Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

On my humor blog this week I finally wrapped up the Tale of Jimmy Rabbit and I just realized I forgot a joke I wanted to put in the closing sketch. Well, I'll just edit that in now and the newsgroup version will have to be out of date is all. Also, there's two comic strip plot recaps and some news about comic strip artists changing so you should be in good shape reading:

• MiSTed: The Tale of Jimmy Rabbit, Part 21: A Queer Cure
• _Nancy_ and _Thatababy_ Look Weird Because New People Are Drawing Them
• Statistics Saturday: Top Days Of 2026 So Far
• Robert Benchley: Hollywood’s Loss
• What’s Going On In Thimble Theatre? You forgot about Thimble Theatre, right? October – November 2025
• What’s Going On In Alley Oop? What happened to the dinosaurs and raccoons? October 2025 – January 2026
• I’m More of a Mustard Enthusiast, Which Is a Different Set of Problems
• MiSTed: The Tale of Jimmy Rabbit, Conclusion

As usual for a Thursday now, please enjoy a dozen pictures from Plopsaland. Don't worry, there's only like twelve weeks left of this.

People being loaded onto The Ride To Happiness, but composed as if an album cover.

And the steps back down, which look like the fancy queue gates you never use in Roller Coaster Tycoon.

Train getting ready to depart the station here.

And here it is, on a low-speed spiral and already spinning.

More of the spinning car. Someone looks like they aren't quite having fun there.

We went back to the elevated swing ride, the Nacht Wacht Flyer, and discovered that --- much like Windseeker at many Cedar Fair parks has done --- the winds were too much.

Well, over to the spinning teacups ride, here doing its best to compete with Gilroy Gardens and d'Efteling for making the setting really good.

A better view of the teapot and cups. Also the floor, which looks too good for an amusement park ride despite being basically what a carousel might have.

Now we got on the train ride; here we are going past the #LikeMe Coaster.

And we go past the sleeping giant of Meli Park.

One of the other stations and the best view you're getting of the trash bin decor. It's a troll inside a gazebo or flat ride.

The other side of that little city-driving kiddie ride, where you can see there's gas pumps that do something, though we didn't see what.

Trivia: England's King Henry III esteemed the needlewoman Mabel of Bury St Edmunds, who made a chasuble in 1239 for him and an embroidered standard for Westminster Abbey in 1234, such that he commanded she be given six measures of cloth and a length of rabbit fur as reward, an honor usually reserved for knights of the realm. Source: Threads of Life: A History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle, Clare Hunter.

Currently Reading: A Call to Arms: Mobilizing America for World War II, Maury Klein.

Posted by Paul Taylor

https://wapsisquare.com/comic/sweaty-shower/

https://wapsisquare.com/?post_type=comic&p=20604

https://wapsisquare.com/comic/sweaty-shower/

https://wapsisquare.com/?post_type=comic&p=20604

New Year's Day Night --- please try to keep up with me --- we saw the weather was less bad, and so we went to the Lake Victoria Light Show. This is a big setup by a guy on the outskirts of the city, near Lake ... you know ... and he had posted a day or two before how he was taking the time to fix some problems that came up on Sunday with all the rain. So while he might take the light show down anytime, we had reason to hope it wasn't quite so soon as this.

There was also the promise he might try some new things, now that Christmas was over, and so he did. Some of the Christmas music, played on his low-power FM station, was gone! In its place were more general rock tunes, not seasonal at all. The light show was as intense and varied for ... oh, uh. Not Get Ready For This, but something with a similar tone ... as it would have been for ``Blue Christmas'', but the energy still felt different. One wonders if he's preparing for a summer show; apparently he already does a Halloween lights show and I guess as long as the things are up, might as well use them. Curiously cut were ``The House On Christmas Street'', this novelty song sold to people who do overdone Christmas Light houses (with their own street in place of Christmas Street on the recording) and the request to donate to the food bank made every half-hour. Also nearly all the bits where an inflatable snowman fills up and then, to some goofy joke song, 'melts' again were run one after the other, instead of spacing out between songs. Possibly the program of performances got scrambled in the song substitutions. We were plausibly the last people there for the night.

