September is almost over and in a few weeks it'll be time to clean up the garden for winter. But for now, my peppers are still producing, in particular my habeneros which finally started ripening this month.
Yes, they are quite spicy but they also have a wonderful flavor too.
Also, I've been freezing my garden herbs for the winter, and I have bags of mint, sage, and basil filling my freezer.
Finally, I planted a bag of crocus bulbs in the back yard. I can hardly wait until next spring for them to bloom!
My garden has been loving the frequent rains we've been getting so far this summer with my peppers, tomatoes, and sunflowers getting visibly bigger every day. And the creeping thyme in my front yard has aspirations of becoming the next kudzu (which surprises me, as it's in partial shade). But no plant in my garden has done quite as well as my zucchini. My zucchini has grown to gigantic proportions and currently has enormous dinner plate sized leaves. And I planted four of them this year.
Zucchini, like any other squash, have separate male and female flowers. Both types of flowers are edible, but the female flowers will grow into squash while the male will just wilt and drop off after a few days. So it makes sense to pinch off most (but not all) of the male flowers and cook with them. There are lots of ways to cook them; I've stuffed them with cheese and garlic and I've heard they make good quesadillas. But today, I wanted to eat a bowl of squash blossom soup.
I halved the recipe and adapted it for what I had lying around.
4 cups Chicken Broth.
2 cans Chicken Breast.
1/2 cup cooked rice.
4 chilies en adobo, minced.
2 serrano peppers seeded and sliced.
1 sweet pepper.
About 1 cup roughly chopped squash blossoms.
Shredded Cheese for garnish.
I still cooked as directed in the recipe. It makes a nice brothy soup wish just the right amount of spiciness and the squash blossoms give it a wonderful freshness. I'll definitely make it again, but next batch of squash blossoms I pick I'm turning into quesodillas...
Frankenstein's daughter is alive and well thanks to her youth serum. Unfortunately for her, she's developing a resistance to it and she needs Santo's blood to help her develop a better serum before it fails and she dies of old age. Rather than just asking Santo for a sample of blood, she kidnaps his girlfriend to lure him to her underground lair where he must battle Dr Frankenstein's once again re-animated monster and a small army of youth-serum dependent elderly henchmen.
Santo and his girlfriend's sister.
I absolutely love these old lucha-libre films, but this one is perhaps the most fun of the Santo films that I've seen to date (I'd place Santo en la Venganza de la Momia a close second).
Besides the near constant fights between Santo and Dr. Frankenstein's henchmen, this movie is loaded with bizarre fun stuff- the entrance to Dr Frankenstein's lair is lined with mummified corpses- corpses that shoot knock out gas from their eyes! And there's a great big self destruct switch on the laboratory's wall. Seriously, this movie is campy, comic book style fun.
It's May now and my week straight of rain has come to an end! I've been dying to get my vegetables in...
This is a Chicago Hardy Fig that I bought from Stark Brothers. It arrived at the end of March and as you can see, it's out of it's dormancy and putting up new growth.
I'm in Kansas City, zone 5b/6a and my climate is a bit cold for figs. However, local Italian-American gardeners universally said that they have grown figs here successfully. The key is to wrap them in winter, making especially sure that the roots are well protected from the cold.
This is the hardiest variety of fig that I found while reading up on figs. It is supposed to be hardy to -30 degrees (and able to survive cold Chicago winters). It'll grow back from the roots if the above ground parts freeze, if what I read is true.
Despite that I will wrap in the winters (until it gets too big to do so), as I was instructed. I already have a carpet remnant (again, as was instructioned) in the basement to wrap it with.
The next picture is a raspberry bush. I hadn't actually planned on planting raspberries, but I had to make a trip to the hardware store for another purchase and I saw it right there in the nursery.
The little raspberry bush said to me, "Come on and buy me. You know you wanna have fresh raspberries. And I only get four foot tall by four foot wide, so you have room for me."
I found the cute little raspberry bush's arguments compelling and now I have a raspberry bush planted behind my house.
While I am happy I planted the little raspberry bush, every time I look at it, I am reminded that my mother doesn't let my father shop at the hardware store alone for the exact same reason!
