April 25, 2004

• i inadvertently planted five castor bean plants last summer, that i picked up on the cheap. when i 'searched' them and discovered i was growing ricin it caused quite a stir. my darlin' just had to tell everyone. they did look great and didn't bloom, thankfully.
• What are castor bean plants? Are castor beans edible?
• The source of castor oil. The beans are very poisonous.
• As fun as this link is, the home page is pure, unadulterated geekatude coolness on a stick.
• Me for the Tabletop Trebuchet!
• well i finally have something fun to do for july 4th this year. darn laws, sayin' bottle rockets aren't legal in this state... nothin' wrong with sparklers though, right? i'll have me a gigundous sparkler bomb on the beach this year. ought to amuse my great-uncle franny, he always was "a bit of a firebug" (as he put it - i saw him light a fire one wet rainy day by using the propane tank from his camper, opened it full-blast and used it like a giant bic lighter. "bit of a firebug" my ass - he's full-on insane. but he always brought a huge pile of semi-legal fireworks for the fourth, so we loved him anyway.) on a related note, if you stick bottle rockets into a mason jar until you can't possibly cram in one more, then light just one of them, you'll get an interesting reaction - first few can't get out of the jar, but the flames start lighting more of the rest. eventually it gets loose enough that several hundred rockets start shooting off at once. never fails to amuse. hard to explain to your dad exactly why the entire driveway is littered with a blanket of those little red sticks though.