The universe according to MMM

[Scott5114]

We need an AARoads merch store, clearly. Sell some I-99 t-shirts for $99.99.

How much for a Craig County?

Jake Bear will sell you a mini replica Craig County sign for $89. (Nobody's taken us up on that yet.)

[LilianaUwU]

We need an AARoads merch store, clearly. Sell some I-99 t-shirts for $99.99.

How much for a Craig County?

Jake Bear will sell you a mini replica Craig County sign for $89. (Nobody's taken us up on that yet.)

I would if I had disposable money.

[Max Rockatansky]

We need an AARoads merch store, clearly. Sell some I-99 t-shirts for $99.99.

How much for a Craig County?

Jake Bear will sell you a mini replica Craig County sign for $89. (Nobody's taken us up on that yet.)

I likely would be a buyer if he made either a Kitchen-Dick Road or Brown Material Road replicas.

[kalvado]

We need an AARoads merch store, clearly. Sell some I-99 t-shirts for $99.99.

How much for a Craig County?

Jake Bear will sell you a mini replica Craig County sign for $89. (Nobody's taken us up on that yet.)

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1193798834/craig-county-oklahoma-county-line-sign

Tempting to try a 3d printed version... 

[algorerhythms]

I was going through that site and I found a street sign for Chautauqua Ave. in Norman, Oklahoma. That's a rather specific sign (which I recognized because I used to live there). I'm wondering who requested it.

(Personally, I prefer the old red signs, though)

[Scott5114]

I likely would be a buyer if he made either a Kitchen-Dick Road or Brown Material Road replicas.

I can make it happen if you want them.

We need an AARoads merch store, clearly. Sell some I-99 t-shirts for $99.99.

How much for a Craig County?

Jake Bear will sell you a mini replica Craig County sign for $89. (Nobody's taken us up on that yet.)

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1193798834/craig-county-oklahoma-county-line-sign

Tempting to try a 3d printed version... 

The prices are lower if you go through his website. https://signsbyjake.com/product/craig-county-oklahoma-county-line-sign/ (Anything on eBay or Etsy can be put on the website at the lower rates, it's just that he has over 2000 signs at this point and the process of getting them all copied to the site takes time. The savvy thing to do is find the sign you want on ebay, then PM me what you want and I'll get it put on the website for you.)

I was going through that site and I found a street sign for Chautauqua Ave. in Norman, Oklahoma. That's a rather specific sign (which I recognized because I used to live there). I'm wondering who requested it.

(Personally, I prefer the old red signs, though)

It certainly helps when the principal designer is based in Norman, Oklahoma. (I personally prefer the green ones, which is why that's the version we went with. If someone requested a red one, though, it wouldn't be too hard to change it.)

[kalvado]

The prices are lower if you go through his website. https://signsbyjake.com/product/craig-county-oklahoma-county-line-sign/ (Anything on eBay or Etsy can be put on the website at the lower rates, it's just that he has over 2000 signs at this point and the process of getting them all copied to the site takes time. The savvy thing to do is find the sign you want on ebay, then PM me what you want and I'll get it put on the website for you.)

Thanks - but I would rather ask for permission to use an image on that page for some personal fun stuff. I am not going into that business, just having fun.
I can pay with a copy of resulting print if I actually make things work!

[triplemultiplex]

And just a clarification about my cargo planes to carry traffic on I-90 over Lake Michigan and Ontario Canada:

These would be similar in shape to those flat shaped triangular planes on the movie "Independence Day" that launched the nuke at the aliens ship. They would be flat and wider, and would hold about 10 cars each, and would carry traffic over these 2 gaps at around 250-300 mph. I ruled out the jet powered water ferries. While this would still leave I-80 as the much straighter and better interstate, it would lessen my grief with I-90 if the gap was completed.

You mean the B-2 stealth bomber, the most expensive plane in history?

