Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesday: Alcohol!!!

In chemistry, we teach you that there are five simple reactions:  synthesis, decomposition, single replacement, double replacement, and combustion.  Synthesis is bringing two or more pieces together to form a new unit.  Decomposition is shit falling apart.  Single and double replacement reactions are pretty straight-forward:  they're just switching things out for something new.  Combustion reactions, however, are the stuff of dreams.  Or the dreams of Tuesdays, at the very least.

I have a new lab assistant.

Within chemistry, there are different divisions which add a different layer to the five basic types of reactions.  Myself, I'm an organic chemist.  Despite what several of my dates have thought over the past years, organic chemistry has nothing to do with being a perv.  Yes, I've been accused of being "like that" when I tell a woman I'm an organic chemist.  I mean, take a spin around my blog and you'll know that I'm "like that," but usually not on the first date.  Or the first fifteen minutes of the date.  Maybe.

Organic chemistry is the study of the element carbon and all of its myriad fascinating compounds...with the notable exceptions of carbon dioxide and calcium carbonate (and other metallic carbonate salts...mostly...sort of...um...let's move on).  These compounds are usually considered to come from non-organic, or non-living, sources...even though animals exhale carbon dioxide and plants take carbon dioxide and form it into sugars.  Oh, and sea creatures make a literal shit ton of calcium carbonate that we use to build things with and as decoration.  Um...again, let's move along.

One thing about organic compounds is that they feature carbon and hydrogen.  Usually, they feature a lot of carbon and hydrogen.  We chemists, always a clever lot, refer to compounds that feature a lot of hydrogens and carbons as "hydrocarbons."  Brilliant, eh?  I thought so, too, as did many of my predecessors!  Now, when you mix together hydrocarbons and oxygen and add in just a touch of flame, something wonderful and enchanting happens!



*inhales deeply*  Magnificent!

What you are seeing here is the mixture of ethanol--yes, the same ethanol that causes you text some gorgeous red-headed girl in the middle of Pennsylvania at three in the morning--vapor, oxygen, and just enough of a heat source to get this thing going.  Since the neck of the vessel is narrow, the fire cannot reach all of the vapor at the same time, so that's why you see that lovely cascade of fire sliding down the insides of the plastic bottle.  The ethanol has pooled a little in the bottom, which is why the bright yellow flames dance in the middle of the bottle once the cascade has reached the bottom.  Heat from the fire has caused the air to warm and rise toward the opening of the bottle, which is why the dancing flames are climbing toward freedom as the fire begins to extinguish itself.

Now, I know I just talked about hydrocarbons, and technically ethanol is not a hydrocarbon; it's an alcohol, which means it has an oxygen inserted between one carbon and one of its hydrogens.  In theory, you could do this with any hydrocarbon with a low enough boiling point that it's a vapor at room temperature.  Butane comes to mind.  As does gasoline (octane)--both of which are hydrocarbons.  Unfortunately, I personally would not try that; the combustion reactions of these gases are pretty spectacularly exothermic (they're hot), and that could cause some issues.  What kind of issues?  Let's find out.

Caveat time:  the "whoosh bottle" is a pretty simple experiment, but you need to make sure you're safe doing this.  After you swirl the ethanol around inside the bottle, dump out the excess liquid.  Make sure the bottle is not cracked or structurally compromised.  And, for the love of God and anything else you might find even the slightest bit holy, be fucking careful.

Why?  What happens if you're not careful and don't follow the instructions?  You'll end up like this dipshit here: 



Fortunately, no one was hurt.  I don't know if the bottle was cracked or if there were any other issues, but the excess ethanol was not dumped out.  That left way too much fuel for the fire and the expansion of the gasses trapped inside the bottle was too rapid for the bottle to hold together.  Thus, kaboom.

In the top experiment, the phenomenon witnessed is called "deflagration," where the fuel is ignited and burns away until no more fuel is left to consume.  It's like a very fast, very hypnotic, very pretty log burning in the fireplace.

The second is a detonation, because the container couldn't hold it and everything went boom.

And notice, aside from some bad glasses on the teacher's face, no safety equipment was used (although flannel shirt girl did have the fire extinguisher ready and handy for the teacher to use).  Safety first...or, somewhere in the top five.

German Gifts

I had kind of a rough day yesterday. And by "rough", I mean by my standards.

First, I didn't really get a lunch. At one point during the afternoon, I slammed down a somewhat overripe banana and some celery and washed it down with some water. Oh, healthy.

When I came in in the morning (oh! Double preposition!), I was filled with optimism that I'd be able to better the world, one sp3-hybridized orbital at a time (unless I'm actually fiddling with the sp2-orbital on the aromatic ring with my bromine on it...how does lithium-halogen exchange work anyway...I know it's a single-electron transfer mechanism, but does it dump into one of the pi-system antibonding orbitals or does it...oh, I'm sorry, what? Did I slip into chemistry speak again? Well, let's fix this ship right the fuck now!).

Anyway, I had high hopes for what I could accomplish during the day. So, I mixed up some solvents, prepared a few samples, slammed down some coffee, and signed up for a decent amount of time on the High Pressure Liquid Chromatography machine (henceforth referred to as the HPLC-inator). I trundled off with my carboy of solvent, my samples in hand, and extra gloves. Science was about to be done.

I prepped the machine appropriately, and I was all fired up. I had this thing. I didn't need to go find my friend, Joe (which would have involved a trip to some sub-tropical, pirate-infested waters, anyway, so it was better that I had everything under control). I could handle this. I started the machine, and this loud buzzing, like a million angry bees were coming for me, started up along with the machine.

Things didn't seem quite right (at least in my adolescent-level mind) but I figured I'd let the first run go, see how things shaped up. Except, I did something stupid: I leaned forward, resting my forearms on the bench, thus pushing the keyboard back into the UV-Vis detector, and shutting it off. Keen. I'll just turn it back on.

Except. It didn't come back on. Not fully. It wouldn't calibrate. I tried shutting it off for longer and letting it come back up. Still no calibration. Crapfuck. I had to go get help.

Fortunately, I went and found someone who wasn't on a cruise in pirate-infested waters, and they tried the same things I did. Nothing. So, they went to consult someone else. Finally, we called it a bust and I hopped on another machine. Not literally, as that might have crushed it. However, hopping on it probably would have netted the same result.

Apparently, over the break, the computer that runs the HPLC-inator had a fight with the pump on the HPLC-inator, and they weren't speaking. I dunno, they started bitching about little things and then the computer called the pump a whore and...well, things got ugly. After a little bit of fiddling, that problem was rectified...except the computer, in an uppity fit of bitchitude, decided it wasn't going to read my information for me, so it wouldn't run the program.

