Random observations from your day

[sg1008]

About eighteen years ago, while my mother-in-law was still alive, she made me a Halloween costume. Like in your picture, she made me a Mr. Peanut outfit, FFS.
That was the last time I dressed for Halloween.

It was fucking awesome and I felt like TeH KING SHIT!!!!

 

 

Hopefully no one was allergic....

LOL!!

TBH, Everything is allergic to me.
Even mosquitoes do not bite me. When they try, I see them abandon the effort almost instantly and fly away, spitting.

(kidding about the spitting, obviously, but seriously, they NEVER bite me) ... and bees and wasps generally keep their distance. Spiders seem to want something from me though. (I do not abide spiders, however, except to photograph them and document what their various lifestyles are like ... a hobby, mind you. I HATE them! I LOVE them!).

I am even impervious to poison ivy, poison oak, poison sumac and mesquite thorns. Not sure why, but I'll take it.

... but even metals. No matter what I touch, steel, silver, copper, nickel (not really gold - I wear a gold wedding ring. No troubles, although it is considerably smaller than when we bought them. Maybe I just eat gold and do not know it.) if I do not wipe the surfaces down, it is likely to become oxidized within hours. 
Such is Life as Teh Dawg and such.

If my Awesome Fucking MR. PEANUT Costume killed someone or even sent them into anaphylactic shock, then I would have loved to have documented this for future reference.


 

Lol. Well thats interesting about the metals...  I'm allergic to anything around my neck (break out in eczema rash), to air pollutants including exhaust and cigarette smoke- but not UNTIL I start some sort of cardiovascular exercise..then boom, airways constrict. Also allergic to lactose, msg (gives me headache), and for some reason tomatoes have always given me a headache.

My father is not allergic to poison ivy. I am slightly, but mosquitos don't like me very much...sometimes they bite but not nearly as much as they attack others. Spiders bite me repeatedly when they do. I never get one spider bite, always a little cluster.

[Lestat]

4-gauge double barrel?

Fuck me, thats got to have some recoil.

I've been looking on ebay just recently for some decent capacitors, with the intent of building a quality, highpowered gauss rifle, we have an old (pre-war, no idea by how long) metal  capstan lathe here in the toolshed that would be just perfect for carving out rounds from steel stock. Got a few big old electrolytics here that are pretty juicy, but they do need reconditioning. Don't have many, only the four, but judging from the size and thickness (almost 4mm thick) of the bus-bars connecting them as the are wired up now, methinks in a marx generator configuration, or cockroft-walton, (with a big beefy diode array on the return path to avoid any accidental depolarization and destruction of the cap dielectric, they might well be able to produce sufficient magnetic field in a solenoid to propel a round fast enough to do some damage.

Either way, will be fun trying. Firearms are hard to come by in the UK. We have such a govt full of bellends almost continually, that they are afraid of the populace having any means to defend themselves. Although they go even MORE mental when it involves explosives, as I found out a few years back.

Nickel is known for causing allergies, but most other metals aren't. Gold certainly doesn't, it is more or less completely inert, aqua regia is one of the very few things that will attack and dissolve gold (a mixture of concentrated hydrochloric and nitric acids, this forms nitrosyl chloride in situ, which will attack the gold), apart from probably fused molten cyanides (this even dissolves iridium, a platinum-group metal noted for its extreme hardness, great weight, and near impervious to attack, other than by molten cyanides and molten caustic bases (E.g NaOH)

I figure mercury attacks gold also, presumably forming an amalgam, as some third-world gold panners use a pan filled partially with Hg to pick up and dissolve the gold, which is then distilled off to leave it behind.

Surprising you aren't allergic to poison ivy/oak/sumac though, given their ability as an allergic sensitizer. Although, if you have only encountered it once chances are you won't react, as the urushiols present in these plants are indeed allergic sensitizers, a prior exposure is required before they will cause the typical blistering.

Last time I did halloween dress-up, I hacked together a hoodie and a goat's skull (minus the goat), so that the skull poked out of the hood, giving a grim-reaper kind of look. Proper shit up more than one person who had their door knocked on

Mosquitos rarely bother me, although they used to, but not now.
Spiders, never had a problem with one I didn't inadvertently antagonise, the only bite I can recall, was from my pet brown widow, whilst cleaning her enclosure, after she had just laid egg sacks, and presumably was still pregnant with more. I never got to find out, as she, and all the couple of hundred-odd baby widow spiders I'd raised were murdered by police when they raided this place once.

