You are an illegally parked shopping cart from the nearby Foodtown supermarket. I happened by this interesting site while heading back to my Metal HQ after mailing out some packages before the holiday madness crowd arrived.
Clearly the sign reads easily enough and I apologize for the slightly limited sunlight. The powers of good ole Sol were not pointing down on my subject and I could not wait for him to get to work.
I even tried a slightly different angle to no avail. Mind you I was also using my little Sony Cybershot and not one of the full on DSLR’s or the ever trusty Lumix.
I laughed at the audacity of there actually being two stolen shopping carts at the pole as opposed to only one. I had seen this before at this very same location on 4th Avenue and 90th Street and am guessing there is a his and hers setup going on now.
Sadly, no one from Foodtown could come and retrieve them since the carts were chained to the pole as if they were the thieves own property. Sigh. Be sure to give a yell to those folks handing out flyers who sport these as their conveyances. They are the reason that you can never get a shopping cart quickly in the store and likely the reason that prices keep on rising as well.
Foodtown is getting a serious makeover at the time of this posting, so maybe one of their charming cashiers will be sent over to this corner with bolt cutters to free the kidnapped carts and return them to their brothers and sisters in the market. I will keep my fingers crossed.
Sometimes The Message Is A Very Simple One :)
Am I wrong? I didn’t think so and when I chanced upon this mural and its very simple yet powerful statement I just wanted to share it with you all. It was located on 11th Street and First Avenue in NYC to my knowledge. I didn’t “map” myself as I was running a little late so snapped the shot and continued on my way. That happens sometimes in this grand metropolis.
That’s all I got right now so carry on my friends and have a wonderful everything.
When Astronomy & Metal Met Face To Face……
And now for something completely different…. OK, I guess by now you realize that this is pretty much par for the course when it comes to how I do things over on the PiercingKen Blog and believe me I would not have it any other way. So my plans for this particular evening was to catch the long awaited return of the band Armored Saint. I was going to be reviewing their show for my PiercingMetal site in my role as Maestro of the Metal Republic. Before the gig one of my friends from the scene was discussing finding a place for dinner and that his friends who were joining were bringing along their telescopes. Clearly he was joking I thought. Right? I mean he had to be….
He wasn’t and indeed his friends Tom Hoffelder and Joe Alcott came to the Metal meanderings bearing two whopping telescopes (that’s a technical term in case you were wondering). Tom is the chap looking into the lens on the scope in the next shot. Check this baby out. According to Tom, this is a Newtonian reflector with an 8 inch f/6. He stated how he was also using a 7mm eyepiece which gives 175 power on Jupiter.
Yep. The team was training the scope on Jupiter. It was rather visible this evening and of course easier to spot by the trained astronomatic eye. You folks do know Jupiter right? Fifth planet from the Sun, biggest one there is in the Milky Way galaxy. Here is a photo I snared from Wikipedia.
Tom briefly told us what they were doing and I snared this recording with the Panasonic Lumix for the sake of the posting. Sorry for this being so short, there was quite a crowd assembling and he had moderate the scopes usage.
Since its over 500 million miles away, its clear that Jupiter is never a place that I can possibly visit for the purposes of photography or anything else and I guess that is a good thing when one considers how this guy runs around the place if you can believe your old Outer Space Men collection 🙂 – That’s Colossus Rex if you didn’t know and he was a part of an amazing set of plastic figures that I had when I was a child. They have long since been gone from my day. Oh well.
Here is another shot of the telescope that Tom was manning. I had to keep going back and forth to the concert and was making visits to the viewing base on the corner between each bands set. It was a lot of running around but who cares, this was amounting to a very fun night.
The next telescope was Joe’s and while a little smaller, they were training its lenses on the Moon. According to Joe this was also a Newtonian reflector and was an f/8 with a 17mm lens, a 2x Barlow (which doubles the magnification) and a blue UV filter. I’ll never remember that so I decided to ask Joe a little more.
Here is Joe explaining a little bit more about this for your edification.
Here’s a cool shot of the Moon which I got while surfing. Believe me I had all my real deal cameras with me and was not able to get a decent shot of Earth’s only satellite. I guess that is not really easy to do. Anyone?? Please fill me in.
Of course since this was a Metal show hang we had lovely ladies in our company as well and here is our official spokesmodel for the evening Miss Lindsay Abken (she’s also an artist and musician so talented). Hi Lindsay 🙂
Here’s Chief Observatory Office Tom Hoffelder with Miss Lindsay. This was becoming a very Metal “Big Bang Theory” episode because it was calling up all the interest in Science and the great beyond. I did not mind at all.
Next up our Lieutenant of Lunar Matters, Mr. Joe Alcott. Oh yes, and Lindsay.
I decided to be in this particular posting and hey why not, its my website after all. How could I resist such a charming lass anyway.
Here’s another shot of Tom checking out the settings on the scope. I was not able to get a photo of the hundreds and hundreds of people that were lining up for this experience. These guys were doing this for free and a few times I acted as Carnival Barker with their friend Mark. “Hey NYC, do you want to see Jupiter?” we shouted. You would be surprised at how many people stopped and got right on line. Pretty cool.
Just before leaving I said goodbye to the massive telescope and mentioned I looked forward to his return to our fair metropolis. The said they will be back sometime in middle January to do this again. Thanks for picking these coming cold weeks. I suggest you watch my @piercingken Twitter to see when I mention this stuff happening again.
