Subdeacon Joe

A true BEAST! And very adaptable. Thank you.

Found it!

People love to ask that question about Vincent Price — usually with a raised eyebrow, as if he personally betrayed cinema. Why would a man with that voice, that face, that elegant, almost Shakespearean presence, “stoop” to horror? Why the haunted houses, the dripping candelabras, the campy villains with arched eyebrows? But that question always feels a little unfair. Because if you really look at his life, you start to see something else entirely — not a fall from grace, but a deliberate turn toward something he understood deeply: performance as pleasure. Price didn’t stumble into horror like a desperate actor scrambling for rent money. By the time he became synonymous with shadowy corridors and sinister laughter, he had already proven himself. Broadway. Period dramas. Serious roles. He had the pedigree, the training, the respect. But Hollywood is fickle, and the “serious” roles weren’t lining up forever. They rarely do. And horror — especially in the 1950s and ’60s — wasn’t the polished, prestige genre it sometimes is today. It was garish. Cheap. A little ridiculous. But it was also wildly popular. Audiences loved it. They packed theaters for adaptations of Poe, for lurid Technicolor nightmares, for that unmistakable voice curling through the dark like cigarette smoke. Price saw something in that. He didn’t just act in horror. He *inhabited* it. There’s a difference. He understood the wink behind the scream. The theatricality. The absurdity. He knew when to lean in and when to let the audience in on the joke. He treated even the most outrageous material with total commitment — which, paradoxically, made it better. And then there was television. When he popped up as Egghead in the 1960s series Batman, it wasn’t some tragic surrender to camp. It was a masterclass in it. Bald head gleaming. Egg puns delivered with Shakespearean gravity. He chewed scenery like it was a gourmet meal — and he did it knowingly. That show was pure pop-art chaos, and Price slid into it like he’d been waiting his whole life to say, “Egg-cellent.” Was it serious drama? Of course not. But it was unforgettable. The truth is, Price didn’t abandon “good roles.” He redefined what a good role could be for *him*. He found freedom in horror. There was room to exaggerate, to play, to flirt with melodrama. He wasn’t trapped trying to be the conventional leading man. He became something rarer — an icon. And let’s be honest: horror gave him immortality. How many respectable period dramas from the 1940s can the average person name? Now ask them about haunted mansions, mad scientists, that laugh. The answer comes instantly. He understood something many actors never do: prestige fades. Personality lingers. There’s also a practical side we shouldn’t ignore. Actors are working professionals. They take jobs. They navigate an industry that doesn’t always reward subtlety or intelligence. Horror studios valued him. They built projects around him. They gave him top billing. That kind of loyalty is hard to walk away from. But beyond practicality, there was joy. Watch him closely in those so-called “schlock” films. There’s a twinkle there. A sense that he’s having the time of his life. The cape swirls a little too dramatically. The line readings stretch deliciously long. He’s not embarrassed. He’s reveling. And maybe that’s the point. Vincent Price didn’t retreat from greatness. He chose a different stage — one filled with fog machines and creaking doors — and turned it into his kingdom. He became the high priest of gothic camp. The velvet-voiced ringmaster of nightmares. In the end, what looks like a compromise might actually have been clarity. He understood his own brand before branding was a thing. He leaned into it. He owned it. And decades later, we’re still talking about him. Not because he chased respectability. Because he chased delight.

To answer Alpo's question In letterpress printing, an "f combination" refers to a ligature, which is a single, custom-cast piece of metal type that combines the letter "f" with an adjacent letter. Graphic Design Stack Exchange Key Aspects of "f" Combinations (Ligatures): Purpose: The primary purpose is to prevent the "hood" (top curve) of the lowercase 'f' from colliding with the tittle (dot) of an 'i', 'j', or the stem of letters like 'l', 'b', or 'h' when they are placed next to each other. Common Examples: fi (f + i) fl (f + l) ffi (f + f + i) ffl (f + f + l) ff (f + f) Usage: These are used to ensure smooth, professional typography, particularly in well-set book work or high-quality stationary, preventing the damaged or crowded look that results from trying to kern individual letters.