Fucking sank her fangs into my hand, although usually widows in general are very shy and gentle spiders. NOT a fun experience, the day after the bite I felt as though I had been run over by a truck.

Never encountered poison ivy and friends, they don't grow here (wish I could find seed actually), so I don't know about that, but otherwise the only thing I'm allergic to is beta-lactam antibiotics (the penicillins, and presumably the carbapenems, although these are reserved for the most intractable resistant infections, and share apparently only partial crossreactivity, immunologically speaking, with the penicillins) and presumably anything else with the beta-lactam cyclic amide motif also.

[odeon]

TBH, Everything is allergic to me.
Even mosquitoes do not bite me. When they try, I see them abandon the effort almost instantly and fly away, spitting.

I'd like to be like that. Unfortunately, mosquitoes love me. The ones in DC positively revelled in my visit.

[DirtDawg]

4-gauge double barrel?

Fuck me, thats got to have some recoil.

I've been looking on ebay just recently for some decent capacitors, with the intent of building a quality, highpowered gauss rifle, we have an old (pre-war, no idea by how long) metal  capstan lathe here in the toolshed that would be just perfect for carving out rounds from steel stock. Got a few big old electrolytics here that are pretty juicy, but they do need reconditioning. Don't have many, only the four, but judging from the size and thickness (almost 4mm thick) of the bus-bars connecting them as the are wired up now, methinks in a marx generator configuration, or cockroft-walton, (with a big beefy diode array on the return path to avoid any accidental depolarization and destruction of the cap dielectric, they might well be able to produce sufficient magnetic field in a solenoid to propel a round fast enough to do some damage.

Either way, will be fun trying. Firearms are hard to come by in the UK. We have such a govt full of bellends almost continually, that they are afraid of the populace having any means to defend themselves. Although they go even MORE mental when it involves explosives, as I found out a few years back.

Nickel is known for causing allergies, but most other metals aren't. Gold certainly doesn't, it is more or less completely inert, aqua regia is one of the very few things that will attack and dissolve gold (a mixture of concentrated hydrochloric and nitric acids, this forms nitrosyl chloride in situ, which will attack the gold), apart from probably fused molten cyanides (this even dissolves iridium, a platinum-group metal noted for its extreme hardness, great weight, and near impervious to attack, other than by molten cyanides and molten caustic bases (E.g NaOH)

I figure mercury attacks gold also, presumably forming an amalgam, as some third-world gold panners use a pan filled partially with Hg to pick up and dissolve the gold, which is then distilled off to leave it behind.

Surprising you aren't allergic to poison ivy/oak/sumac though, given their ability as an allergic sensitizer. Although, if you have only encountered it once chances are you won't react, as the urushiols present in these plants are indeed allergic sensitizers, a prior exposure is required before they will cause the typical blistering.

Last time I did halloween dress-up, I hacked together a hoodie and a goat's skull (minus the goat), so that the skull poked out of the hood, giving a grim-reaper kind of look. Proper shit up more than one person who had their door knocked on

Mosquitos rarely bother me, although they used to, but not now.
Spiders, never had a problem with one I didn't inadvertently antagonise, the only bite I can recall, was from my pet brown widow, whilst cleaning her enclosure, after she had just laid egg sacks, and presumably was still pregnant with more. I never got to find out, as she, and all the couple of hundred-odd baby widow spiders I'd raised were murdered by police when they raided this place once.

Fucking sank her fangs into my hand, although usually widows in general are very shy and gentle spiders. NOT a fun experience, the day after the bite I felt as though I had been run over by a truck.

Never encountered poison ivy and friends, they don't grow here (wish I could find seed actually), so I don't know about that, but otherwise the only thing I'm allergic to is beta-lactam antibiotics (the penicillins, and presumably the carbapenems, although these are reserved for the most intractable resistant infections, and share apparently only partial crossreactivity, immunologically speaking, with the penicillins) and presumably anything else with the beta-lactam cyclic amide motif also.

Nah, I have been exposed to all those "poison" plants on a number of occasions. I am completely immune to any reaction from any of these.
In Fact, when I lived in Tennessee I was cutting a massive bunch of vines from the back fence of a rental property when my new neighbor stopped by and FREAKED out, because I was wearing shorts, no shirt and I was carrying a double armload of machete'd poison ivy vines to a fire I had going. The poison ivy in Tennessee looked a lot different from the poison ivy in Texas (already knew it meant nothing to my system) and I did not even know what it was. I just knew I wanted it away from my fence.

