9.5 9.5 you say?

Doesn’t the “O” in “Oak Aged” on the bottle remind you of something, Brad?

I would like to repeat, for the benefit of all involved, that the Beavers are battling the Eaters on ESPN2. And the game is being called by a man named Orel.

Tune in, grab a beer, and enjoy a giggle.

Unless you’re Ann Althouse, in which case you should write a meaningful analysis about the teams’ choice of mascots and how it relates to Bill Clinton.

My kitchen cabinets all squeak. But one of them squeaks French. This is a problem because I spend half the morning trying to understand, and keep being late for stuff.

Plus, as most of you have likely discerned, I’m a lot better at wrecking shit than I am at fixing shit. I’ve still got a silverware drawer possessed by the devil. I may very well have to call an artillery barrage down on my kitchen. Dammit…

mikey

Jun 21 Non-vagina-related program activities

Sausage party? Did you invite Ace?

…the Beavers are battling the Eaters on ESPN2. And the game is being called by a man named Orel.

Yet another piece of evidence supporting my theory that the Earth is currently buried deep in a clump of Dark Matter and it is Truly fucking with our reality on the quantum level.

Just a Theory tho.

Y’know, Bradrocket, I feel like I should apologize. The giant roll into Boston for the first time since, what, 1914? And Boston is among the elite teams, with the best record in the league.

Now I’m not even saying the Giants should have won even one game. With a team built around a 42 year old cripple and his geriatric posse, without even one viable bat, and a bullpen full of clueless amateurs and creaky “journeymen”, they had no right to think for a moment they belonged on the same field as Manny and Poppi. But it really does seem like it would have been a helluva lot more fun if the Giant’s brought a team that could play Major League Baseball. Personally, I’d like to have seen the ’89 giants play, with Jeff Leonard and Kevin Mitchell and all. But anyway, what happened over the weekend is exactly what should have happened, and while it was boring and stupid to watch, it was unavoidable and maybe will help drive home the message to the Giants ownership…

mikey

Digby speaks! And gives an interview!

Doesn’t the “O� in “Oak Aged� on the bottle remind you of something, Brad?

The man uses 67 O’s and thinks that’s gonna slide by. Thank god the alphabet doesn’t have a carrot in it.

The man uses 67 O’s and thinks that’s gonna slide by. Thank god the alphabet doesn’t have a carrot in it.

Ahem. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^.

I feel so dirty.

Ok, Doc Marita, yer onna roll? Find us the ASCII Stick!

mikey

Ahem. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^.

I admit to falling asleep while Big Bird was singing about ampersands and tildes.

This is an asshole:

☀

AlthouseSciianPr0n:

o^O>OOO

Oh man, that got cut off. I guess our phallic symbols can only point up and to the left to avoid being misunderstood.

o^O>OO|8\/OOO^^^oO8^>0o>O

â—? I prefer to think of this vagina as half-full.

My kitchen cabinets all squeak. But one of them squeaks French.

DARE we ask?

Å

Don’t those piercings hurt?

(keeping fingers crossed, what with lack of preview and all)

⎈☜

¯•^•¯

Darn it. My local gay hamsters were on strike all last night and today so it looks like I missed Ann’s annual Clinton Commemorative Freudian Potluck. Is there any beer left? I broght the sammich.

☺
∪∪

Those are some saggy boobs there, Bubba.

Self-portraits are always so debasing.

Why don’t you just take a picture of your shadow cast over something expensive? It seems to make some people happy!

Ha,ha,ha, Kingbu. Excellent sammy!

Now if only we sould see the celery version…

º|º
∴
∷
☂
☹

Personally, Brad has been very, very spoiled over the years by by Rogue’s Shakespeare Stout and Avery Mephistopheles Stout over the years.

four out five

but I just can’t justifying

So, I’m guessing you had downed four or five pints by the time you wrote this entry, eh? Yet, you spelled Mephistopheles correctly.

I don’t know about your Yetibrau, but Stone Russian Imperial Stout did well for me this evening.

Imperial stout is a beer that almost every brewery will attempt. It is not a beer that many succeed at.

Big Bear Black is another good offering, especially when it is cask conditioned.

Alcohol’s a crutch, man.