To coin a popular super hero refernce I will leave you all with “Look up in the sky” and change it around to “because there is some really cool stuff going on up there that amazes and inspires. We are all just a really tiny piece of the puzzle at the end of the day. Thanks so much to the Sidewalk Astronomers for this interesting time. You should know that these stalwart celestial explorers all missed the Armored Saint concert but I don’t think that this bothered them at all. Their Facebook page is below. Be sure to “Like” it.
Official Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sidewalk-astronomers/
Foodtastic: The Ungrilled Cheesy Sandwich
I’ve been meaning to post this simple little recipe for a quick comfort grilled cheese sandwich which in all honesty is not grilled at all and more melted to achieve its effect. I started making them like this to avoid the extra intake of excess butter or cooking oils. That’s no good for you if overdone after all. Sharing this one with you was based on one of my friends posting on her Facebook how much she loved grilled cheese sandwiches so now the rest of you readers benefit. Let’s begin.
We are starting with a couple of pieces of white bread but these days I have opted to use something a little healthier like a whole wheat or seven grain bread. It surely adds to the taste and if you want to be brave go with pumpernickel.
Once toasted we move over to the toaster oven. I hope you have one of these as otherwise the rest of the recipes steps are kind of useless to you. You CAN use a microwave but that is just not the same in my humble opinion. Of course you can try and let us know how you made out with the comments section. We’ll leave the kitchen light on for you.
For this recipe I decided to use some spicy brown mustard. I like a little kick to my food and you can also use a good hot sauce (not the pepper water that is often sold as the stuff) for a different vibe to the fun. Since I had the Gulden’s stuff in the house I went that route.
Lay a few slices of American cheese on each slice of bread. I went with two for each side as that was going to be more than enough. My goal is to eat and not overdo it and we still had some ingredients to go.
As I assembled my working area I noticed I still had some mozzarella cheese and I wanted to put it to good use. I sliced it up nice and thin and applied to the top of the slices of American cheese.
Now we’ll put the tray back into the toaster over and click the toast button which should run for about a minute on a standard device. You need to stick around for this since its a very quick process and you don’t want to burn your sandwich. Once melted it looks like this if you didn’t over melt and its quite visually appealing. We’re almost done.
I mentioned loving some spice so I took some whole pepperoncini and sliced them into halves. For this particular sandwich I only used one larger pepperoncini as it was more than sufficient. If they were smaller you could surely use a couple of them or even try out some Jalapeno peppers. Mind you that I have NOT yet tried those on this but it would probably work out fine.
Take the whole thing and put them together and press lightly so these two sides of cheese meet and connect. We’re still working with some hot stuff so that should happen with no incident. Doesn’t look too bad in the end right? I know that I was happy with it.
Now it’s time to eat and you can serve this with a sour pickle and some chips or perhaps pretzels. Total preparation time is less than ten minutes if you need an exact count and that is great. It’s also easy to clean up after this one.
Ingredients Used:
Sliced Bread
Sliced Cheese
Sliced Mozzarella
Slicked Pepperoncini
Spicy Mustard
Happy Thanksgiving 2011 Everyone!!!
Hey it’s Thanksgiving once again isn’t it? Well so it is and in that I would like to wish you and your families a very Happy Thanksgiving. This is a very big and very family oriented holiday here in the USA and while I realize that we have a lot of global readers on the blog, I ask that you folks indulge me for a second here. This year has been a tricky one for a lot of people and with that in mind its best to remember the good things and good people in one’s day and be thankful for them. Do you have some decent health, a handful of trustworthy people around you and interesting ways to spend your time? If so you have a serious bounty to be thankful for. Could you use a little more money? Well, who couldn’t and as the economy has show us that kind of thing comes and goes more often than we’d like. Perhaps you’ve experienced some kind of loss this year and while that saddens me too, its best to remember the good times and be thankful for the time you had spent with that person. Remember we all leave eventually and some just sooner than we would like. We’ve not a set amount of time on this plane that’s for sure. Try to make the best of what we do have and make your life one that positively impacts the life of someone else. You can do this with kind words, gestures and even support. Positive energy is strong medicine in an uncertain world.
Oh so I snapped some images of Thanksgiving related stuff that I happened upon and wanted to share it with you all before you get a move on into your day. Check out these couple of turkeys (horrible I know, but this is what you get from me).
I like the comfortable look on this little Pumpkin Man. He doesn’t seem to have a care in the world and all is solid with him. A nice place to be every once in awhile don’t you think?
Next we see one of the protester’s from “Occupy Thanksgiving” whose position is more of an Anti-Pumpkin one. Sadly I don’t think he has a leg or drumstick to stand on (queue snare drum).
A festive napkin for sure but not the kind of plate I like to see on Thanksgiving. Empty that is. My hope is that everyone gets their fill today.
Here is a slightly different take on a stuffed turkey. My grandmother actually made this many years ago and since I’ve always loved it, I decided to share a visual with you all.
Next up, the only way that I like to be given the bird. Let the feasting begin…..
I’ll close out by saying thank you to all those who have made my day a little bit better. Thanks to the parents for the constant support and thanks to my friends for being around for fun times and adventuring. Thank you Heavy Metal music as you drive my passions. Thanks also to anyone who reads and enjoys the websites that I have brought out to you, I really appreciate that stuff and promise to do more.
Take care of yourselves and treat each other good a little more than you might usually.