[kphoger]

The tenth Grand Alan was Alan Register (J-FX). Register inherited an office in disarray from his scandal-ridden predecessor, Alan Bannister. Bannister had become morose at the failure of his much-vaunted ALANCAN system, and as a result allowed the powers and duties and houseplants of the office to atrophy over the waning years of his term. The election of Register was seen as an all-but-inevitable necessity to bring new life and vitality to the office.

Register is actually quite unusual amongst the Grand Alans, as he is the only one to have served in the Dominant Parliament before taking office as Grand Alan. Most young men bestowed the name of Alan do not participate in the 3.14 Houses of Parliament at all, given that they can simply be elected as Grand Alan more or less whenever. Register, however, served capably and competently as Dominator for a good number of years before seeking the Alancy. Register made the case for his candidacy in that after the divisive Bannister administration, none could truly embody the unity of the 3.14 parliaments without having served as a member of one. He was elected in a landslide under his banner of "He Knows Where The Light Switches Are", which was seen as a much stronger slogan than Bannister's "You Can't Make Me Get Out Of Bed".

Register's first act upon taking office was to order the inside and outside of all federal buildings, bridges, and national parks painted a shade known as "Tasteful Beige". In order to avoid the "pitiful display" of another effortless campaign like Bannister's, the crime of political woosterism was codified, and an amendment to the Alanland Constitution requiring the purchase and wearing of a fish hat while campaigning for public office was enacted. (Initially, the fish hats were required to be Tasteful Beige as well, but this was quickly dropped by act of the Introspective Parliament after nine days, mostly because the Introspective Warbler at the time said beige made his hair look too provocative.)

Register was adamant that he would have the most uneventful administration of any Grand Alan. This extended to the point that he made the rounds in Quindaro Hall, terminating any federal employee that looked like they might be doing something interesting. Nevertheless, some incremental reforms did take place during Register's term of office, like standardizing the ratio of croutons to salad, regulations on fast-drying paint, establishing procedures for the sorting and storage of socks, and establishing the standard six minute, thirty-three second minimum hold time before one is allowed to speak to a customer service representative.

Despite Register's best efforts, and his skill as a negotiator in the Dominant Parliament, one intractable foreign policy issue did rise to the fore during his term. A group of federal fence painters in Porshaped Oblast were alleged by the Nimbyan Government to have carelessly applied some amount of Tasteful Beige paint to a structure on the Nimbyan side of the border. The Nimbyans allege that it was "way the hell too much" paint, while the Alanlanders contend it was only a few drips. The Proctor of Nimbya's stern directive to Quindaro to "Keep that ugly beige shit out of our Nimbya" rankled more than a few feathers among top administration staff. This touched off a protracted period of tensions with the neighboring country. The Register administration was happy to field questions regarding the possibility of military intervention, responding to them with forceful rhetoric like "You asked about that yesterday." This culminated in a speech given by Alan Register himself, best known for the quote, "What makes you think we're at war with Nimbya? That wouldn't be very interesting."

Alan Register was many things, but his story has been mostly forgotten by the populace. It is shame that all but the most weighty tomes of Alanland history gloss over his term of office–it's crucial to the understanding of the modern day situation.

Alan Register was born on 11 June 1978 in rural Gocormizant Oblast (then known as Rural Gocormizant Oblast), the second child of Otto M. Perkins and Lizbeth R. Milhous.  His father had been a defector during the Great Reluctance, and first met Lizbeth while in hiding in an industrial complex in Eastwest Boscoria.  Lizbeth Milhous had just enlisted as a Learner in the Eastwest Boscoria chapter of the Daughters of the Resistance, and her first assignment as Learner was to look after Otto's physical needs.  When Perkins and Milhous married in 1974, both changed their surnames to Register;  Lizbeth told her friends at the time that this was in order to remove certain perceived obstacles to their social and political ambitions, as both the Perkins and Milhous names would then have excluded them from various social circles and ostracized them from a great many people of influence.


