Still got the right stuff...

How perfectly fitting, that on the same day that Felix Baumgartner took his 24-mile high skydive, becoming the first person to break the sound barrier in freefall with only a high-tech suit for protection...

...retired Air Force Brigadier General Charles "Chuck" Yeager celebrated the 65th anniversary of the very first supersonic flight - which Yeager accomplished in the X-1 - by flying faster than sound again at the age of 89.

There ain't enough accomplishments of daring these days, it sadly seems. Reading stuff like this, gives me great hope.

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Germination of the Bhut jolokia has begun!

Awright, I've been putting this off for too long now. I knew that this day would come. Not gonna run and hide anymore. Here, live or die, I will make my stand.

This afternoon I began the process of growing my can of Bhut jolokia.

And as I said when I first wrote about coming into possession of this stuff back in February, "This is either one of the bravest things that I will have ever attempted... or it is the stoopidest of my entire life..."

The Bhut jolokia: regarded by the scientific community as THE world's hottest naturally-occurring pepper. Native to north-eastern India, in the local tongue "Bhut jolokia" translates into "ghost pepper". Because as the natives like to joke, one bite of this could send you to an early grave.

Spicy heat is measured in Scoville units. Regular Tabasco sauce has a "hotness" of 2,500 Scoville Heat Units.

The Bhut jolokia? More than ONE MILLION.

So ever since this can arrived (you can order some for yourself from the good folks at ThinkGeek) it's been sitting on my desk, and I've been... looking at it. Studying it. Contemplating its potency.

And finally today, like Jeff Goldblum's character does in that scene in The Fly, I finally came to the place where I had to say "What are we waiting for, let's do it." So I followed the package's directions, put enough water into it that it began draining through the opened bottom, and set it in sunlight.

In another month or so, the crimson red agony-ridden peppers will have arrived.

And then, the fun really begins.

My good friend and fellow blogger Steven Glaspie is still set to chronicle my eating this pepper on video (he also did an excellent job being co-cameraman on Vaporware Nevermore! the other week :-). That he is a volunteer firefighter trained in first aid, was of course another factor in considering him for the task. I have another friend who is scheduled to be here, who has brewed his own brand of beer just for the occasion. As beer is said to be a very fast and effective counter-agent for spicy-hot burning, we're going to have his brew on hand as a last resort.

So... have I finally gone too far? Have I crossed a terrible, terrible line? Is your friend and humble narrator gone mad? Will this be the end of Chris Knight?!?

Tune in later this summer to find out!! :-P

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Chris set to tempt fate with... REAL BHUT JOLOKIA!

This is either one of the bravest things that I will have ever attempted... or it is the stoopidest of my entire life (which could be snuffed out by this stuff).

Back in December I posted about my filmmaking partner "Weird" Ed Woody passing along the link where you can purchase Bhut jolokia for your very own! Why did Ed tell me about ThinkGeek's Grow Your Own World's Hottest DIY Pepper kit? Because he's all too aware of my hideous interest in super-spicy hot food. Here's the link if you want to buy some too: whether to consume or just to display on your desk as a potent symbol of power.

Well, as you can see in the photo on the left, I am now in possession of a can of Bhut jolokia seeds, along with the soil (presumably from north-eastern India where the pepper originates) to grow it in. This can arrived shortly after Christmas. I've been considering what to do with it ever since. All it needs is water and sunlight and the hottest pepper on Earth is mine to wield.

"Bhut jolokia" in the native tongue means "ghost pepper". Because it is said that one bite of it can take you to an early grave. How hot is this stuff? Tabasco Sauce has a "hotness" of 2,500 Scoville units. Bhut jolokia is... more than 1 million.

Zoinks!

So here's the plan: sometime in the next few weeks I am going to begin growing my Bhut jolokia. And once the peppers have grown to a nice ripe size, I'm going to recruit good friend and fellow blogger Steven Glaspie to operate my best video camera and record Yours Truly eating a pepper (or more than one if I can manage it). I first thought of Steven as the one I wanted to videotape my doing this 'cuz he's the kind of guy that you wanna have on hand for a stunt of possible comedic potential. 'Course, that he's also a trained firefighter and well versed in first aid won't hurt matters either. And then (after I regain my senses) we'll post the video on YouTube.

