Now I Get It

If there is one thing all serious beer drinkers agree on (almost by definition), it is that mass-produced American lagers are terrible. Budweiser, Miller, Coors--each of them deserves every bit of the abuse they receive. Watered-down, nasty tasting, foul aftertaste, etc etc.

I know why we drink 'em--they're cheap, readily available, and intoxicating. I knew guys in high school who would drink aftershave for a buzz, and even Bud Light is definitely a step up from Brut.

So the question has always been, why brew such crap? I mean, yeah, so people will buy it, but there are plenty of other beer recipes that might work.

Right now, I'm finding out why. I'm trying an imported lager called Czechvar, which is known in Europe as Budweiser. Czechvar was first brewed in Ceske Budejovice in the late 13th century, and rumor has it that the American Budweiser is an attempt to recreate it. Anheuser-Busch and Budweiser Budvar (the brewer of Czechvar) have been in a legal battle over the rights to the "Budweiser" name for longer than I've been able to drink legally.

Makes sense. Czechvar has a great crisp taste, clean flavor, and just a bit of bite on aftertaste to let you know it's there. American lagers are a very obvious, very pale imitation--sort of like Star Wars Episodes I, II, III--you can see the similarity, which make the imitator all the more pitiful.

This may be my new lawn-mowing beer.

Mental note: Get a lawn.

Czechvar. Five stars. Ted sez check it out.

Wheel Keeps Turning (or not)

Robert Jordan died this week. He's the guy who wrote the Wheel of Time series, famous for being a very long and detail-oriented sword-and-sorcery epic. The series is unfinished, despite 11 volumes being published.

Eric maintains that he never starts a series of novels until the last book is published for exactly this reason. Makes sense--it would be pretty frustrating to slog through eleven of those doorstops only to find out that you'll never know what finally happened.

Pirate Humor Done Well....

I've been following this guy's blogs for a while now, and he's usually good for a laugh or two. This post almost made me spit-take.

Buckle yer Swashes, me Hearties!

I couldn't figure out what to post for International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Then I found this:

Thanks to Monte Moore, who claims to have drawn her.

Busy Weekend

I worked Saturday night, which was relatively quiet until about 5 am, when all hell broke loose. That meant I went home about 2 hours late, showered, and collapsed into bed.

Only one problem. My Shotokan karate belt test was Sunday at noon. So I slept for about an hour, got up, diluted the blood out of my caffeine system, and went to the test.

Where I passed three consecutive belt tests, compressing about a year's worth of work into 3 months.*

Makes for a pretty impressive feat, if I do say so.

*note that passing two, much less three, belt tests at once is rather rare in this particular style**
**also note that these are all ranks I'd previously achieved in this style, but so long ago I had to re-start. Further, I still haven't caught up to my Tang Soo Do rank, which requires very similar skills. So this wasn't really THAT impressive.

MelloYello has been Hiding Something

My kid sister took the MCAT recently, as many of you know.

Being a shy and retiring young lady, she has not kept us updated on her results.

But I have spies everywhere.

And, as I predicted, she did great.

Med school applications are proceeding apace.

Congrats, kiddo.

Strikes a Chord

"An amateur practices until he gets it right. A professional practices until he can't get it wrong."
---Some South African NCO

With thanks to the good folks at The LawDog Files

Some Good News

The title of the next Indiana Jones movie has been released. "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" will hit theatres on May 22, 2008 unless Ousama bin Laden blows us all up first. Personally, I'm looking forward to seeing what a 65-year-old guy can do with a whip. One major drawback: John Rhys-Davies does not appear to be in the movie.

Don't believe me? Follow this link:
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/Movies/09/10/film.indianajones.ap/index.html

Disappointed

I really expected a better response to the Blogging Monkeys post. I figured y'all would be trying to top each other with "people are stupid" quotes from Shakespeare for weeks.

To paraphrase Hoffman and Hofman: "Give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite amount of bandwidth and eventually they'll reproduce the works of Shakespeare."

Don't believe me? Follow this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem

Still More Cat Abuse

For those few who don't know, Bonsai Kitty is a (rather amusing) hoax website claiming to sell kittens which have been morphed into geometric shapes by the simple expedient of raising them inside small containers.


They used to have some rather interesting pictures (made with Photoshop or some equivalent, I'm told), but apparently they have pussied out*.


The site now consists mostly of text and unaltered pictures of cats.


This bothers me, because it means the PC Thought Police are winning. It looks like these guys are caving in to the animal rights activists who seem to think that suggesting such a thing (even in jest) should be a capital offence.

As for me, I'm against animal cruelty. Ask The Wife to tell you about the debates we've had on crate-training dogs**. But I'm also opposed to censorship...I think there's a reason that the right to free speech is protected by the constitution and the right to throw paint on someone in a fur coat isn't.


So as long as you're not ACTUALLY putting kittens in jars, I'm completely in support of talking about it.




*sorry, I couldn't resist

**a story that is relevant and illustrative on many levels

A Good Boy

We put the dog to sleep yesterday. It was time. Heather tells his story much better than I can . Which is appropriate, because he was her dog. She knew it, he knew it, I knew it. He didn't ignore me, but he belonged to her. He loved her and made her happy, and I loved him for that. And now he's gone.

He was a Good Dog.

I miss him.