Otto and Lizbeth Register, ca. September 1975

Alan's older sister, Nora, died of complications from severe ptomaine poisoning at the age of nine, when Alan was five years old.  Six years later, his mother was caught up in a raid of the levitating quux depot while she was protesting there.  During the scuffle, she sustained injuries to the head and especially the abdomen, and she later died of peritonitis in Otto's arms.  Alan, who was eleven years old at the time, was deeply affected by witnessing his mother's death.  The following week, he made a sacrificial vow to Goat Jesus that he would dedicate his life to the advancement of acquiescence, modesty, and monotony.  Lying about his age, he immediately entered the workforce and quickly excelled as a night receptionist.  At age sixteen, he changed jobs and began to pursue a career in chartered accountancy.

It was during his time as a chartered accountant that Alan Register responded to an advertisement seeking term workers to convert years' worth of scanned Dominant Parliament records to the recently enacted Uniform Data Preservation Protocol, which involved the use of a decoder ring, a typewriter, and a shredder.  He applied for the position and was immediately promoted to Stationery Project Manager.  In the course of his duties in that role, he overheard a heated encounter between two Dominators and Thurston Dangle, a disgruntled Lamplighter who had just extinguished all the lamps in parliamentary hall during session.  One of the two Dominators, while Register listened on, called for punitive action against Dangle, invoked the so-called Big Stick Compact, and–because the hall was still plunged in darkness–called a special enforcement session in Bradley Antechamber.  Just as the Quorum of Eight approached the rear doors, Alan Register reached over and turned the overhead lights on, saying simply, "There you go, back to work."   The Quorum of Eight, stunned, moved back into the hall, and both Dangle and Register were put up for questioning.  It was revealed that the electric lights had not been used since the Alan Lower Wacker administration, and by this time there was only a single Dominator left in Parliament who remembered the lights existed–and she had fallen asleep during session and wasn't even aware the lamps had been extinguished.  When asked how he knew about the lights, Alan Register replied that he had seen the wiring blueprint during the course of his job as Stationery Project Manager, that the elegant monochrome had caught his attention, and that he had studied it briefly before shredding it.  He also added that, according to an addendum to the Big Stick Compact, which he had also come across and read, Dangle could no longer be held for questioning or punishment, because the antecedent problem had been so quickly solved.


Thurston Dangle


the light switch plate

This incident, nicknamed the Switch Plate Affair, catapulted Alan Register to popularity among both Parliamentarians and the public alike.  He was seen simultaneously as a commonsense problem solver in an era of increasing formality and ceremony, a defender of the working man during a period of civil unrest, an expert in the law during a time of perceived parliamentary incompetency, and a cool head during an age of growing political division and hostility.  His appeal extended to both conservatives and liberals, to both the establishment and those who were fed up with it, to the powerful and the powerless alike.  Alan Register, later describing his subsequent decision to move into politics, said:  "It was hardly a decision at all.  It needed to be done, so I did it."   He was nominated to the Dominant Parliament within the year and served as Mediant of the Dominant for the next nine years.

Alan Bannister, Grand Alan at the time, took a keen interest in Register, and suggested that he should seek candidacy for the Alancy.  By this time, Bannister had already become disenchanted of his own leadership ability and had confined himself, bedridden, to Quindaro Hall, installing an outward-facing space heater in the window as his final attempt at popular success.  Seeing that nobody could make Bannister get out of bed, let alone lead Alanland in any meaningful way, Register proceeded immediately to the Registrar and registered himself in the registry as candidate for the office of Grand Alan.  His preferred slogan of "Beige Is Better"  was rejected by the Warbler of the Dominant Parliament, in favor of "He Knows Where The Light Switches Are" .  Register attempted to correct the capitalization error, but to no avail:  by the time his request was received, the promotional materials had already been printed.

