guinness red??

o my poppets, ima skeptical!! why fiddle with perfection?

but sayeth the guinness blog:

Guinness Red uses the exact same ingredients & the same process but cuts short the roasting of the barley slightly - roasting the barley until it is red rather than black. This has 2 main effects:

1) COLOUR: The lighter roasting means that the whole pint is that wonderful rich ruby red colour that you see at the bottom of a pint of Guinness Draught if you hold it up to the light

2) TASTE: The lighter roasted barley knocks back the dominant bitter flavour just enough to allow some of the other flavours that are normally shrouded in a pint of Guinness, to come to the fore. This means that you get a pint with the familiar bitter/roast flavours at the front of the mouth, but with a subtle sweetness towards the finish - creating a pint with a fantastic bitter-sweet balance.

And it still has that traditional 2 part pour, surge and settle, tight creamy head and fantastic velvet smoothness that we know you love about Guinness!

mmm, tight creamy head.
it feels like friday.
it should be friday.

F to the E to the F...

[via email, cos e don't IM.]

yo boy -- I found your gf’s blog here. who else would "e" be? who else would say "Buy this truck and PUNCH MOTHER NATURE IN THE FACE"?

I asked her if she was going to post these on the internet and she never got back to me. Apparently she has disguised us as Frenchie Canadians, so smart, no one ever suspects Canadians, let alone French ones.

Funny. Thanks.

good and can you ride today.

[in the spirit of full disclosure i should say i've been listening to slayer and pantera all day but i did not have mexican for lunch.]

Sorry. I can not ride today.

your loss. it's not everyday you can get serenaded by a meowed version of "Raining Death."

what are you talking about. I heard that this morning on www.anotherrandomblogthatmeows.blogturds.com
but maybe your version is different, please make a recording for me.

out-meowed again. curses!

idiots rule

my evening commute yesterday was marred by clips from juan williams' interview with Our Glorious Leader. needless to say, i ground another mm of enamel off my teeth and tossed for an hour before blessed sleep came. the full transcript and audio is here, but it's this shit that's like waving the red cape in front of me:

MR. WILLIAMS: Mr. President, you have talked about Harry Truman and the challenges that President Truman faced during his time here. He wasn't popular toward the end of his presidency, but history ended up judging him very well. Is that your hope now?

PRESIDENT BUSH: [bunch of posturing snipped] ...I think it's very important for people – for a president to make decisions based upon principles. You know, you can be popular, but you may be wrong. And I would rather, when it's all said and done, get back home and look in the mirror and say, I didn't compromise the principles that are etched into my soul in order to be a popular guy. What I want to do is solve problems for the American people and yield the peace that we all want.

guess what, dipshit. you were elected to enact the will of the people, not to act as a fucking philosopher-king. do you get it?? you’re the leader of a democracy, so if the populace and your congress oppose your wish to send more troops to iraq, maybe you should listen to them.

“principles etched into my soul.” give me a fucking break.

you can be UNpopular, AND you can be wrong.

role reversal

JR, MyCo's self-professed manwhore, appeared as a suppliant at my desk this morning.

- F tells me you know all about muscle tears and shit. i need help. i think i tore my trap lifting too hard on saturday.

- did you feel it tear while you were lifting? like did it totally give out?

- no, but it was really sore sunday morning and i couldn't lift this morning either.

- then it's probably just a pull. take a shitload of ibuprofen, stretch it and get a massage if you can. what're you doing lifting so much anyway? you gonna start body building? watch out -- you could end up prolapsing your rectum.

JR winces. for a manwhore he can be really pansy-arsed. he wigged out a bit during the centipede vid, for ex. (note: pansy-arsed ppl shd NOT click. u kno who u r.)