When people bought printing presses, how many of each letter were they typically given? Or were letters sold separately? Letterpress printing type was sold by the ‘font’ which consists of a package of upper case or lower case letters, or figures (numerals and punctuation marks), and looks like these: As hard as it may be for someone in 2021 to understand, each pack of type consisted of one subset of one typeface in one size and one style and one weight. Each foundry had a standard distribution of characters (because, for example, “x” was used much less frequently than “e”). Since each package of type was more or less the same size, the number of actual pieces of type in a package would vary with the point size of the type. Thus each package would have stamped on it the number of “A” (or “a”) characters it contained…allowing the purchaser to extrapolate the other character counts using a standard table (the most common being that of American Typefounders): Because typesetting anything serious would require more characters than came in a single package, customers would order multiples of packages, which would then be combined and carefully placed into a typecase: …which would in turn be stored in a type cabinet: To put this in stark perspective, for a typesetter to have the flexibility to use the same assortment of faces, weights and styles as are visible in this MS Word dialog box… …would require about 14,000 pounds of metal type!

Just kicking the can down the road. https://www.scotusblog.com/cases/case-files/duncan-v-bonta-2/ " 03/02/2026 DISTRIBUTED for Conference of 3/6/2026."

Go to en banc, en banc will uphold law, appeal to to SCOTUS, SCOTUS will sit on it for a while before getting around to denying cert. Yes, I'm rather cynical.

YAWN!!!!! Go to en banc, en banc will uphold law, appeal to to SCOTUS, SCOTUS will sit on it for a while before getting around to denying cert. Yes, I'm rather cynical.

So you aren't reading the article, just the Billy Mays headline. Or maybe the carnival midway talker patter. What you wrote suggests that it was the entire comment in the article, not just the bait in a headline. ADDED: A side note, if not for your post about it I wouldn't have looked at 5 or 6 Yahoo links, plus CNN, NBC, CBS, BBC, and several others to see if any of them gave the short version you had high lighted. You do a better job than the headlines do.

Well, when you pull it out of the context of the statement it is confusing. But looking at 5 or 6 Yahoo links, they all said, ""This was an unfortunate incident that is completely inexcusable," a representative for Spears tells PEOPLE in a statement. "Britney is going to take the right steps and comply with the law and hopefully this can be the first step in long overdue change that needs to occur in Britney’s life. Hopefully, she can get the help and support she needs during this difficult time."" Other sources were the same. Now, I don't get the Yahoo emails, so i have no idea what was in the email, but I assume that it was similar to what I saw.

Yep! And a strange, high pitched ringing

Thanks!

So they anticipated shooting at aircraft.

On 4 March 1945, a B-29 Superfortress named Dinah Might made the first emergency landing by a Superfortress on Iwo Jima... while the island was still an active combat zone! The bomber belonged to the 9th Bomb Group of the US Army Air Forces’ 313th Bomb Wing, based out of Tinian in the Mariana Islands, and was returning from a long raid over Japan when it ran dangerously low on fuel. Its aircraft commander, First Lieutenant Fred Malo, faced three stark choices: ditch at sea, have the crew bail out near the island, or attempt a landing on one of the recently captured airstrips. He chose to land at Motoyama Airfield No 1 (South Field), which was still being secured by Marines at the southern end of the island. Though it struck a telephone pole, it managed to come to a stop before the end of the short runway. As Japanese defenders sporadically fired at the B-29, its crew worked frantically to repair a faulty fuel valve so it could return to Tinian. After about 30 minutes of repairs and refueling, Dinah Might took off again under fire and made it back to base. At the time, heavy fighting was still underway on Iwo Jima. The invasion had begun on 19 February 1945, and Marines were engaged in brutal combat to seize not only the beaches and high ground but also the island’s airfields, which were considered strategically vital because of their location roughly halfway between the Japanese home islands and the Marianas. Japanese resistance was fierce, and Iwo Jima was not fully secured until 26 March 1945, more than three weeks after the first B-29 landing. The Dinah Might’s emergency landing was not just a one-off drama either. It was the first many Superfortress landings on Iwo Jima for crews returning from missions over Japan with battle damage, mechanical problems, or fuel shortages. By the end of the war, over 2,200 B-29 landings were recorded at Iwo’s airfields, saving countless airmen who otherwise might have ditched at sea and been lost. Dinah Might itself survived the war and was eventually flown back to the United States on 28 April 1946. Its ultimate fate after being returned to the US is unclear, but like many wartime aircraft, it was likely scrapped or otherwise disposed of during postwar downsizing.