Alan Register was expected to win the election by a substantial margin, and that margin only continued to grow as election day drew near.  The actual results surpassed even the boldest predictions, with Register garnering 92.1% of the vote.  His chief opponent, Alan Ellen, was a Nimbya sympathizer and died three days before the election but still managed to win 6.2% of the vote.  The remaining 2.8% of the votes were distributed more of less evenly between Alan Spanx, Alanis Duffy, and a pony from Leggid Oblast named Lucky Alan.  Two days of heavy rainfall preceded the official announcement of the election results, and the ceremony, traditionally held in the Back Yard of Quindaro Hall, was moved to the portico.  During the announcer's speech, a nearby embankment became unstable from the recent rainfall, the retaining wall gave way, and several tons of subsoil, topsoil, mulch, topiaries, and root vegetables came down onto the crowd.  The news outlets, of course, immediately hailed the incident with headlines like "Register Wins In A Landslide!"  (capitalization errors and all).  Alan Register saw it as a sign from Goat Jesus that the vow he had made at eleven had been fulfilled.  He remained committed, however, to the advancement of acquiescence, modesty, and monotony, and to that end he worked consistently and unceremoniously until he was succeeded by (unknown).

[Max Rockatansky]

Beautiful retelling of the Switch Plate Affair.  I watched a documentary on topic fairly recently, heady times indeed. 

[Roadgeekteen]

Beautiful retelling of the Switch Plate Affair.  I watched a documentary on topic fairly recently, heady times indeed.

I googled this to make sure that this wasn't real.

[Max Rockatansky]

And just a clarification about my cargo planes to carry traffic on I-90 over Lake Michigan and Ontario Canada:

These would be similar in shape to those flat shaped triangular planes on the movie "Independence Day" that launched the nuke at the aliens ship. They would be flat and wider, and would hold about 10 cars each, and would carry traffic over these 2 gaps at around 250-300 mph. I ruled out the jet powered water ferries. While this would still leave I-80 as the much straighter and better interstate, it would lessen my grief with I-90 if the gap was completed.

You mean the B-2 stealth bomber, the most expensive plane in history?

Similar shape, but not the same technology. Could carry up to 10 cars at low altitude a 200-300 mph over both Ontario and Lack Michigan so we wouldn't have to trade land or anything. These planes could circle back and forth carrying traffic in both directions after it drops one set of cars off it carries the ones waiting on that side back across the other direction..etc.

And where would this unlimited source of energy to fuel the cargo planes come from?

[Roadgeekteen]

And just a clarification about my cargo planes to carry traffic on I-90 over Lake Michigan and Ontario Canada:

These would be similar in shape to those flat shaped triangular planes on the movie "Independence Day" that launched the nuke at the aliens ship. They would be flat and wider, and would hold about 10 cars each, and would carry traffic over these 2 gaps at around 250-300 mph. I ruled out the jet powered water ferries. While this would still leave I-80 as the much straighter and better interstate, it would lessen my grief with I-90 if the gap was completed.

You mean the B-2 stealth bomber, the most expensive plane in history?

Similar shape, but not the same technology. Could carry up to 10 cars at low altitude a 200-300 mph over both Ontario and Lack Michigan so we wouldn't have to trade land or anything. These planes could circle back and forth carrying traffic in both directions after it drops one set of cars off it carries the ones waiting on that side back across the other direction..etc.

And where would this unlimited source of energy to fuel the cargo planes come from?

Harnessing the power of the sun itself, of course

[roadman65]

And just a clarification about my cargo planes to carry traffic on I-90 over Lake Michigan and Ontario Canada:

These would be similar in shape to those flat shaped triangular planes on the movie "Independence Day" that launched the nuke at the aliens ship. They would be flat and wider, and would hold about 10 cars each, and would carry traffic over these 2 gaps at around 250-300 mph. I ruled out the jet powered water ferries. While this would still leave I-80 as the much straighter and better interstate, it would lessen my grief with I-90 if the gap was completed.

You mean the B-2 stealth bomber, the most expensive plane in history?

Similar shape, but not the same technology. Could carry up to 10 cars at low altitude a 200-300 mph over both Ontario and Lack Michigan so we wouldn't have to trade land or anything. These planes could circle back and forth carrying traffic in both directions after it drops one set of cars off it carries the ones waiting on that side back across the other direction..etc.

You are very unbelievable.  Your ideas are so wacky.

