terrycloth

This week my humor blog caught an LLM in the process of stealing all my writing, and I parried by including two things from the public domain, and then a startling thing to consider about Iron Maiden. Plus my MST3K fan fiction went another week without touching the Sonic the Hedgehog fan fiction it's theoretically riffing on. Enjoy!

• MiSTed: FX Down To Mobius, Part 3: A Moral Argument, Part 2
• Statistics January: Oh, I’m Being Scraped _Today_ Edition
• Statistics Saturday: Some Ohio Metropolitan Areas And Whether I Would Have Sworn They Were Bigger Than Columbus
• Robert Benchley: Lucky World
• What’s Going On In Mark Trail? Why are the Grungey Boys after Mark Trail? November 2025 – February 2026
• Oh
• Not Where I Expected Pinball Night to End Up
• MiSTed: FX Down To Mobius, Part 4: Host Sketch

Now, a dozen pictures from Six Flags America from the couple hours we were able to spend there on the last day of June.

The Pirates Flight is a kind of swing ride. We were on one much like this, with a Flying Dutchman theme, at ... I want to say d'Efteling, back in the day, but I may be wrong about that.

Party Pavilion is not getting itself too overboard.

bunnyhugger was cross when she got the pun.

Here's a little pond out in front of Chop Six and right nearby the carousel. We figure it's an older part of the park, given that.

Wildlife! Hanging around near the Chop Six and that pond was this squirrel.

Squirrel did a bit of that personal grooming and keeping an eye on us to ask what we thought we were up to.

Minutemen Motors is the antique car ride and we can't pass that up on a ride.

Here's the carousel from the antique autos track.

As you can see, I wasn't recklessly photographing while driving.

One of the other cars, off the track, so you know what model they went for.

The track looped just past some heavy bamboo trees out to green lawn next to the parking lot, which was less scenery than I was expecting.

But it did take us past some signs, like this picture of 'Splinter Alley' in Laurel, Maryland, a century ago.

Trivia: In his youth, seventh International Olympic Committee president Juan Antonio Samaranch was a boxer fighting under the name ``Kid Samaranch'' in the Catalina championships, and then played and promoted bockey sobre patinas (roller hockey), a hockey variant played on roller skates. Source: Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement, Editors John E Findling, Kimberly D Pelle.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 84: A Man in a Moon, Ralph Stein, Bill Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle. A steam-powered rocket sends Popeye and beloved well-remembered character Pommy to, not the Moon, and not to Squareturn --- the strange planet with square rings ruled by a look-alike for Wimpy --- because that was like two stories ago, but instead to Earth orbit to go recover Swee'Pea.

Monday I went to again donate platelets and, since they asked, what the heck. Plasma too. In filling out the RapidPass ahead of time to save me answering a bunch of health questions you're supposed to answer ``No'', I realized I automatically blipped past one that I could no longer truthfully do that for. They ask if you've ever had a cancer diagnosis and as of the waning days of December ...

I did go back and correct the question, but wondered how this would change the donation. When I got to the screening they checked my arms and blood pressure and pulse and hemoglobin and all that, and checked my ID and that my address would be valid for the next eight weeks and as always I said, I sure hope so. They scanned the QR code of my RapidPass and asked if anything about my health had changed since I last donated and I told them. Diagnosis of prostate cancer, I'm not on any treatments yet, so, no medications or anything that might get into some recipient's bloodstream.

The intake nurse had to check about what this implied, and after a few minutes came back with someone else who seemed more experienced. On some discussion and trying out different options on the computer they gave me the verdict. I'm deferred, until at minimum February of 2027, barring some change in Red Cross blood-donation guidelines.

The ``at minimum'' is because it's really until twelve months after I'm certified cancer-free. As we're right now just waiting to see what happens for a year, that implies that even if there's full remission (however that would be demonstrated) it won't be until at least 2028 that I can donate again. It feels weird to be not just not donating but to have an expectation for at least two years that I can't.

Also weird is that after explaining the deferral to me, they finished up the last couple of questions, despite their irrelevance. They did offer that I could help myself to the refreshments table, but I felt like that would just be a stranger feeling than I was up for.

So there I am, until something changes.

Shortly after the change last June where I became someone with 300 roller coaster rides, at Six Flags America, I took these photographs, mostly of The Wild One on which I logged my 300th ride:

The lift hill of The Wild One, with some ice cream of the future past underneath it all. You can see the lovely main drop too, there.

And here's the return leg including a late hill and then where the track turns to a helix (lost, and then rebuilt decades later, part of what makes The Wild One's historic identity so questionable).

Walking towards the next section of the park brought us past this fountain, and you can see the fenced-off walkway behind it, evidence of a ride and a park link no longer there.

But here's the view of the lift hill from the tunnel underneath.

And that's the view of a tunnel underneath the track from near the fountain.

The crest of the lift hill and start of the return leg from the near side of the park.

Trivia: Before his election to President of the International Olympic Committee, Michael Morris, Lord Killanin, headed the 1967 commission that judged that South Africa violated the requirement to provide equal treatment and facilities for all athletes regardless of race, religion, or nationality. Despite this, the IOC invited South Africa to the 1968 Mexico City games. Source: Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement, Editors John E Findling, Kimberly D Pelle. The text makes it sound like Morris was doing his best to make an Olympics where all people were welcome, only for the three under his tenure --- 1972 (with the Munich shooting and then Avery Brundage shooting his mouth off), 1976 (with Taiwan refusing to compete since China was invited, with African nations demanding New Zealand be kicked out because of rugby players playing in South Africa, and with Ukranian demonstrators protesting the Soviet Union), and then 1980 (US Secretary of State Cyrus Vance demanding the Moscow games be cancelled at the opening of the Winter Olympics, and then the boycott afterward) --- to not give him a moment's peace. On the other hand, book says Morris directed The Quiet Man (1952) with John Ford and, uh, not to hear IMDB tell it.

Currently Reading: Some comic books.