The obvious fix was what anyone does when dealing with an uppity computer: turn it off, turn it back on. Things finally seemed to work, so I reloaded all of my data into the sequence programs and got things running. This was an hour and forty-five minutes after I wanted to start, and I had a meeting looming over me at 2:00.

Yeah. Six hours into the new year and we're having a meeting. Right, sir, I'll send a memo.

So, after the meeting, it was 3:00, and I went down to check on my HPLC-inator runs, and I found that it had shut off. This was not unexpected. The initial run was to get a feel for the method I was running and to see if it would, in fact, purify my compounds for me. Finally, around 3:30, after having to reload all the data for the sequences into the computer and restarting the run, I was able to go sit down for a bit and cram some food into my piehole.

I worked on my notebook to make myself look busy for a little while and then wandered back out to my bench to see what was happening there (the answer better have been nothing, since I hadn't been able to set anything up, thanks to the bitchy nature of the computer and the spat it had with the pump).

Instead of nothing, I found a big-ass, flat, cardboard box. "What the bloody hell is this?"

"It's a box," said my labmate, Jennifer.

Because it's always a good idea just to go tearing into mysterious, unlabeled packages in a chemistry company, I dove right in. What I pulled out was...a calendar.

Apparently, I bought a chemical from this vendor in Germany, and they wanted to thank me for my purchase with a calendar. It's a nice calendar, pictures of flowers, all that good stuff. The days are even in the right order, and all the months are there. Top of the line stuff.

I found a letter enclosed with the calendar. It was in German.

"Can you read German?" I asked my labmate, Jennifer.

"Nyet," she responded. I cocked an eyebrow at her.

"You're very funny; you know that, right?"

She grinned.

Fortunately, if you flip the letter over, there's English on the other side. That's how I knew this was a "thank you" calendar. Also, I found a packing slip. It was, perhaps, my favorite thing in the box. It read: "Contents: 1 calendar".

Also, there was a letter verifying that the calendar did not contain any infectious agents. Nice. So, it's not an anthrax calendar or anything. Which is good, because "death by calendar" is probably a very ignoble way to go.

So, thanks, German vendor of chemicals. I'll hang that calendar up in my office...whenever I find a way to do it. All I need is a hook or a nail or someone with rock-hard nipples one of those magnet things.

Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays: Mmmm...Turkey!

God bless whoever realized, "Hey, turkey is delicious. Deep-fried foods are delicious." A pause for some brooding contemplation. Suddenly, "I wonder what happens when you deep fry turkey?!?!?!?!?"

Clearly, expressed in equation form, this is what you'd get:

Turkey + hot oil ------> DELICIOUS!!!!!

My first experience with fried turkey was at Notre Dame. One of the maintenance guys, a gregarious fellow of middling years with a pervert's moustache named Ross, threw some ass-kicking good tailgaters. Every year, for the last football game (you know the game, the one where Charlie Weis loses the game, honoring the seniors the only way he knows how) he'd get a half dozen turkeys and deep fry them. Since I was usually busy drinking myself into a stupor (Bob Davie was the coach...need I say more?), I wouldn't get to Ross' tailgate until all that was left of the turkeys were some well-picked-over carcasses. I will say that whatever meat I could pry from the ransacked remains of the birds was pretty effing delicious. Clearly, this is enough scientific data to support the above equation.

However, as with all good things in this world (nuclear weapons, running with sharp objects, the comedy of Emo Phillips), fried turkey has a dark side--and I'm not just talking about the legs. That's what's known as ham-fisted comedy, my friends.

No, the problem with fried turkey is that, typically, idiots are doing the frying. And when you have idiots, you have the potential for disaster.


Yes, whose drunk ass idea was that? For, I would like to salute you, Mr. Drunk Ass Genius!

Anyway, yes, I know that this was a contrived video. The people set it up so that they could send flames spewing forth into the night. My only wish is that the camera hadn't been on its side, though that angle does help with the perspective of just how effing big the fireball was. Yahtzee! That's a spicy meatball! And any other lame catchphrases you can think to insert here. BAM!

There's three main reasons for the fryer to go all napalm on you like this, and all are avoidable.

The first is fairly obvious: don't overfill the fryer with oil. But, is it that obvious? No, I don't think that it is, otherwise shit like this wouldn't happen all the time. The problem that most people overlook is that when oil is heated, it expands, thereby taking up a greater volume than what you originally put in. So, while it looks like the initial amount of oil that you added to the fryer won't cover the bird, you're probably wrong. Be sure to follow the fill line, kids. The people making the fryers actually know what they're doing.

The second biggest problem is dunking a turkey too fast. While it's true that some things are better when done fast and hard and hot and faster and harder and harder and oh God yes, yes, yes--ahem. Sorry. Got sidetracked. While it's true that doing some things faster--like driving--are really satisfying, take your time inserting the turkey into the fryer. It's not going to cook any faster if you throw that shit in there rather than slowly inserting it. Remember what Aesop and his tortoise taught us in kindergarten: slow and steady wins the race, you cocksure hare.

Now, the third problem is entirely scientific. If you put a partially-frozen or frozen bird into the fryer, you're asking for trouble. And by trouble, I mean you're going to go all Johnny Storm, without the benefits of yelling "flame on" first (and also without the benefits of diddling Alicia Masters...rowr). We'll assume, based on some of the recipes I've seen round these here innernets, that the oil bath you're dunking your turkey into is 350 degrees F. Water boils at a paltry 212 degrees F. This means that when you're frying up captain frozen poultry, you're taking ice and inserting it into an environment which is already above the temperature of its boiling point. This causes the ice to rapidly melt and form steam, which expands. Hot steam likes to rise up, and so it goes out the top of your fryer--violently--splashing oil down onto the open flames below. Oil + fire = Chinese buffet and bandages. Despite how delicious it is, no one really wants crab rangoon on Thanksgiving.

So, to review: 1) don't overfill your fryer; 2) don't dunk the turkey like an Oreo into milk; 3) don't try to fry a frozen turkey. And, just to be safe, make sure the fryer, heater and propane tank are away from any structure you feel particularly attached to.

Also, while I have your attention...please stop saying "boiling oil". Oil doesn't boil. Boiling means that you go from liquid to gaseous form. Most cooking oils (and rendered animal fats used to dissuade besieging armies) burst into flame well before they reach boiling temperatures. Thank you. I'll end my rant now.

Totally Blowing Shit Up: Car Wars

With a tip of the hat to my good friend, Scope, I bring you this week's version of blowing shit up. Except...well...I'm not blowing shit up. But, I am ripping holes in things with cascades of molten metal.