Like I said before, I wish Sam Ripley could be alive to meet a fossil like you.

[Max Rockatansky]

I'm sure nothing would go wrong if one of those cargo planes dropped out of the sky. 

[roadman65]

They would be nuclear powered, in combination with solar power and small booster engines using conventional fuel. I ruled out jet engine ferries as a way to increase ferry speed, so figured the air is the way to go. The route could be marked with large stationary balloons every mile with Giant I-90 symbols on them.

[Max Rockatansky]

I'm sure there would be absolutely no consequences to numerous small nuclear explosions in the lower atmosphere. 

[roadman65]

Plus how would you get pass the climate change politicians?  Nuclear is not green and the big wigs in DC would stop that before it even started.

[roadman65]

Like your tunnel under the Rockies?

It would have to be long  and straight. Not to mention deep as parts of Lake Michigan drop below sea level.

[kalvado]

And just a clarification about my cargo planes to carry traffic on I-90 over Lake Michigan and Ontario Canada:

These would be similar in shape to those flat shaped triangular planes on the movie "Independence Day" that launched the nuke at the aliens ship. They would be flat and wider, and would hold about 10 cars each, and would carry traffic over these 2 gaps at around 250-300 mph. I ruled out the jet powered water ferries. While this would still leave I-80 as the much straighter and better interstate, it would lessen my grief with I-90 if the gap was completed.

You mean the B-2 stealth bomber, the most expensive plane in history?

Similar shape, but not the same technology. Could carry up to 10 cars at low altitude a 200-300 mph over both Ontario and Lack Michigan so we wouldn't have to trade land or anything. These planes could circle back and forth carrying traffic in both directions after it drops one set of cars off it carries the ones waiting on that side back across the other direction..etc.

And where would this unlimited source of energy to fuel the cargo planes come from?

Harnessing the power of the sun itself, of course

Scaring drivers to death by appearance of such planes and collecting farting gases may provide more energy than you can imagine!

[kalvado]

I mean I don't know how reliable ion propulsion is, but that's one of only 2 ways to achieve propulsion with nuclear fission/fusion. The other option is the Orion project which uses a pusher plate with small nuclear blasts detonated behind it to propel the craft forward.

Pardon my inattention, but are we talking about going to Canada or to Mars?

[roadman65]

This guy should write Joe Biden.

Hey MMM pitch your ideas to Mr. Biden and show him what you got.

Be sure to tell him you didn't vote for him or his nemesis Trump or that you don't even vote.

[kkt]

And just a clarification about my cargo planes to carry traffic on I-90 over Lake Michigan and Ontario Canada:

These would be similar in shape to those flat shaped triangular planes on the movie "Independence Day" that launched the nuke at the aliens ship. They would be flat and wider, and would hold about 10 cars each, and would carry traffic over these 2 gaps at around 250-300 mph. I ruled out the jet powered water ferries. While this would still leave I-80 as the much straighter and better interstate, it would lessen my grief with I-90 if the gap was completed.

You mean the B-2 stealth bomber, the most expensive plane in history?

Similar shape, but not the same technology. Could carry up to 10 cars at low altitude a 200-300 mph over both Ontario and Lack Michigan so we wouldn't have to trade land or anything. These planes could circle back and forth carrying traffic in both directions after it drops one set of cars off it carries the ones waiting on that side back across the other direction..etc.

And where would this unlimited source of energy to fuel the cargo planes come from?

The same source as the unlimited money used to pay for it all....

[kphoger]

From the laundromat, of course.

Time is money.  Thus, the more money you're able to source for the project, the more time you'll save on the overall journey time for each plane.  Simple math.

Fortunately, the funding doesn't have to come from official, or even legal, sources.  Illicit funds can simply be laundered and used to fund the initiative.  Official Bank policy is to actually wash money when Laundering is requested, which is why banks are required to have a 14 3/4-unit laundromat in the basement and attic.

source

[Max Rockatansky]

What kind of interest rates is Alan Bank charging these days for laundering money?