Feel free to make odds on whether I survive this. Or how red my face becomes when I bite into the Bhut jolokia. I plan to have plenty of ice cream, bread, and other foods that are said to be good at countering capsaicin (the chemical which causes the "heat" sensation) on hand, just in case they're needed.

Stay tuned! This could turn into the most daring post that I've ever done... or the very last (which I may have to compose pre-posthumously :-P)

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These guys sank a basket from a flying airplane

Dude Perfect, a group of guys from Texas A&M specializing in basketball trick shots. And they have set the Intertubes ablaze with this insanely awesome "nothing but net" shot from a low-flying airplane!

Check it out...

From what I understand, it only took them two attempts to make the basket.

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Ten unbelievably awesome low-pass flybys

This clip begins with that scene from Top Gun where Tom Cruise buzzes the control tower. And it then proceeds to assault your senses (and possibly good sense) with ten low-altitude flybys that Hollywood probably wouldn't dare do without 'spensive computer graphics. But these are real. And #3 on this list had me literally grabbing at my own head, it's so scary! That dude on the ground has some brass ones...

Okay, #3 is maybe all the more amazing for me 'cuz the pilot is flying upside-down. And I once saw a plane crash at an air show. It was in 1996 here in Rockingham County, and the dude in the cockpit was doing a low-altitude maneuver upside-down over the runway. It happened right in front of where we were sitting and it looked horrific. But he got out with just a few scratches and I heard that the plane was even flyable again not long afterward. But when we're looking at a multi-million dollar piece of military hardware doing the same thing... yah, gotta admire the cajones there!

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Dude mounts rocket launchers onto his motorcycle

This guy has apparently watched Megaforce too many times for his own good...

As cool as that looks, I can't help but think that a bike-mounted minigun like the one at the end of the Machete faux trailer would be much more useful/intimidating.

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Anvil shooting: Firing anvils 200 feet into the air

Being into knifemaking I'd read about this before: how back in the old days blacksmiths would have "anvil shootings". There are conflicting stories about why the practice originated. Some say that it began when Union soldiers invading the South during the Civil War would try to destroy every anvil they found so as to break the Confederacy's ability to make weapons and other tools. Others hold, with some evidence backing them up, that there was a much more mundane purpose behind anvil shooting: that blacksmiths simply found it the quickest way to "clean up" an anvil after long periods of use.

However it started, there's no doubt that it was spectacular enough of a sight that for many years it became a favorite way to celebrate festive events throughout America, such as victory in war. But then with the increase of modern industry, anvil shooting began to decline.

And today, Gay Wilkinson and a number of others are bringing it back. Wilkinson is a world champion in the "sport" of anvil shooting. Points are added for each foot into the air the anvil is fired, and deducted for however many feet from the base it lands.

What does it look like? Here's Wilkinson preparing and firing his anvil...

HOLY COW!!!

That's about 200 feet straight up into the air that he shot that thing!

A good anvil costs anywhere between $150 and $300. I'd love to try this sometime, but the anvil we work with was made from scratch by Dad and is firmly welded to its supporting base (which has several feet of itself buried in the ground beneath the shop for extra stability).

That's probably a good thing :-P

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Here's a song dedication going out to Falcon Heene

Yeah, the kid from Colorado who was thought to have taken a ride in that balloon yesterday and then cryptically said on national television "We did this for a show".

Here is "Up, Up and Away" by The Fifth Dimension...

Now, let us never speak of this again.

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"At around 72 hours I wanted to die."

A man in Great Britain spent 84 nonstop hours watching EVERY episode of the television sitcom Friends.

Steve Misiura, 31, did it in an attempt to win a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records. The current record is 72 hours.

Was it worth it?

He said he experienced nausea, stomach cramps and hallucinations while watching the adventures of Ross, Rachel and friends.

"I love 'Friends,' but this did indeed hurt. At around 72 hours I wanted to die," Misiura said.

"I started hallucinating," he said. "I was saying to my friend, 'What's happening to this room? The wall keeps disappearing.'

"I was also getting quite delirious and not knowing what I was doing, but it helped that every hour I was updating my photo log," he said.

