This tiny town of Morris, Minnesota has one single-screen theater that was built in the 1940s — it’s a classic and historic building, where I’ve spent many hours. Two of my kids worked there through high school and part of college. It has struggled a bit, though, and several years ago there was a worrisome struggle when the owner sold it, and one of the buyers intended to turn into a goddamned church. Morris has over 15 churches, but only one theater, so that would have been a wasteful catastrophe. Fortunately, it was instead bought up by a coalition of community members committed to preserving it, and it’s now a coop. I’m a member, and I’ve actually just volunteered to work in the theater maybe once a week, starting in January. Come on out some evening, maybe I’ll sell you some popcorn.

There is an exhibit on the history of the theatre opening at the county historical museum today, and there is a video about the community efforts.

One catch, though: movie distribution has changed, and it’s really tough to book for a single-screen theater anymore.

Our next great challenge: the movie business itself. Regrettably movie studios are becoming our enemy. Studios are insisting that even small single screen theatres, like ourselves, must keep first run movies for three weeks. This means no other movie can be shown on our one screen while the first run movie is in town, which is a significant problem because our audience drops off dramatically in subsequent weeks. To keep showing first run movies we need a smaller, second screen. This will allow us to move first run movies to the smaller screen after two weeks, and bring in a new movie on the big screen. We can also use the small screen for quirky films and special events while a first run film is showing on the main screen.

That necessary second screen is in the works. The room is there. There’s all kinds of carpentry going on. But it needs more money to finish the work and get the projection equipment — once we’ve gotten over that hurdle, we can achieve a major leap in revenues, which will allow further renovation. There is a GoFundMe to raise money to complete the second screen — donate if you love movies and classy old art deco theaters! And if you do donate, next time you’re in Morris I’ll take you to the movies, my treat.

Any financial types out there who like browsing through 990 tax forms? I don’t understand this stuff at all, but I’ve been sent the publicly available stuff for Ken Ham’s organizations: the 2015 AiG 990 and 2015 Crosswater Canyon 990. It’s all fairly mundane. All I learned was that AiG’s total revenues went up by about a million dollars over the previous year, to about $22.5 million, that the Creation “Museum” is losing money, and that Ham employs 8 relatives on his staff. Nice racket.

I don’t see anything otherwise dodgy in the report, but then I wouldn’t. Anything jumping out at you tax wizards?

There will be no further blogging until this state of uncomfortable tension breaks.

Tenterhooks, by the way, are hooks attached to wooden frames used to stretch woolen or linen cloth while drying. I’m pretty sure they’re also used to torture cenobites.

Will explain later.

How nerdy and SJW can it get? It’s called Potlatch, and it’s a game written with the assistance of Indians to educate people about a misunderstood principle.

Potlatch, the game is a strategic, educational card game based on indigenous philosophies. It is designed to meet K-12 educational standards for teaching about native history, economics, culture, and government. Potlatch, the game, was developed as a community effort with local elders and language experts. The game is written in both English and Lushootseed, the indigenous language of the Pacific Northwest. Game mechanics are based on sharing resources to meet other players’ needs for food, materials, technology, and knowledge.

What sold me was this recommendation, though:

“A big change in thinking from other games. I started out thinking about what I was getting and by the end it was more important the way I was sharing.”

Oh my god. If it’s any good, can we buy a bunch of copies, and then lock all the billionaires of the world in some rooms and force them to play until they grasp the concept?

I tried something different this year: jollof rice and hot pepper soup, with naan on the side. I have no idea how authentically Nigerian they were, but they were delicious, especially the soup. Something about the base — onions, habeneros, and garlic — was particularly tasty. +1, would cook again.

Dessert will be in about an hour, and I reverted to an American traditional: hot apple pie and ice cream. Come on over, there’s plenty to go around.

Also, much of my highly domestic day was spent scrubbing floors and moving furniture, and I now have a splendid home office, with room to sprawl and lots of bookshelves. My wife is already calling it my man cave, despite the fact that it’s a corner room with lots of windows, and isn’t cave-like at all. In retaliation, I told her that the living room which is now empty (or almost empty) of my junk can be her woman-cave.

Who am I supposed to thank? Should I just be shouting “thank you” into the void, or feel generically grateful without cause or purpose, or be looking for some reason to feel I owe it to the universe to be praising it? Because I’m not feeling it.

This isn’t my kind of holiday. What day is Blamesgiving? Because I’d rather be snarling at a few evil bastards and punching them in face. Donald Trump, Ajit Pai, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, the Alabama Idjit Brigade that’s lobbying for Roy Moore, all the people who picket Planned Parenthood, Republicans in general, Betsy Devos, Ken Ham…my list is endless, and just thinking about them all is making my punchin’ arm tired.

It’s probably a good thing my wife is me clean house and confining me to the kitchen to cook today’s dinner, because otherwise I’d just be boiling in frustration and bitterness.

Maybe you can thank her for keeping me out of your face today.

This video is a surprising history of those sea monkeys that you used to see advertised in comic books — I raise them routinely and mundanely to feed to fish, and I was surprised by a couple of things. First, the “instant life” gimmick was faked — they lied about the contents of the little packages you got when you ordered them (I never did that part, I get the eggs direct), and the other surprise…well, if you must know, skip ahead to around 11 minutes in the video.

Now I’m just glad I never ordered them from the original company, and Braunhut never got a penny of my money.