Th’ Gaussling & family are off on a road trip to the darkest interior of Missouri. With any luck, we’ll spot some of the fabled “hill people” at the nearby Road Kill Festival. We’ll partake in the local custom of dining on tree climbing mammals tenderized by an ’82 Chevy pickup.
I’ll be teaching a Festival shortcourse called HB-302 “Advanced Hillbilly Engineering Methods”, in the big white tent. Bring your own duct tape and uni-strut.
Th’ Gaussling just received this photo of his good friend Paul on the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro. This is a real accomplishment and my hat is off to him. Paul is a tenured perfesser of chemistry and is accustomed to slogging up endless slopes in the rarified air. We overlap in our fascination with asymmetric lactam enolate alkylations and pyridazine chemistry.
Paul on Top of Africa
In case any of my dear colleagues in the blogosphere are in the market for a lead brasserie or heavy metal codpiece, there is one supplier of goods meant to protect those delicate regions from radiation. By way of style, I’d put the design in the 19th century Amish or Mormon settler category. But, that is beside the point. This habillement de mode de plumbum [thanks BabelFish!] is meant to protect the more tender regions from ionization.
The number of young adults walking around with piercings, tatoos, and those curious discs in their ear lobes continues to grow. Whereas tatoos were once popular only among cannibals and sailors, todays suburban tatoo fashionistas come from all walks of life and sport technicolor displays of fantasy art that make a point of in-your-face incongruence. And with much of it on locations where the wearer can’t view it themselves.
I can’t help but imagine rest homes of the future where geezers and codgers will dodder in their twilight years, festoons of ear hair sprouting over gaping holes in their pendulous ear lobes like Amazonian witch doctors. The urine scented hallways will be populated with crones and the occasional geezer sporting once provocative tats, now blurred with age, protruding from private locations and shared only with the floor nurse.
It seems to me that the tatoo money would be better spent on a round of antibiotics after a trip to Phuket. At least it would have been a genuine experience of life on the edge rather than just an illustration of one.
Am I a bad berson for thinking that this Lego Stephen Hawking model is hilarious?
Are these tunnel boring machines cool or what?
This fellow was spotted south of Area 51. These silent cyan hominids have yet to reveal their origin or intent.
Gaussling and family are off on a motoring holiday in which our Nissan will carry us to a large city in southern Nevada. We’ll see some musicians with blue heads and visit a large chunk of concrete holding back the Colorado river. It should be a splendid time.
It is surely a sign of the End Times. Just as sure as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and cats sleeping with dogs. A Belgian company buys Anheuser-Busch. Wow. Just the thought of it is too much for me to get my arms around. Michelob now has a kissin’ cousin named Stella Artois.
What was that old brain teaser an Austrian colleague once asked-
Can you name 10 famous Belgians?
I agree. It is a bit outrageous. I’m sure there are as many as 20 famous Belgians.
Who knows? This may be the European connection NASCAR has been looking for. Watery beer, fast cars, and drunken hooligans. It’s universal.
5 July, 2008. Boulder, Colorado. The climbing community mourns today as the recovery of six bodies continues from the 2008 Mt Kraznydang expedition. A makeshift morgue was set up in the capital city of Bleeny, in the Zapore Islands off the Kamchatkan coast near Gnoyniechok, Siberia. The international climbing team was lead by Gon Anandachopbalmanchoda, well known Thai explorer, climbing apparel designer, and raconteur.
Mt Kraznydang is the tallest mountain in the Podguznik range in the volcanic Zapore island chain. Also known as Stalin’s Carbuncle, 33,459 ft Mt Kraznydang has resisted several attempts at its summit since its height was revised in 2005 by satellite radar, making it the second tallest peak on earth.
The Anandachopbalmanchoda team was reportedly near the summit when an earthquake loosened a bank of snow, bringing the team careening down to the 9000 ft level in the avalanche. The last radio transmission was from an unidentified climber who exclaimed ” … Oh, for Petes sake!! … Son of a(garbled) … refund! (static)….”.
Bleeny is the Sister City of Boulder, Colorado. Services will be held at the Podguznik Mountaineering Center on the Pearl Street mall. Donations are appreciated.
Lewis Black has a new book out called “Me of Little Faith“. He has some video exerpts on his website that are fairly amusing.
Lamentations on Chemistry 