| Now you can get a Kalashnikov in a brand new caliber... 82 proof. 2004-09-20 15:05:14 ET |
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http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/09/20/kalashnikov.vodka.reut/
Lt. Gen. Mikhail Kalashnikov, who invented the AK-47 after being shot by German soldiers during World War II, said Monday he wanted to continue "the good name" of his gun.
"I've always wanted to improve and expand on the good name of my weapon by doing good things," he told Reuters Television.
"So we decided to create a vodka under my name. And we wanted that vodka to be better than anything made, up until now, in both Russia and England."
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| Ice Cave of Total and Impending Doom 2004-09-20 14:28:53 ET |
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http://www.enamon.com/st/
These were taken about year or two ago in February. If memory serves me right the cave is actually an old train tunnel running through a hill/small mountain and rumour has it that one railroad worker was killed there by a train and that he haunts the tunnel. Which, like most rumours from New Jersey, usually dealing with satanic cults, probably isn't true.
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| Current Reading 2004-09-20 12:53:30 ET |
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Just finished "Live and Let Die". It was obviously much better than the movie and much more tighter plot-wise.
Now I'm going to start on Cryptonomicon. And then I'll restart reading, and this time I'll finish, Master and Margarita.
I'll also pick up Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for the book club. I think I know where I can get it for 2 bucks.
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| Photographers in the Mist 2004-09-19 19:31:54 ET |
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I was looking for a book in the garage when I found a box with a Zenit ET photocamera in it. With a zoom lens. Now I have to learn about photography so I can use it tommorow.
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| Need help on "Borellus"!!! 2004-09-16 21:48:49 ET |
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Who is the Borellus mentioned in Cotton Mather's "Magnalia Christi Americana"?
He is specifically mentioned in the quote:
‘Tis likely, that all the Observations of such Writers, as the Incomparable Borellus, will find it hard enough to produce our Belief, that the Essential Salts of Animals may be so Prepared and Preserved, that an Ingenious Man may have the whole Ark of Noah in his own Study, and raise the fine Shape of an Animal out of its Ashes at his Pleasure: And, that by the like Method from the Essential Salts of Human Dust, a Philosopher may, without any Criminal Necromancy, call up the Shape of any Dead Ancestor from the Dust whereinto his Body has been Incarcerated.”
Some of you may recognize that quote from H.P. Lovecraft's "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward." I went to the mid-Manhattan library a while back and actually looked at a notated copy of "Magnalia Christi Americana" which gave the full name of the aforementioned Borellus. The quote from Cotton Mather seems to indicate the alchemical practice of palingenesis ("again" + "born") which is the process of raising an object or the form of the original object through some alchemical process using saltes derived from the original object. Dictionary.com also defines palingenesis as:
"The repetition by a single organism of various stages in the evolution of its species during embryonic development."
I've first heard that in Aleister Crowley's "Magic Without Tears" the only Aleister Crowely book that I own. He basically mentioned it in passing. Also Manly P. Hall in his work "The Secret Teachings of All Ages" claims that palingenesis is a process relating to the mind and not to the physical world. I'm not sure. I don't really care. Who the hell is Borellus?
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