I didn't plant these pretty purple flowers, in fact they've been there since before I moved in. I've never seen them look so happy before and they are so pretty I thought I'd post pictures of them.
I have a list of other plants that I have in my garden this year but don't have pictured:
Dill
English Thyme
Roman Chamomile
Mint (I might regret planting mint)
Habeñeros
Anaheim Peppers
Jalapeños
Italian Stuffer Peppers
Poblanos (I LOVE peppers, Okay)
Rosa Bianca Eggplant
Zucchini (I don't remember the variety)
Old German Tomatoes
Cherokee Purple Tomatoes
Black Brandywine Tomatoes
Lots and Lots and Lots of Sunflowers (assorted varieties)
Lots and Lots and Lots of Marigolds (I'm experimenting with using them as a living mulch in some spots)
Once my sunflowers start to take off in a week or two, I might plant some cucumbers along side them. I'm thinking I can get the cucumbers to trellis on the sunflowers.
The Turkish movie where Captain America teams up with El Santo to battle the Evil Spider-Man.
... All without permission from the any from anyone who owns the rights to these characters.
When I heard that a Turkish film studio put out an unauthorized film in the 1970s where Captain America teams up with the Mexican wrestler to stop Spider-Man's Istanbul crime wave, I just knew that I had to track this crime-against-film down and watch it. It was easy to find on Youtube, although I only found a low quality version without subtitles. And since I don't understand Turkish, I won't know what the heck is going on. But, I have a feeling that I wouldn't be able to figure out what was going on in this movie even if I did speak Turkish...
It starts with Evil Turkish Spider-Man, his red-haired gun moll, and his goons on the beach where they've buried a woman up to her head in sand and run her over with a boat. Evil Turkish Spider-Man wears ugly green outfit with a red hood, and a big red spider on the back.
Next, Evil Spider-Man stabs three random men to death with a switchblade. I assume they're supposed to be mobsters, since Evil-Spider-Man says "Audios mafia" (the only dialog in this movie I've understood so far) over their bleeding corpses. Spidey seems to have cashed in his super-powers in favor of becoming a homicidal maniac. Oh Spidey, you could have been an amazing homicidal maniac WITH your powers.
Then we go to a fashion show where I am almost expecting Evil-Spider-Man to jump out and start snapping the model's necks... but no. Instead,
I wish I knew what was going on.
a woman in a jumpsuit sneaks into an office and starts photographing papers. Then she is captured and then driven out to a building where some large men tie her to a post. Outside, another car drives up and a man in a suit gets out and removes his tie... is this a job for Turkish Captain America?
It is! Also Steve Rogers seems to have dyed his hair black and emigrated to Turkey. But that's probably enough nitpicking for now...
Turkish Captain America is a violent man. He jumps through the door and beats the living crap out of the whole gang and frees Jumpsuit Girl, all while Evil-Spider-Man watches outside from his hiding spot. When Turkish Captain America sees Evil Spidey, he chases him to a cemetery where he beats Evil Spidey up. But when Turkish Cap gets his foot stuck in a gravestone, Evil Spidey manages to escape. So embarrassing, I hate it when that happens. Anyway, it looks like we're gonna have a whole hour of movie left now.
And that makes Turkish El Santo sad. He gets introduced next when he is beating up an evil doer of his own... and dojo full of black belts. (In an actual lucha libre movie, it would've been a dojo full of little person black belts.)
When Evil Turkish Spider-Man finds out that both heroes are after him he is not happy. So naturally, he climbs through a random woman's bedroom window and strangles her in the bath with the shower sprayer. Then he steals an ugly statue on his way out of her house. I'm starting to wonder if this movie was written by Turkish J Jonah Jameson...
Then Turkish El Santo runs around town getting into fights with local thugs while not wearing his mask. Which is a sacrilege, the real El Santo never removed his mask! Otherwise how would the local thugs know to attack him? Similarly Turkish Captain-America spends a lot of time wearing a pinstripe suit that I think he must have taken from one of the gangsters he beat to death with his bare hands.
