I’m sure most of you are aware classic tradition of pairing wines with different types dinner Entrees. However if your like me you don’t get to many practical opportunities try your hand at this art form. I present to you today another form of drink pairing that is so simple and easy a child could do it. This is the art of Soda Pop pairing.

Soda Pop pairing, like its classy cousin, centers around flavour matching. “What taste best with what , should I have a 7up or a Root beer with my cheese burger? The general rule that I follow for any of my soda pairings is, “Dark meat, dark soda, light meat light soda.”

Dark meats are your Hamburgers, Polish hot dogs/bratwurst, and pizza. Pizza is lumped in with the dark meats because it tends to have sausages and pepperoni on it and cheese tends to have a musky full body flavour when melted. The exception to pizza are Hawaiian and  specialty pizzas which, For these types of foods colas (Pepsi, Coke, etc.)Dr. Pepper, and Root Beers. All these drinks have a dark full body flavour that seems to go well with the aforementioned  foods.

Light meats include such things as fried chicken, ball park franks/hot dogs, thin sliced deli meats (turkey, ham), and some fried fish like cod and halibut.  For these foods Sprite, 7up, Sierra Mist, and Mountain Dew are the drinks of choice. These drinks have a citrus taste which adds a nice zest to the light  flavour of those foods.
Who says you can’t make your mundane meal look fancy?

A tip for deserts: cream sodas, Root beer, and fruity drinks like grape and orange work out well most of the time.

Well that’s all I have for now, feel free to leave a comment with pairings you’ve found you like. Raspberry soda with cream cheese and bagels anyone?

Two things to help with this.  The first is having the grace to understand that some times things just don’t go as planned, and that some times things need to slide for a little bit.  The second is having the self discipline to not shrug off things just because the scheduled time is past. Just because something is a little late, doesn’t make it okay to let it be very late.

“Its not that I think you wheel is imperfect, I just think it could use some tinkering is all.” Nathanel The Tinker.

The latest addtion of  The Falling Angel is out.

This Teliphone runs off an Automaton  (Andriod) system that has opened a new world for me. Already it has lead me to an app that locates zombies in my near by vicinity. At seeing how many zombies where in my area, quickly loaded an app for a shotgun and pistol. Just to be on the safe side I also retrieved an app for a light-saber. I have yet to find an app for a decent ray gun but one can alwasy hope yes?

For somthing a little Different.

The Falling Angel

As you know the Holiday Season is in full swing, and with it comes more dangers than the Bermuda currants. So as you navigate your way through the storms that lay ahead keep some things in mind.

Keep a sharp eye out. You never know when a split second decision could save your ship, or land you that deal on salted pork and rum for the stock room.

Make friends not enemies if you can help it. Remember to remain calm  when dealing with others right now as everyone is dealing with more stress than normal. Captains and Commanders should keep an eye on the crew’s morale. A ship burning under mutiny is hardly festive.

Keep your friends close, and your ray guns closer. Some times you just need to bunker down and wait for the season to wind down. Don’t worry these sort of things don’t last forever.

This Sunday’s edition of The Falling Angel is out.

The Falling Angel

Graphically speaking the game is sub-par for a playstaion 2 game of the time, and even less so for the compter. It feels very much like a dumbed down final fantisy game style wise.

Where Shadow of Destiny really stands out is its story. You start out as Eike kusch, a 22-year old man who is fated to die. In fact you dont start controling Eike untill after he is stabbed coming out of a small coffee shop.  It is in death that Eike is given a small divice and a second chance. The divice alows Eike to move though key spots in time, in hopes to change his fate.

The over all game play is very simple. Most of the time is spent on changing small things in the past thorough actions and dialog with prominent people from the city’s past and present, so the game is more like a interactive story trying to find out ways to stop Eike from dieing and of course finding out who’s trying to kill him in the first place.

If you like time travel stories or adventure type games I would highly recommend  getting a hold of a copy if you come across it.

I guess the question that’s been nagging me the past week or so is, how real are dreams? I think there is a habit of defining ‘real’ as being what we can see, touch, taste, and hear. An apple is easily defined to be real. The shape and color are seen right away, the firmness of the skin felt, the juice tasted when bitten, and the sound of crunch quite audible. All these sensations are broken down into impulses that are then sent to the brain, these impulses tell us that the apple is real. When I mentioned an apple, what color did you picture in you mind? Red maybe? when I mentioned juice, could you for a moment almost taste it? and did you hear the crunch of the bite? Yet the apple presented just now wasn’t real.

