Remember, Remember the Fifth of November

Who is Guy Fawkes?

Brett went outside this morning hoping to foil our neighbors and pull the costume out of the box and dress our little boy ourselves and lo and behold they beat us to it!!

Go check your gunpowder...

Halloween Trick or Treat

Think it was some of both! 15 inches of snow on October 29th? A trick and a treat!

The Adventures of Dr. McSvenja

Dr. McNinja: Could this boy's youthful innocence and exuberance be what I need to keep my dark and troubled soul in check? 
Dr. McNinja's Inner Voice: (You're not a dark and troubled soul. You're a doctor who wants to be Batman.)

The Adventures of Dr. McNinja an action-comedy webcomic by Chris Hastings and Anthony "Nedroid" Clark* , and the love child of the Rule Of Cool and the Rule of Funny. It is the most awesomely epic / epically awesome webcomic ever.

The story unofficially * begins with the eponymous omnidisciplinary doctor who is also a ninja discovering that the McDonald's restaurant chain has created a burger bearing his name. Naturally, he solves this copyright infringement by battling Ronald McDonald himself.

The next arc, "Meet The Doctor And His Friendly Staff" introduces Dr. McNinja's gorilla receptionist, as the two of them race against time to save a patient with Paul Bunyan's Disease (an illness which turns children into giant lumberjacks).

"So What IS A McNinja?'' introduces the Doctor's family, who are very disappointed with him for not becoming a professional ninja. The McNinjas' origins are revealed, and of course there are pirates.

The next morning, the Doctor finds a raptor in his office ("There is a Raptor in My Office"). This turns out to be the tip of the iceberg, said iceberg being a conspiracy involving paleontologists-turned-banditos, organic jetpacks, MySpace and NewsCorp. At least the Doctor gets a sidekick out of the deal: a gunslinging, mustachioed 12-year-old named Gordito.

"D.A.R.E. To Resist Ninja Drugs and Ninja Violence" begins with McNinja facing a hard choice: Will he help his father defeat 80's action movie star Frans Rayner and his army of drug-enhanced ninja mooks? Or will he help the clone of Benjamin Franklin create a medicine to cure death?

...And everything after that point simply must be seen to be believed.

What's interesting about the comic is Hastings' sheer commitment to the utter weirdness. Every bizarre twist gets a completely straight reaction from the cast, and can have repercussions that stretch over multiple chapters. The overall effect is like a geodesic dome of absurdity, where every time the authors throw in a killer weatherman or cyborg bears or zombie Ben Franklin re-enacting the "Thriller" music video with situationally-appropriate lyrics, the plot becomes that much more believable. In the words of Chris Hastings, "Dr. McNinja lives in a world that operates like a Mortal Kombat stage." (but Cumberland, Maryland is a real place), so if you're a stickler for scientific and historical plausibility and blow a gasket whenever you see Hollywood Physics, please stay far away from this webcomic.

And just to prove the series hasn't hit the peak of absurdly awesome yet, in Summer of 2010, Doctor McNinja took part in a crossover with Axe Cop.

Sventopher Columbus, Admiral of the Ocean Sea

Sven is wearing the family crest of Cristoforo Colombo (1451-1506) with the added phrase "Admiral of the Ocean Sea" -- the title the endlessly arrogant explorer requested from Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand.

Sven's hat is inspired by the Ridolfo Ghirlandaio portrait (Google it!) -- but we don't know what C.C. actually looked like, much less what hats he wore. Since no contemporary portraits exist, I say Sven is as good a model for C.C. as anyone!

At his elbow is a copy of the 1490 map possibly created by C.C. and his brother in Lisbon -- the point being that there was nothing better to guide him on his voyage a couple years later (www.henry-davis.com/MAPS/LMwebpages/257.html). There's also a translation of his journal entry for the day he and his crew landed in the New World, though they didn't know where they actually were...

Yes, the little globe in a ball-and-chain in front of Sven is a political statement. Deal with it. See www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-kasum/columbus-day-a-bad-idea_b_742708.html or if you have the stomach for it, read more horrific detail at the bottom portion of www.thirdworldtraveler.com/History/Hero-making_LMTTM.html.

"Columbus's claim to fame isn't that he got there first, it's that he stayed." --historian Martin Dugard

   --Andre

Weekend Snapshot

More details when I get a bigger moment!



The moment apaprently isn't happening. Dora learned to ride a bike last weekend! And Owen got a new bike! Everyone had fun! It was great!

Mushrooms!

DISCLAIMER! If you use anything I post here as a guideline to go find mushrooms, you're not thinking it through. Go buy books, talk to someone who knows something about mushrooms, and be really freaking careful. If in doubt, chuck it out. I don't want to hear about you eating some awesome looking mushroom after briefly seeing it here and getting sick. You are responsible for your own actions. I'm still learning and in no way am I any kind of authority on this stuff.

As they say in Mall Rats:
"You're going to listen to me? To something I said? Jesus, man, haven't I made it abundantly clear during the tenure of our friendship that I don't know sh**? I mean, half the time I'm just talking out of my ass . . ."

Anyway, on to the fun stuff...

We've become interested in the world of wild mushrooms this year after attending a presentation at Greenwood Furnace SP in July. We knew about chicken mushrooms, which are quite tasty, and shaggy manes that my dad introduced us to, but the rest, not so much. That is changing ever since we started getting rain again. The woods are rife with a riot of mushrooms and we've been searching out some edible ones.

The first success was in our own driveway when we found and identified meadow mushrooms--quite tasty!

Of course, we needed to know the bad ones, too, and I'm pretty confident I can pick out the destroying angel with no problems now. This is good because it'll dissolve your liver and kill you within a week.

We've been pretty cautious about identifying what we find and if there's doubt, we throw them out. False chanterelles and uncertain puffballs have gone this route.

But this week? Jackpot! Been looking for these for a bit now and stumbled upon them quite by accident.

Horn of Plenty/Black Trumpets/Trumpets/Black Chanterelles!





We tried a couple last night, felt fine all night and so they went in the eggs this morning!



These have a great smoky flavor--very good. And we've read that they can be put in dry white wine to flavor it. We intend to try this. Great mushroom--hard to see against the forest floor, though.

And even better, on the way to pick the trumpets, nearly tripped over some true Chanterelles! Spore print matches, description matches...might have to try a bit tonight...



Once again, don't use anything here to identify a mushroom with no other checks!

Functional But Not Finished

As of 8-30-11, functional but not finished. Plan is to swap the bar and stem and post for silver, the seat collar for blue, the rear skewer for blue, and eventually rebuild the front wheel with a blue hub. The pink bottle cage will stay, natch. Fork: Reba RLT Ti 120mm 20mm TA. Rear Shock: Fox RP23 w/ Boost valve and Kashima. And try to control yourselves, but I moved to 9 speed with this build finally. Currently 2x9, might become 1x9 depending on the use the little ring sees. Trying to dial it in this week for Shenandoah.