Title:	How to feel old with just one word.
Author:	gushi
Date:	2009-12-21 @ 01:30
Security:	public

I was recently showing this video:

To Kat, who is 9 years younger than me.

I remarked that I remembered seeing it as part of Pinwheel.

To which she innocently replied: "Pinwheel?"

And right then and there, I felt a slight pang of Arthritis.

I suppose there's no hope of her remembering The Magic Garden.

Title:	Amusing bits about Franklin Stoves and Kentucky
Author:	gushi
Date:	2009-12-20 @ 10:24
Security:	public

A friend of mine in the UK has a coal-fired stove for home heating. I remarked that in the US, we'd call that a "Franklin Stove", and then checked wikipedia. Apparently, a Franklin Stove is not what I, or, well, frankly, a lot of people thought it was. It's apparently a metal-lined fireplace, as opposed to an enclosed unit.

I guess my earliest inkling about this idea was the old disney short animated movie "Ben and Me", which is in turn based on a book by Robert Lawson. Now, my amusement here is that while the book may have this wrong, which is just fine for a Kid's Book, apparently a school district in Kentucky is referencing the story(PDF Link) for use in testing, stating that "this story is about the invention of the franklin stove, explain why this story is FICTION". The correct answer might in fact be "because that's not what a Franklin Stove is."

To jump subjects a bit (but totally keep ragging on Kentucky), the instructions in that there PDF state "The following is from a fictional book". BZZT! That doesn't mean what you think it means. "Tobin's Spirit Guide" (from Ghostbusters) is a fictional book. The thing that bit Bruce Campbell's hand in Army of Darkness is a fictional book. "Fucking and Punching" from Shotime's Californication is a Fictional Book. "Handbook for the Recently Deceased" from "Beetlejuice" is a fictional book. Do you even get the difference, Kentucky?

I think what you meant to say is "The following is from a work of fiction". Could you please stop miseducatin' the younguns?

Taking that last bit one step further because hey, I'm awake on 2.5 hours of sleep:

• The book Bastion was reading from in "The Neverending Story" was also called "The Neverending Story", but it's not the same book the movie was based on.

• In "The Princess Bride" we are seen a grandfather reading from a book by "S Morganstern", and while there was a book called "The Princess Bride", it was written by William Goldman, who claimed it was a retelling of Morganstern's Classic Tale (which never existed). There's apparently more to this running gag.

• "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" is also a real book (and movie) about a fictional book also called "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".

These would have been decent examples above, if I didn't think that they'd confuse the great state of Kentucky.