going to have write them before the bombs destroy all of civilization. He took a first stab at the genre with So Long Mom:

Karl Marx was quite the family man, having had five legitimate, named children with his wife Jenny von Westphalen. His children’s names?

1. Jenny Caroline (m. Longuet; 1844–1883)
2. Jenny Laura (m. Lafargue; 1846–1911)
3. Edgar (1847–1855)
4. Henry Edward Guy (”Guido”; 1849–1850)
5. Jenny Eveline Frances (”Franziska”; 1851–1852)
6. Jenny Julia Eleanor (1855–1898)

I feel somewhat bad that none of his children lived long enough to see his work be implemented in 1917.  Jenny Laura almost made it too… a mere six more years and she could have seen her father’s ideas put into practice (sort of).

Thanks trp.

Why aren’t I in New York to see this?

Troeltsch presents the following trivia question:

Five players on the 2007 Red Sox (at any point this year, not just the 25-man roster) share last names (one with a very minor change) with the 2007 Rockies. Name them. A hint: 4 of the five are hispanic (latino? whatever) names.

Knowing nothing about anything, I leave this to my few readers to figure out.