Fictionlet

Greg pulled a small package out of his grocery bag and examined it dubiously. "The new XPLUSION has 64 blades and launches anti-tank rockets to give you a closer, more comfortable shave than any man has ever had in the history of the universe!"

"'Xplusion'?" said Brigid. "What happened to 'X-17, the Widowmaker'?"

"Had too much soap residue," Greg said. "It interfered with the targeting reticule."

"Aw, man," said Brigid. "I hate it when that happens."

-The Gneech

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Happy Birthday, sargeabernathy!

EDIT: Supplemental happy birthdays to bigtig and stilghar!

For your present, here's today's Forgotten English!

enjeopard
To put in jeopardy, jeopardize, endanger.

--Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1901

Thrill Day
On this date in 1934, the Minnesota State Fair proudly entertained its patrons with a display of conspicuously dangerous exhibitions of questionable judgement as part of its annual Thrill Day. The day before, the Minneapolis Journal had recommended that readers go see "Marion Swanson pilot her racing auto through a plank wall" and "the most spectacular of all crack-ups," a head-on train collision. The Journal touted the wreck -- which did indeed live up to its billing -- saying of the trains: "They telescope, enveloped in flames with clouds of steam and smoke pouring from the battered hulks. They roll over, a mass of mangled scrap iron -- what a thrill!" Thrill Day debuted in 1922 with stunts by eighteen-year-old Lillian Boyer, who claimed to be the only female aviator to have boarded a moving automobile from a flying airplane. Into the 1940s the fair featured other such spectacles, including airplanes crashing into buildings.

And this was a good fifty years before "The Man Show"!

-The Gneech