THEN, when he saw me take it to a fire, he went totally ballistic, saying that I was going to poison the entire neighborhood if I just burned those vines!
It took some considerable resolve to make an effort be a good neighbor on my part but I composted those vines instead of burning them. Many years later, once we all had internet,  I found that his "old wives tale" about smoke and such from poisonous plants can indeed affect a wide area of allergic people, I was glad that I had taken his ranting seriously, even though I had no reaction whatsoever.

Hey, a hoodie and a goat's head sounds like a current day scary outfit. I was not really going for scary, just funny. You should have seem me work that cane!
 


... and YES, the 4 gauge is an amazingly powerful beast. I have fired MANY high powered weapons in my life, but this thing is a monster and it hurts to even think of the recoil!


Had friends with "pet"  spiders, but I never had one. I like to find them in the wild and spend days photographing them in their own habitat. As I mentioned - hobby, meaning I can not make a living doing this.
I have only been bitten once by a spider and it was a grass spider (Agelenopsis) which looks almost identical to Loxoceles (very bad - Brown Recluse fame) except that it has eyes in pairs instead of threes. Still a fiddleback, but totally NOT deadly.

BTW, if you are actually seeking out seeds for a plant that is NOT native to your area, I recommend extreme caution!
 

IN fact, do NOT do it!
Just enjoy the plants you can safely raise and leave the exotics to a qualified nursery or better yet, leave those plants to their native lands and keep your native plants safe.

 

Serious business!

[Lestat]

Oh I've grown plenty exotic plants in my time. Trichocereus cacti, used to have some yopo trees, small ones but they grow quite fast (Anadenanthera colubrina and A.peregrina, producers of bufotenine in the seeds, they are used to make a hallucinogenic snuff by the indigenous people from their living area, amazon basin)

And others, I forget what but I've had quite a few interesting and oddball plants of that sort. Likewise fungi. Grown several patches of Psilocybe cyanescens (wavy caps), one of the most potent of the psilocybin mushrooms. So much so in fact that one batch I picked from my woodchip beds after spawning them, took that home and had a housemate at the time (who incidentally turned out to be a total cunt of the worst possible kind, only uncuntlike in that she lacked warmth, depth or use to humanity), but we were cleaning the harvest, and noticed at first, massively blown pupils, then things started getting a brighter, more colourful and wavy, wobbly, after a while cleaning those little buggers I actually started tripping moderately hard, and neither of us had actually EATEN a single mushroom.



And its true about burning certain plants. Poison ivy and its relatives' active principles, urushiols are resinous, oily compounds and are volatilized in smoke, burning poison ivy is dangerous to be around if you react, the damage can be very serious indeed.

Oleander is worse, burning oleander wood has apparently been known to kill before, as its extremely toxic (cardenolide type cardiac glycosides similar to digitalis, strophanthin and ouabain)

[DirtDawg]

4-gauge double barrel?

Fuck me, thats got to have some recoil.

(Edited quote)

BTW, I found this pic, comparing various shotgun shells.

Note that a typical "Big Boy" shotgun is a 12 Gauge, which generally sports a one and one half to (sometimes) two ounce load of lead and at Magnum pressures, it is quite a usable weapon on fairly large dangers.

Recognize that the 4 gauge is usually three ounces to four ounces of lead and generally they fire at the same velocities, 1,100 (standard load) to 1,600 (or more for Magnum pressure load) feet per second. Using a slug instead of shot, this was used historically to discourage elephants and rhinos. The only reason I own one is for the curiosity of the damn thing and just because I can.

[DirtDawg]

Oh I've grown plenty exotic plants in my time. Trichocereus cacti, used to have some yopo trees, small ones but they grow quite fast (Anadenanthera colubrina and A.peregrina, producers of bufotenine in the seeds, they are used to make a hallucinogenic snuff by the indigenous people from their living area, amazon basin)

And others, I forget what but I've had quite a few interesting and oddball plants of that sort. Likewise fungi. Grown several patches of Psilocybe cyanescens (wavy caps), one of the most potent of the psilocybin mushrooms. So much so in fact that one batch I picked from my woodchip beds after spawning them, took that home and had a housemate at the time (who incidentally turned out to be a total cunt of the worst possible kind, only uncuntlike in that she lacked warmth, depth or use to humanity), but we were cleaning the harvest, and noticed at first, massively blown pupils, then things started getting a brighter, more colourful and wavy, wobbly, after a while cleaning those little buggers I actually started tripping moderately hard, and neither of us had actually EATEN a single mushroom.



And its true about burning certain plants. Poison ivy and its relatives' active principles, urushiols are resinous, oily compounds and are volatilized in smoke, burning poison ivy is dangerous to be around if you react, the damage can be very serious indeed.

