Time to learn

Hello and welcome to another installement of Eccentric Spheres!

Today we are getting our learning on with some documentaries.

First up is The Great Escape from Alcatraz Prison:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVtaxYKk74M

followed by The Trial of Adolf Eichmann:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uANesju1B58

and finally Lost Worlds: Persia's Forgotten Empire:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3bOL8j3ypQ

Unfortunately I have to cut it a bit short today, but join me again next time. Until then, stay safe and have a great week!

The Remedy

This week we're taking a radical departure from our usual content. This week we're talking about flu remedies. Or a particular remedy to be precise.

DISCLAIMER:

1. The following information is based on my personal experience, yours may wary.
2. The remedy is not, not a medicine. If you are really sick, go to the doctor! Especially these days. If you suspect that you may have Covid-19, aka Corona virus, follow the guidelines set forth by your government. Let me repeat: This remedy may help you stave off a cold or get better faster, but it is not a medicine and I am not a doctor. See a doctor if you need to. I take no responsibility for your health. Thank you.

Story time. Back in the mists of time known as the early 2000's my wife’s boss gave her the recipe for this remedy, as my wife was getting the flu and she noticed that my wife was sounding a bit hoarse.

She came home and told me, and we tried it out. This was the original:

Squeeze the juice from ½ lemon. Add 1 crushed clove of garlic. Drink. (Serves 1-2 people)

It tasted pretty heinous, but it actually worked. Crushing garlic releases allicin, which is a powerful antioxidant and also helps reduce inflammations. Combined with the Vitamin C bomb from the lemon, it helps your immune system fight off the cold. But it sure ain't fun going down!

Then, a year ago or so, I was coming down with a cold and the wife went to the store to pick up lemon and garlic. But, to everyone's surprise, they were out of lemons. Being a resourceful woman, she got oranges and limes instead. This new version tasted so much better it was crazy. However, the limes here are pretty expensive, so we went back to lemons, but this time with orange included. Besides, lime has less Vitamin C, so oranges and lemons are preferable anyway. The sweetness from the orange balances out the incredible sourness from the lemon and even makes the raw garlic a bit more palatable. With the increased amount of liquid I have also increased the garlic. So the new recipe looks like this:

Squeeze the juice from 1 lemon and 1 orange. Add 1-3 crushed cloves of garlic depending on their size. Drink. (Serves 2 people)

Then recently, I was reading up on ginger, and how healthy that is. Yes, you can sort of see where this is going, but wait! There's more!

I'm a fan of several cooking shows on Youtube, and some info must have slowly fermented and combined in my brain. Our new recipe is this:

Peel a nub of ginger and grate it. Crush a roughly equal amount of garlic. Put both in a small jar and mix. Pour honey to cover and stir to mix. Add 1 teaspoon of the mix to the juice of 1 lemon and 1 orange. Drink. (Serves 2 people)

This new recipe is amazing! The honey and orange are pleasantly sweet while the garlic and ginger adds a nice heat. Honey and ginger are both very good for you and the mixture seems to stay fresh in the fridge a fairly long time. The honey stops air from getting to the garlic and ginger, and honey is essentially a preservative. Use you own judgment though.

A small warning. Fresh citrus juice goes bad pretty fast, so it's not recommendable that you make more than you can drink immediately. Also, I never take this more than once per day and never more than three days in a row, it's pretty strong stuff and you might want to be nice to your stomach.

I have told several people about this recipe and 95% go “Eeww, sounds nasty. I don't want to”. Yeah it's not cake, but every time in the last almost 20 years that I've felt a cold coming and I haven't taken a dose, I've gotten sick. It works, it really does. These days I chug a bit a couple of times a day just to boost the old immune system army. Again, it's not a medicine or a cure, but it helps. Try it out.

That is that. I hope you are all healthy and that you're careful. We are not out of this yet but it is getting better. Until next time, stay strong and have a great week!

