Froggy Bomb!

This is the soon-to-be Mrs. Mullet's favorite story about me in my youth... it is quite possibly one of the most absurd things you will ever here, but keep reading.

In my science class when I was in eighth grade we had this crazy teacher who loved to show us weird stuff. This relates to this thread because he showed us how to make a hydrogen "bomb". What you do is this... you get a big bowl of water, and then an equally big funnel. Drop a 9V battery into the water, invert the funnel over the top to direct the gas released, and put a gallon milk container over the top of the funnel to catch the gas. Now, does anyone know what happens when you run an electric current through water? Yep, it produces H and O[sub]2[/sub], so, the milk jug fills with H (edit: because the hydrogen is lighter than the oxygen). If you don't invert it, you can then prop the jug on something, and, using a match on the end of a yard stick, ignite the H and make a very big boom!

Now, I was a very inquisitive child, and thought it might be fun to put this little tidbit of information into use in another way. Oh, let me also mention that at somepoint in this class, I also learned that NaCl will burn very easily and produce a pretty sweet little yellow flame. OK... fast forward to the summer time... Mullet Man has a little science set that somone has bought him. It includes some powdered chemicals (nothing truly harmful... at least under adult supervision), a little sad microscope, some slides, and, most importantly, one formaldehyde-preserved frog for disecting. Now, we had already disected frogs in school, so I wasn't super interested in the frog... until one summer afternoon when it was raining, a friend was over, and we got really bored.

What ensued next has only recently been revealed to my mother. You see, my parents were divorced when I was very young, and so I spent a lot of time caring for myslef from about age 12 on... good for me... better for my mischief.
OK, on with it... so on this boring summer afternoon, my friend and I were at my house, and we were trying to figure out something to do. We were in my basement looking for a baseball bat or something, and he came across this science set. The original suggestion was to take the frog out of the set and play some sort of prank... a good suggestion, but I came up with a better idea. Using my scientific knowledge, I decided that we might be able to construct a "frog bomb" as I had recently learned that all organisms are essentially open from one end to another (you know, through the GI tract). So... we gathered up our materials:

1 Frog
1 canister NaCL
2 funnels
1 bowl
1 9V Battery
1 Gallon water
Matches
Duct tape

... and proceeded to my garage.

OK, so the assembly of the frog bomb was fairly simple... I figured that the Hydrogen needed to go in one end, and the fire into the other. We put the water, funnel and 9V battery together, and duct taped it shut so none of the hydrogen could escape. We then put the top end of the funnel into the frog's anus assuming that this would fill the frog with hydrogen (and, as we soon found out... it did!). The frog was somewhat limp, you know... having been soaked in formaldehyde and all, and so, we sort of duct taped him up a bit as well. Into his mouth we inserted the smaller funnel filled with NaCl... this was to serve as our fuse. We lit several matches, dropped them into the top funnel and stepped back... actually ran, but whatever.

So the NaCl was burning, the water was bubbling, but nothing was happenning. After about 2 or 3 minutes, we thought it was a dud. We started to walk closer and realized that the frog was much more bloated than when we had first stepped back (many years later in an anatomy class, I would come to understand that there were several sphincters that the hydrogen needed to open in order to get through the GI tract but I didn't know that at the time...). We were encouraged by the bloating, so we stepped back, waited a few more seconds... and then... a garge window shaking BOOM!!! The hydrogen ignited, the frog exploded, and we had froggy bits everywhere!!

Now... has anyone caught the one little problem with our froggy? That's right, he was soaked in formaldehyde... highly flamable formaldehyde! Now, suprisingly, there was no warning (that we'd bothered to read) suggesting that our frog was flamable, but he was! And now we had flamming froggy bits all over the inside of our 75-year old wooden garage! After about 5 minutes of laughter, we realized the frog wasn't gonna stop burning. In a sheer panic we ran about trying to figure out what to do. Totally ignoring the bowl of water, and the garden hose hooked up to the faucet on the side of my house. Eventually it damned on us that water would put out fire, and we turned the hose on our little bits of flaming frog! Crisis averted, froggy destroyed, a true victory for science!

The look on my mother's face when we told her about it 15 years after the fact was worth every moment of planning, execution, and aftermath.

I think Queen wrote that song for us...

Tuesday, June 21st, 2005 - The longest day of the year. The beginning of summer. The day the Refs stood still.

