Steve and I went to the Titan Missile Museum to see a real formerly live Titan missile.

All the presentations around the structure focussed on the doctrine of MAD or as they said “peace through deterrence” which sounded almost Orwellian in its historicity.  This contrasted nicely with the tawdry kitsch of the gift shop which had Soviet Threat merit badges and instructions on making an Atomic Martini.  The tour itself was led by a man who went to the Wilford Brimley school of docenting, much as the cryptologic museum docent had.

I couldn’t figure out if the site was larger or smaller than I expected or if the weapon was weaker or stronger than I expected, but the security redundancy over-engineering of the shock-resistant facility was hallmark 1950s American construction.

The missile itself had a level of precision hand-craftsmanship that only exists in very expensive small-lot devices like measurement equipment, prototype computers, and, apparently, nuclear warheads.

We topped off this trip with a stop at Fuddruckers which I was excited to learn offers an artificially sweetened peach green tea which was awesome enough for me to down at least five glasses which coupled with a 1/2 lb burger and potato wedges clogged my hosts quaint toilet.  My normal methods of the flush-and-a-half didn’t work and his plungerless bathroom offered no alternate terms of clog remediation leading me to try to stealthily move about his house to find a plunger without alerting him to the fact that I’d laid down suppressive fire on his period toilet.  I eventually found a plunger in the garage and he would have been none the wiser except that in attempting to rinse the plunger I activated the shower head instead of the bath tap and drenched my head and upper shirt in water.  At least his toilet would now flush.