And a couple nights later we drove all the way to Brooklyn, Michigan, to return to the Michigan International Speedway. You might remember that in mid-November we went to a 5K run or, for us, walk, to see the many light displays set up on the track while sauntering about. Now, just before Twelfth Night, was their last day in operation and we wanted to drive through it the way everyone not on the 5K experienced the ride.

We started --- wait for it --- later than we really meant to and were a little bit worried they might stop letting cars in before we got there. They did not, and in fact we wouldn't even be the last car in. A couple cars came in immediately after us and I finally pulled to the side long enough that they passed, and then we suspected we were the final people there, only to have someone catch up to us at the end of the trail.

We had seen all or almost all the paid-course lighting when we walked through it and so anticipated we wouldn't need to take many photographs at all, despite which we did. Completely new to us were the fixtures for sponsors, which you see in the long drive up to the ticket booth. There did seem to be more than we remembered there and some were pretty clever at that, so we also got bunches of pictures of those that won't be nearly as good as seeing them in person.

The light show was great but was done before we were ready for it to finish, and was great to have done, much like the holidays are. Back to quotidian stuff soon, and then back to pinball stuff shortly after that.

I'm happy now to bring you pictures of the ride to happiness, as we saw it back in the day (June):

So we got another Ride to Happiness. This time we noticed the boardwalk leading to it has the ride's (English) motto to 'Live Today .. Love Tomorrow ... Unite Forever' in it.

Some artificial lily pads in the waters surrounding the ride.

And here we are back at the station. There is something really Victorian Train Station about the high glass windows with all the muntins like this.

There's that motto again, underneath the computer-animated face greeting you into this.

Ride ready for dispatch. Half of everyone starts out backwards but the spinning --- unlike other spinning coasters we've been on --- starts almost immediately out the gate, rather than waiting even until we ascend the lift hill.

So while you can pick your seat, front- or back-facing, as you load the station there's no way to know which way you'll even start, and you certainly will spin during the ride.

Trivia: Noon, originally ``none'', was the ninth hour of the day, around what we would term three in the afternoon; the time retreated to its modern position over the fourteenth century, likely because during fasting periods monks could not eat before the none hour, and in long summer days this would take quite some time. Source: Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement From Cubits to Quantum Constants, James Vincent. This was also an era when there were twelve hours to daylight, with the length of the hour growing in summer.

Currently Reading: A Call to Arms: Mobilizing America for World War II, Maury Klein.

This afternoon we saw a traveling exhibit at the Frick Art Museum, The Scandinavian Home. It's only there for a few more days; we kept meaning to go on a day with docent tours and logistics kept happening, but finally, success. (The remaining tours are this Friday and Saturday.)

The pieces are mostly drawn from one private collection of works from Scandinavia from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. From the museum's description:

Exhibitions of Scandinavian art typically focus on either painting — often on the work of a single artist or theme such as landscape — or on artisanal design. The Scandinavian Home integrates folk, decorative, and fine art with “home” as a central metaphor, mirroring the tastes and convictions of the period’s collectors and creators.

There were a lot of paintings, many of them landscapes, many of them striking -- capturing the feel of hoarfrost or high-latitude twilights. The collection also included some furniture items, including this really nifty cabinet:

It's pretty shallow. I don't know its intended use:

From the description:

Lars Kinsarvik, Norwegian 1846-1925:
The complex design of this cabinet rewards close looking: trolls, animals, enigmatic faces, and fantastical details peer out from the interlaced patterns -- folkloric imagery that helped forge a national design identity in Norway at the turn of the 20th century. [...] A chronicler of Viking ornament and rural material culture, he incorporated historical motifs into his invented repertiore of trolls and other imaginary creatures.

