Swamp Thing

Know what? Having a "Friday Action Figure" once a week is just too much for me to handle. I had originally hoped that it would motivate me to post more (and it has), but I'd really have to step it way more to make the Friday post stand out from the normal stream of posts. I just don't have that kind of time. So, with that said I think I'm going to cut this back to the "Sporadic Friday Action Figure".

Right.

Now if I had done a "Friday Action Figure" yesterday, it would have probably been "Swamp Thing" because I spent my entire day yesterday learning how to collect field samples of algae. Which for me was quite cool. It is almost pathetic that I could have spent the last 8 years as an "algal molecular biologist" never having actually isolated an alga from the wild. So as you can guess, this was a big deal for me. I'll have to go into lab later today to see if anything has grown up early.

Athiest Speciation Test

You scored as Scientific Atheist, These guys rule. I'm not one of them myself, although I play one online. They know the rules of debate, the Laws of Thermodynamics, and can explain evolution in fifty words or less. More concerned with how things ARE than how they should be, these are the people who will bring us into the future. Scientific Atheist 100% Spiritual Atheist 42% Agnostic 33% Apathetic Atheist 33% Militant Atheist 17% Theist 8% Angry Atheist 0% What kind of atheist are you? created with QuizFarm.com

News Flash

Some of you may remember that my company recently had asked me and my group to re-locate to our facility in Boulder, CO. Well, after a change in senior management, that proposal has been taken off the table. So, you all will have to continue to tolerate my being around for at least the forseeable future.

Belated Friday Action Figure

Spiderman 3 sucked ass. If you went into the movie knowing nothing about the Spiderman story, or about the origin of Sandman and especially Venom, you might think it was a fun and entertaining flick. After all, they are making a pile of money from it. However, as a long-time Spiderman fan, I was pissed. I would have been happy with the movie if they just introduced Sandman, and left it simple at that. I would have also been OK if they did a "fast-forward" episode, where most of Spiderman's enemies have already developed, and the movie then focuses on some big battle (perhaps even as the first installment of the "Secret Wars" story, leading up to the later introduction of Venom). But what they did instead was to mash together the origin of two of Spiderman's foe's, one of the very first and one of the very last, into a story line that makes no fucking sense at all. Twelve-trillion thumbs down. I hated this movie so much I am in a major thumb deficit. I will need to borrow thumbs from some of you people. I will need to hire the world's best economists to ward off spiraling thumb-flation.

Cayman Islands

Before I spent three days turkey hunting, Chris and I were in the Cayman Islands attending her sister Lisa's wedding. Lisa had managed to talk a fairly large chunk of the extended family into making the trip down there. Despite the expense, it seemed that everyone really enjoyed themselves and had fun catching up. Not having the history with these people that Chris did I felt a little bit like an outsider, but that's to be expected, I just went to bed early on the big night (and got teased the morning after for "passing out" from drinking too much, which I preferred to rudely confessing I was just bored out of my mind).

Anyway, the Caymans are supposed to be the third best SCUBA-diving site in the world (second to the Galapagos Islands and Morehead City, NC). Since I've been to the Galapagos and a number of others exotic sites, I felt it my duty to verify the claim. Not having been to Morehead City (yet) I would generally have to agree. The Galapagos is still by far the best diving I've ever done. The Caymans will be a close second with the Florida keys (specifically the wreck of the USCG Duane) and Maui following close behind.

The coolest thing about the Caymans was the diversity of wildlife to be seen. This was the same thing that made the Galapagos attractive actually, but the wildlife there is just plain cooler. For every school of barracuda you might see in the Caymans, there's a school of hammerheads in the Galapagos. For every giant grouper in the Caymans, there's a giant whaleshark in the Galapagos. Anyway, the Caymans is still great. I saw a bunch of trumpetfish, angelfish, parrotfish, pufferfish (which simply refused to bloat no matter how much I chased them), a medium-sized squid, many colorful corals (which at one site were large enough to form caves, thus the site was called "Trinity Caves"). Lastly, I saw this odd fellow who was normally camouflaged with the ocean floor until approached, after which he would pulsate with these awesome cobalt-blue rings you can see in the photo. Amazing stuff.

Don't Be a Turkey

Or else I might kill you and eat you.



As you may have guessed, I went turkey hunting over the past three days. It shouldn't have been as difficult as it was to talk myself into paying for a guide, because I know for a fact I would have never been able to nab a turkey on my own for a variety of reasons (primary among which was that I have never been turkey hunting). In any case, I am so glad I did finally talk myself into it. So let me recommend the fine outfitting services of Joe Austin of Delmarva Outdoor Adventure.

It was the best "class" I ever took and I can't wait to give this a shot on my own sometime. The season ends May 23rd so I expect I won't get the opportunity to try until next season (or perhaps during the short fall season). For now though, I'll just keep thinking about how this was easily the most fun thing I've ever done which required me to wake up before 4:30 AM.

The coming weeks

This summer is turning out to be a busy one. Chris and I will be away at her sister's wedding in the Caymans this coming Friday through Monday, then on Tuesday through Thursday, I'll be tukey hunting. So there will be a decline in posting. That said, I've decided to give you Friday's Action Figure a little early. I bring you, Leonardo of the The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.



It is at this point I would like to remind my fair readers that I am a 35 year old man. I am aware that most adults with a fondness for TMNT came to them via the animated cartoon series, which by most accounts aired at a period of time which would make most adult TMNT fans less than 30 years old. I however was a true leader in the feild of uber-geek fandom. You see, the animated cartoon was actually based on a poorly circulated, black and white comic book, distributed by what was then the flegdling company, Image comics, which would later grow to become the next biggest comic book outfit ever (after Marvel and DC). When I was 15 or so, I began to see value in collecting comic books, and so I did. I specificlaly only went after comic books that I thought were truly entertaining, but which also sold poorly. The comic-book version of TMNT was funny but also graphicly violent. The turtles themselves were believably bad-ass, unlike the vanilla shit-tarts they were presented as in the animated cartoon. You see, for the original creators, the whole joke was to make some characters who were more bad-ass and bloody than the reservoir dogs, but have them be some ridiculous animal. The joke worked on me. So, to this day I still have original, never-opened, first print editions of TMNT comics 1-10 as well as several of the spin-offs made along the way at that time. I rule.

Games

A while ago Chris and I were hanging out with some folks that liked to play board and card games. I actually really enjoyed the gaming, but I have to say that all but one of these folks were a little hard to take. I'd like to try and get something like that going again, and if so, I totally want to try out this game, where the object is to guess the use of some real, patented invention just from the diagram of the invention as detailed in the patent. I had heard of this game before, but a co-worker reminded me of it last night when he told a story about playing it.

And oh ya, I had some long thoughts on "Justice" that I think I'll try and post soon. I'm hoping this note will act as a reminder.