I want to see my sister try to do this :-P

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Bruno Kammerl and the world's scariest waterslide

Wet 'n Wild Emerald Pointe ain't got nothin' on Bruno Kammerl and what has to be the biggest waterslide in the history of anything...

Props to Matt Mittan for finding this!

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MAN ON FIRE: What ALMOST happened to protest uniforms at Reidsville schools

This morning I was going back though the past few months of blog posts looking for something I'd written pertaining to education. In the course of searching I found the video of WGSR's Star Talk on June 14th where Mark Childrey interviewed me about my plans to address the July 9th meeting of the Rockingham County Board of Education while dressed as a Jedi Knight. It was all to protest the "Standard Mode of Dress" (legalese for "school uniforms") at Reidsville Middle and Reidsville High schools that the board had approved.

As was reported here a few weeks later, the board wound up rescinding the earlier vote to implement the policy after POTSMOD (People Opposed To Standard Mode Of Dress) turned the meeting into a media spectacle with picketing by students, black armbands and not just a Jedi but an "escaped convict" too :-)

Well, I watched the video again and it got to the part where I was alluded to Mark that I had "something much more outrageous" in mind if the board continued to refuse to acknowledge us. What this was, I told Mark, would "drop jaws all over the place".

Fortunately, the board did hear us out. And we are thankful that they did and that they overturned their initial vote for the uniforms.

But I was not bluffing. There was something that I had planned to do if the board, at the July meeting, continued to deny our protests.

If the Jedi Costume didn't grab their attention, I was seriously intending to escalate this thing, big time.

The only people who've known about this before now were my wife Lisa, Samantha Fettig of POTSMOD, Richard Moore, "Weird" Ed Woody, and just a few others. They were all sworn to secrecy about it. They also, every single one of them, tried their darndest to talk me out of doing this.

But after studying it long and hard and figuring that (a) if it was in the public interest to do this then I'd have no problem with attempting it and (b) it would be an awesome experience if I survived, I was all the more bound and determined to be ready to do this.

So what was it?

If, after the July 9th meeting, we could not help but believe that the Rockingham County Board of Education was not interested in our concerns about the school uniforms and why we did not want them, then I was going to pick a date and send out a whole wazoo-load of press releases, telling every TV and radio station, newspaper, blogger and whoever else came to mind to be at a certain spot at a certain time.

When the press was all situated, I was going to come out wearing one of those flame-proof suits that cover you from head to toe, set myself on fire, and with the cameras rolling stand there with a sign saying "SCHOOL UNIFORMS BURN ME UP!"

The effect was hopefully going to be like what you see in the photo on the right.

The plan was for me to stand there for several seconds all lit up holding the sign, long enough for everyone to get good footage and pics, and then have volunteers with fire extinguishers douse out the flames.

So intent on going through with this was I, that the announcement of my plan for it was written into the first draft of my speech before the board. Luckily a cooler head (bad pun I know) prevailed and the "threat" didn't make it into the second version of the remarks. But I can only imagine what the look of horror on the faces of all those board members might have been, had I gone through with publicizing it that night...

...and especially what the reactions from a certain few of the members would have been. You see, they're the ones who know me. We've been friends for many, many years. And they would be the first to tell you that they KNOW that I am outrageous enough to try something like this! Emphasis on "try": they're well aware that I would take a stab at it even if success wasn't guaranteed. If the stunt might be glorious and spectacular, that's all I need to know to want to attempt it. Although so far as physical danger goes, this would have been one of the more daring things that I'd have ever considered.

Would I have really done this? For my brothers and sisters in POTSMOD and for the kids at Reidsville Middle and Reidsville High schools, you bet that I would have.

Thankfully (and I really can't stress that nearly enough), things didn't get to that point at all. The board voted 7-3 at the July meeting to overturn the uniforms policy at the two schools. So ever since classes started a few weeks ago the middle and high school students in Reidsville get to wear whatever they want, so long as it adheres to the reasonable dress code.

But for a few weeks there, in the summer of 2007, Rockingham County was almost the site of its very own version of the Burning Man tour.

Look, it could have been worse. At least I didn't have The Wicker Man in mind when I hatched this crazy plot...

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