The exhibit includes an ornate chair (obviously well-used) by the same artist. The docent told this story: the collectors found the chair, very beat up and covered in crud, at some sale or other, bought it, and stuck it in their basement. Later they started to clean it up and realized they had something special, but they didn't know anything more about its origins. The chair was, it turned out, one of a pair: somewhere in Europe (I forget the details) they happened to be at a museum, saw the other one, and said "we have one just like that at home!". So that's how they found out who the artist was. I didn't ask, but I assume they acquired the cabinet sometime after that.

You can see the exhibit any time the museum is open (through Sunday), and we wandered around on our own for a while before the scheduled tour. The guided tour is about an hour; it was informative and the docent was friendly and approachable. I appreciate having a guided overview of an exhibit before diving into the details and reading all the little cards one by one (which at most museums is physically taxing for me). After the tour we went back through the exhibit to take a closer look at things.

I said that reading the display cards is usually a challenge. The Frick Museum gets major kudos for always having printed booklets (at decently large font) for people to use. Each page includes the information from the card and a small photo of the item it's for. Sometimes I have to do some flipping through the book when starting a new "section", especially when there are many rooms that you can take different paths through or when there are displays in the middle of the room as well as along the walls. But it works pretty well and it's a huge accessibility win. I don't know how long it'll be there, but I later found the PDF for this exhbibit on their website (and I see that somebody has already saved it in the Wayback Machine).

The exhibit included a few tapestries and carpets. Most were displayed so you could see only one side, as usual, but they had one hanging in a room so that you could view both sides. This is a tapestry from 1906 of wool and linen; they did not include information about dyes. After only 120 years of, presumably, being hung in range of sunlight, compare:

Front:

Back:

I'm leading a library Zoom discussion on this 2005 Newbery Medal (YA) winner next week. Discussion prompts:

1. The two sisters each think of the other as having saved them from the dog. Are they both right? How does this relationship hold up during the book?
2. Humor is mixed in with the grief of the story.  How did the balance work for you?
3. What's the longest road trip you've taken? How did it compare to the Takeshima family's trip?
4. How did the family deal with the move from Iowa to Georgia? 
5. While finishing up the trip to Georgia, Katie notices that every Georgia town declares some claim to fame. Have you noticed towns in Maryland that do this? Do you remember any other town-identity signs from your travels? (e.g., Webster, NY "Where Life is Worth Living").    
6. Who else laughed when Katie's dad told her what the "B" word meant ("Bad Lady", referring to the mean woman at the hotel), and told her not to tell her her mom he'd told her? 
7. What did you think of the chess in this story compared to *The Queen's Gambit* that some of us read earlier?
8. What did you think of the way the story portrayed the main adults?
9. Did you have a favorite character? (mom, dad, Katie, Lynn, Sammy, Uncle Katsuhisa, Silly, others)?
10. Lynn keeps a diary. Have you ever maintained a diary for long? Have you read any diaries?
11. What did you think of the portrayals of racism in the story?  Were they age-appropriate? Should the story have gone farther? 
12. The chicken processing plant has long and hard hours, but also emphasizes hygiene. How does this compare to other food-related jobs you've read about in books? 
13. What are examples of kindness of strangers shown in this book? 
14. How did Katie's dad and Katie's stress/grief coping mechanisms compare?
15. Is there a scene or quote you'd like to share and discuss?
16. Would you recommend this book to others?

• https://www.bookbrowse.com/reading_guides/detail/index.cfm/book_number/1522/kirakira

We went on New Year's Day to the Festival of Trees at Lansing's historic Turner-Dodge House, the very building where Turner Dodge invented the automobile or something. We got there closer to the 5 pm closing hour than we expected, in part because we'd gotten the bad information online that they were open to 7:00, but we had time to visit every room in the house anyway. We also would have had an extra quarter-hour or more; while were there the docent promised a woman on the phone that if she and her gaggle of kids could get there by 5:15 they'd have the place open for them, but not later. I don't know why so many people are missing on the proper closing hours. My supposition is that some LLM somewhere decided the Turner-Dodge House could stay open until 7:00 and if that were false, that was a burden they were content to make the Turner-Dodge House staff bear.