A couple of weeks ago, back when I showed the pumpkin and the thermite reaction, Mr. C asked the question "It said it [thermite] could burn through the hood of a car, the engine block, and concrete. True?"

I could simply tell you the answer. But if Seymour Skinner has taught me anything about the conservation of angular momentum, it's that people learn better when you show them rather than explain to them. So, I humbly offer the video below.

Heh. They destroyed that car because it was French.

And, yeah, I know. There was no concrete under the car, so I didn't technically answer Mr. C's question. However, I can assure you that, with enough thermite, it will destroy the concrete underneath the car's engine block and bonnet. Remember, as they point out in the above clip, thermite burns at around two and a half thousand degrees Celsius. That's quite warm.

But, thermite's not just good for destroying the engine block of a car. And, frankly, I'd be doing you, my friends, a disservice if I didn't show you that thermite can also be used for the entire, wanton destruction of the entire car.

Don't believe me? Well, then you don't watch enough Mythbusters...


Sorry about the shitty quality of the film. It's the best I could find.

Okay, so Jamie said that thermite burns at 4500 degrees. That was in degrees Fahrenheit. Still, it's damned hot, as evidenced by the smoldering lump of bubbly steel left in the wake of Adam and Jamie's little "experiment."

So, if this is an experiment, then what is the reaction? Well, a "thermite" reaction is simply a metal oxide and another metal mixed together and, when heated, the oxide is transferred and a lot of extra heat is released during the course of the single-replacement reaction. For what we've seen twice above, this is the balanced chemical equation:

Fe2O3 + 2Al → 2Fe + Al2O3 + heat

I say the oxide is "transferred", but that may not be entirely true. The oxygen could, conceivably, come from the atmosphere. I don't know if anyone has done isotopic studies to make sure taht the oxide from the iron is ending up on the aluminum. Also, I don't know if 18O (O-eighteen) is stable at two and a half thousand degrees.

That's just one type of thermite, though. Another common form, used in welding (especially in the rail industry), uses copper instead of iron:

3CuO + 2Al → 3Cu + Al2O3 + heat

Anyway, the net product is one bitching hot reaction and, as Jamie says in the second video, it's really, really satisfying. Fortunately, the tires blew up during the course of the melting of the car with thermite. Hooray thermite! Hooray explosions!

Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays: Pumpkin Edition 2

Sorry this is getting to you a little late today. I meant to do it last night, but then I fell asleep on the couch, woke up, staggered upstairs to watch the end of the Jets and Dolphins game, and dick around on the computer in a very non-bloggy sort of way.

Okay, fine. I was playing Civ III. Again.

Fuck a duck.

As a consequence, I'm writing this over my lunch hour, which means it will probably be abbreviated and feature a lot less ridiculous Halloween costumes. Also, it means I'll be fucking hungry this afternoon.

Anyway, since it's October, I figured we'd revisit the detonation of all things pumpkin. I mean, aside from pie and jack-o-lanterns, they're pretty effing useless. Unless you factor in their bomb capabilities, or using them as giant boats for racing. Oh, those wacky kids from New England.

To wit, I bring you another edition of pumpkin detonation:

Well, that's one way to roast the pumpkin seeds.

Curious about where the name "pumpkin" comes from? Of course you are, bitch. Now sit down and pretend to be interested. Guys, pretend we're at dinner and there's a chance I'm giving up the sex later. Ladies...well, ladies pretty much ignore me all the time, anyway. So, carry on!

Pumpkin comes from the Greek word pepon, which means "large melon". The French adopted it as "pompon", and the English took it on as "pumpion", which got changed to "pumpkin" over here in the States. Man, could I unintentionally work in any more euphemisms for "breasts" in one paragraph? I think not, Sweater Kittens.

Pumpkins most likely originated in North America, as archaeological expeditions in Mexico have netted seeds in the 5,000 to 7,000 years old range, though no one can conclusively prove that the Aztecs were blowing shit up with them. Yet.

The nice thing about pumpkins is that they have a lovely hard rind (that's what she said) with a soft, pulpy inner core. You learn this quickly if you get married and have kids and everyone gets their own pumpkin at the holidays, and you are the one tasked with reaching your hand into a tight space and ripping out fistfuls of pumpkin guts for...everyone's...individual...pumpkin. What? Bitter? Me? Never! I love having orange shit under my fingernails until the new year.

This combination of hard outer shell and soft and gooey insides makes pumpkins excellent for bomb-making or for analogies for Clint Eastwood. The hard outer shell provides enough strength to contain the gasses in an explosion long enough for a good amount of force to be generated. The softness of the innards provides an excellent splatter pattern.

Oh, and one other thing: pumpkins aren't technically squashes. They're gourds, so they are related, but there's a few differences between them. If you're an insufferable douchebag with a botanical streak in him, this is important (read: how I'll act at this year's Halloween party!) but for everyone else, it's a side note. Also, a pumpkin is considered a fruit since it grows from the plants ovaries (kind of like tomatoes are fruits). If you want to wow your friends, you can tell them that the main nutritional value of pumpkins is their high levels of lutein and both flavors of carotene (alpha AND beta--beta being that which gets converted to Vitamin A in your body). This all means that pumpkins are good for your eyes, skin and gene transcription. Use that as an pick up line and I guarantee you'll be parting someone's thighs later that night*.

So, there you have it. Not only have we blown the pumpkins up, but we've also explored where they come from and what they do. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go stick my hands in some very unseemly places.

* I actually don't guarantee a damned thing. You've come to the wrong place if you're reading this blog looking for dating advice, loser.

Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays: Ice, Ice Baby

What's going on, everybody? Yeah, it's been a couple of weeks since our last installment of this lovely little series, but, you know, sometimes you need to take a moment from the explosive excitement and gather your thoughts. Hell, even Shakespeare took a little time after writing A Midsummer Night's Dream (I assume). That's right, I just likened myself to the Bard. Except, I have more hair. What? The Bard loved him a good explosion, as well, which is why his Globe theater burnt to the ground in 1613 after a cannon misfired during a performance of Henry VIII.

Did you see what I just did there? I combined several of my favorite things: Shakespeare, useless history lessons, explosions and Latin. Self-induced priapism is three, two, one...

Alright, let's get back on track. Originally, I saw this little piece of awesome on Brainiac, but since they've done the old bait and switch on explosions before, the "experiment" was repeated on Mythbusters. Satisfyingly, that smug grin was wiped off Adam and Jamie's faces (along with their so-called explosives expert) when they successfully caused a detonation by repeating the conditions previously reported.