Time for a laugh

Okay, folks. It is a short one today.

Please enjoy these very oddball sketches, and I'll see you again next time. Until then have a great week and stay safe!

Entertaining links

With the most of the world sitting behind closed doors, I thought you might like some entertainment, since the Corona virus has us all sitting inside and we all need a bit of a distraction.

Steam broke its record of accounts simultaneously logged on three times in a row, starting with 20 million and then jumping up to 21 and then 22 million players at once. So, if you're having trouble getting the store to work, it's probably just that.

But you can't play games all the time. Sometimes your wrist gets tired, sometimes your brain gets tired and for that matter, maybe you're not much of a gamer to begin with. That's okay. Today I'm listing some of the many many Youtube channels I follow for various reasons, so that you can have something to do while staying indoors.

One of my recent fascinations has been watching Total War Warhammer let's plays. The game is huge and interesting with plenty going on. If you too want to watch this I recommend

lionheartx10 - https://www.youtube.com/user/lionheartx10/playlists

and

Alchemical Rabbit - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC47yx7iA8irIEIIDkaduQZQ/playlists

If grand strategy isn't your thing, then maybe you'll find something fun over at

8 Bites - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYljqyDdMZzqqHLZOgs49JQ/playlists

Or

Many a True Nerd - https://www.youtube.com/user/ManyATrueNerd/playlists

If playing games normally is boring and you want to drink tea and utterly break games, then you have to visit

The Spiffing Brit - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRHXUZ0BxbkU2MYZgsuFgkQ/videos

If you prefer the golden days of yore both in games and movies then head over to

Cinemassacre (includes the Angry Video Game Nerd) - https://www.youtube.com/user/JamesNintendoNerd/playlists

And finally, maybe you don't care to watch games and you are not keen on film reviews? Then why not watch a trio of Aussie lads drop things from a 45m (147 feet) tall tower, often times on to trampolines. It's surprisingly addictive. - https://www.youtube.com/user/whoisjimmy/videos

That is that. Now go wash your hands, don't rely on hand sanitizer and join me again next time on Eccentric Spheres. Until then, have a great week and stay safe!

Trivia time!

Now that it behooves us all to stay inside and avoid physical contact, I thought I'd talk movies. Okay, to be fair I talk a lot about movies, since movies are awesome. At least some are awesome. Many many films are the opposite of awesome...

So it's trivia time!

An iconic scene in the awesome Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) is when the Terminator is riding his big bike, twirling his shotgun around one handed, to re-cock and shoots gates open.

This scene is so well done. Smooth and badass to the bone. But, anyone crazy enough to do that would end up badly hurt.

The gun in question is a Winchester 1887 lever action shotgun with the stock and trigger guard cut off. Even though it's technically possible to spin it around like that, it won't end well. The gun you see Arnold spin around was a prop gun, and one time when Arnold accidentally picked up a real one and tried to do the move, he almost broke three fingers. Keep in mind that as a champion bodybuilder, Arnold has to have pretty strong hands, and the torque still nearly broke his hand.

Further, the novel states that it is a 10-gauge shotgun, so unless you really are a Terminator, don't try shooting it with one hand, okay? Don't try this at home!

So that was a lot to digest at once. Quickfire trivia time!

Every time John Travolta's character Vincent goes to the bathroom in Pulp Fiction, something bad happens.

The original raw footage of Apocalypse Now is 1.250.000 feet long, or 381 kilometers. The distance from London to Paris is 350 kilometers as the crow flies.

The warthog Pumbaa in Lion King is the first Disney character to fart on screen.

In that vein, Psycho (1960) was the first film to show a flushing toilet.

Staying with Psycho, it was filmed in black and white to save money. Hitchcock had to pony up most of the money himself and was keen to cut costs.

In Batman and Robin (1997) Batman pulls out a bat-themed credit card that reads Good until: Forever. Imagine trying to use that card to buy anything on the internet. How many shops have Forever as an option?