Every room in the century-and-a-half-old house had at least one tree in it, many of them several trees. There were a couple that were straightforward, keeping their whimsical elements to a topper or a couple special elements. There were a number that were a little odd but in normal ways, if that makes sense, like a fairy tree where all the ornaments were fairy-winged dolls; that's not far outside the range of things someone might use as their ordinary tree. And then there were some high-concept ones, such as the humane society's ``tree'' made out of cat trees and canned goods and animal toys, things that had been donated and that I assume after the event go back into the donation bin. One that I ultimately voted for as best was in the ballroom on the top floor, a snowman tree framed by a giant cardboard book to look like you were stepping into a fairy-tale. Another that I almost voted for, and that bunnyhugger did, was an actual game of chutes and ladders, with several dozen colored and numbered squares, and half-pipes and ladders, with a couple of movable ornaments for your game token and inflatable six-sided dice to play.

Also a couple of rooms that we hadn't seen previously were open, including a billiards room just off the ballroom. It had a model train set up, but the track was in all many pieces so there was no hope of it running. Also in the corners they still had the plastic skeletons from some Halloween event we assumed. On the first floor they had open the servants kitchen, which we weren't fully sure we were allowed in, but they had explanatory signs in there so we can't have been doing anything too bad by nosing around. Also past that, open, was the real kitchen, with the staff refrigerator and all. We probably weren't supposed to be in there so we didn't stick around, past observing what rooms still had those push-button on and off switches along with your modern rocker-style light switch.

As we drove home we went past the pet store we normally get stuff from, and saw cars in the lot and figured this a good chance to get some pet food. Nope: the store was closed. Why so many cars there, then? We don't know; maybe the staff holiday party? No telling.

Meanwhile seven months ago we were in the middle of a parade. We'll start with a couple stills from the movie I took and then go back to normal pictures when I accidentally stopped the movie recording.

Bumba! I guess! Some kind of clown show, at least, as we saw at that playground area and also one of the indoor areas that I can't remember if I shared pictures of yet, or if they're coming. You'll see.

And some bees, which bunnyhugger tells me are coincidental to the park's former existence as Meli Park, built around an apiary.

And there's the close of the parade with beloved Plopsaland character (???) waving to everyone.

Back to ordinary park activities like not being eaten by a pterodactyl statue; how's that sound to you?

Back to photographing those ducks in a circle. It does look fun, doesn't it ?

And here's the entrance to The Ride To Happiness, seen from the side where there's gardening and all.

Trivia: In 1920 Marjorie Merriweather Post, inheritor of C W Post's cereal company, married the second of her four husbands, investor E F Hutton. Hutton left Wall Street to work for what would become General Foods. Source: A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression, Jane Ziegelman and Andrew Coe.

Currently Reading: A Call to Arms: Mobilizing America for World War II, Maury Klein.

PS: What’s Going On In Alley Oop? What happened to the dinosaurs and raccoons? October 2025 – January 2026 in time travel nonsense, but there's some good art too.

The essence of gold was rare, he conquered with his virtue, offered his gifts and fell behind the sun...

Dedicated to the soul of my dear friend's father, Nadir Oğuz...

The name yaybahar (pronounced /jajba'har/) has Turkish origin. It is a composite of two words: yay means a "string" or a "coiled string" and bahar means the season "spring." According to Gorkem Sen, the name is derived from the idea of a new life or a new beginning. [1]

I'm not dead; I've taken today & tomorrow off work and would not be surprised if I call in sick Thursday & Friday as well; I'm in less pain than I was, but I'm still pretty uncomfortable; mostly stopped coughing but my head is full of goo, which may honestly be worse. I felt marginally better yesterday, and thank goodness I took advantage of it to change my bedlinens and run the robovac, because today the prospect of taking the dirty linens down to the basement to wash them is making me quail. (ETA: 1/3 accomplished.) Naptime now.

