perfidy

From today's email, an oldie whose punchline snuck up on me.

Punchline:

The boy turns, and whispers back, "I had no idea your father was a pharmacist."

Joke:

---

A girl asks her boyfriend to come over Friday night to meet, and have dinner with her parents. Since this is such a big event, the girl announces to her boyfriend that after dinner, she would like to go out and make love for the first time.

The boy is ecstatic, but he has never had sex before, so he takes a trip to the pharmacist to get some condoms. He tells the pharmacist it's his first time and the pharmacist helps the boy for about an hour. He tells the boy everything there is to know about condoms and sex. At the register, the pharmacist asks the boy how many condoms he'd like to buy, a 3-pack, 10-pack, or family pack. The boy insists on the family pack because he thinks he will be rather busy, it being his first time and all.

That night, the boy shows up at the girl's parents house and meets his girlfriend at the door. "Oh, I'm so excited for you to meet my parents, come on in!"

The boy goes inside and is taken to the dinner table where the girl's parents are seated The boy quickly offers to say grace and
bows his head. A minute passes, and the boy is still deep in prayer, with his head down. 10 minutes pass, and still no movement from the boy.
Finally, after 20 minutes with his head down, the girlfriend leans over and whispers to the boyfriend, "I had no idea you were this religious."

The boy turns, and whispers back, "I had no idea your father was a pharmacist."

---

I blame my slow uptake of the joke on the absurdity of a pharmacist even knowing "all there is to know about sex", let alone spending an hour briefing a kid on it.

Comic book hero Captain America has been killed off by his corporate masters. With a sniper bullet. From my title, please don't think that I am speaking ill of Captain America. Cap was always, after Batman, one of my favorite comic book heroes. I think that putting him down in this manner is cheap. It's Captain America, fer chrissakes. Cap should have gone down, if at all, in a blaze of glory saving us from a certain doom. Martyrdom, if anything. Heroic sacrifice. Not a pot shot on the streets.

"As Anna Nicole decomposes, James Brown looking good"

Here I sit, watching (several years after the fact) the film Jackass, after the MTV show of the same name. Currently on the screen, Steve-O is attempting to cross a tightrope over an alligator pit wearing nothing but a helmet, shoes, and a jock strap with several pounds of meat stuffed in the waistband.

Recently, I watched the new Mike Judge movie Idiocracy, which I highly recommend to all. Some of you know Mike Judge from Beavis and Butthead. Others from King of the Hill. Still others may have seen Office Space a dozen times. The common thread through all these movies is an abiding contempt of the deeply stupid and pointless things and people that make life a little poorer for having encountered them. People mistook Beavis and Butthead for a mere celebration of dimwitted hijinks - I swear to you there's some anger in there also. How else do you explain the Halloween special where Butthead meets a farmer who dismembers people and helps the farmer, in a sequence what actually manages to be a little chilling despite the lo-rent animation, capture and dismember Beavis? King of the Hill features an endless parade of do-gooding dipshits who wreak havoc in the name of 'helping.' Office Space goes after the pettiness of managerial power and the deadening, soul-sapping routines that office life can draw one into.

Anyway, what was I saying before I disappeared up my own anus... O yeah. Idiocracy. Good movie. Not as good as Office Space but pretty great nonetheless, about an average man of today who wakes up 500 years in the future to find he's the smartest man on the planet. The President is a professional wrestler. Garbage is piled up everywhere. La-Z-Boys come with plumbing and a nice comfy toilet seat. The #1 show in the USA is called "Ow! My Balls!" and the biggest Oscar winner is titled Ass. Our hero, because he speaks in complete sentences, is told he "talks like a fag."

So.

Thesis A: Steve-O hanging from a rope as crocodiles lunge at him from below, attracted to the chicken carcass stuffed into his jockstrap, is comic genius of the first water.

Thesis B: Steve-O hanging from that rope not that different from "Ow! My Balls!," the type of comedy which Mike Judge holds in total contempt as the lowest common denominator of culture, a baseless, graceless, debasing parade of farting ass cheeks and nut-shots that not only lacks in any intellectual content, but which actually is hostile to the very idea of intellect, and which as a consequence impoverishes the culture that enjoys it.