Next Evil Spidey has some fun by torturing some guy with a pair of rats. Then Turkish Captain America and Turkish Santo put on their costumes so they can beat up some gangsters in the basement of a strip club (I know they're gangster because they're wearing the same pinstipe suits Captain Ametica wears when he's off duty.) While the two heroes are distracted by beating up mobsters, Evil Spidey takes the opportunity to walk in on a couple fornicating in the shower and stab them to death and watch their blood flow down the drain. All in a days work for your friendly neighborhood Turkish Spider-Man!
Afterwords he fights both Turkish Captain America and Turkish El Santo. In two separate fights. How many Evil Spider-Men are there?
At least 3, because as soon as Turkish Captain America strangles his Evil Spidey, another one jumps out of the woodwork.
Make that at least 4...
Santo in the Chamber of Dead Spideys
While Turkish Captain America is busy killing Evil Spidey #4 on the roof, Evil Spidey #5 shows up in the street below with a bag over one shoulder and gives an evil laugh before driving off in his car.
Later, when the two heroes are hanging out in the bar in their civilian clothes, a bunch of Evil Spidey's goons show up. After a giant bar fight, the goons haul Turkish Captain America and Turkish El Santo into their car. They drive them out to Evil Spidey's lair and lock them in the basement at gunpoint. Maybe Evil Spidey's had enough of this movie.
Turkish Cap and Turkish Santo manage to escape from the basement by fighting each other so the goons will let them out. (Yeah, that doesn't make any sense to me either, but in the movie it works.) Then the proceed to beat up all the goons to death. Once all of Evil-Spidey's henchmen and his red haired gun moll are dead, Turkish Captain America chases Evil Spidey through his lair while Turkish Santo stands watch over the dead henchmen. Turkish Cap kills Evil Spidey #5 with his bare hands. He kills Evil Spidey #6 by crushing his head in a press. #7 gets thrown into a machine and hung from the ceiling. #8 gets caught in a conveyor belt and crushed. #9 gets unmasked in the back of a police car.
This movie was at least as much fun to watch as it was awful. It's just so, so wrong. Turkish Captain America? Santo removing his mask? Evil homicidal Spider-Man? It's an awful film, but it's worth the view because of it.
My latest sewing project is this stuffed lobster monster I made. It's hand-stitched from a home-made pattern.
While I don't want to ever hand stitch anything with ten limbs ever again, I did save the pattern I used. If I ever do make another one, I will make a few tweaks to it, such as making the head larger, changing the side legs so they can actually be stuffed, and using fleece instead of an old t-shirt.
Of, course, I have a few other creatures in my sketch books I'd like to make into stuffed creatures before I do another one of these...
Hey there, Internet People! It's time for another movie review, and today I'll be reviewing my recently received copy of the 1968 man-on-a-mission film, Dark of the Sun.
It has a reputation for being extremely violent and Tarantino even used some of the films score in Inglorious Basterds, so we must be in for a treat, right? In any case, I can check another fi7lm off of my "Watch All the Films Referenced in a Tarantino Movie" list. (Okay, I don't actually have a list of all the films referenced by Tarantino movies.)
Set during the Congo Crisis that was unfolding while the film was in production, it follows a band of mercenaries hired by the President of the Congo ostensibly to rescue a town full of Europeans civilians from the advancing rebel Simbas, but in reality their mission is to retrieve fifty million dollars worth of diamonds from a mining company vault before the rebels can seize them (Blood Diamonds anyone? Looks like I'm gonna have read those Wikipedia articles, too...)
Despite the ripped-from-the-headlines-plot, it feels very much like the other war movies of the era. The mercenaries include Bruce Curry (played by Rod Taylor), as the leader, Rufo (football player and 70s and 80s action movie regular Jim Brown), the friend, Doctor Wreid (British actor Kenneth Moore), as the alcoholic or perhaps as the british guy, and Ex-Nazi Heinlein (Peter Carsten) as the expert and to provide the obligitory tension in the group. He's even wearing a swastika pinned to his uniform in his first scene. None of the rest of team trusts him, but he does bring a company of trained soldiers with him, so they tolerate him for the time being. Of course, by the rules of the genre, we all know that by the end of the movie they'll have this all worked out and probably sacrifice himself for one of them... or he will have betrayed them to the Simbas in a ploy to get the diamonds for himself.