The original plan for New Year's Eve was that we might go out to the Lake Victoria Lights Show. This is this guy who's set up a bajillion lights around his house and a low-power FM radio station playing music they're synchronized to. But New Year's Eve Day started with the 412th day in a row this season of a light snow turning into a mushy, icy crud on the roads. I dealt with enough of that popping out to Meijer's for hors d'ouevres that I wasn't looking forward to doing that, only at night, and on country roads, and bunnyhugger took a look out the window and agreed.

So instead --- with no New Year's Eve tournament that we hoped to attend, nor the desire to go to our hipster bar and face that crowd on that night --- we stayed home, with the old movie-and-snacks plan. This would turn out to be our chance to watch the Alastair Sim Scrooge, which we'd missed over Christmas proper, and once again we noticed things we hadn't before, like the way Scrooge's pleading with Jacob Marley foreshadows his begging Ghost of Christmas Yet-To-Come. We keep digging out new stuff; that's part of what keeps us from getting exhausted with the movie.

Also in looking for a short to precede the movie bunnyhugger found a copy of the Betty Boop's Grampy where he brings Christmas to an orphanage, which is pleasant in that way every Grampy cartoon is. The next thing on the compilation was a baffling early-30s thing with no credits titled The Snowman, one of your generic human-and-animals-dance-until-they-accidentally-create-a-snowman-who-comes-to-life-and-is-mean-and-scary cartoons that ends when the (sigh) Eskimo runs into what looks like a power plant that turns out to be the factory controlling the Northern Lights, cranks them up to 11, and in an light show that we agreed would be really something if this were in color, melts the Snowman. bunnyhugger was able to follow all the clues, however, and discovered just where the short came from. It was Ted Eschbaugh, this indie animated movie-maker, who did work with Van Beuren studios occasionally (gratifying my hunch that it was Van Beuren, even though this short was not) and who was stumbling out of complete obscurity into mild obscurity; he's got a footnote in a much bigger cultural history as the director of the 1933 The Wizard of Oz cartoon, the first (known) cartoon and color production based on that story. She also found a decent, color print and yes, the short is much more interesting that way.

So with that happy discovery and a lot of popcorn eaten we were in good shape to eat a lot of oven-heated snacks --- they all came out of the oven and toaster oven together, for once! --- and have the wine leftover from Thanksgiving to ring in 2026.

Now to ring in, oh, like 3 pm back that June Saturday at Plopsaland De Panne:

Looking up at Heidi: The Ride --- you can see a train just crested the hill --- although admittedly it does look like most any modern wooden coaster.

The area we had our lunch in, with Heidi: The Ride in the background and track for Nacht Wacht over it.

The castle for Nacht Wacht's Draconis. Now, why would we be sitting here again if we'd already eaten?

And here's why! There was a parade and we wanted a good vantage point for it. Here's the leading edge of it.

I tried taking a movie and got interrupted partway through, but, this will do. I think the float might be representing Heidi.

And here's something pirate-based. You've seen pirates before.

Trivia: Among the requirements for manned spacecraft ground tracking developed in spring 1959 by the Space Task Group and the Tracking And Ground Instrumentation Unit was that ground station placement should ensure there would never be more than ten minutes between loss of signal at one station and picking up of voice contact at the next. (The space medicine community pushed for continuous voice contact, which proved impractical fro the time.) Source: Read You Loud and Clear: The Story of NASA's Spaceflight Tracking and Data Network, Sunny Tsiao.

Currently Reading: A Call to Arms: Mobilizing America for World War II, Maury Klein.