- i gotta get in shape for acapulco. - he and F are reliving their college days doing spring break down there in march. here's another thing i love about F: he's all muslim fast-during-ramadan, pray, clean body, family boy; then he goes utterly may-fly bacchanal, then returns home and grounds his brother cos he failed a calculus exam. and just like JR, he's in heavy lifting mode now too. gots to impress the lizadies - he explains, and just laughs when i tell him he's perfect the way he is.

so hah, you fuckers. for once YOU can grapple with the insecurities and dissatisfaction with body image crap. worry worry worry while i just don't give a flying fuck because i am running again and life is good.

GAD sent out a link to this YouTube vid to MyCo's inner sanctum, subjecting it "JR's last date."
"i would go out with her," i reply-all'd after watching.
his response was immediate. "you are her, finn."

not a flying fuck.
today, at least.

oh, and to the people on the treadmills to either side of me this morning?? -i'm really sorry about the garlic. it seemed like a good idea last night.

friday's dashboard confessional

i don't who jared leto is or why he's famous.

i don't watch 24, or Lost, or Heroes.

i really suck at Gears of War.

i think i have a tapeworm.

i saw paris hilton's twat.

i hate my cats.

i <3 MFBT.

mujahideen

F’s uncle, who underwent 7 hours of open heart surgery last week, has finally stabilized enough to leave ICU for a less-intensive care room, one with a roommate who has the tv volume pegged from sunup ‘til sundown.

an impatient, driven man even on his best days, nazir’s now decided he’s responsible for his healing, not his doctors; and he’s begun to roam the hallways with his IV drip, barking commands and interrogatives at the nurses. yesterday nazir, his drip, and his wife were cruising down the hall when he lost his balance. his wife reached out to steady him but he batted her away. leave me be! – he commanded – let me fall!

this is the man who told F that if he didn’t stop gambling, he’d still be living in his parents’ basement at age 50. “NO LIFE, NO WIFE, NO MONEY, BALD AND AGED and no one to blame but yourself, Assuming you don't kill yourself by then” he wrote to his nephew.

afghans are HARD, man. the soviets didn’t have a fucking prayer in that country.

State of the Union blues

so Our Glorious Leader had some wisdom and hope to dispense last night to the amurkin people. i was not one of them, as i was buried in bed with a stephanie plum novel when OGL took the stand. bitter experience has taught me that bush's tendency to spindle and mutilate the english language, combined with his snarky little giggles jon stewart apes so well, and topped with his astounding general ignorance gets me so exercised that i cannot sleep for hours afterward.

so i sacrificed getting to know the state of our union for some sleep. selfish, i know; but ultimately practical, for when i got up at 4:20 this morning, D was twitching restlessly, and he toddled blearily into the kitchen while i was making my double cappuccino.

- you missed a good speech last night - he noted while swigging orange juice straight from the carton. cad.

- really.

- yup. made me proud to be an american - he wiped his mouth, placed the juice carton in the spice cabinet and shuffled back toward the bedroom.

- you didn't sleep at all did you.

- nope.

i put the orange juice back in the fridge and took off for the Y feeling very pleased with myself.

coachella 07

need an excuse to go west, young man?

jesus & mary chain, LCD soundsystem, the frames, air, damo rice and MF Rage.
what else were you planning to do the last weekend in april??

rudy's consigned me and my posterior tib tendinitis to treadmill running, akin to a death sentence to someone who needs to be outside, away from other people and going someplace. what makes this inane hamstering tolerable is my nano and the Underworld soundtrack. it's got a killer version of bowie's bring me the disco king, the thrash of dillinger escape plan & icarus line, APC's solid heft and the crooning of johnette napolitano's suicide note. there're also some sweet solo instrumental tracks from danny lohner, who's responsible for corralling all this shit together and making it cohere.

there should be more lohner in the world.

UPDATED: here's that "killer version" of bowie's disco king. it's compressed tae fuck, but you get the idea.

a train wreck of an AC/DC cover

celine dion and anastacia on "you shook me all night long."
which will bleed first, your eyes or your ears?



i wonder how much they had to pay the drummer.
it could not have been too much.

observations, and action

1. it's monday
2. monday *morning*.
3. i'm hungover
4. and gloomy.
   
