Utterly Ytterby

Own Up -
 - or should I say 'Own Uppsala'* - because I bet you've never heard of the Swedish town of Ytterby, have you?
     I thought not.
     Now, this comes as a consequence of having a mind with all the organisation of a skip full of rubbish after it gets hit by a hurricane. 
     "Ytterbium" I thought to myself.  "There's an element name with a tale to it.  I wonder if it explodes on contact with water, or is instantaneously toxic to all mammalian life on cutaneous contact?"

Beautiful romantic Uppsala
(A city in Sweden)

     Well - it's up there, if not quite as deadly as polonium or cadmium.  It is deemed to be toxic, and will spontaneously combust if rendered into a powder, and the fumes of such are also toxic.  PLUS!  An Ytterbium fire cannot be put out with water - I wonder what happens if you try? - and you need either a dry powder fire extinguisher or a bucket of sand.  So - the BOOJUM! verdict is that it's mildly interesting.

The stuff itself

     Now to put the motley into a swing and see if we can make it go completely round - or be sick, whichever comes first.  Tee hee!

Ytterby Itself
The village of Ytterby is the site of a mine, from whence a chunk of strange, dense black rock was taken to be chemically analysed back in C18, by a chap called John Gadolin.
     Here an aside.  You are familiar with the material "Suede"? (also a band, who are not bad, although having said that the Curse of Conrad will strike and they'll either all die horribly or split up)  The name comes from the French for 'Sweden', because the M83's used to get their untreated kid skins from Sweden.

The mine, inside which there may very well be some strange scenes

     So, the element Ytterbium was named after the town; as were Yttrium, Terbium and Erbium - all new elements found in what they dubbed "Gadolinite" after the Finnish chemist, who himself had an element named after him - Gadolinium.
     Which is not radioactive, toxic or explosive <sad face>
     
Blowing A Very Small Trumpet
Normally, gentle reader, when your modest artisan bakes, he bakes the entire thing from scratch, because - well, if the ingredients are there, why not?
     However, Wonder Wifey had laid in a supply of Betty Crocker gluten-free Devil's Food cake mix, and had been missing cake long enough to request that Conrad heave to and bake it up a storm.  Art?

     So I did.  WW supplied and applied the frosting, and that cake mix did very well.  GF mixes tend to rise well when baking and then collapse afterwards, but not this one.     Of course I cannot have any - quite apart from the insulin issues, Conrad detests chocolate cake almost as much as he detests pineapple.

Apt

     There you go.  

That Marvel Anniversary Poster
Conrad can't remember where he got this article from, but it certainly is the gift that keeps on giving.  Every so often part of it will catch my attention, as did the cover illustration that Art is about to supply.  Art?  Supply!

That has to be Jack Kirby artwork

     I was rather thrown by the colour used for the unreconstructed villain in the background.  He is Galactus, you see, whose normal colour palette is blue and purple, rather than a virulent green.  Art?

Thus

     There are some who don't see Galactus as a villain, and I can only think that's because he's not popped around to their solar system and eaten up their home planet(s), as is his wont.
     Now, about that title - I think there ought to be a question mark at the end, is that not so, Stan?  Moot question anyway - NO WAY are Marvel going to let a cash-cow like the F4 get scragged by some galactic upstart.  So - perhaps that's why there's no question mark, because it definitely isn't Doomsday.

Then again -

     That above is Doomsday; however, he lives in the DC comics universe so there's still no way the F4 are ever going to encounter him.  Ergo: still no Doomsday.
Finally -
Just to prove that the First Unpleasantness also involved brains, as well as brawn, here is a South Canadian trench-digging machine.  Art?

Somewhat baroque, I admit

     For when you absolutely, positively just had to dig a whole lot of trenches.



*  Do you see what I - O you do.