The recipe for this explosion is easy: thermite + ice = explosion. Being that I'm not an expert, I'll let someone else tell you how to make thermite. Ice, I think, you can pretty much figure out where to get: water + cold = ice. Anyway, when you let the thermite reaction pour down onto a carefully constructed pile of ice blocks, it blows up. Don't believe me? Watch.

Now, why does this seemingly innocuous mixture of fire and ice result in explosive goodliness? Fuck if I know. Ask someone else in the field, and they'll give you some hand-waving explanation. My initial thoughts were that the ice sublimates under the extreme heat of the thermite reaction (up to 4500 degrees Fahrenheit), and such a rapid expansion of gas against a relatively solid wall of ice causes it to explode.

Another explanation is that the thermite induces the water which forms the ice to break down into its elemental units of oxygen and hydrogen. We've already seen the explosive nature of hydrogen a couple of times on here, and the mixture of the right amounts of hydrogen and oxygen form a really good explosion. My only problem with this is that hydrogen is very flammable. A curtain of molten metals burning down through a cloud of hydrogen should cause it to ignite fairly quickly. It doesn't seem like there would be an accumulation of sufficient amounts of hydrogen gas to cause an explosion like that.

Finally, a third explanation is that with the rapid sublimation of the ice into water vapor, it helps to aerosolize the thermite as it rains fire down through the ice blocks. Again, we've seen what happens when you mix fine powders and source of ignition. No one has definitively proved how this happens. In fact, I'm pretty sure that everyone who sets out to prove the mechanism of explosion ends up laughing and saying "What happens if we add more ice?"

The whole point of this is that, while the Brainiacs have been known to enhance their explosions, this is not one of those times. It's been repeated on Mythbusters with most satisfying results, AND it's been repeated several times by amateur scientists with video cameras and too much time on their hands. Not to mention a healthy love of explosions.

Now, if only other songs of ice and fire could finish so satisfyingly, I'd be happy. Or, better yet, maybe they could just, you know, finish.

Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays: The Peeps Saga

I knew, last week, when I was telling everyone about how much I loved me some peeps, that a lot of you weren't Peeps fans. And while I will never understand this, I fully accept the fact that you are marshmallowphobic. Frankly, I embrace it. I mean, if you're not eating the Peeps, then that saves more for me, right? Win win, baby.

And while the movie I showed last week was cool and all--you know, the one where they had the Peeps and it looked like they were various types of fireworks and whatnot--it wasn't really blowing shit up. So, why not blow some Peeps up this week?

You know that it pains me to watch Peeps ruined in such a way, but I'm doing it for you, the people who loves them some splosions and such. Don't say I'm not a giver, because I'm willing to sacrifice some of my favorite disgustingly sugary treats for you readers. It's like a written hug or something.

The key to this expansion thing is that marshmallow, for all it's sugary goodness, has a lot of air whipped into it. When you microwave the Peeps, the air gets hot and expands. Okay, let me rephrase that. Water vapor in the air within the Peeps gets excited when you microwave it, which causes those hydrogen-oxygen bonds to wiggle back and forth a lot more, which causes heat. As the bonds wiggle more and more, more heat is produced. As the heat is produced, something needs to absorb it, so the air heats up. As the air heats up, it expands. Since it's trapped in a somewhat solid matrix of sugar, the air pushes out on the soft marshmallow, which causes it to expand like that. The heat also helps to melt the marshmallow, giving the added blobby effect.

The heat that melts the marshmallow, though, is probably caused by the vibrations of the hydrogen-oxygen bonds in the sugar itself, but that would also contribute to the overall heating, expansion and melting effect seen above. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. It's the polarizability of the -OH bonds that causes the microwave to have any efficacy at all.

The same thing (minus the melting) happens to a marshmallow when you put it in a vacuum. Except, here the air is expanding because it is being pulled out of the marshmallow instead of expansion through heating. Put a marshmallow in a Bell jar and evacuate it, and it swells up huge before collapsing upon itself.

While all of that is cool, it's not really blowing anything up, per se, is it? No, it's not. It's expanding due to heat and pressure changes, but not a true explosion.

So, what happens when you shove a firecracker up a Peeps' ass and light it?



That was so much more satisfying.

EDIT: I had to pop the word verification back up yesterday. I had some asshole dillweed Chinese fucktard spamming my comments. I'll probably drop it again in a few days. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays: The Power of Sublimation

Remember how, whenever the criminal du jour needed to add that creepy effect to his fake ghost story, the villain from Scooby-Doo would always employ dry ice and water to create his ghostly fog. I think Scooby even made some donuts out of the dry ice fog once. Mmmm...carbon dioxide. So tasty.

I guess if you're a stoner and a dog--stone dog--then when the munchies hit, you have to respond, right?

When I was a lad, I remember my mother helping to make a parade for a float in the parade for our local festival. They needed to create a smoky effect coming out of a pot. For some strange reason, with all the papier mache, streamers and tissue all mounted onto a particle board frame with a tractor pulling it unsteadily down the road, they shied away from using actual fire. So, they opted for dry ice in water. I remember seeing the result--a few wisps of smoke-like vapor escaping the top of the cauldron--and being completely underwhelmed.

I've since learned that, if one wants a really good fog effect from dry ice, isopropyl alcohol--otherwise known as "rubbing alcohol"--gives a great plume of foggy carbon dioxide. So, there you go. In case you find yourself working on a float in the near future and you need a good, boiling plume of fog, drop some chunks of dry ice into rubbing alcohol. Just be sure to recharge the alcohol from time to time, because as it gets colder, the effect cools a bit. Heh. Pun.

Dry ice--which is frozen carbon dioxide--undergoes one of those rare phase shifts from solid to gas, called sublimation. Most of the time, we think of solids turning liquid first and then going to gas, but some things go straight from their solid form to their gas phase. Snow will do this sometimes in the winter, as well. The net result of the sublimation of dry ice to carbon dioxide gas is the nice fog effect.

We can also harvest the awesome power of the sublimation explosively. Don't believe me? Take a look.

For some reason, seeing that cinder block get blown to gravel really amused me. I think part of it is because I went to undergrad with this guy named Seville that someone once described as having "a personality like a cinder block." The damnedest thing was, that description was dead accurate.

Walking monoliths aside, I have to say I'm pretty impressed with the power that this showed. If I were to guess, I would have thought that the force would escape up and away from the block where the bottle was not holding it. Shows what I know about explosive forces.

Now, I'm not telling you to go out and try this stunt at home, but after watching this, I would make damned sure that the dry ice bomb doesn't go off in your hand. Otherwise, you might be getting the Tyr experience without all the fun of tricking Fenrir.