5. i fucking don't feel like working.
6. i've had that bloc party prayer song in my head going on 4 hours.
   

what could possibly help?? how about maxim's top 10 horror movie deaths? no dandying about with shitty dialogue and extraneous plot detail -- it's straight to the tasty stuff. the eye-popping lucio fulci makes the cut (hur), as do tom savini's zombies and julia's resurrection in Hellraiser 2. good times. but no dario argento??

there's a reason "sanguinity" is made up of cheer, and blood. i feel better already. let me outshine the moon.

adam, u can fall in love with me now

memes are gay, but.

You're Pale Fire!
by Vladimir Nabokov

You're really into poetry and the interpretation thereof. Along the road of life, you have had several identity crises which make it very unclear who you are, let alone how to interpret poetry. You probably came from a foreign country, but then again you seem foreign to everyone in ways unrelated to immigration. Most people think you're quite funny, but maybe you're just sick. Talking to you ends up being much like playing a round of the popular board game Clue.

Take the Book Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.

frosty ride

did i say i missed winter? i must have been fucking high.

yesterday afternoon E and i rode for an hour-forty. lulled by tuesday's shorts-worthy temps, i totally underdressed for yesterday's sub-zero windchill. by the time we were rounding about to come back home, our cheeks were little mounds of numb and we slurred at each other like a couple professional drunks.

- fush it i can't feel my toves anymur. do you fing they're still ver?

- num num norgl numming yee.

- yu soun like paula abnul. hur hur hur.

- hur hur fush yuyu fushing fush.

my ass was hyena-red when i lept into the shower, and my toves were bone-white. afterward i donned 3 wool sweaters and huddled next to the radiator in the guest room. the dog came to investigate the smell of burning wool but didn't bring me any hot chocolate. some "working breed" he turned out to be, mr. sorry excuse for a border collie.

sanitation won, in the BMJ poll to assess the most signif medical advance since 1840. i think that's a load of crap, or i just hang out with the wrong people. if sanitation's so important, why does someone keep shitting on the toilet seat on the 4th floor, and why does it stay like that for days?

7 hours

F's uncle is under the knife. he's down at Johns Hopkins having open-heart surgery.

- can you watch it? - i asked F, the would-be doc. he looked at me like i were mad.

- no, i wouldn't want to. not someone that i care about. besides, the surgery's 7 hours.

7 hours?!? that's longer than some relationships i've had. in fact, there's not a helluva lot i can do for 7 hours straight. even the workday gets broken up by lunch and, since i don't smoke, union-enforced p0rn breaks. i can't even sleep that long, unless some kind of sedative's involved.

what i might be able to do for that seeming eternity is:

• drive, though i'd probably have to pee once or twice
• race (part of) an Ironman. i did a half-ironman in 5 hours, and that was fine, because you're doing 3 different things so time passes quickly
• play Silent Hill 4, or some other decent survival-horror game -- which might not be all that different from performing surgery although i trust the Hopkins surgeons aren't using gatling guns.
  

what could you do for 7 hours?

the difference, is why you drink

bukkake

- how ya doin', loucypher?

- ah, you know, taking it minute by minute.

- one cornhole at a time, eh?

- yeah, the only thing is, everybody wants to gangbang me.

clients. can't live with 'em; can't afford a habit without 'em.

shorts in january

yesterday i rode in SHORTS and a SHORT-SLEEVE JERSEY. last time i looked, it was JANUARY. where is the SNOW and the WINTER. where is the school closings and XC skiing and mornings so cold you sneeze when you venture outside.

is it the GLOBAL WARMINGS?

all american, again

USA Triathlon 2006 rankings are now final, and public.

even though i was injured for half the season and totally sucked at worlds, i still eked out All American honors, in both duathlon AND triathlon, for the second year in a row.