I’ve had dreams so real that I honestly couldn’t tell if they had actually happened or not. It wasn’t until I talked to the person in question that I knew for sure. There have been times where I knew what happened was a dream, yet when talking to the person that had been in the dream, they had, had a similar dream the same night. If what we kn0w as real, are simply impulses that the brain is picking up. Is it possible for dreams to be more real than normally thought?

I don’t have an answer. I do know that through my dreams I have had a chance to fly many times, been the only person in a city of monsters and survived.  I have been killed in countless ways, felt all ranges of emotions. I have been in many families, I have been married and had kids of my own. I have lived and ran with wolves, raised by dragons, and hunted with lions. I had the chance to be a the creation of everything, and I have seen it all end.

I have memories of these dream life’s. Even if they can’t be defined as real they still share a place in my mind.

Dr. Horrible’s sing-along blog. An amusing story of Dr. Horrible and his struggles to go from a nobody to super-villain in the Evil league of Evil.  Of course his rise to power isn’t easy, not only does he have to make himself noticed by the Evil League of Evil, but he also must contend with his heroic enemy Captain Hammer. As if all that wasn’t complication enough for the Dr. There’s a pretty redhead down at the laundromat that’s grabbed the Dr.’s eye.

Filled with laughs and songs Dr. Horrible’s sing-along blog is definitely worth the watch.   Watch me!

MS Paint Adventures is a web comic series that tries to recapture the fun and frustrations felt while playing those types of games. Andrew, the artiest of MSPA, Takes a unique approach to making his comics . He takes suggestions for what happens next in the comic strait from his readers. The result is a zany adventure that will have you coming back over and over again.

At the time of this writing there are four comics. The first two comics are incomplete due to flaws in the early ways the artiest was taking suggestions. In the third comic titled problem sleuth a more controlled method was applied and the result was a year long comic that truly is a work of genus.

One of the things that really sticks out in problem sleuth is the unique  ‘game rule set’ that is used.  Things such as inventory, stats, and even a leveling system have unique little quirks that are discovered as the comic progresses.

I highly recommend this comic if you enjoy text based games, like unique comics, or if you game at all.

http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=4

Nathanael made his way to the back of the building being sure to avoid any attention, not that there where that many people present at this time. Just the Fathers absorbed in their early morning prayers. Nathanael made it to a small door witch he knew would lead him to the steeple without incident.

As he climbed the stairs Nathanael thought back to a story Mother Kathryn had once told him. It was about a man that had been imprisoned on a small island. The man devised a way to escape using a pair of wings he crafted out of feathers and wax. While he was successful at crafting the wings, he flew to high and fell to his death when the wings melted in the sun. Nathanael disliked the story. He got the imprison the lesson Mother Kathryn was trying to teach is that humans had there place and they shouldn’t reach for more than that.
Nathanael disagreed, if God didn’t want him to try and be more than what he was, then God shouldn’t have giving him a mind to make up for what he lacked.

The sky was already starting to glow with the first rays of sunrise as Nathanael reached the last step to the steeple tower. along one of the walls was a large lump of cloth. Walking over to the pile, Nathanael pulled back the cloth to reveal his latest creation. A flying machine. The suit was designed to strap to a persons back. The controls where a simple pair of handles that assisted in increasing or decreasing incline and the degree of banking while in the air. On the back of the machine where two mid size tanks of highly pressurized steam, when a switch was hit on one of the control sticks a burst of steam would shoot out giving the suit a boost. Well that was Nathanael’s theory anyway. It hadn’t been tested yet.

Nathanael set down his sack and started digging through it. The sack contained a pair of leather chaps, a jacket, gloves, and finally a pair of goggles. Nathanael suited up in his gear and then strapped the flying machine to his back and walked to the western window. The west side window had a small balcony on it witch Nathanael planed to use as his launch pad.

Far below him the sounds of the city waking up and coming to life could be heard. The newspaper boys shouting out the teasers for the new’s, shop keepers opening doors and greeting the early customers.
Nathanael took a breath, looked out over the city and then hit the switch for the first boost of steam.