The original Die Hard is one of the finest action movies of all time and it made Bruce Willis a household name. But he was the seventh (technically eight) actor considered for the role. In line ahead of Bruce was: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Burt Reynolds, Richard Gere, Harrison Ford, and Mel Gibson.

The reason for the technical eight was that due to contract reasons, they had to offer the role to an aging Frank Sinatra...

The raunchy Mel Brooks comedy Blazing Saddles was shot on the same set as Westworld

The passport James Bond shows in Skyfall was actually issued by the British Home Office. Besides being made out to a fictional character, it's absolutely genuine.

That's that. Until next time, stay safe, wash your hands and have a great week!

How accurate is it?

The Mummy (1999) with Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, John Hannah and many more is an amazing adventure movie. It is in fact one of my favorite action-adventure movies.

It's exciting and funny. The jokes are good, the action is great and most importantly it doesn't take itself too seriously. Sure, the CG is a bit dated now, but some of it is still okay, mostly because no one has a reference point as to how a sandstorm with a face in it really should look.

But how correct is it in regard to the Egyptology? Both completely inaccurate and surprisingly correct.

In the following video, Rachel Maksy sits down with actual Egyptologist Dr. Colleen Darnell to find out.

Join me again next week for more Eccentric Spheres, and until then have a great and curse free week!

Direct link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjFFrYEZsAQ

Don't kiss vampires

I've been on a horror binge lately, both watching and enjoying many of the excellent podcasts that are out there.

It's no secret to anyone who's been here a while that I'm a fan of Hammer Horror, and to my delight I found a couple that I had never seen before.

So today we're talking about The Kiss of the Vampire (1963). Mild spoilers – sort of.

I say sort of because, well, this movie is mostly predictable to a fault.

Gerald and Marianne Harcourt, a couple of newly weds on their honeymoon run out of gas in their awesome 1903 De Dion Bouton model Q. They stay the night at a local hotel who’s only guest is the brusque and heavy drinking Professor Zimmer.

The same night they are invited to the local castle for dinner by Dr. Ravna and his children. The following day they are invited to a sumptuous ball at the castle where Gerald is drugged and Marianne is turned into a vampire, sort of.

Gerald wakes up and is told by everyone that he has no wife and that he came alone, drank too much and made a scene. The police won't help him and he despairs until Zimmer tells him the truth; Ravna is the master of a cult of vampires.

Together they rescue Marianne and then enact an occult ritual that destroys the vampires and Marianne is released from the vampires influence. The end.

The Kiss of the Vampire is a mixed bag for me. On the one hand, the idea of using occult powers to defeat the vampires instead of the old stake to the heart is a welcome change and the ritual is well filmed. The movie is over all well made and the atmosphere is fine. The part where everyone insists that Gerald isn't married was really good.

On the other hand, these are the weakest, most ineffective and lame vampires ever. They really don't do anything. When Gerald and Zimmer rescue Marianne from the castle, they are pursued by the vampires hulking servant, and once he is killed, they can seal the castle by drawing crosses with distilled garlic on the doors and the vampires are trapped. All they do is sit around and complain.

This bunch is far removed from Dracula and the Karnsteins, who are actual predators and thus are actually scary.

This brings me to the vampire “cult”. They like to gather in a room vaguely decorated in an Asian style and they wear white robes and sit in a square on the floor. It looked so much like the martial arts movies of the 60's that I half expected Bruce Lee to kick in the door and beat them up.

And what is the deal with having a vampire cult? Creating more vampires that still has to drink blood creates a greater demand for victims, which increases the likelihood that they will be discovered exponentially.Very silly.

All in all TkotV is a very mixed bag. I didn't hate it, but I can't really recommend it either. It's certainly not one of the great Hammer vampire movies, but from a completionist point of view, it's worth watching. Decide for yourself.

That's that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great week!