Welcome to my World of Wonderment

Our planet is a neat place, full of weird and unusual people doing weird and unusual things. One oddball thing I like to do is geocache. What other activity is there that makes people travel hundreds of miles to climb a mountain, wade a river, and fight a Bigfoot, just to be the first person to sign a piece of paper rolled up in a 35mm film canister stuffed in the knot hole of a tree? I can't think of any other sport that has such a great mix of technology and the wonderful outdoors. A lot of geocaches are placed in a beautiful setting, or hidden in a challenging or unique way, or in a historical setting. Geocaching allows the finder to share in some of the hiders favorite places, and along the way you get to meet some interesting characters, and occasionally learn something new. While this blog is primarily a geocaching blog, I also use this place to post the occasional funny video or weird news story, or as a platform to rant or rave about something I really have to share. But for the most part this website is about you, the weirdo walking around in circles, talking into your GPS unit like it's a phone, pretending your taking pictures of a phone booth to find find the tiniest micro-cache, or circling your car around and around a light pole in a parking lot trying to retrieve a cache without even getting out of your car.

6/30/08

God is Imaginary - 50 simple proofs

Lost and Found

Ortolan - The Weirdest Meal Ever

I was watching a cooking show on TV and they started talking about the Turducken, a chicken stuffed inside of a duck stuffed inside of a turkey. WTF! Who thought of this? Most of the food we eat you can imagine a primitive man starving so much that he is willing to try anything. Mushrooms, crabs, even artichokes, but you know the turducken was not an invention of necessity. It was some sadistic bird hater. And then there is the Ortolan, by far the weirdest poultry dish ever:


"The eating of the ortolan has ethical eating groups baying for blood. First, it is caught with a net in the forest. Taken alive, its eyes are poked out and the bird is put in a small cage. It's then force-fed oats, millet and figs until it has swollen to four times its normal size. Then the bird is drowned alive in fine cognac. Then, it's roasted whole, in an oven at high heat, for six to eight minutes. Once it reaches the table, a napkin is placed over the eater's head. (To preserve the aromas and, some believe, to hide from God.) The technique of eating the ortolan is to put the whole bird into the mouth, with only the beak protruding. Here sadism mingles with masochism. The first taste as you crunch on the bird is the brandied flesh and fat. Then, the bitterness of the guts follow and finally, as the tiny, delicate bones are being chewed on, they will lacerate the diner's gums, with the salty taste of the bleeding gums mingling with the richness of the fat and the bitterness of the organs. Chewing the ortolan takes approximately 15 minutes.– The Connoisseur's Series, The Global Gourmet"
Ortolan Bunting - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If you're still not too put off by this, listen to this great podcast about Francois Mitterrand's (a former French president) last meal of Ortolan. NPR Podcast

Artichokes are Bad for Humanity

What is the purpose of an artichoke? It is nothing but a green pine cone. They taste alright but the time and effort to prepare one is a pain in the ass. And then, when you do cook one correctly it is nearly impossible to eat. It's worse than shellfish. At least with most crabs and lobsters there is enough meat to make it worth your time. But with the artichoke you just scrape the leaves with your teeth. What other food do you do that with? Then to top it all off, you have to dispose of the artichoke carcass. And I learned one thing this week, do not, I repeat, DO NOT ever put any part of an artichoke down a garbage disposal. If there is one thing in life that I can pass on to the rest of the human population is never, never, never, ever put an artichoke in your garbage disposal. My kitchen sink has been clogged for days now. I couldn't even use my dishwasher, all because of a damn artichoke. The artichoke actually got ground up and passed through my disposal but then all of its parts got caught in the pipe before the P trap. I don't think you can actually destroy an artichoke. NASA should look into the artichoke for uses in space.