PS: What’s Going On In Thimble Theatre? You forgot about Thimble Theatre, right? October – November 2025 in a comic strips update I could've run anytime the last two months.

https://revlyncox.tumblr.com/post/804861642983735296

skinnerhousebooks:

How to Survive the Apocalypse

First, learn to listen.
Not only for enemies around
corners in hidden places,
but for the faint footsteps
of hope and the whisper of resistance.
Hone your skills, aim your
heart toward kindness and
stockpile second chances.
Under the weight of destruction,
we will need the strong shelter
of forgiveness and the deeper wells
that give the sweet water of welcome:
“We have a place for you.”
When the world ends, we must not
add destruction to destruction,
not accept a beggar’s bargain,
to fight death with more death.
In order to survive the apocalypse—
any apocalypse at all—
we have to give up
the counterfeit currency of self-
sufficiency, the mistaken addiction
to competition, the lie that the last
to die has somehow survived.

—Rev. Sean Parker Dennison
Breaking and Blessing: Meditations

https://revlyncox.tumblr.com/post/804861642983735296

Silver Balls '025 would be the 150th pinball tournament bunnyhugger has run through Matchplay, a web site that does great at organizing matches and keeping results straight and all that. It would also be the first one she's run without using her computer to do the computing work. She had a used iPad Mini, formerly her mother's and replaced as a Christmas gift, for the work and did it in a trial by fire, for the biggest and highest-profile open tournament she runs in the year.

Or almost. There were fewer people this year than usual --- 21, I think, with a couple leaving early --- including the absense of a couple people like MWS and BMK. It might have been the weather; they promised snow starting about 9 pm and that'd be lousy to drive home through. It might be the way the state pinball rankings shaped up this year; there weren't many people who could push themselves into contention, or improve their standing worth anything, by taking a high rank in this tournament, partly because a huge tournament in Bay City the weekend before took that spot. No telling. Still, people came, people bought in raffle tickets --- the raffling off of a couple boxes of charity prizes also being done by an app on the iPad Mini --- and there were some random draws for door prizes, t-shirts and the like, so that all went well enough and left bunnyhugger with a fattened wallet to bring and deposit later than she really wanted to.

The tournament itself started a little past the scheduled time, with bunnyhugger's voice fading under the stress just as her megeaphone was fading under battery fatigue. I had to repeat some stuff for her. But we were under way, groups of three or four players. In the fair-strikes format, the person winning a game gets zero strikes. The person coming in last takes two strikes. Everyone else takes one. The big difference between this and progressive strikes --- where you take one strike for everyone who finishes ahead of you --- is that near the end of the night, when there might be three or two people playing, someone's always taking two strikes in a round, cutting the finale rounds in half.

My first round was in a match against DMC, a very much stronger player, on Kiss, a game I'm good on, and some other people. DMC had a lousy first and second ball while I had my decent-but-not-exceptional play. And then DMC went and had a ball that not just kept on going on, but kept getting to higher levels of achievement, climaxing in something called Kiss Army Multiball that I have never, not in a decade of playing this game, seen or even heard of before. He said it was a surprise to him too, though I don't know if he meant he didn't expect to attain it or didn't know it even existed.

So, I took a single strike. And I got a single strike on the next game, Metallica, ordinarily a strong one for me but today being mean. That's all right, though; I figured if I averaged one strike a round I'd be in a good place overall. Then on the next game, Attack From Mars, I finished last, taking two strikes. I made that up the next round, The Addams Family, just squeaking out bunnyhugger to her delight. So the next round, Mandalorian, yeah, I took last place again and now I was in the do-or-die position where I'd have to win every game to continue. That sound be on Stranger Things, where my path once again crossed bunnyhugger's.

Stranger Things is another of those games that's usually in my back pocket, but I just wasn't having it balls one or two. Meanwhile FB, a new guy, was calmly running away with it. My last ball I would have to make up a hundred million points to beat him and, you know? For a while it looked like I might do it. I fell far short in points, about forty million or so, but that's because I had the bad luck to drain at the start of an Upside-Down Mode that, completed, would have brought me pretty near the top.