See what I did there? Brilliant, no? I thought so, too.

Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays: The Purple Powder of DOOM!

I'm going to let you in on a little secret. It's something that some of my brethren in the chemical world would appreciate me keeping under wraps, but I can't do it any longer. The truth must be known.

The truth is this: General Chemistry isn't all gas laws and molality. We totally love blowing shit up! We even take times between drawing Lewis Dot Structures and calculating Gibbs' free energies to watch...movies. Movies about totally blowing shit up!

And you know what? We love those movies. It's probably a bad idea to give a bunch of pyros access to chemicals--even if it is in the relative safety of a supervised and monitored laboratory setting--but still. I would look forward to getting to see these little explosive vignettes from time to time rather than learn a new a creative way to transform an amount of something into moles of something.

That's how I learned about this little beauty here. I've seen maybe five or six different versions of the explosive reaction featured in this video, and really, it never gets old to me. To think that something could go off with just the touch of a feather? Awesome.

What you see there is nitrogen triiodide. The beauty of nitrogen triiodide is that, when it's wet, it's completely stable. When it dries out, the shit's as touchy as an overweight, middle-aged man about his car. As you can see, just brushing it with a feather can get it to go off. Later in my chemical career, my undergraduate professor for gen chem, quantitative analysis and p chem, Dr. Awesome, told me about how his room mates would whip up some nitrogen triiodide (he called it ammonia triiodide) and then those wily chemists would paint Dr. Awesome's keyhole (to his door, you sick fucks) with the wet stuff. That way, when he finally rolled back to the dorm, he'd stick his key in the door and BLAM! Instant Heart Failure!!!

He said he was usually tipped off when he would step in front of his door and he'd hear a faint "Paff!" come from under his foot where he had stepped on a spot where the nitrogen triiodide had dripped off the paintbrush and dried on the floor. We chemists know how to have an awesome good time.

Why is this so shock-sensitive? Take in a deep breath. 70% of what you just filled your lungs with is diatomic nitrogen. The reason why 70% of our atmosphere is comprised of this is because it's so stable. Chances are, there's a molecule or seven of N2 going into your lungs right this very second that went into Jesus' lungs, too. The only ones who are good at using this stuff are bacteria that live on the roots of bean plants, fixing nitrogen in the air so that the bean plants can use it, which is why beans are a good source of protein. The farts are just the bonus prize. The moral of this little side avenue is that nitrogen, for all the other magnificent compounds it makes, really just wants to bind with itself and hang out in the atmosphere. That's why nitrogen compounds make such wonderful explosives.

You'll notice the Purple Haze that hangs in the air after the detonations. That's the iodine from the explosive returning to its more stable and happy state of diatomic iodine, or I2. Since iodine is such a huge effing atom (trust me, it's huge in Atomic World), it tends to make easily-broken bonds, which is why the nitrogen can be freed so easily and readily. The net result of those easily-broken bonds is those pieces of filter paper totally being blown up!

The other cool part is that the crystals are a deep purple, most likely thanks to the influence of the iodine floating around in it. In comparison to all the stuff I make, which is either a white solid or an off-white solid or--sometimes!--a yellow solid, it's nice to see the elements from the right hand side of the periodic table (where all the druggies hang out) that can form up into some purty colors.

An Interesting Observation...

Since it's Saturday, and Cate at Show My Face was kind of enough to kick this whole thing off, I thought I'd join in on the Six Word Saturday Thing.

Poignant Social Commentary Via My Blog

I picked up on this little trend late Thursday evening, but since I teach you guys how to pick up chicks in the subjunctive on Friday, I waited until today to record my observations.

Monday, I retold the story of St. Vitus, the Patron Saint of Epilepsy and Actors.
I got nine comments on the story, one of which was my own.

Thursday, I told you about how I gave Colin Firth a semen mustache.
I got thirty comments, two of which were mine, and I got three new followers and four new commenters.

...

Apparently, you people are far more enthralled with what comes out of my penis as opposed to some kid who survives being dunked in a vat of boiling lead.

I don't know whether I should be honored and a little bit humbled or if I should be concerned and a little bit scared.

Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays: Dr. Poopy Pants Edition

So, last week, I played one of my favorite Brainiac clips, in which ampules containing alkali metals were dropped into water and comedy ensued. And by comedy, I mean explosions. Why the hell else would I post that on a Tuesday?

Well, someone came along and told us about how Brainiac has been known to enhance their explosions a wee bit. Oh, boo hoo! It's blowing shit up Tuesdays, man! When in doubt, use C-4. Or would that still be considered "cheating", Dr. Poopy Pants?

So, I went out and found another video detailing some of the fun times that can be had when mixing those metals found in the first column of the periodic table with water. In case you were wondering (and I know that you were), the first column is called the 'alkali metals', as opposed to the second column, which is the 'alkaline earth metals.'

When the alkali metals react with water, they produce a base (opposite of acid) and hydrogen gas. It's the hydrogen gas that's the problem here. You can see it bubbling out rather inconsequentially with the lithium and the sodium, but when you get down to potassium, the heat of reaction is such that it causes the produced hydrogen to ignite. Further down the periodic table and things get...well...more 'splosive. Let's find out.

Dang, that crystallizing dish didn't know what was coming, did it? Notice how they spelled cesium as caesium? I won't go into the hairy details about the name this week. Get it? Hairy? Fuck, I'm clever.

But wait, there's more! Underneath cesium there is another metal, francium! Time for another history lesson. Can you guess where francium was discovered? That's right, Gaul! In modern lingo, we call it France. It's also the rarest of the naturally occurring elements, with only an estimated 20-30 g of the stuff existing at any given time throughout the entirety of the Earth's crust. The reason it's so rare is because every isotope of francium is radioactive, and so it's constantly decaying into something else (radon and radium). It's longest-lived isotope is around 30 minutes. If you're looking for it out in nature, it can be found in ores of thorium and uranium.

Now, if the trend of reactivity toward water holds true as we travel down the periodic table in the first column, and since francium is under cesium, it should be more reactive than cesium. And cesium just totally blew the shit out of a crystallization dish. Let's see what happens when you mix francium with water, shall we?



Aye, that's the stuff!

So, sure, Brainiac might have augmented their explosions a little bit; I mean, Christ, we all get those emails in our spam boxes about augmentation. I'm sure I'm not the only one who clicks on the links--out of idle curiosity, naturally--right? Right? Why do I hear crickets?

Anyway, the point was that, even if Brainiac tossed in some extra shizz with their alkali metals, the stuff is still pretty potent. And it makes for a great Tuesday morning read, right? Right?