Team Devine's won the Durham Park and Rec's League Softball Championship. It was the bottom of the 7th, tied score 17-17. Jody Franke was on second base after a double. Aaron Stewart (i.e. the Stew) was up to bat. The left field foul line was calling his name. After a foul ball skirted the line, another bomb was dropped, but this time it was fair. Jody scores easily with Stew standing triumphantly on second. 17-18. Devine's wins.

Overall, there were both upsides and downsides to the game. We helped them with 4 or 5 outs in a few innings. Our bats fell silent for a few innings too. Carefree Ranch put up a fight though, coming back twice during the course of the game. But in the end, we were victorious. The PACKED stands erupted and to the beer we went!

It's kinda cool that our trophies will be up in Devine's until the place closes its doors. Our mark on Durham - because science definately won't be our lasting legacy here.

So next time you pass those doors on Main Street to watch the latest game or have a brew, look up at the mantle overtop the bar. That's our mark - and hopefully not our last.
















Do you think the cops were wondering why we were humping trophies while standing on a brick wall? Just a thought.

Back from the dead and I can't see shit!

OK, well I may have stolen that part from Chris Rock (see Bring the Pain for more info), but damnit... its time to rock the blog!

OK, so Lola and I have just returned from a trip to Philly. Nice city, smells like urine a little too much for my tastes. I must say that out of our five days there our most fun night was a night out in Manayuk with Laura's friends from college, Sarah and Anthony. They have a nice little place and we grabbed a case of Hop Devil IPA (if you can find this, drink it, because its fantastic), and some burgers. After getting thouroughly buzzed we thought it would be a nice idea to head down a local drinking establishment. We had a lovely time, talked to the Kid at one point (or so I'm told) and even had a bit of drama which is neither here nor there, other than to say that it resulted in Lola and I eating some really crappy pizza on a street corner in Philly until around 3:30 in the AM. We then grabbed a cab home, and spent most of the next day avoiding beer like the plague.

You know what else happened the next day??? That's right CHEESESTEAKS! Now, this is one of those legendary culinary traditions that you wait your whole life to try, and lordy was I excited. We went to Pat's (not Geno's) because it is less gaudy and most people I talked to liked it better. I got "Whiz, wit" and Lola got "Provolone, wit". (That's your type of cheese and wit or witout onions.) It was everything that I ever hoped... greasy, meaty, and quite possibly the best use ever for a processed cheese product. And you can ask Lola, I love me some processed cheese! Anyway, it was sweet, and we followed it up by immediately going to the Phillies game.

So, the Phillies game: Citizen's Bank Park is a gorgeous stadium. Centerfield is sort of cut out and looks upon the Philly skyline, and whenever the Phils hit a homerun, a giant neon Liberty Bell flashes and rings. They did well, and I feel like this will be one of the final "new-old" stadiums that we'll see for a while in baseball as the trend started by Camden Yards and Jacobs Field has about run it course. My one complaint about the game was the Philadelphia fans. They suck. They are uneducated, know-nothings who heckle thier team for half the game and then blow them for the remaining half. These quantities and the order in which they happen will vary with the team's success mind you! We were sitting in the upper deck, and Philly fans were booing non-called strikes against the Brewers that were visibly going through the wrong batter's box! WTF?! Anyway, the Phils won, so we didn't have to hear the fans cry anymore, and we ended a spectacular trip to Philly... good times.

Oh, and we did the touristy stuff too like seeing the Liberty Bell, drinking in the City Tavern where GW, Ben Franklin, etc used to drink (man, Thomas Jefferson made some mean ale!), and going to museums, etc... I just figured this crowd wouldn't care for that talk! Bwahahaha!

And now, for the Devine's Softball update... still with only one loss on the season, we roll into tonight's final game with the regular season title in hand. Moose and the Kid are ripping the ball up at the plate, while I have sucked hind tit all season long! I'll continue to do my job behind the plate, and hopefully, as we roll into the playoffs on Thursday, our bats will stay hot, and Steve-O and I will continue to be the best battery in the league! Nice! Come cheer for Devine's! Southern Boundaries, 7:45 PM Tuesday and Thursday! Woo-hoo!

One final set of thoughts in this most random of posts. OK, so we stayed in a swanky hotel becuase Duke was paying, right? And its weird, but I don't know if I like being waited on hand and foot. The bellman came into our room. The room service guy came into our room. The valet guy took Lola's bags without even asking where she wanted them in the car. It was weird. Anyway, just an observation...

Long live the Fourventeenth!

Long live the king

Pittsnoggle has opted out of the draft. Long live the king.


It makes me want to say....Parlaaaaaaaay.