Oleander is worse, burning oleander wood has apparently been known to kill before, as its extremely toxic (cardenolide type cardiac glycosides similar to digitalis, strophanthin and ouabain)

I grew up in South Texas. We had a ten foot hedge, about eight hundred feet long of oleander along one side of our yard. Always cutting to keep it in check, always burning because there was no such thing as city pick up in those days. Hell, there was barely anything anyone could call a city.

[Lestat]

Burning it (the oleander) was a seriously dangerous thing to do. The plant is so toxic, even a couple of leaves is enough to kill a child, and people have been sickened and hospitalized after sharing a piece of meat cooked on a skewer carved from its wood.

You got a pic of that beast of a shotgun? loaded with slugs that thing would make one hell of a mess of any housebreaker, although quite possibly, of the rest of the house along with it

[DirtDawg]

Oh I've grown plenty exotic plants in my time. Trichocereus cacti, used to have some yopo trees, small ones but they grow quite fast (Anadenanthera colubrina and A.peregrina, producers of bufotenine in the seeds, they are used to make a hallucinogenic snuff by the indigenous people from their living area, amazon basin)

And others, I forget what but I've had quite a few interesting and oddball plants of that sort. Likewise fungi. Grown several patches of Psilocybe cyanescens (wavy caps), one of the most potent of the psilocybin mushrooms. So much so in fact that one batch I picked from my woodchip beds after spawning them, took that home and had a housemate at the time (who incidentally turned out to be a total cunt of the worst possible kind, only uncuntlike in that she lacked warmth, depth or use to humanity), but we were cleaning the harvest, and noticed at first, massively blown pupils, then things started getting a brighter, more colourful and wavy, wobbly, after a while cleaning those little buggers I actually started tripping moderately hard, and neither of us had actually EATEN a single mushroom.



And its true about burning certain plants. Poison ivy and its relatives' active principles, urushiols are resinous, oily compounds and are volatilized in smoke, burning poison ivy is dangerous to be around if you react, the damage can be very serious indeed.

Oleander is worse, burning oleander wood has apparently been known to kill before, as its extremely toxic (cardenolide type cardiac glycosides similar to digitalis, strophanthin and ouabain)

Maybe the term "exotic"  was improperly used.

When I caution you against bringing in non-native plants, it is with a learned mind and heavy heart from seeing what can happen when imports compete too readily with native species.

Your exotics sound fine in your climate (UK-ish, right?).

An example of my fear coming to pass is our local (Central Indiana, USA) import of Japanese Honeysuckle or the southern import of an un-natural horror called kudzu.
These plants have been introduced from foreign lands and they have actually become a nuisance to native species in the area.
Be very careful!
 

[DirtDawg]

Burning it (the oleander) was a seriously dangerous thing to do. The plant is so toxic, even a couple of leaves is enough to kill a child, and people have been sickened and hospitalized after sharing a piece of meat cooked on a skewer carved from its wood.

You got a pic of that beast of a shotgun? loaded with slugs that thing would make one hell of a mess of any housebreaker, although quite possibly, of the rest of the house along with it

Yeah, everyone knows NOT to use the oleander as a skewer. Seriously, I have burned it for years with no ill effects.

[Lestat]

I am indeed aware of the problems should such things get loose.

And if the smoke of oleander is inhaled it can and has done quite a bit of poisoning people in the past.

And yes, I'm from england. We here have an invasive nasty, japanese knotweed that is an absolute plague wherever it gets established, which it does extremely well.
I read somewhere, an area the size of a football pitch (or was it swimming pool, one of the two) of soil must be dug out and burnt enough to kill anything living in it before just one plant is considered removed properly, as the tiniest bit of root can spawn another plant, and its a total bugger to poison also.

And we have another, less friendly, also pretty invasive plant, giant hogweed. Its an umbellifer, first brought in as a garden ornamental by the victorians, and it does indeed look nice, with sharply jagged multilobed leaves, reddish areas on its hairy stem, and it grows really tall, as tall as some small trees, produces masses of seed when fertilized.

Only problem, invasiveness aside, is that its severely phototoxic, containing a variety of furanocoumarin derivatives which increase skin sensitivity to sunlight manyfold, to the extent of causing severe burning and blistering. It got me once, and raised a big black blistered welt on my leg that lasted quite some time. Mostly I've only ever seen it confined to a local forested area, but lately, I have seen it growing along the nearest main road to me, where it could easily have gotten somebody.