Dammit, my joke bongnoise tags didn’t take. Hopefully I didn’t get the gay hamsters stoned.

Damn, this post is really cruel to those of us (okay, me) trapped in godforsaken Utah, where the local stouts are pretty good but required by law to top out at 4.0% ABV. We can get stronger stuff at the state-owned liquor store, but the selection is pretty thin.

The Yeti sounds tasty. I haven’t tried the Avery. If memory serves, the Shakespeare Stout is fine stuff, but I’ve had better. Specifically: any of the five stouts and porters made by the Porterhouse in Dublin (with another branch in London), each one better than the last no matter how you line them up. Bell’s Kalamazoo Stout from Michigan also kicks some serious ass, as does the Blackhawk Stout from Mendocino County BC. Or so I longingly recall from my days before exile to Zion…

I’m experiencing a between-paychecks drought, so I’m making do with box wine – please don’t be cruel and call me Ann Althouse.

Regarding the hamsters – well, we have wildlife issues here at the g-house.

We have 2 fruit trees – a Santa Rosa plum and a Moorpark apricot. They are just coming into fruit – still green. But the local fauna anticipates the feast.

We also, as I’ve mentioned, have 2 geriatric dogs – one Rottweiler with a deformed skull, and one deaf Malamute.

We leave the doors of the house open while we’re home so the dogs can more easily go in and out to take care of their business.

last night we were watching TV. From the kitchen, we heard the satisfying crunching of dog eating kibble, and were pleased, because the deaf Malamute has been picky lately.

Ooops. Both the Malamute and the Rottweiler were in the living room with us.

Suddenly the Rottie growled, then loped into the kitchen on his shivering and arthritic legs, and barked. Then he sniffed all around the doorway.

Whoa. Out on the patio was a big fucking racoon.

Motherfucker had been in the kitchen, bold as you please, chowing down on the dog food from the dish!

Leave that damn raccoon alone, man, they’re mean goddamn animals. My uncle used to hunt raccoons, and somehow or another, my cousin wound up with one as a pet. More or less. He kept it in an old chickenwire cage and, now and again, he and his buddies would give it some of my uncle’s homemade wine.

Let me tell you, a half-beer can full of homemade muscadine wine, and that was one mean raccoon. So proceed with due caution.

I know, I know. The fucker seems to be very at home in my kitchen, though. He looked a little pissed we were interrupting his meal.

The malamute looked at him, like, “Hey, buddy! How’s it going? Wanna beer?”

I’ll take your advice, though, and put a lock on the wine cooler and put the corkscrew away in the drawer.

Damn!

I wonder what a stoned raccoon would be like. Maybe I’ll leave a pot brownie in the garbage cans outside my house one night. The ones they break into night after fucking night. If’n your uncle is still with us, Matt T, do you think he would enjoy a hunting expedition up north?

While I’m no beer connoisseur, I appreciate the tips. I can recommend other kinds of varietals though. First is labeled Crystal Punch. It can offer you a nice, alert, sociable kind of feeling. Perfect for a night out on the town or if you’re going to a party where it’s going to be awkward if you’re not making conversation. Next up is a very aromatic little number called simply Grape. Don’t be surprised if people walking past you in a bar do a double sniff as they’ll be able to smell it through two plastic bags and your pants pocket. Good way to make new friends but I like to use it for solo flights. Very mellow feelings guaranteed so it’ll prepare you perfectly for watching ballgames and doing crossword puzzles. I’ve heard.

9.5% beers taste kind of like port to me. anyone else have this experience?

I gotta admit, my eyes glaze when a beer name has more than three syllables. Guin-ness. Aaaaah.

The best argument for keeping grass illegal is the likelihood of Reefer Aficinado magazine and upscale grass bars. “Oh, dahling, have you tried the new Mocha Manzibar?” Feh.

Count your blessings, G… there are people who’ve walked into their own personal kitchens & found the wildlife chowing down on their pet kibble was a skunk. It’s embarrassing for all parties, and if the dog decides to get possessive (now that the human backup is there), even repainting the kitchen may not completely eliminate the lingering odor of mustelidae defiance. Or so I have heard.