Where the fuck are all those crickets coming from? I should spray or something...

Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays: Fruit Salad, Yummy Yummy

Not much in the way of science today, folks. Just the expansion of a gas as it travels from it's liquid state to the its, uh, gaseous state. If you remember correctly, liquids take up less volume than do gases. So, if you have, say, 20 oz. of a liquid in a sealed vessel and then it warms up to the point that it wants to erupt out of said vessel, you've got yourself an explosion.

But...what happens when that 20 oz vessel is in the middle of a watermelon? Let's find out...one...two-hoo...three (some guy yells out "Holy Shit!" at the end of the video, so turn your volume way up so that the folks in the office know you're not doing any real work):

Max Gallagher, eat your fucking heart out.

The liquified there, I hope you're happy gas in question is liquid nitrogen. Where these strokes got liquid nitrogen, I don't know, but notice that the patsy kid handling the liquid nitrogen has shunned protective eyewear. Notice that his protective gloves are the ones worn while doing dishes. Safety first.

As I learned way back in Physical chemistry (aside from new and mystic methods of torture called "gas laws"), an explosion is nothing more than a gas expanding at a rate greater than the area it is contained in will allow. Kind of sucks the magic out of blowing shit up, doesn't it?

You're right, it doesn't.

How to Tell if You Have Swine Flu

The most recent overhyped media frenzy when it comes to public health is the dreaded Swine Flu. Remember back when we had to fear birds? Yeah, fuck that. It's pigs now.

People are terrified of this new, porcine-originating flu. And rightly so. 150 people in a nation of 110 million have died! That's a mortality rate of 0.000136%!!! Gnash your teeth and beat your breasts, the Black Rider is among us, touching us with his sickly, sausage-infested scythe, harvesting souls right and left with his latest biological weapon, the Swine Flu.

Being the scientist that I am, I've decided to allay some of your fears. The Swine Flu isn't something that you'll get by hanging out with pigs. You also cannot get Swine Flu by eating the savory, succulent flesh of the pig--you can, however, get fat from eating too much of the savory, succulent flesh of the pig. The name "Swine Flu" means that it originally was a pig flu but mutated into a strain of flu that can now infect humans. So, transmission of Swine Flu comes from people, not pigs. No need to put the pork chop down, fatty, you're safe. Jowly, but safe.

If you are afraid you've come in contact with anyone who has had Swine Flu, stay the fuck home. Turn off the lights. Draw the curtains. Sit in a bathtub. Weep.

If you are wondering if you have contracted the Swine Flu, check to see if you have any of the following symptoms:

• You are achy.
• You have chest congestion.
• You have lots of yellow mucus in your sinuses and throat.
• When it comes time to eat, any slop will do.
• You have grown a curly tail.
• You've grown more chauvinistic.
  
• You've developed a stutter and an aversion to pants.
• You suddenly want to make out with a frog.
• People mistake you for a cop.
• Jabba has hired you to guard his palace.
  
• Spiders are writing you messages in their webs.
• When you're outside in the sun too long, you smell something delicious.
• You bear an uncanny resemblance to Porco Rosso.

If you exhibit any of these symptoms, please contact your nearest health professional and/or barbecue supply store.

Mars 3-D: A Review

Today is Earth Day, so I find it fitting that I do my review of Mars 3-D by Jim Bell. This was another Christmas present from my wife because I loves me some astrogeekiness. Unfortunately, I decided to kill my brain cells with beer when I was in college rather than putting them to good use by unraveling the mysteries of the universe and thus--oh look, a squirrel!

Anyway, the author, Jim Bell, is a professor at Cornell (I'll let the irony sink in for a moment) and has been a very active contributor to several NASA missions (he did a post-doc with NASA's Ames Research Center before joining the staff at Cornell). As such, he was one of the leaders for the imaging teams for the two Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity.

The first part of the book discusses some of the preparations the Earth-bound teams faced when planning the rather daunting task of putting the two rovers on the surface of the Red Planet. After that, the home team was tasked with developing a system to guide the robots around the surface of Mars, sample the soil, take pictures, and try to piece together some of the geologic history of Mars...and do all this from anywhere between 55 and 400 million km away (oh, metric!). While this seems like a boring read, Bell does a good job of writing in a way that does not alienate someone who isn't overly familiar with the source material.

The last three quarters of the book are all pictures taken from Mars along with explanations as to what the pictures are showing. The book comes equipped with a pair of red-and-green 3-D viewing glasses (on a bifold front cover, so they're plenty sturdy) to give the pictures in the back a better sense of depth and dimension. This is pretty cool...when it works. Unfortunately, sometimes the pictures don't line up real well, so only parts of the picture are in 3-D. Also, I would have enjoyed seeing more pictures with the "false color" (taken with a UV camera) so that everything doesn't look overly red.

That being said, the pictures taken on the edges of some of the more spectacular craters are stunning. There are also a few pictures where the rover has taken a picture behind it, so that you can see the trails left in the martian soil by the rover's wheels, which I thought was pretty damned cool. Also, there were some pictures when one of the rovers got stuck and its wheel dug down into the soil far enough to expose this shiny, pearlescent layer beneath the red dust and soil. The white mineral was chemically very similar to opal, so you can imagine that there could, potentially, be an opal the size of a continent hanging out just under the surface of Mars. Effing cool, if you ask me.

Some of the coolest pictures, I thought, were of the holes left by the boring tool. The camera worked well enough that you could see the grains of sand and dust left in the wake of the auger as well as the texture and shape of the parts that make up the hole. This, of course, fascinates me because I like geology and shit like that, and looking at some of the layers of the rock as they were formed in Mars' past is really awesome to me.

Anyway, a couple of weeks before I read this, I watched a special on National Geographic about the two rovers. I think Jim Bell was interviewed. Often. It was an entertaining and informative documentary. I really enjoyed it. Though it's not written to be, Mars 3-D serves as a nice companion piece to this show. If you're into space stuff, I'd recommend the two together. If you can only pick one, I'd go with the National Geographic show.

And, there you have it: how to turn today's green celebration red.

Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays: The Return

After a brief hiatus wherein I discussed conversations I've had with my dick hanging out and reports of large, feline predators stalking my property, we've returned with the series of posts most likely to get DHS rifling through my trash cans: Totally Blow Shit Up Tuesdays, Poobomber's Brainchild.

Today, let's take a look at what some people have dubbed the "methane tower". Here, we have an attractive dark-haired girl filling a sink with methane gas and a dorky side-kick with a flaming stick. Awesomeness ensues.