this calls for shots all 'round.
(it prob means i shd get off my lazy ass now too.)

all my heroes are dead

last week scottish cartoonist, writer and all-around unique individdle, Harry Horse (aka Richard Horne), died along with his wife, and their pets, in what looks to be a suicide pact. horne's wife mandy contracted MS when she was 39, and her condition was getting worse and worse. the going theory is that richard helped her leave, then tidied the house afterward.

here's an article in The Scotsman, followed by a readerly debate on the ethics of euthanasia (and pet euthanasia in particular). it's even more passionate than a CO "cats'n'racks" post-up.

peace to harryrichard, mandy and their loved ones.

MFyouknowwhat

in the pool this morning at 5am -- a bit earlier than usual -- and out at 6, much earlier than usual.

- what, done already? - asked my favorite lifeguard (the one with the tongue stud) as i walked past him pulling off my swimcap.

- done. it's friday. time for a beer.

- i am in total agreement.

aaah, the friday before a weekend with abs nothing on the agenda.

hey, how come we didn't have naked parties** when i was at cornell? i'm diggin' on the idea of not having to fret about what to wear to a gig -- you know, where you assemble a dozen different outfits from your outdated closet and then end up staying home with Sliding Doors and a quart of Starbucks Java Chip ice cream cos you have absolutely nothing to wear and you've got too much of a gut to go out in public anyway. (fatmammycat u will just hv to trust me on this 1.)

this is easy dressing, like einstein's. plus, it just might change how you relate to people:

"I found that people who would have been considered heavy with their clothes on actually looked better naked. I’m not sure why. And definitely the gaunt look was a lot less attractive. Visible hip bones looked alarming. It was a nice reality check."

GayArtDirector goes to naked parties, but they're different than Yale's i'm pretty sure. GAD usually don't walk so good the day after his.

have a wonderful weekend, peeps.

**requires login, but it's free registration and it's the NYT, people.

training 'em early

- you know why i love my wife? - loucypher asked me.

i totally know. she let him play "Damn it feels good to be a gangsta" during the entrance to their wedding reception. she bought him High Tension for christmas and watched it with him. she has her own wireless controller for the 360, and she hates squirrels. what's not to love? but i played along.

- why do you love your wife.

- because she's reading this animal book to aidan and when she gets to the cat part, she says "the cat says meow" and then adds "cats. uuuuuuuuugh" and aidan loves it. he laughs and laughs and tries to say "ugh."

right on. i might consider having kids if i knew i could exert such a positive influence.

so we asked jimba, who's been excommunicated to the first floor, if he'd feel like a part of our clique again if he could look at us all on camera whenever he felt lonesome. he needed no time to consider. no, he responded, actually i think i'd feel really creepy.

"creepy" seems to be the adjective of choice in this discussion.

big brother, 2007

apparently we’re considering installing cameras in the office. currently there’s a camera surveying and recording parking lot activity, and, unbeknownst to me, quasar set up another on my desk. this morning he was all cackly-triumphant because he caught the janitor looking through some boxes. he pulled me, loucypher and carv over to witness the felony.

- look! look! i caught him on tape! he’s going through my stuff! – quasar was elated; i was horrified.

- you’re spying on the janitor??

- he’s going through my stuff! he’s supposed to be cleaning, not rifling through boxes.

- you put cameras in our office?

- well, just one for now. it’s J’s idea. he thought it’d be nice to know when people are at their desks, in case you need to talk to someone.

- first of all, J is from CHINA. he eats dog, would drown girl babies and has never met a civil liberty he liked. second, if you need to talk to someone, what about IM?

- not everyone’s always on IM – quasar cut his eyes at me. don’t put ME on the defensive.

- how ‘bout the fucking phone?