The initial effect was a blister that resembles those produced by for ex. sulfur mustard or lewisite (neither of which I've had the personal 'pleasure' of thankfully)

[sg1008]

Maybe the term "exotic"  was improperly used.

When I caution you against bringing in non-native plants, it is with a learned mind and heavy heart from seeing what can happen when imports compete too readily with native species.

Your exotics sound fine in your climate (UK-ish, right?).

An example of my fear coming to pass is our local (Central Indiana, USA) import of Japanese Honeysuckle or the southern import of an un-natural horror called kudzu.
These plants have been introduced from foreign lands and they have actually become a nuisance to native species in the area.
Be very careful!
 

Speaking of honey suckle, we have a massive invasion of honey suckle shrubs here in the ohio river valley...so bad it is rare to see new saplings thriving on their own. Our other invasive species is the wild garlic mustard....they grow like their on frickin steroids. 

[DirtDawg]

Maybe the term "exotic"  was improperly used.

When I caution you against bringing in non-native plants, it is with a learned mind and heavy heart from seeing what can happen when imports compete too readily with native species.

Your exotics sound fine in your climate (UK-ish, right?).

An example of my fear coming to pass is our local (Central Indiana, USA) import of Japanese Honeysuckle or the southern import of an un-natural horror called kudzu.
These plants have been introduced from foreign lands and they have actually become a nuisance to native species in the area.
Be very careful!
 

Speaking of honey suckle, we have a massive invasion of honey suckle shrubs here in the ohio river valley...so bad it is rare to see new saplings thriving on their own. Our other invasive species is the wild garlic mustard....they grow like their on frickin steroids. 

I do not understand your comment regarding honeysuckle.

Are you sure that the ones that rarely survive infancy are the invasive species?  From what I have been able to determine, you folk in the Ohio Valley are in the same shape as we people in the White River Valley.

Japanese  honeysuckle has invaded all the central states in the USA.

[sg1008]

Maybe the term "exotic"  was improperly used.

When I caution you against bringing in non-native plants, it is with a learned mind and heavy heart from seeing what can happen when imports compete too readily with native species.

Your exotics sound fine in your climate (UK-ish, right?).

An example of my fear coming to pass is our local (Central Indiana, USA) import of Japanese Honeysuckle or the southern import of an un-natural horror called kudzu.
These plants have been introduced from foreign lands and they have actually become a nuisance to native species in the area.
Be very careful!
 

Speaking of honey suckle, we have a massive invasion of honey suckle shrubs here in the ohio river valley...so bad it is rare to see new saplings thriving on their own. Our other invasive species is the wild garlic mustard....they grow like their on frickin steroids. 

I do not understand your comment regarding honeysuckle.

Are you sure that the ones that rarely survive infancy are the invasive species?  From what I have been able to determine, you folk in the Ohio Valley are in the same shape as we people in the White River Valley.

Japanese  honeysuckle has invaded all the central states in the USA.

I meant new saplings of native trees are a rare sight. The honeysuckle is everywhere, definitely thriving.

[DirtDawg]

Maybe the term "exotic"  was improperly used.

When I caution you against bringing in non-native plants, it is with a learned mind and heavy heart from seeing what can happen when imports compete too readily with native species.

Your exotics sound fine in your climate (UK-ish, right?).

An example of my fear coming to pass is our local (Central Indiana, USA) import of Japanese Honeysuckle or the southern import of an un-natural horror called kudzu.
These plants have been introduced from foreign lands and they have actually become a nuisance to native species in the area.
Be very careful!
 

Speaking of honey suckle, we have a massive invasion of honey suckle shrubs here in the ohio river valley...so bad it is rare to see new saplings thriving on their own. Our other invasive species is the wild garlic mustard....they grow like their on frickin steroids. 

I do not understand your comment regarding honeysuckle.

Are you sure that the ones that rarely survive infancy are the invasive species?  From what I have been able to determine, you folk in the Ohio Valley are in the same shape as we people in the White River Valley.

Japanese  honeysuckle has invaded all the central states in the USA.

I meant new saplings of native trees are a rare sight. The honeysuckle is everywhere, definitely thriving.

There are certain species of plants that manage to "poison" the surrounding soil with hormones that they create which are capable of preventing germination by any other plant.

Hickory and walnut both do this. Once established, nothing can grow anywhere near one of those nut trees, totally preventing any form of competition. I am not sure if Japanese honeysuckle can do this, but I do know that once established, nothing grows anywhere near them, then they spread like crazy weeds, here in central USA.

While it is a beautiful plant when established and very fragrant, anyone who grows this plant locally is a criminal, in my way of thinking.