Okay, so it wasn't necessarily an explosion, but there was a towering flume and some bright lights. What happened was the attractive dark-haired girl took some soapy water and bubbled methane gas through it. Being lighter than water, the methane gas rose to the surface and was trapped in the soap bubbles. Once a nice pile of bubble has accrued, we touch a flame to it and *poof* we have a giant column of flame. No word on whether the Israelites are following it by night yet...

This is a classic combustion reaction, wherein we take a hydrocarbon (methane) in the presence of our friendly neighborhood gaseous oxidizer (oxygen) and we get the bane of Al Gore and the aliens from Signs (carbon dioxide and water, respectively).

CH4 + 2O2 + ignition source -----> CO2 + 2H2O + bitchin' light show

This is also the recipe for the "fire triangle":

Fuel + Oxidizer + Ignition Source -----> Increased Insurance Rates + Ostracized Catalysts

At this point, we should ask ourselves, where do we get methane? Methane gas parades about under the clever guise of "natural gas" and can be harvested from natural reservoirs, typically along coastal areas. It is a by-product of the natural decay of organic material, so the effervescence you see in bogs and swamps and such is a release of methane gas from material rotting on the lake bed. Occasionally, these will catch fire and float eerily over the surface of the water and are called "will-o'-the-wisp(s)".

Another source of methane gas is in your bowels. Yes, flatulence is primarily a release of methane gas (with some sulfurous compounds thrown in for taste). Essentially that means that, what we've seen here, is the lab equivalent of lighting farts...just without the feculent odor and singed ass- and grundle-hairs.

And you guys thought science was boring!

Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays: A Science Lesson

Did you miss me yesterday? Yeah, I missed you, too. I had one of them meeting things that the corporate world is so fond of. It was alright. I got free lunch, I didn't have to work in the lab, and I giggled and tittered and tee-heed at my boss' picture from a recent skiing trip in which his goatee--coated over with snot-drippings and snow--caused him to bear an uncanny resemblance to Wilford Brimley and/or Diabeetus Cat. The only drawback was the chair I was sitting on made my ass hurt. A lot.
Anyway, let's talk less of my boss' resemblance to old men with oatmeal fetishes and more about blowing the living hell out of some shit! Remember last week's post, in which a bunch of morons were blowing up a balloon and deafening themselves at the same time? Here's a link to take you back in time and refresh your memory, should you need it.

The comments section (spurred on by my own concrete lack of knowledge) brought about quite a number of guesses about what was in the balloon in order to cause it to detonate so grandly. I originally wavered between hydrogen and methane (both readily accessible); Scope thought it had to be something else, something incendiary; Hap thought that since it wasn't fully buoyant that it had to be something like methane.

This is where blogging life spills over into real life. My friend Joe--the third smartest person I've ever met, right behind Dr. John Nichols and Dr. Xavier Creary--knew exactly what was in the balloon. Apparently, when he was in undergrad, he had a professor who showed the kids how to make good homemade bombs. After Joe told me about this guy, I suddenly thought that maybe I would make a good teacher...except for that whole stare lingering too long over the comely lass in the front row with a short skirt. Wait, where the hell was I?

Oh, yes, last week's explosion. Apparently, if you combine hydrogen and oxygen in a stoichiometric mixture, you get a bang like that. It just flashes and "boom" and very little fire is given off from the explosion--it's gone in a flash. For instance, there's this; apparently, someone snuck a camera into Joe's professor's lectures:

Now, compare that to a "pure" hydrogen fire. There's plenty of sound and there's plenty of flame...which I've never understood because hydrogen itself burns with no visible flame, according to experts. Being as how I'm just a schlub, I'll take their word for it, but I've seen it burn this bright yellowish-orange flame. In fact, here's a pure hydrogen balloon going up.


Notice how that guy was all safety first, what with the gloves and the long pole to ignite the fire. Fuck safety glasses, he said. Tsk tsk. We'll have to write you up, Mister Hydrogen Balloon Man.

So, what's the difference? Apparently, the presence of oxygen is the key here. See, in the second balloon, the oxygen is pulled from the surrounding atmosphere. In the first, I assume that the hydrogen has been mixed with the correct amount of oxygen in order to undergo the accordant combustion or combination reaction (take your pick which you want, since--technically--this reaction falls into both).

How to know the amount of oxygen to mix in there? That's a good one. You need to balance you some equations. For instance, we know that what we have here is hydrogen reacting with oxygen. Hopefully, you also know that hydrogen and oxygen mix to form water. I'll also assume that you know that hydrogen and oxygen are both diatomic molecules. What, were you sleeping during chem class? So, we write the reaction like this:

H2 + O2 ---> H2O
Except, you'll notice, that on the left hand side of the arrow (which is used to show a reaction has taken place), you have 2 oxygens and on the right hand side, you have only one (remember, subscripts go with the element in front of them). Since matter cannot be destroyed nor created, we have what is called an unbalanced reaction. Therefore, we must put numbers out in front of our reactants (on the left hand side) and our products (on the right hand side) so that all the amounts of atoms match up. It should look something like this:

2H2 + O2 ---> 2H2O
So, essentially, what that tells us (other than the fact that you can't subscript on Blogger), is that you need twice as much hydrogen as you do oxygen in order to get the big ass bang that we saw last week and in the first video.

And who says science can't be fun? Oh, right. Everyone. And they'd be right.

And now...I'll let Chemgeek--a Real Professor of Chemistry--pick apart my post.

Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays, Part Deux.

I'm not sure what is going on in this video, aside from a bunch of jackasses with two much time on their hands, and some extra combustible gas laying around. I don't know if this is a methane balloon or a hydrogen balloon (it's listed on YouTube as a "Helium Balloon Explosion", which I can assure it's not). I can guarantee you this because I know that helium is not a flammable gas. I can be sure because helium is non-reactive--it's king of the inert or noble gases...I dubbed it king because it sits on top of the column and because the sun likes to make lots of it. If it's good enough for the sun...and all that shit. Now, if they overfilled the balloon with helium and it blew that way, I'd give it to them, but there's a countdown and what looks like some sort of ignition when the Ringleader of the Fellowship of Jackasses gets down to one. That tells me that they simply did not overfill the balloon and cause it to burst.

All of the mylar confetti as a result of the explosion is pretty cool, though. Also, that might be helium in there...if mylar is flammable/explosive...I'm not sure about that. Being an organic chemist...metals scare me.

Anyway, this group of morons has decided that detonating a balloon filled with something combustible would be a good time had by all...except, you know, for the permanent damage it did to their hearing. Watch and learn.