Things soon go wrong when their train is strafed by a UN plane despite having UN clearance. Exploding train cars and machine gun fire ensues, it looks like this movie's going to have non-stop action from the first reel. When they're not fighting the movie goes full soap opera. Curry argues with Dr Wreid over his drinking the moment the bullets stop flying and the fires are all put out, they he takes one of the congolese soldiers to task for choking up when the UN plane was strafing them.
The film also has lots of gorgeous scenery. It was filmed in Jamaica along the Jamaican railway system and there is plenty of shots of the forests.
Yes, this movie really does have a CHAINSAW FIGHT.
In one early scene Heinlein machine guns to Congolese children believing them to be spies while the rest of the hardened mercenaries watch shocked. In the next scene Curry asked Rufo "why don't you hate whites?" They don't make movies like this anymore.
Then Heinlein goes after Curry with a chainsaw in an effort to resolve their differences. And then Curry tries to crush Heinlein's skull under the wheels of their train. Forget all about what I wrote earlier about this movie feeling like any other 60s war movie. They didn't have chainsaw duels in The Dirty Dozen. This movie is amazing.
Once the train arrives in the town, the mercenaries get to have even more character development. After Dr Wreid and Heinlein get drunk and shoot up an (empty) bar, Curry hauls Wreid off to the local church where he is needed to help deliver a baby despite the fact that Dr Wreid is a, drunk and b, apparently only qualified to remove patch up bullet wounds. Dr. Wreid then decides to stay behind so he can be murdered by the Simbas once they arrive.
All hell breaks loose when they Simbas arrive right before the time lock on the diamond vault door opens. Fortunately, it seems the simbas are armed with wooden spears while the mercenaries have machine guns. Unfortunately things turn into a running firefight with the rebels firing on the fleeing train with mortars (yeah, they have mortars now.) Then their train gets blown up an they have to flee on foot. The mercenaries, the evacuating civilians, and the diamonds, surrounded by an army of leftist guerrillas who want to torture them all to death. And to make things even worse in all this the diamonds get left in the hotel in town. The same town that the Simbas just seized.
Curry and Rufo have a plan for retrieving the diamonds that is pure awesome. Rufo walks into town with Curry stripped to the waist and slung over one shoulder. They just wander into the hotel past the crowd of guerillas caught up in a frenzy of looting, pillaging, raping, and killing. (Did I mention that this movie totally deserves it's reputation? 'Cause it does.) Once inside they snatch the diamonds off the table and then kill everybody with machine guns and blow up everything that hasn't burned down yet.
Rufo and Curry follow up their moment of badass by spending the next scene arguing over Curry fighting because he's a mercenary versus Rufo fighting for his country. Then Heinlein shows up and murders Rufo while Curry is away from the group. It looks like they've elected not to have them settle their difference with Heinlein and instead they went with the other option. That's probably not surprising after the Chainsaw Incident.
Then Curry gets back from wherever he was and finds the rest of the cast holding a funeral for Rufo. At this point he seems to forget all about the diamonds and heard of refugees he's leading. Yeah, this movie is awesome. And brutal.
This is messed up in so many ways, but it comes with a very surprising moral at the end of the movie. One that the whole rest of the movie was just one big setup for. I would recommend this movie to anyone who wanted to see something in the vein of Blood Diamond.
One of my current ongoing projects is to teach myself to code in Python. While I have been going through the lessons in Learn Python the Hard Way, (I've been on lesson 23 for a few weeks now), I have been on the lookout for things to code with Python.
The Conjecture states that for any natural number:
If even, divide by 2.
If odd, multiply by 3 and add 1.
Repeat these steps until you end up with 1.
The conjecture states that as long as you are using a natural number, you will eventually end up with the number one.