So I indirectly mentioned how I gave one strike to bunnyhugger. She had a frustrating tournament, taking one strike in every single round until that Stranger Things game where, thanks in part to my strong finish after a mediocre start, she got two strikes and was knocked out. I did try to help her to at least a third place, which would have let her continue, offering advice on how to get the (timed) skill shot, but the game didn't let her play long enough and, critically, never gave her --- and only her --- a chance at an Upside-Down Mode that's normally good for tens of millions of points. Had she got that even once she'd likely have gone on at least one further round and then, who can say where she'd have ended up? We tied, instead, just above the median for the whole group.

In the rounds after we were eliminated more people gained their seventh strike, three in the next round and then one more each round after that. Finally we were down to three people, DMC (no surprise), FAE (also no surprise), and DG, who was having a killer tournament. He started everyone by beating both these A-rank players in The Munsters, and was doing pretty well on Deadpool until a catastrophic moment. After DMC put up a monstrously high third ball, DG went up for his turn, forgetting until after he plunged that it was FAE's turn. This meant that he took a last place for the round, automatically, and that knocked him out. FAE finished out the game even though DMC observed --- and we didn't quite understand it at the moment --- that the outcome didn't actually matter. DMC would win unless FAE beat him two rounds straight, whether or not FAE took first place this game. (FAE did, it happens).

The next game, drawn up at random, was Rush, which you'd expect to be an automatic win for DMC. I mean, you know DMC and Rush. And yet, somehow, FAE won, getting halfway to overtaking the guy who'd been on top of the tournament all day. Next game, randomly drawn: The Simpsons Pinball Party, which DMC started out by putting up about ten million, a plausibly winning score, right away. FAE would need until the end of ball two to match this. DMC plunged the third ball, which pinged right into the outlane --- bad luck --- and we discovered that the game had no ball save.

Every couple years someone at Stern pinball gets the idea that factory settings should include zero ball save time, and everyone hates it because modern game design supposes you should have some minimum play time, and they go back to being normal for a couple years. But Simpsons was one of those no-ball-save games (The Munsters is another), and the game was probably reset to factory setting a couple weeks ago after MWS's Saturday tournament and nobody complained to RED about the problem since then.

And now this change just screwed DMC out of --- well, he'd still have had to make up FAE's score, plus enough on top for whatever their third ball would have been. But screwed him out of a chance to play, and it sucks to lose that way and it kind of hurts to win that way too.

But it was a win, FAE's third(?) in a row at Silver Balls, which would earn them permanent possession of the trophy if we had a travelling trophy.

And while it was past midnight, it was not so outrageously past midnight. We got home and to bed at a reasonable hour for New Year's Eve Day, ready to see what 2026 might start like.

But for now, you're going to see what Plopsaland was like in its 25th year and final month under that name!

Peeking around the track of SuperSplash; you can see some animals that I don't think were Heidi-linked particularly. As you get back to the station you see them, though.

People getting into a train car.

And here they're ready to dispatch.

Here's a close-up of some control button with the thing.

And here's a view out the window of the station, which is pretty nicely decorated, you can see.

We're ready for the next ride, and here's the exit side.

Trivia: In 1920, at the start of Prohibition, the United States Coast Guard fleet consisted of 26 inshore vessels, some converted tugboats, and 29 cruising cutters, one of them based in Evansville, Indiana. Congress would not approve any significant additional appropriations for five years. Source: Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, Daniel Okrent. Okrent mentions this was for just under five thousand miles of coastline, which I think means he's discounting Alaska entirely, which is fair because Alaska at the time had about twenty people so smuggle whatever you want in, it doesn't matter. But also you kinda can't actually measure coastline, thanks fractals, so I'm not sure what the five thousand miles represents.

Currently Reading: A Call to Arms: Mobilizing America for World War II, Maury Klein.

