Rant: Thomas is the root of all evil (or something like that)

I stumbled across this blog post (Bookfraud: Thomas the Money-Making Engine) and was shocked. I thought it was my blog. The downside of using a standard template. It could have been me. Anyhow, over at the Bookfraud blog (which by the way is way better than this blog -- great job sticking pictures in the posts) you'll find a rant of amazing proportions railing against Thomas the Tank Engine and comercialism. Apparently his cheekiness was lost on Mr. Fraud, (quite similar to John Naughton's Thomas Bash). I enjoyed the following quote:

Google 'Thomas the Tank Engine' and you are confronted with 1.36 million
hits, many for buying Thomas the Tank Engines and Friends Craptastic Crap.
(Personally, in the name of verisimilitude, I think they should have
Thomas-brand anthracite coal, a three-fingered, one-eyed engineer action figure,
and a soot-covered boiler doll that sings, I've been working on the BEEPing
railroad, all my BEEPing days.)

While certainly no one who keeps a Thomas the Tank Engine Blog has much right to call someone else pathetic, why the profanity? Anyone with a vocabulary that includes the word "verisimilitude" can surely find better ways to express anger at a fictional train than with profanity.

Photo: Japanese Thomas Train

Photo of Thomas Commuter Train in Japan

I thought this was kind of fun.

Site: How to make your own train track

Jigs for Making Wooden Train Tracks

The above site is fantastic. I've not yet tried any of them but I intend to. I don't expect my results to be as good as that guys but I hope to make some straight pieces. It's a shame to pay so much for trach when it's so simple to make (I'm going to start with the straight pieces... I'll let you know how it goes). Thanks Brian Donnelly for your great work and for sharing it with us.