Thanksgiving is coming!

In the Foulard household, it's a tradition for the whole family to watch this special holiday presentation together:

Email Gremlins

A little background, from Wikipedia:
Gremlin is an English folkloric creature, commonly depicted as mischievous and mechanically oriented, with a specific interest in aircraft. Although their origin is found in myths among airmen, claiming that the gremlins were responsible for sabotaging aircraft, John W. Hazen states that "some people" derive the name from the Old English word gremian, "to vex".^[1] Since World War II, different fantastical creatures have been referred to as gremlins, bearing varying degrees of resemblance to the originals.

One of the most vexing gremlins I know of is a fairly recent incarnation, the Email Gremlin. This little fellow grabs your email right after you send it, and sits on it for a period of time that can range from 5 minutes to several months. Have you ever encountered him?

Here's how he does his work: You and your correspondent are both at work, shooting emails back and forth, having a medium-temp conversation, when suddenly your friend just drops out, usually after you've asked a question or made a clever joke. Then you're suddenly sitting there hitting 'refresh' over and over again and wondering "Is (s)he mad at me? Did I say something offensive? Is there an emergency? I thought we were cool..."

After a suitably tense interval, the missing email(s) start(s) popping up in your inbox, with time markers showing you that you actually got a prompt response to what you wrote. Somewhere an email gremlin is rolling around on his Disney-esque butt and laughing at you!

Holiday Cocktails

Wassail! The holidays are upon us, and it's time to start thinking about specialty cocktails that are in tune with the festive feeling we are all...feeling.

With that in mind, put aside those summer-y egg white-based recipes and start thinking about using the whole egg in your drink of choice. Here are a couple of recipes to get you started:Those drinks sound SOLID!

Economy Makes Startling Rebound

As you may remember, See's Candies™ stopped selling the Gift of Elegance™, which experts determined was a sure sign that the U.S. economy was "in the crapper". Well, happy days are here again! The Gift of Elegance™ has returned!:

Synergy

Supplemental M*A*S*H post

These terrible-looking books were a common sight on drugstore paperback spinner racks in the 70s:
These titles beg the questions: How does "M*A*S*H" get to all these fun places, and does it have to go back to Korea afterward?

The Weird Offspring of M*A*S*H

This long-running tv series was spun off from a successful movie based on a semi-successful book.

Toy M*A*S*H latrine. I didn't have this, but I had the toy operating theater.

Eventually, it had its own spin-offs and semi spin-offs.

First, a semi-spin-off: Wayne Rogers (Trapper John McIntyre) playing a different comedic doctor in the tv spin-off of the Walter Matthau movie House Calls.

At a approximately the same time, Pernell (Bonanza) Roberts was playing the titular role in Trapper John. M.D., a hospital drama with only the most tenuous connection to the movie/tv series of M*A*S*H.

This was all very confusing to me as a child!

Then it got even worse: AfterMASH, the sequel spin-off, featuring three character actors from the show: Harry Morgan, William Christopher, and Jamie Farr. Oof! A big, lifeless flop. For years, I forgot that Father Mulcahy was in this--I thought Radar O'Reilly was the third one...but he just appeared in two episodes.

But wait, there's more! Gary Burghoff filmed a pilot called W*A*L*T*E*R in 1984!

You can read about the whole thing in the Wikipedia link, but here's the horrible plot:

The episode opens with Walter O'Reilly in his cousin Wendell Micklejohn's apartment. They are getting ready for their workday while watching the start of a television interview. The interview shows journalist Clete Roberts following up on the members of the M*A*S*H 4077th. The previous week Roberts had interviewed Hawkeye Pierce, and this week he is catching up with O'Reilly. At the police department and through store windows on the street, O'Reilly and Micklejohn catch pieces of the television interview, giving viewers of the pilot a chance to sample the potential series and to build a bridge between the events of M*A*S*H and W*A*L*T*E*R.

Viewers learn that O'Reilly returned to Iowa, where he failed at farming. He sold the farm and the livestock and sent his mother off to live with his aunt. His bride left him for another man after their honeymoon. O'Reilly decided to commit suicide, and went to a drug store to buy sleeping pills for an overdose (as well as aspirin, because sleeping pills give him headaches). The drugstore clerk, Victoria, cheered him up and they became good friends. His cousin Wendell helped him get a job on the police force. Walter solves a dispute between two strippers, and gets his wallet back from a young would-be thief whose father had died in Korea.