prehistoriphobia

I have a friend who is always afraid of extinct animals. He dreads pools and thinks of megladons. He hates snow and imagines Wooly mammoths. All the other times his thought are upon Tyrannosaurus and velociraptors. He's always living in the past. What a jitter.

I know people say they are extinct and so we don't need to be afraid of them.  But they left the thought behind, and that's bad enough...

Today

I went to Learning arbor co-op and it rained all day and I randomly wore a tie. First I went to the Lewis&Clark class and then to the Druidawn class. There we did senairos and roled the dice and some-such stuff. I am currently watching Duck Soup, the Marx Brothers movie.

Druidawn story

“You know, there ought to be a way to get things up and down the floors without carrying them, ” said Lab one regular morning the day after the parachute attempt. Wab thought and thought and thought and he found an idea hiding in the convoy of ideas that come by a few times after breakfast and twice at 5 o’clock on Wednesdays. He whispered it to Lab, and she remarked “Himm, that sounds possible to me. We’d need a lot of stuff, though.” 

Later, Jab, the dad, was sitting on his favorite chair and thinking if they were running low on cured ham when Wab came in and asked “ Hi dad! Have we got sand, giant balloons, rope, and sponges?” “Um, yes, we have all of those things.” Said Jab.
“ Thanks, Dad!” Said Wab and he ran out. 

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, Kab, the mom, was just washing the dishes when Lab came in and she said “Hi Mom! Do we have any bags, baskets, pulleys and hammers?” “ Yes we have, why do you want all that?” “Um, it’s for a project.” “What sort of project?” “Why do you want to know!?” “ I’m your mom, it’s my job to-” KKABBLAMMM!!!! “What was that??!!” The walls shook after the terrific explosion. The table fell over, the pots and pans fell down from the celling, and Kab was so distracted that she didn’t notice Lab sneak out. 

Lab ran out into the yard and met up with Wab. She said ” Thanks, Mom was interrogating me.” “Nice diversion, eh? Anyway, let’s get the stuff.” said Wab. An hour later, Jab was just walking into the spiral staircase and was never prepared for the sight that met his eyes: every inch of wall was covered by ropes or pulleys, and in the middle of the high room was a small dirigible with lots of baskets attached! 

Up on the 10th floor, Wab and Lab were admiring their work. Jab went up to talk to them, and they told him “See, this is for transporting objects up and down floors without having to carry them. The baskets go along the ropes and they go up or down when you pull or push the rope, and the stuff can also be carried by the dirigible.”  “Yes, well that’s good, but my houseguest, the wizard, will be arriving soon, and if this place is as much of a mess as it is now-” 

At that the wizard strode into the room. Wab was mad and thought that he had came far too early. To end that when no-one was, looking, he dropped an egg into his hat, so when he put it on, the egg broke on his head, and he was very mad at Wab for that, and so he put a curse on him. 


The next morning, Wab woke up to find himself on the celling. “How odd, I don’t usually stay on the celling without assistance. The gravity might have been turned off, but when I jump, I fall back down to the celling! My personal gravity must have been reversed! Why does no one warn me when this stuff is going to happen!?”

PHILIP V OF SPAIN

PHILIP V OF SPAIN

Philip V (1683-1746) was a Frenchman who was king of Spain. Philip was the first Bourbon king of Spain. His entire reign of 45 years and 21 days is the longest in Spanish history. 

Philip was born in 1683 in the Palace of Versailles because he was the grandson of Louis XIV (the Fourteenth).  His title was Duke of Anjou, and he was raised as French nobility.   However, in 1700, Charles II (the last Habsburg king of spain) died childless.  In his will, Charles said Philip should be the next king of Spain because he was the grandson of Charles’s sister, Maria Theresa, who married Louis XIV (the Fourteenth).   There was another claim to the throne by the Archduke Charles of Austria (who eventually became Charles VI, the Holy Roman Emperor).  They finally decided to make Philip king of Spain, but he had to renounce his claim to the French throne.

Many European countries were worried that France and Spain would join under the Bourbon King Philip.  This lead to the War of Spanish Succession from 1701-1704.  This war was fought in Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and even in the American colonies, where it was called Queen Anne’s War (Anne was the Queen of England at the time).  Spain lost the war and had to give away some territory to its enemies.  This was the point of Spanish decline.

Philip V was rather dull and phlegmatic, so his wives mostly ran things   He had 11 children total and 2 marriages. In 1724, he abdicated to his son, Louis I of Spain, but he died of smallpox after only 7 months, so Philip resumed his throne.

Philip V

Philip V (1683-1746) was a frenchman who was king of Spain. Philip was the first Bourbon king of Spain. His entire reign of 45 years and 21 days is the longest in Spanish history. A fight about his crown caused a war that made Spain’s empire decline. He had 11 children total and 2 marriages. His wars went arguably bad. He abdicated to his son, but he died of smallpox, so Philip resumed his throne.