- that’s not the point, really. the point is that we’re all spread out now, and the people on the first floor are totally disconnected from the third and fourth. we thought it’d be nice if people in remote places -

- like the first floor

- well, yeah and if we open other offices in philly or new york then people there can feel like they’re still part of the company, you know, cos they’ll be able to see us here. take jimba. his project team gathered on the first floor, and he had to move down there away from us. he’s out of sight, out of earshot.

- so this is about how you miss jimba? – carv broke in. quasar ducked his head bashfully. – then send him a whitman’s sampler for fuck’s sake. this is the stupidest idea i’ve ever heard. a surveillance camera is not gonna make people feel warm & fuzzy. it’s gonna creep them out. i’m creeped out just talking about it.

i finally have a handle on what's been bothering me.
- dude, do you know how many times i’ve gotten naked at my desk?!

i’ve got everyone’s attention now. loucypher’s eyes glitter. he IS part goat; i just know it.
- you get naked? -quasar asks.

- yeah, like if i have to change into client clothes, or when it’s really hot in here in the summer, and there’s no one else around, so what does it matter?

- like naked naked? – quasar wants the exquisite details.

- oh like you’ve never rubbed one out when you’re here all alone at 11 at night. – i’ve overestimated him, however. a corn-fed midwestern boy, he doesn’t even know what i mean, and i rabbit on. – the fact is that even though this is a public place, taking away our personal privacy is wrong and, in this case, without merit. if the janitor – or anybody – were stealing stuff, that’d be one thing, but he’s not. you’re just spying on him, and us, you creepy little man.

- i don’t like it either – carv backed me up.

- me neither – added loucypher - unless we're talking about the Finn Crotch Cam.

we’ll see where this goes. we were talking grass once, too, and now we’ve nice wood floors downstairs…

new year; new look

reverse type was hell on my hangover. is this better??

fuckinA florida. have no fear, underdog is here.

peas in a pod

loucypher sidled up to my desk this morning.

- did you hear? -rashan's, like, AWOL. nobody knows where he is, and we had to send allen to BigStinkyCo in his stead, only allen's not a WebSphere guy, so he had to do the dance. this is the third time rashan's done this.

- what about dauntay? isn't he WebSphere Portal Man?

- he's out too. he went home to Mali for a week. vacay.

- really? i didn't think he got vacation - quasar stuck his big nose in.

- why, quasar? cos he's black??
oh fuck. godDAMit loucypher you are a bad influence.

he is, too. he's singlehandedly responsible for the spoliation of the political correkdness grad school beat into me, as well as my full-bore Ultimate Alliance addiction. we marched through Silent Hill 3 together too, and he got me off the subway when i kept dying on the tracks. he's my id.

my box is now on UPS backup, because everytime Biz Dev prints to the color printer, it overloads the circuits to this side of the building and trips the breaker. installing more outlets, or giving us more juice, would make too much sense; so now everyone just runs off battery until the 50-page SOW's done printing. when i set my UPS up this morning, i pulled the socket guard off its 3-prong plug and planted it on loucypher's desk with the note, "Here is the Butt Plug you asked for."

so now everyone knows.

vote on the greatest medical advance

what, in your opinion, is the greatest medical advance since 1840? was it anesthesia? antibiotics? immunology? the pill?

today the British Medical Journal opened up this poll to anyone, even the unwashed masses like me who know shit about medicine but know their lives would have been a lot different without oral contraceptives, amoxicillin and meth. (just kidding. meth didn't make the poll's short-list, an obvious oversight on the part of the "experts" who identified the 15 finalists.)

read more about the poll here, or go to the BMJ's site, where there's a link to the poll itself at the top of the homepage. voting ends the 18th.

if you do vote, spill your choice in a comment. i'm curious.

melancholy friday

[not mine]

thievery corporation's remix of sarah mclachlan's dirty little secret.

danny lohner's remix of a perfect circle's judith.
fuck your god indeed.

better than camus

jerome murat

where have all the aphorisms gone?

as i lugged my junk up yet another landenberg hill yesterday afternoon, the creaking in my knees vying with my bottom bracket’s, i shifted down a gear and thought haste makes waste, you poncy bird in the bush.