Actually it’s just as well your Rottie didn’t make it into the kitchen in time to skirmish with the invader, because I don’t know about the laws in your neck of the woods, but here in Massachusetts dogs that have gotten into arguments with racoons are supposed to be quarantined at a state facility for six weeks for fear of rabies, unless the coon carcass tests negative, and those buggers die hard. Something you might want to research, in case the issue comes up again, which heaven forfend…

We’re in an old blue-collar town, surrounded by highway offramps, truck depots, and light industrial facilities, but there’s more wildlife than one would expect. Vast numbers of cottontails, chipmunks, and voles, therefore also racoons, skunks, and the occasional fox. What worries us is the possibility of coyotes — they haven’t been spotted in this neighborhood, yet, but they’ve been seen & trapped in neighboring towns (including downtown Boston). The smallest (and oldest — 16 this summer) of our three Papillons weighs just over 6 pounds, and while we don’t leave our back door open, we do let the dogs out in the fenced yard unsupervised. Mostly it’s cats that end up as coyote-chow, but there have been incidents where they attacked dogs, especially small slow-moving dogs. Much as I love coyotes, I wouldn’t appreciate having to escort our guys on their every bathroom break.

Worse that’s happened to us so far was the dark, misty spring night our 12-pound middle-aged girl decided to challenge a skunk that was, I swear, almost as large as she was. Fortunately, the tone of hysteria in her yarps drew me out into the yard before she could work herself up to a full-blown attack… and the skunk was sufficiently well-fed that it chose to waddle off hissing when I highbeamed my flashlight at him, rather than using its WMDs.

I’ve still got a silverware drawer possessed by the devil.

Oy, I actually thought this happened to me once. It was hilarious.

I lived on the second floor of a 100+-year-old house in a once-nice Providence neighborhood, the sort of place where cops don’t check reports of shots fired unless someone gets hit. Fortunately everyone seemed to have real bad aim.

Anyway. My GF-at-the-time thought the house was haunted, due to door opening by themselves (on crooked hinges…) clonky clunky sounds (from the radiators…) and other mysterious stuff (items that “disappeared” due to forgetting where one put them during a bong-and-Playstation session). All hogwash to skeptical me. But one day I was home alone, and not entirely alert, and was walking by the antique table-with-drawer thingy the silverware was kept in. And the silverware was rattling. But it didn’t do that just by walking by, any other time I’d ever walked by. Oo ee oo.

I stopped, and the silverware kept rattling and rustling. I just stared for a moment (“….dude!”). Then I opened the drawer.

It was the damn ferret. Somehow Clive had escaped the cage and found a teeny tiny back way into the drawer that we didn’t even know was there before. It was cool.

We’re in the Santa Monica mountains, and we have our share of wildlife. But it’s good for you to remind me of skunks – of course, there is eveidence of skunks around all the time, either carcasses or a pocket of skunk essence you drive through on the road.

At night we get choirs of coyotes calling to one another across the canyon. Our neighbor had an aging female retriever who was courted by a coyote, like a sweet innocent girl being wooed by a leather-jacket-clad roue – he kept coming round the fence and trying to get her.

In a locally famous incident, a guy up the hill pulled a coyote off his dog and throttled it, only not until it bit his finger to the bone. He had to have rabies shots after that.

We even had a feral peacock roaming the neighborhood one spring.

We even had a feral peacock roaming the neighborhood one spring.
Well, that must suck first thing in the morning.

If ya get the urge to travel, the Seabright in Santa Cruz, CA brews a fantastic Oatmeal Stout year round. Also, my hometown pub, the Blackstone, Nashville, TN, serves up an equally tasty Stout ’round November. In the meantime, I can grab a six of Highland Mocha Stout (from Asheville, NC) or a bottle or two of O’Hara from Ireland. Whoa, its just about Beer thirty here!

Try the regular Yeti Stout, the oak ruins it.

Stout, in the summer? That’s a three season (fall, winter, early spring) drink. At the Solstice and beyond, in the heat and humidity, you want to squeeze a quarter lime into a tall glass, add ice, pour in your favorite gin, dilute with tonic and quaff. I’m on the front porch with my banjo and the kids are finally asleep. All hail the long days and pass the Deet!