1st Regiment Infantry New York Volunteers Spanish-American War :: New York State Military Museum and Veterans Research Center https://share.google/YgePW2JiTncOOKRMp And an AI Overview The 1st Regiment Infantry New York Volunteers in the Spanish-American War (1898) was largely equipped with older, single-shot Springfield Model 1873 "Trapdoor" rifles rather than the modern Krag-Jørgensen rifles used by Regular Army units. They typically wore blue flannel shirts, canvas leggings, and standard-issue blue wool uniforms. Key Equipment and Details: Rifles: While Krag-Jørgensen .30-40s were standard for the Regular Army, many volunteers, including New York regiments, were issued older Springfield .45-70 trapdoor rifles. Uniforms: The unit, composed of several New York National Guard companies, wore blue wool uniforms and sometimes M1883 "sack coats". Field Gear: Standard equipment included canvas gaiters/leggings, canteen, haversack, and bayonet. Personal Items: Uniforms often featured specialized cap devices identifying the regiment and company (e.g., 1st Infantry, A Co). New York State Military Museum (.gov) New York State Military Museum (.gov) +4 The regiment was federalized in May 1898 and consisted of various battalions from upstate New York. New York State Military Museum (.gov) New York State Military Museum (.gov)

You got me going off on a tangent with your mention of the Krag being effective. It was the US Army issue right after the Trapdoor Springfield, transitioning from relatively slow, big bore, black powder with a rainbow trajectory to a fast, small bore, smokeless, fairly flat trajectory rifle, and what that might mean for the sights. How do the developers come up with the dimensions for the sights? How do they determine the stadia markings?

What's so funny about it?

While the U.S. Camel Corps was officially birthed by an act of Congress on March 3, 1855, its legacy is deeply woven into the rugged geography of California history. The $30,000 appropriation signed by President Franklin Pierce was intended to solve the "Great American Desert" problem the impassable stretch of land between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Coast. For California, which had achieved statehood just five years prior, the experiment represented a desperate hope for a dependable "land bridge" that could connect the booming ports of San Francisco and Los Angeles to the rest of the nation. The California chapter of this history began in earnest in 1857, when Edward Fitzgerald Beale, a legendary figure in California’s development, led a caravan of 25 camels from Texas to the Colorado River. Upon reaching the California border, the camels didn't just survive; they thrived, easily swimming across the river and trekking through the Mojave Desert with loads that would have broken a mule. Beale was so enamored with the beasts that he brought them to his vast estate at Rancho El Tejon (near modern-day Lebec and Bakersfield). For several years, the sight of dromedaries grazing alongside California cattle became a symbol of the state's eccentric and experimental frontier spirit. The camels soon became integral to the defense and mapping of the state. Based at Fort Tejon, the Camel Corps was used to scout routes through the Sierra Nevada and across the high deserts, providing a vital link between the military outposts of the South and the burgeoning settlements of the North. In 1860, the camels were even used to establish a fast-paced express mail service between San Pedro and the desert interior. During this time, California’s newspapers were filled with stories of the "ships of the desert," and the camels became a fixture of local lore, proving that the state’s difficult terrain was no match for the right biological technology. However, the onset of the Civil War and the rise of the transcontinental railroad eventually turned the Camel Corps into a historical footnote. By 1863, the military decided to abandon the experiment, and the remaining California herd was moved to the Benicia Arsenal north of San Francisco. On February 26, 1864, the government held a public auction in Benicia, selling the camels to local ranchers, circus performers, and even mining companies. Some of these camels remained in the state for years, used to haul salt in the Owens Valley or appear in local parades, while others were turned loose, leading to "ghost camel" sightings in the California desert as late as the early 20th century. Today, the March 3 anniversary serves as a reminder of California’s role as a laboratory for American expansion. The experiment is memorialized at Fort Tejon State Historic Park, where historical markers and reenactments keep the memory of the "Camel Express" alive. It remains a uniquely Californian story one that blends military strategy, immigrant camel drivers like Hi Jolly, and the sheer vastness of the Golden State’s wilderness into a narrative of bold, if eventually abandoned, innovation.

The grounds crew did a major cut back on a pepper tree about a week ago. More than they should have, really. But now we get an interesting shadow across the way.

Jonathan Winters and Jack Klugman. Great episode. Broken into 7 clips. The first one. Go to YouTube for the rest.

That's not the government.

@watab kid made a a comment on my Spanish American War about the Krag being effective. Which got me thinking about Mausers and other rifles of that era. The transition from big bores and black powder to small bore and smokeless. Which got me to thinking about sights. You've designed a new rifle. Smaller bore, higher velocity than your 11mm, 1,500fps black powder (thinking of the 11mm Gras). How do you calculate front sight height, sight radius, rear sight hight and calibration for range adjustments? It can't just be by guess and by God. There must be some calculation to give you a theoretical starting point.