6/29/08

The Breach

We just watched Breach. I think it was a great movie. 7 maybe 8 out of 10. It is based on the true story of Robert Hanssen, the devastating mole, who almost took down all of our national security. I read one book about this, The Mole, which came out real soon after Hanssen was arrested in 2001. But this movie is based on a book written a few years later, by the FBI Agent who took Hansen down. Fascinating story. It makes you wonder why a person would commit treason. The movie hints at his reason for doing this was to better the U.S. by pointing out our short comings. But what I read was, he was really motivated by money and sex. The Soviet Union, later the Russians, were giving him loads of money that he was spending on lots of prostitutes and drugs. What is more American than that? Sounds like spring break. Sign me up. But seriously how much money would it take for you to commit treason. To me there is no amount. Now I know I hate the current administration, and I wish all of them ill, but I could never be treasonous. I could sell my soul to the devil (because he doesn't exist) but never sell out my country for some poontang. (Sorry about being crude, I try to keep this clean, but fuck it's hard not to mention pussy once in a while) One thing that got me thinking was, I can still remember Hanssen's name seven years later, but I can't remember the name of the agent that helped take him down, and I just watched the movie! Was it Ryan Phillippe? No that was the name of the actor. (And how many "p"s does this guy need in his name anyway. He is hogging all the "p"s. How cool would my name be with all of those "p"s, PJ Hoppy. Doesn't that sound fucking awesome? I wish this guy would give up a few of those "p"s) We are all fascinated by the bad guy. I guess that means that we all can relate to the good guy, we are all like him, but what we really want to know is why Ben stuck his dick in the peanut butter. That Bastard.

Interesting, But Sad Graphic on the Iraq War

http://www.obleek.com/iraq/

I'm Voting Republican

This video caused a little turmoil with my conservative family.

Well, I guess Blogger and Internet Explorer don't play well with each other when using 3 columns. I liked the look of a 3 column website but I had to comprimise for Internet Explorer users. Now I guess I have to download Opera and Flock and see what the other 1% of the world sees. By the way, as I was tweaking this page this morning, I watched I Know Who Killed Me and all I can say is WTF WTF WTF?

Internet Explorer

Holy cow, this looks bad in Internet Explorer. No one should use that anyway. While I work on this get firefox.


We take our dogs over to the spillway on Lake Monroe quite often. This morning the weather was perfect for a walk. But I'm guessing that who ever was there last night probably had a little more fun than us. Seems like they got fucked and fucked up.

6/28/08

Wall-E

We just saw Wall-E and it was great. I give it a 9 out of 10. It has some of the best animation ever made. It has a cute script and has a good moral story. We went to the Premier Theater in Bedford and watched a matinee. I would not recommend the Premier Theater though. First of all they don’t take credit/debit cards at all. It was pretty dirty, and the screen had a big dirty, shiny spot right in the middle of it. And for Ben, the deal breaker was, they didn’t have any wieners. Everyone knows a theater has to have wieners. How can you be expected to appreciate a fine work of art on the big screen if you can’t have some erthylbate in your mouth. But regardless of our surroundings, we persevered and enjoyed the movie sans hot dogs. I’m not sure if little kids will love this movie. There were about a dozen or so kids watching this movie with us, and I never heard the big laughs like you hear in some “kids” movies. But it could be they were just too enthralled with the awesome animation. But who cares what a bunch of kids think about a movie anyway? Kids can watch the same Barney movie over and over again. For those of you who were concerned about Ben’s lack of pork intake, we went to the Fairfax Inn afterward and he had a half of rack of ribs.

Harley Davidson Landscaping

This was shot in a friend's driveway. His neighbor thought he would help him pull up a dead bush with his Harley. Dohh!

Nick's

We went to Nick’s English Hut last night and had a good meal. They have decent food at a decent price, with a pretty good selection of beers. But in all the years that I have been going there I never knew they had Bratwurst on the menu. I don’t know if I overlooked it or if it was new on the menu. But none the less Jon orders it. Here I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.


6/27/08

First Post

Testing, testing, is this thing on? Stand back I’m not sure how big this thing gets! That’s an old joke but still funny. Well anyway, I think I need somewhere to spill out the rants, raves, and reviews that are bouncing around inside my skull, so I am going to try out “blogging” and see if it relieves any of the pressure behind my eyes. “Blogging”, “Blog”, Blogger”, I kind of hate those words, and I’m not sure why? “Blog” (I’ll quit using quotes in a second, I just felt like the quote mark is under appreciated in today’s society so I am going to give it some love here. What other punctuation mark changes the direction it faces every time you use it, and still only takes up one place on a keyboard?) and “Blogger” to me, conjures up an idea of some pasty skinned nerd in his underwear, who sits in his mom’s basement complaining about the lag on World of Warcraft. Hmmmm? Well, other than the mom’s basement thing I guess it fits here also. So fucking Blog this baby!!!