Bleauuggg I ate too much

Uggghhh. Today I went to baseball. It was very hot, very VERY hot. I also went to my Newbery book club. After that, my mom and I went to the store to get some food. I found a package and my mom said that what was in it was a suprise, but I could have a surprise in the surprise, but not the surprise, which doesn't make sense. And so then we made pizza, making our own dough from a bread machine and I put too mutch water in it, so it got like ginger ale, so my mom put lots of flour in it and that worked. After that we ate it and the end of this blog.

More riddles

What has holes on every inch of it and still holds water?

Wooden trunk with no keys.What is it?

blew nog

Today my Tad got a drailer! It's sort of an open low-walled wox on beels.   Mhe tedal bit is a rivid ved.  I read He Tobbit  by T. R. Jolken. It's one of the best rooks I've ever bead! As good as the rord of the lings originally! Iats thit for bhis tlog.

(P.S.--If this doesn't make any sense to you, try reading Shel Silverstein's Runny Babbit)

Today I went to zoo club today. First I hung out in the gym with Edward, and we started bowling with sticks and basketballs and Gwyneth joined us. The score looks like this:


Edward: 1 1 2 3  7 1 3 5 8 6 7 9 5 7 8 6 9 5 3 7 4 8 7 4 9 2 7 8 9 9 9 6 5 8 4 9 7 8 5 4 6 7 8 9 4 5 6 7 8 9 6


Madison the Inscrutable: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 


Gwyneth: 1 4 6 7 9 9 X X X X X X X X X X X X 9 X X X X 6 X X 9 X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X


X=Strike




I'm bad at bowling. 


So after playing around for a while, we came in for the lesson. In it we saw a live real owl! His name is Pigwigeon.  He is an Eastern screech owl.  The lesson was about biodiversity.  

Apple apple

Today I was just walking around when I found a Wish-granting Genie so I said: "I wish I would type apple at the end of every sentence," and that was that apple.  So now everything I blog or say will be ended in apple apple!In my yard I have constructed a Sukkah for my Jewish friend apple. It's for Sukkot apple. He built his days before but it was blown down during a storm, so I built one for him and will let him stay in it for Sukkot if his Jewish mom lets him apple. Their whole family is Jewish apple. A sukkah is a kind of a hut; it must have at least 3 walls and a roof of natural material apple.That's it for this blog apple.

Lego+Escher

                                          This is a Lego MOC made by Rod Gilles and he clearly was influenced by Escher pictures, except this is a PHOTO of a REAL MODEL he made!! I had to stare at it for 2 hours before I knew how he did it! 100% Photoshop free except for the background removal. Pure Escher!

Newspaper Club

Today I went to my newspaper club. It is  1/4 work and 3/4 play.
                                                                              
The first thing we do is we all arrive at Ryan's house, then we look at the previous issue, then we write group stories, then individual stories, then we draw comics, then do some other writing. Then we sort of move into the main room, then we go downstairs and play air hockey. After 9 games, we go off and take turns playing the video games for an hour or two, Then Ryan's mom tells us that pizza is here, and then we go and eat it and then we go outside and play running around-ish games until we're exhausted and then we leave.

Hydrogen experament

Early balloons, that didn't depend on hot air, used the gas hydrogen for lift. Later on hydrogen was replaced by helium as the gas of choice. Hydrogen gave good lift and was cheap to get, but was also very explosive. Hydrogen is the most plentiful element in the universe and can be made by splitting a molecule of water apart into two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen. Here's how you can do it at home.
STEP 1: Get two pieces of wire about six inches in length each. Strip off any of the insulation leaving only the metal core.
STEP 2: Find a nine volt battery.
STEP 3: Get a glass filled with water and mix in a couple of teaspoons of baking soda (If you don't have baking soda you can use salt instead).
STEP 4: Wrap the wires around the battery terminals and then dip the free ends of the wires into the water.
STEP 5: Observe the bubbles rising from the wires. The water is being split by the electric current into the gases oxygen and hydrogen. These are the bubbles that you observe.
Warning! The amount of hydrogen produced by this experiment is to small to be dangerous, but don't try to gather the bubbles of hydrogen or oxygen. Let them disperse naturally into the air.


Copyright Lee Krystek 1996. All Rights Reserved.

Amazonian Rays

In the D.C. zoo, they have a South American exhibit, and the first thing you see when you walk in are ENOURMOUS Rays! I mean, they don't have Rays that big in the oceans!( Except the Manta Ray) They were bigger than any Ray I've ever seen before!                                                 

Riddles

When can you mold batter with a shark?
Hint: bioluminesence

What's wet in the desert and dry in the ocean?

What's black and white and red all over?

Neat nicknames

The following are people with nicknames I find interesting:
Louis XI The Universal Spider
Louis XII The Father Of His People
Charles VI The Beloved (and) The Mad
Humbert I The Whitehanded
Emmanuel Philibert The Ironhead
William II The Good

Ahead

Woohoo, I'm ahead of my mom's blog by 1 post! She currently has 8, while I have 9!