Sounds like a good thing to practice coding with. Here's what I've got:
i = 0
x = int(raw_input("Please input a number> "))
while x != 1:
i = i + 1
if x % 2 == 0:
x = x/2
print "%d> %d" % (i, x)
elif x != 1:
x = 3 * x + 1
print "%d> %d" % (i, x)
else:
print "%d> %d" % (i, x)
For every step, it prints out the step number and the current number. Example output:
Well, I have an angry werelizard in my back yard. And he managed to bring a bunch of terrified troglodytes to the surface with him. Time to summon my military, and observe the fun.
No. Wait. It seems the terrified troglodytes are fighting back.
I'll let them fight it out instead. Then my military will polish off the victor.
And Akul is all ready sporting wounds on his head, right lower arm, left lower arm, and left upper leg. Akul, you dissapoint me.
Or not. I also find an unconscious troglodyte who is unconscious and has been seriously mauled. About this point, I see a flashing pale blue U appear on screen followed by this announcement:
The human Akul Icgasom flees off the edge of the map. An angry troglodyte pursues him, but unlike Akul, it does not leave the map.
Assuming I don't have to put down any disturbances by angry troglodytes, it seems my dwarves can get back to whatever it is I was working on.
And after a brief computer problem forcing me to reboot everything, I do return to whatever it was I was working on.
Or at least I try to get back to whatever I was doing...
I read the announcement that one of my woodcutters has bled to death.
His body is laying in a pool of his own blood while an infant crawls nearby and a small group of dwarves hang out near a pond. It would be a great scene to be masterfully engraved on somebody's bedroom wall.
He's big and covered in dwarf blood.
Several of my dwarves have reported being scared by a Dwarf Eating Feral Draltha, so I have dispatched the military to kill it. I anticipate that should solve that problem.
Two of my military dwarves and a blue peacock chase down the big scary herbivore and kill it.
I hope my poor jeweler wasn't too badly injured...
My engravers continue their efforts to smooth and engrave high traffic corridors and living spaces. I currently have them working in a busy hallway connecting the farming and related workshops to my warehouse and trade level. I also have a series of alcoves carved along the sides, it is my plan to position statues along the corridor
once the engravings are completed.
And NOW there's a troglodyte chasing around a mule. Time to call up the militia (and peacock?) again. Likot Ebalkeskal showed up quickly and killed it with her *bronze battle axe*. They're much more effective not that they have real weapons.
This troglodyte makes her fourth kill (although I was hoping that the peacock would get credit for killing the draltha), if I manage to get her some armor now and more training, my milita just might be lethal yet.
I had plans for building a danger room for my military to train in, but this cycle of having to kill a dangerous animal every time I try to do something productive seems to be working too.
And before I finish my session, I am greeted with the scariest message I have seen today:
Cure cabin fever by conversing with homemade sock puppets.
The "polar vortex" has parked itself in my front yard and it's too cold to contemplate opening the front door, let alone leaving the house...
So, what's the best way avoid becoming a half-crazed shut in during this blast of arctic weather? The answer is obvious- make a sock puppet and become a fully-crazed shut in!
I used an old (and only slightly worn) sock and strips of an old t-shirt for the hair and inside of the mouth. Also inside the mouth is strips of cardboard. The eyes are embroidered on with black thread.
Curry and Rufo have a plan for retrieving the diamonds that is pure awesome. Rufo walks into town with Curry stripped to the waist and slung over one shoulder. They just wander into the hotel past the crowd of guerillas caught up in a frenzy of looting, pillaging, raping, and killing. (Did I mention that this movie totally deserves it's reputation? 'Cause it does.) Once inside they snatch the diamonds off the table and then kill everybody with machine guns and blow up everything that hasn't burned down yet.
I'll let them fight it out instead. Then my military will polish off the victor.
Assuming I don't have to put down any disturbances by angry troglodytes, it seems my dwarves can get back to whatever it is I was working on.
My engravers continue their efforts to smooth and engrave high traffic corridors and living spaces. I currently have them working in a busy hallway connecting the farming and related workshops to my warehouse and trade level. I also have a series of alcoves carved along the sides, it is my plan to position statues along the corridor
And NOW there's a troglodyte chasing around a mule. Time to call up the militia (and peacock?) again. Likot Ebalkeskal showed up quickly and killed it with her *bronze battle axe*. They're much more effective not that they have real weapons.