which got me to thinking: when was the last time someone coined a good aphorism that stuck? seems like we as a civilisation blew our wad with benjamin franklin, and since then no one’s come close, either in quantity or quality. is aphorism-ing (not to be confused with jism-ing) a lost art? has the prevalence of texting and chat turned our language so utilitarian and flat that we now lack the wit to pack a complex truth in a half-dozen words? or has everything worthwhile already been packed?

the most recent solid job i can come up with is mcluhan’s the medium is the message, with pigface's the temple walls are made of flesh a distant second.

a ken bruen christmas

still clawing out from under the holidays. went for a ride yesterday, and did i feel those extra pounds? did i fuck. what floats me in the pool does not float me up the hills of southern chester county PA.

one of the unfortunate side effects of getting older is that the holidays lose their magic. you learn santa’s just a construct and it’s all downhill from there. every year you stress a little more about all the shit you have to buy for other people and all the crap you’ll get from them in return. D’s mom gave me earrings. In the 15 years she’s known me, she’s never noticed my ears aren’t pierced. i nodded & smiled, content to let the thing ride, but D had to bust her chops, at which point she did her damnest to try to convince me i was wrong and went into great detail about a pair of earrings she’d seen me wear at some point in the imagined past.

you see? yer holidays demand herculean mental effort and levels of diplomacy not seen since carter's days in Camp David.

then old people you care about grow infirm and delicate, but they manage to hold on by their scrabbly, peeling nails ‘til the holidays; then they go forth and pop off right around Christmas, adding yet another dimension of bleak misery to that time of year. w0rd to the doddering folx: if you think you’re doing us a favor by eking it out to the holidays, you’re not. don’t bother. if you’re doing it because you want one last round of figgy pudding that’s entirely different, and i can dig it.

in sum, dim sum, it was not a Charlie Brown Christmas this year. It wasn’t a Very Special Christmas, nor was it a Bee Gees Christmas. it was more like a Ken Bruen Christmas:

The first two weeks of December I was dry. Gearing up. I knew I’d never get through the whole fiasco sober so I was putting in time for good behaviour. It’s just another delusion that alcoholics practice. These lies are nearly as vital as the alcohol. You hug them close as prayer, and they are twice as heartfelt…

I had a calendar on the wall. The Sacred Heart was on the front, and the days were marked with pithy sayings to uplift your day. I can’t say they much uplifted mine. In red, the 18th stood out like a beacon. It’s my father’s birthday. That was the day I’d drink again. Just knowing the very time when I’d lift a glass got me through so many other impossible hours. I’d planned well. Had four bottles of black Bushmill’s, twenty-four pint cans of Guinness and an ounce of coke. I kid you not, this was just for openers; and for the lock-down days of Christmas, I thought it was a fairly decent plan.

The day came and I lashed in with a vengeance. Managed a week till I got a blackout and ended back in a hospital. They were not pleased to see me and read me a minor riot act. Their hearts weren’t in it, as they knew I’d drink again.

The Magdalen Martyrs

that bruen and his crusty, broken heroes. doesn't it make you feel better.

baby got back

after a month of excess which came to a fearsome head the last week of december (i did not drink that entire bottle of Jameson by myself in 3 nights, did i? the cats must have taken a nip now & then, yes?), i finally slunk back to the pool this morning, after getting ZERO sleep last night because the idea of going back to work was just too terrible to bear; and i kept waking every half-hour. oh the horror.

sure it was nice to get back in the water. but befuddlement arrived during the 300yds of fly kick i usually do after my warm-up. why, i wondered, did i keep rising to the water's surface, rendering that dolphin movement utterly ineffectual?

the sad truth, people, is that i gained 6 pounds in december. my ass is now a Red Cross-certified floatation device, and it's destroyed my butterfly. blasted!!

i hope you all had lovely holidays.