Posted by Paul Taylor

https://wapsisquare.com/comic/refreshed/

https://wapsisquare.com/?post_type=comic&p=20601

https://wapsisquare.com/comic/refreshed/

https://wapsisquare.com/?post_type=comic&p=20601

[Stop-motion animated snowman voice] If I live to be a hundred I'll probably never forget that year that --- you won't believe this --- the world almost missed Silver Balls In The City. You don't know the story? Well, let me tell you ...

bunnyhugger's Silver Balls has always been one of the last pinball events of the Michigan calendar and this year planned to be no exception, with the event --- a ``fair strikes'' tournament, where you play until you lose enough times, last one standing the winner --- set for the Tuesday between Christmas and New Year's. Except that earlier this month bunnyhugger discovered that while she had created a Facebook Event for it and been publicizing it in the Lansing and the Michigan Pinball communities, she hadn't registered it with the International Flipper Pinball Association, the sanctioning body for competitive pinball. They require a thirty-day notice before an event takes place, the better to avoid shenanigans where people try to cheat their way in a close pinball standings race by opening something only the conspirators have a hope of playing.

What to do? Run it as an un-sanctioned event, kneecapping participation and --- the true point of it --- charitable donations to the Capital Area Humane Society? Run it thirty days from the date of discovery, which would put it not just into the New Year but past even Twelfth Night, the latest anyone could plausibly care about a Christmas-themed event? Ask the IFPA if they'll allow an exception because there was no attempt made to hide this event from anyone, just an absent-minded oversight?

After encouragement from me, bunnyhugger took the last course, and the IFPA, possibly just relieved any woman is still talking to them, approved the event with a bit of don't-do-it-again scolding. bunnyhugger went on to register every event --- league night, side tournament, women's tournament, and charity tournament --- for 2026, so that's covered. And we could trust that nothing would stop the tournament now.

When I got home from work --- inexplicably we had to come into the office the Tuesday between Christmas and New Year's --- bunnyhugger was distraught. Her plans for upcycling donated trophies had gone wrong, and went wrong very badly, consuming way more time and proving impossible without hardware that she wasn't sure any hardware store near us had. She spent many of the hours of the night in more aggravated improvisations of a workshop, and then --- sleeping so long she lost the time to make the cookies she had promised for the tournament --- running to hardware stores to get things that might help, and might yet help, but would not help this tournament.

She had got the trophies for the final three finishers assembled, but only just, and she was not able to find the laminate sheets and insulated jacket to run the placement finishes through the laminator and was about to give up on them. (Fortunately I knew where these were.) It would take hours for the trophy toppers to really set, and a day or more for them to be really secure. All we could do is trust that people wouldn't touch the Santa figures on top, and hope that they wouldn't fall off in loading them to my car or bringing them into the venue.

However, the important thing, is that Silver Balls '025 did happen.

And before I reveal how it happened, let me share Plopsaland De Panne pictures, like you've been enjoying since before Silver Balls:

A zone of fun in the park, where kids can pedal miniature cars around on a replica city street. If I were a kid this would have been my most favorite attration ever.

Isn't that great? Traffic lanes and curbs and confusing arrays of signs? Just fantastic stuff.

Kid giving some adults a high-five for managing a loop around the city square.

And here we are returned to the front of the park and the playful fountain. Note the shops in the distance have backdrops featuring a fake partly-cloudy sky that's a little weird to see against the actually partly-cloudy sky.

And now ... that tower ride seen earlier, SuperSplash. Wonder what that means!

And here's the station. You see one of the riders is all set to be super splashed.

Trivia: The name of Cambridge's Magdalene College is pronounced ``Maudlin''; the college was named for Saint Mary Magdalene, but founder Lord Thomas Audley insisted on spelling it ``Maudelyn'', rhyming with his own name. Source: Empire of the Sum: The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator, Keith Houston. Re-founded, technically; it was a reestablishment of Buckingham College, which Audley had graduated.

Currently Reading: A Call to Arms: Mobilizing America for World War II, Maury Klein.