Wednesday Night ONT - August 26, 2026 [TRex]

Good evening Horde! The time has come for mid-week shenanigans of the overnight variety. The bar is open and (mostly) re-stocked. Step up and place your order.

Welcome to the Wednesday night ONT which means another edition of random overnight fun and games. Pull up a chair and join the fun. Good will offerings of amusing puns are encouraged. Pants are optional. Be nice to your fellow commenters and AoS contributors. If you're a troll, go away.

This is a Tucker, Candace, Megyn, and Bill Kristol free zone. Please.

[Top photo: Sevierville, Tennessee]

Sevierville is in east Tennessee, about a 40 minute drive south and east from Knoxville. Sevierville is considered the gateway to the Great Smoky Mountains and places like Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg. It is not a large town. It has no airport with regularly scheduled commercial service. It has no main boulevard with bustling honky tonk bars playing live music like Nashville, but it is considered the hometown of Dolly Parton. She grew up in a small cabin about 13 miles away, deeper into the hills and forest.

In these parts, Dolly is considered family regardless of blood relation. The news of her death came as a shock, but a much different and deeper shock than the passing of a celebrity. She was a rare link to old school country music but she was much more than that. Dolly was both Tennessee royalty and the life-long friend next door. In Appalachian terms, they were proud of her and she never forgot where she came from. They looked up to her while she remained one of them.

A statue of Dolly was installed in 1987 in front of the small courthouse in Sevierville. It depicts a barefoot Dolly sitting on a rock with a guitar. In ordinary times, the statue is a frequent and familiar stop for many. Today, it is a gathering point for her broader family to pay their respects. We made our own visit.

A steady stream of people brought flowers and other mementos - many wore Dolly shirts. Visitors spanned gender and age. Some paused at the growing memorial. Others wanted their photo taken with Dolly's statue. They will all remember where and when they heard the news.

Like a wake, hushed comments and murmurs gave voice to emotions and memories. Nobody expected her to be immortal but she was a fixture and a source of strength for years. As an 80 year old that started show biz young, she was always there for most people's lives. Everybody in east Tennessee has a personal Dolly story. Many across the south view Dolly as their patron saint.

Words will be written and said about Dolly. Many will come from people that don't fundamentally understand what made Dolly special or unique why she was so important to her Tennessee family. (Hint: it wasn't just flashy outfits and huge tracts of land.) She wasn't famous for being famous (or infamous). She got the joke but ensured everyone laughed together.

For a musician, sometimes a song says it best. The Carter family reworked a Christian hymn into a funeral hymn that has become a staple of the country music anthology:

I was standin' by the window
On one cold and cloudy day
And I saw the hearse come rollin'
For to carry my mother away

Oh, can the circle be unbroken?
By and by, Lord, by and by
There's a better home awaiting
In the sky, Lord, in the sky

Back to our usual programming...

Department of TP History

Splinter-free toilet paper didn't exist until the 1930's

Paper has been utilized for purposes of hygiene since the 6th Century, in China. It became a mass-produced product in the 14th Century.

Modern toilet paper, for commercial use, started in the 19th Century and a patent for dispensers, that could hold rolls, was made in 1883.

The rolled toilet paper that we use today, which is perforated, was created in the 1880's. Toilet paper varies immensely; size, roughness, weight, resistance, residues, water-absorption, etc.

The bigger companies invest time and money in surveys to figure out which requirements sell best. This can lead to the adding of aloe in the paper, for a softer feeling paper.

Northern Issue, in 1935, began to advertise toilet paper that was "splinter free." Up until this point, it was common to have splinters in toilet roll, due to the production techniques used. St. Andrew's Paper Mill, in the UK, launched 2-ply paper in 1942.

Ouch.

NJ Transit Toilet News

Ring flushed down New Jersey train toilet returned to owner

A New Jersey woman who accidentally flushed her wedding ring down a train toilet was reunited with the precious object thanks to NJ Transit employees.

Julie Angelicola said she had just left the bathroom aboard an NJ Transit train when she realized her wedding ring was missing.

"So I'm kind of meticulously getting all of this soap off of my hands with toilet paper and literally going finger by finger, and crumpling it all up, trying to do it quickly - threw it in the toilet, flushed the toilet, went back to my seat," Angelicola told WPVI-TV.

She reported the ring's loss to NJ Transit, which took the train out of service.

Employees put the train up on jacks, removed the toilet tank and opened it up to discover Angelicola's ring on top.

The ring was returned to Angelicola on Monday at a NJ Transit Customer Service Center.

Random Ikea website of the week

Ever wonder how complicated a particular Ikea product is to build? Check out the "Ikea Complexity Index"

ikea complexity index ~20k ikea products, ranked by how long they take to build "complexity" = steps x total parts "est. time" = "complexity" x empirical factor (based on self-reported build times) "ease rating" = average ease-of-assembly rating (1-5, higher = easier) left by reviewers on ikea.com. "~" ratings are averaged across combo products. not affiliated with ikea

Tune those church bells!

Mandatory Maiden

Niche YouTube Channel of the Week

Tonight's feature is a YouTube channel called Millennial Farmer. Zach Johnson is a 5th generation family farmer from West Central Minnesota. He promotes agriculture by sharing his day-to-day experiences on the family farm. At its core, the channel shows where our food comes from and what it takes to produce it.

He's been posting videos on YouTube for 10 years and has accumulated 1.15 million subscribers. His channel shows the work of the farm as the seasons change, from planting through harvest. They primarily grow soybeans and corn.

The channel provides a first-person insight to running a farm.

The channel shows new equipment, repairs and getting stuck in the field. It shows the push of the harvest, including the challenges of weather and darkness. It also is unafraid to tackle business and regulatory factors - or anything else that impacts running a farm. It isn't hysterical but rather pragmatic and descriptive. They primarily run John Deere equipment.

Lots of problem solving.

The channel also shows the family involvement and raising kids on a working farm. It restores your faith in the heartland and is a window to what it takes to be a farmer.

Videos routinely get several hundred thousand views and periodically get millions. Lots of interweb farming interest out there!

Pittsburgh Scanner

The Pittsburgh police scanner has the night off in light of the unplanned Dolly content. There are a few giggles that will be included in next week's batch, so you won't miss anything.

Dexy's Midnight Runners in pop-up video form for the big ONT finish:

Correspondence can be sent to moronhobbies at protonmail dot com where it will be promptly transferred to an undetermined department for processing. Are you lurking ????

posted by Open Blogger at 10:00 PM

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