#21 Re: the asshat at Westminster Abbey.

Yes, I recognize that. That same walking/talking pile of used food (or his brother) got on my case while I was there a few years ago. Mr. Fruity-voice leads his tour group over to where I'm already sitting, continuing his precious little memorized lecture about which king once sent a shirty note to which duke about whatever, and he proceeds to suggest that I not unfairly take advantage of his vast wisdom, which the other poor suckers have paid him for.

I wonder if there's a whole tribe of these?

Great idea. Otherwise I'd probably never look at women's breasts, or something. So, glad that problem's been solved.

It was funnier when it was Groucho and Harpo.

There are plenty of swindles in the world that target the poorer segments of The Great Stupid (lottery scratch tickets come easily to mind here). Now comes something that aims at the upper crust of The Duh, and Apple takes it off. That's just not sporting.

Didn't some philosopher say that the rich have just as much right as the poor to be gullible morons? No? Well he should have.

Oh, swell idea!

Now how about making an Oreo that looks and tastes more like broccoli? And maybe a peach pie with the flavor and appearance of overcooked peas and carrots?

Or, why not some time-wasting maroons that look and act almost like real scientists? Oh, wait... they've already got that one. Good job, fellas!

All that about cleaning up your food supplies so that the mice won't visit is fine, but for us apartment dwellers, we aren't allowed to clean up our neighbors' kitchens, and have to deal with whatever their hygiene level attracts. So trap expertise is required anyway.

In my last place, mouse migration began in the fall, and I had good results with the classic Victor traps. I would buy them 4 or 8 at a time (they're really cheap) and set them across all the mouse paths and trails, in the corners, narrow spots, doorway squeeze-holes, etc., leaving them unsprung and unbaited for several days. That way, the mice got used to running over them. Then, all in one night, I would bait them all, with two or three different baits on different traps: as suggested, peanut butter, cheese, milk chocolate worked well. For the next several nights, I would hear the occasional *snap* and slam of an upset trap. There's no point in trying to reuse a trap, so just dispose of it with the ex-critter. The other mice never caught wise, and after a week, I would have them all cleared up.

A perfectly pure gadget indeed. I tried the "plastic cheese" trigger bar kind, and they didn't work as well.

I'm living someplace much cleaner now. Plus, we have a cat. Sometimes I miss that *snap* sound in the night.

Oh man! This has such great potential for starting HUGE sports bar fights! It's so tempting.

"Manson swings, and it's a hard line drive way deep into left field. Gilmore's rounding third and digging for home. Matetsky's going back, back, and it's... You had me at 'hello'." WTF!!!

This evil thing is just absolutely The Nuts! And what with Texas moving to an "Open Carry" ethos, the hijinx would be even hijinxier.

Just be sure to disguise the thing. Maybe an Altoids box?

Regarding Swanwick's "A Small Room in Koboldtown"... it's a great choice!

Escape Pod (at escapepod.org, episode #157) featured this in their Hugo Nominee series this spring, and it was clearly best in show. If you haven't heard or read the story, you're missing a real treat. Go get surprised and spooked by one of the oddest genre collisions you'll ever come across. I would love to see a novel set in this yewnavoice.

On the subject of steampunk in general, I was watching the DVD of George Pal's _The Time Machine_ last night, and found it has a featurette on the prop Machine itself, hosted by star Rod Taylor.

Surely this 1960 incarnation of the most famous Victorian-era sf device must be counted as a crucial inspiration for all steampunkery?

The featurette details the creation, wanderings, neglect, near destruction, and refurbishment of the Time Machine. It even has a "years later" scene between Taylor and Alan Young, playing their original characters, meeting one last time, before Filby leaves for The Great War.

I hope those doctors really get their...

oh, the hell with it. This one's like shooting fish in a barrel.

Until perhaps around the 1950s, there was a slang expression in Freemasonry (in the US at least) that referred to "riding the goat" as part of one of the degree ceremonies. Members in some lodges used to tease candidates that they were going to have to "ride the goat." I've never heard it, myself, but I've read about it.

While there's absolutely nothing about any "goat" in those ceremonies, there are old letters and warnings from grand lodge authorities not to inject any hilarity or buffoonery into the ceremonies -- which indicates there must have been cases of excess and stupidity in the past. No one issues injunctions against things that people aren't thinking of or actually doing.

The three degree ceremonies in Craft Masonry are very serious. I'd suspect that these goats were more for unofficial "masonic clubs", unauthorized social club offshoots from lodges, which would have had a wider latitude in the kind of dumbass stunts they could put their new members through. At least with the goat, you don't end up shooting anybody in the head.

I recall that years ago, a tourist in Lhasa wearing a Phil Silvers "Sgt. Bilko" t-shirt was mobbed and attacked because of the actor's resemblance to His Holiness. Does this indicate that one should not wear the new DL shirt at, say, the Museum of Television and Radio?

Okay, I mis-parsed the headline and the picture. I thought it was saying that someone (NASA?) would be providing some "monster robot heads for space station". I.e., someone noticed that with all of its new extensions, the space station was beginning to resemble a Transformer, so there was going to be another module added at one end, with that module looking like a big robot head.

Which I still think would be a pretty cool idea.

Oh for heaven's sake! I was trying for extreme, over-the-top, no-one-would-ever-actually-do-THAT satire when
I wrote about this just after the Reagan era. It's like a kind of Moore's Law of depravity: yesterday's satire is tomorrow's horrible headline.