*note* I know that the story of Icarus was actually a father and son story and that it was the son that fell because he didn’t heed his fathers warning. This was just meant to be what Nathanael had taken from that story and his reaction to it now that its him about to take the leap. part two of this story will be posted next Sunday so stay tuned

I heard this story some time back and unfortunately I don’t remember where from, but those words have stayed with me.

That one phrase sums up all the self help books I’ve ever read. It means just do it.  If you want to change something in your life then just do it. take the first steps right now. If you want to start a new hobby, or learn a new skill, just do it.

Will it be hard, maybe. Will there be setbacks, oh yeah. But there will be rewards. There will be accomplishments. But only if take action and Change your life.

30 second gods: What if when God (or gods) finished making the earth and her children that he gave a fragment of his power to be passed around from person to person in a Russian roulette of sorts. Every thirty seconds or so a person is selected for godhood and he or she controls all of existence until the next person was chosen. Because the change of power is so quick there wouldn’t be enough time to drastically change the world with one person. only if enough people where thinking on the same changes start to show. Even if change did start to happen it would be so subtle that it would be missed by most.

The Firefly Nexes: The nexes could be simply explained as infinity with self awareness. Imagine that you are plain of existence that is all black expect for little firefly’s darting all about you. When all these firefly’s get together they can actually communicate and think as one entity just the same as you. However if you where to just take one by itself it would lose that ability to communicate and think. If you looked deeper however you would see that it itself was made of galaxies and intelligent life on a smaller scale. This is much like our own bodies made of atoms each one working together to make us. But what if each atom is truly a galaxy with its own life? What if we are just part of another larger person?

Telepathic Telekineses: TT is a power in witch you communicate with your self in the past to change things in the present time. For a small scale explanation lets take a marble and place it in front of us. Now without touching the marble move it with your mind. This is the principal of Telekineses. Most of us would fail at moving the marble. Now lets try something else. Instead of focusing on the marble to move, try and send a Telepathic suggestion to yourself in the past. The reason for trying to communicate with yourself is that you know exactly where you’ve been sitting this past few minutes, and you are already in tune with your mind because you live with it everyday. Now if the marble has moved congratulations you have manage to change the past and started a butterfly effect that will unhinge the universe. Good going mate.

]]> http://thescoundrels.net/literature/philosophical-theory-0r-how-to-keep-your-mind-busy-at-work/feed/ 0 http://thescoundrels.net/soapbox/its-summer-time-mates/ http://thescoundrels.net/soapbox/its-summer-time-mates/#comments Sun, 07 Jun 2009 08:11:05 +0000 Nathanael the Tinkerer http://thescoundrels.net/?p=769 Ah, summer. That marvelous time when spirits soar like an airship in a fair wind, And hopes swell with the canvas sails. In the morning we are met with the bright rays of sunrise, and in the evening the sky is is filled with the spectacular colors of the sun’s last stand. Now as you go about your summer days there are a few things to keep in mind, both for you and your crew mates.
1. Keep hydrated. This simple but often over looked process can mean all difference between a productive scoundrel and one more bed wormer in sick bay.
2. Wear protection. I recommend Professor Gwyn’s Super sun and bug screen spf 9000. sure you might experience random hair loss or gain and may turn all colors of the rainbow before the day is done but at least you wont be kept up all night by those annoying sunburns.
3. Keep alert. Its easy to doze off with all that worm sun, but this can prove to be a disastrous mistake. Anything from missing the first sight of an imperial cruiser to improperly secured salvage can spell doom for a ship.Also while spiritual enlightenment is the goal of some, I really doubt your crew mates will be please to find themselves one with the aether because you failed to notice a leak in the main engines cooling tube.
4. Organize. If your like me you probably put off your spring cleaning, Never fear there is still time to find a place for everything and for everything some sort of space. And remember your way of organizing may not fit with the typical mind set. I for one like piles set in such a way that I have access to what I need with in a moments notice. It’s such a bother to search thorough endless drawers for your mini-clockwork drill gun.
5. Enjoy. Its summer time! get out there and enjoy it! There are glider-packs to test Ray guns to fire, and electric fencing words to build. If you happen to be more of the laid back sort, open cook outs on the deck, art to pain, and books to read. If your interested in trying out one of my inventions you could try that one over here at The Falling Angel – its just a little art thing I call a inter-web-space comic.

What ever you chose to do this summer I wish you the best of it.

]]> http://thescoundrels.net/soapbox/its-summer-time-mates/feed/ 0