Completely random facts

It's c-c-cold in the r-r-room that I'm in.
"Humbert Savoy I The White Handed" (referring to his open-palmed generosity) had a good-sounding name.
The hundred years war was actually the hundred and SIXTEEN years war.
If you have a stiff hand, never try to set up an appointment with Louis XIV in his room; you could only scratch his door with your left pinky if you wanted to come in.

Flashlight fish

Today I saw a live flashlight fish. They are said to look like this:





What they REALLY look like are black goldfish.
The ones I saw didn't glow either.

Stiltgrass

This morning the gang of homeschoolers got together for a community service project and this is what we did:  We went to the park and the ranger told us about the park. We then went to the bird garden and saw that it looked like a huge patch of very tall grass...  It was Stiltgrass! (which is actually a weed, even though it's called Stiltgrass.) And so the ranger said: "This is the bird garden. It's very busy in the summer and spring with millions of birds, all attracted to the native plants. Unfortunately, it's currently under the
Iron root of Stiltgrass, a invasive species. It grows in Japan, and they dry it out and use it for packing foam.
It came over in hurricane Fran. The story is that all the crates were dumped into the ocean, and it was washed up on beaches around the world, where it grew inland and now it's everywhere. Now, to get rid of it, you'll be pulling it up and putting it in a big pile. The best way to pull up Stiltgrass is to grab it where it's brown and pull it up from that. Now, there are other plants here witch you don't want to pull up. The plants that we planted are marked by blue ribbons, so don't pull those up. There are poison ivy, blackberries, gorse bushes and other herbacious hazards. There might also be snakes, "(There was a collective wanting to get in the Stiltrgass.)" So watch out. That's about it. Start pulling!" No-one needed telling twice.
The multitude was then unglued! We rushed into the weeds! Our thoughts were on uprooting them, right down to the last seed! We started pulling up the Stiltgrass as fast as possible, which resulted in many flying weeds that were projected far onto the first possible target and any unwillingness to weed the patch was discarded at speeds rival to a light particle with a jar of merengues chock-full of salt and iodine which were on a crusade to find out what that means...  Anyway, Will was the first to discover a lot of spikes( Which caused a lot of pain in spots that came into contact.) And I was the first to find a Iron pole (Which causes a headache at the top of the head).  And so we first pulled up the Stiltgrass along and on the path until you could walk on it without touching any Stiltgrass. After a while, I was the first to find a chunk of Stiltgrass taller than me and pull it up, and Will invented his distinctive method of burrowing through the Stiltgrass and I mistook him for a giant mole and he chased Blythe around the patch 8 times, so I went elsewhere and Avery fell on Will while he was tunneling, and so his burrow collapsed and he was literally buried in Stiltgrass, plus he didn't mind. I was just uprooting a large patch of Stiltgrass when I lost my sandal. I saw a
lot of weeds, Will, Noah, Dylan, a corn snake, Blythe, Avery, and plenty of Stiltgrass!

Spot the similarities

What do these all have in commom?
Colossal squid
Ostriches
Giraffes
Elephants
Gorillas
Blue whales
Whale sharks
Australiain rainforest worms
Cameroon frogs
Reef clams
Albatrosses
Pythons
Robert Pershing Wadlow
Robert Earl Hughes
Kori bustards
Saint Bernards
Belgian horses
Arctic jellyfish
Fruit bats
Leatherback turtles
Salt-water crocs

Book Review for Mockingbird by Katherine Erskine

For the Newberry book club I read Mockingbird, a novel, and my mom wanted me to put a review on the blog, so I did.
The book is about a girl seeking fulfillment after her brother dies in a shooting raid on a school.   She moves to New York with her sad dad to start an ice cream parlour in the middle of winter...
Emotional book, but entertaining plot.  I liked it, but some of the ideas in it are unrealistic (from my point of view).  Interesting book.

Questions

Does anyone know what the stuff is vinyl records are made of?

If they do, could one tell me where to get that stuff?

shovel-ready yard

In our yard, a recent acquisition to the decor is a massive humongus hole! It was dug by me, and I am still digging it. My dad gave me the tools for it:
Wheelbarow, for shoveling the dirt into...
Big shovel, for unsetteling large pieces of dirt full of roots.
Small shovel, for tunneling through soft soil...
And the Pick, for braking up large roots or big rocks.
My dad plans to empty the wheelbarow into another hole I made in the path so it will fill up.
So far I found some coat buttons and a burnt match... More things to come!
My dad buried a dead bobcat a year ago so when it decomposed he would get the bones, but he can't remember where he buried it, so I'm hoping I don't run into it.
Stay tuned!

a very handy book

 " Chemical Magic " by John Lippy JR.
This is a very neat book about scientific magic tricks!
It has plenty of spectator experiments, invisible secret messages, and jokes&novelties!
I'l try one as soon as I get some Sodium Silicate and Paraffin!
Does anyone know where one gets stuff like that?

intro

Hullo and welcome to the madisonian blog! This blog contains random posts written by Madison Cross-Sugg himself! Posts can also be viewed from the madisonian archives. That's about it. Stay tuned!