My ears are ringing so loud. Mine, too. So loudly, in fact, that when you said "I can't take any more", I heard it as "I want to be your whore." Well, alright then. But, first things first...let's talk about the relative flammability of gasses. Topless.

Bucket Brigade

Sorry that I've left you guys stuck with that review of Orcs for a couple of days, but I'm fucking wiped out. I don't know what it is, but I'm thinking I need to remove the "iNDefatigable" part from my title. I guess I can't dress like Dr. Jones anymore.

My boss spent the weekend fountaining vomit, and one of my coworkers felt lousy on Monday afternoon and was out Tuesday. Surprisingly, neither of my kids nor my wife are sick. Me? I'm run down and my eyes have that gritty, grainy feeling that you get when you rub them too much because you love that sort of glowing yellow-green torus that appears when you do so. Not even coffee has made me feel my normal perkalicious self; you know something must be wrong if I'm not perkalicious after infusing my bloodstream with the sweet brewiness of Cofea canephora!

I'm hoping that I can sleep it off some more tonight. I'll still slap together the Latin lesson for tomorrow morning, and I swear, as soon as I can, I'll be back here divulging too much information to you all as well as peppering my sentences with f-bombs like they were semicolons.

For now, I think I'm going to go start a hydrogenation. Let's see...flammable solvent, explosive gas, pyrophoric catalysts, forces that convert glassware into grenades. What could possibly go wrong?

Don't Laugh at My Shame!

Since it got cold last night...cold enough to counteract the colligative affect imparted by the brine/salt mixture thrown on the roads yesterday...everything froze up nice and solid. Therefore, the roads and such were too hazardous during the usual morning crush and my employer delayed opening by two hours.

Have I mentioned how much I fricking love my job?

It was so effing nice to by able to lay in bed this morning until 8:30 with the sultry breath of a half-naked redhead on the back of my neck. Yes, even when she's sighing at me over a lousy pun or pissed because I ate the last chocolate cookie, it's sultry. Most everything a redhead does is inherently sultry.

Still, when I finally rolled out of the house this morning at 9:15, it was 24 degrees F. And I shivered.

There used to be a time in my life when I would look 24 in the eye, whip my junk out, and wave it tauntingly at Old Man Winter. Six years of living in the South (just the South...not the Deep South) has softened me to marshmallow consistency. Much below 30 and I'm a quivering mass of jelly that doesn't want a thing to do with the outdoors. Unless there's nekkid chicks, but since most of them are marshmallow soft, too, that doesn't happen too often.

The first winter that we were married, back around the turn of the century, my wife and I came down to Charlotte to spend a week with her parents around the Christmas holiday. We had just left behind 48 inches of snow in South Bend from the blizzard that had hit us about two weeks prior (I think the blizzard dumped 24-28 inches on us, but that particular December had seen 48 inches of snow) and while it was cold in Charlotte, it wasn't as cold as it was in South Bend.

One day during the break, we went to one of the malls in Charlotte, and I was decked out in my winter attire. However, that day it got up to almost 40, and I was dying. I finally stripped down to just a t-shirt and my jeans and was finally comfortable. I remember steam coming off my head when I took my sock-cap off. It was sweet relief. Besides that, a steaming head is badass.

Now, the thought of a t-shirt in 40 degree weather sends chills throughout my body. I think my feet got colder just thinking about it.

That, however, was not the least I've ever worn on a winter's day. When I was in my first semester at ND, I was living alone in an apartment about two miles from campus. It was pleasant enough, though my neighbors were rather...sketchy...to say the least. One night, though, I decided I was going to do some laundry, so I spent the afternoon carting my stuff back and forth from my place to the community laundry room. It was mildly annoying, but I figured the walking was good for me. As I was putting my last load of clothes in, the washer wasn't completely full, so I figured I'd man-worn my jeans enough and stripped them off right there and tossed them in the wash. I gathered up my stuff and walked back to my apartment to find that I had thrown the lock on the way out.

With my keys still in the apartment.

And my pants in the wash.

I tried my best to kick or bash the door in but--remember the neighborhood was sketchy--the lock was pretty strong. While I felt safer that I wasn't going to be murdered in my sleep anytime soon, I was not looking forward to weathering the night on the floor in front of my door until the maintenance guys came to work the next morning. It was $20 if you had to call them after hours to let you in. I had no cash in my wallet, which was also inside the apartment.

I realized that there was one thing I would have to do. Some of my friends were having a little dinner party at a friend's apartment near campus. I opted for laundry and watching the Indiana/Ohio State game that night instead of the party, but I was planning on showing up for movie time. However, I knew that my only hope now rested in crashing the party.

I did have my shoes on, which was a damned good thing since there was 8 inches of snow on the ground. So, I set down my laundry basket (which was full of towels and other non-pants items) and, in my underwear, started walking to campus. From time to time, I would get cold enough that I would start running, but running in the cold night air when you're an asthmatic is not conducive to breathing. I would run as far as I could until I had to stop and walk. My lungs burned with inflammation; my skin burned with the cold; my humility just burned.

Now, I've never had a problem with being less than fully-clad, we'll say, much to the chagrin of most everyone in the world. However, I do take issue with being in just my undies while it's somewhere around 15-20 degrees.

I learned that night that South Bend cops could give a fuck less about your needs when they have their sights set on Nick's Patio, the local greasy spoon. What, stop and help the guy who is running in his underwear and waving his arms and gesticulating madly for me to help him, when there's biscuits and gravy that I could be shoving in my gob? You're on your own, fatboy. You could probably use the exercise, anyway.
So, I showed up at the party in my underwear and a t-shirt. I'll just toss in here that the dinner party-goers...all women. Except for my friend Jeff, one of the few Red Sox fans not named Karp that I can stand.

Here's my soliloquy that I gave when I got to the door, somewhat sweaty and panting:

"I locked myself out while doing laundry." *pant pant* "Don't ask." *pant pant* "Can I borrow $20 from someone?" *pant pant wheeze* "I'll pay you back." *pant pant wheeze wheeze* "If you're not watching anything, can I watch the Indiana game?" *wheeze*

Priorities.

Fortunately, after they ate and before we started the movie, Jeff lent me the cash and drove my sorry ass back to my apartment and hung out while I waited for the maintenance guy to show up...who lived in the next apartment building over. Fuck him. Having secured some pants and a warmer shirt, I returned to the party and watched Office Space. A couple of the ladies felt sorry for me and huddled/cuddled up to me to keep me warm.

That was the night I triumphed over Old Man Winter, not only successfully braving the cold and snow, but also I got cuddled on by a couple of reasonably attractive ladies to help "warm me up."

These days, though, I'll just take the ladies.