So I ask you: as I sit here laughing my ass off, how can both A and B possibly be simultaneously true? They sure as hell seem to be.

Brew # 14, Desert Fox Dunkelweizen

6.6 lbs liquid wheat malt extract (50% each barley and wheat)
4 oz caramunich malt? or maybe it was crystal malt 90L?
2 oz crystal malt 60L?
4 oz chocolate malt
2 oz black patent malt
1 oz Styrian goldings hops, pellet
1/4 oz Tettnanger Tettnang hops, pellet
1 lb very ripe bananas, frozen, thawed, and mashed
.2 oz locally grown coriander, ground
1/2 tsp black pepper, ground
1/2 tsp North African dried lemon, grated
White Labs WLP 300, Hefeweizen Yeast

Steeped grains in 1 gal bottled spring water at 160 degrees for 45 minutes. Meanwhile brought 2.5 gallons bottled spring water to boil in kettle. Sparged grain bag in kettle water and added the gallon of steeping water. At boil added extract and Styrian goldings and started the hour clock.

At :40 added Tettnanger Tettnang
At :50 added bananas
At :55 added coriander
At :59 added pepper and dried lemon

Removed kettle to ice-water bath and brought down to about 95 degrees within half an hour. Added about 1.5 gallons bottled spring water to fermentor. Added contents of kettle to fermentor, and separated out cold/hot break and hops. There were banana chunks in the wort; made sure that as many of them were in the bucket as possible, which may eventually prove to be a grave mistake. Pitched yeast at 74 degrees.

Woken up the ensuing morning by my wife, alarmed by the amount of activity at the fermentor. Sure enough, a VERY vigorous fermentation at a higher than optimum temperature (74-75 degrees rather than 68-72) had combined with a banana chunk to block the airlock, and pressure was building. Cracked lid for a second to relieve pressure and went to rig a blowoff hose instead; when airlock was removed it blew protein scum and banana a couple feet in the air. Yeesh.

There's a lot about this beer that I'm doing "wrong." First of all, I'm really not sure what my specialty grains are; it was a while back when I bought them and I have conflicting reports on my draft recipes. I should have used a little Caramunich or munich, with a small amount of black Carafa malt for color; these are all German malts and characteristic of the style. Instead, I chose to go with American varieties that are rather unlike their German counterparts. Chocolate malt is fairly astringent, and the dark crystal malt I believe I used is bittersweet, rather than frankly sweet. That's probably fine - I'm not really after a sweet beer, but a complex one. But I hope that the yeast strain I'm using doesn't dry things out too too much. Dunkelweizens are supposed to be a little heavier and sweeter than light hefeweizens. I'm heading in that direction but taking a detour.

As for the adulterants; I'm bored with making regular beers, good as they are. I figure what the hell, I'll go nuts. I have bananas; hefeweizen yeast produces banana flavors; in go bananas. I have this weird little dried up black desiccated Egyptian lemon; some lemon tartness is good in hefeweizens; in goes some of that. Hefeweizen yeast produces phenolic compounds reminiscent of cloves and spices; coriander in small amounts adds depth, and black pepper in small amounts adds punch without being noticeable, and they're both characteristic of Red Sea area cuisine; in they go!

It could suck, I suppose. But I kind of think it won't. We'll find out.

Next up is either an Imperial Belgian IPA, combining the citrusy overtones and maltiness of an American IPA with the spicy punch of a Belgian ale, golden in color and around 8% alcohol, or a Fakey-fake Pilsener Ale, which takes the subtle malt and soft hops of a Czech Pilsener and translates them into a higher-alcohol, hoppier American version made with the cleanest, most lagerlike ale yeast I can find. Nummy-num-num.

[wik] Holy crap! The blowoff hose keeps getting clogged with bits of banana, requiring me to physically go to the bucket every half hour to press on the lid enough to blow the banana down the hose. There's all kinds of floaty bits of banana in my bottle of sanitizer now that have come out the end of the hose. This is what they call "adventure in homebrewing."

[alsø wik] So a word to the wise: no matter the worth of the banana as an adjunct to beer, whether slight or great, always make sure those bananas are liquified before they go in the wort.

[alsø alsø wik] Now what terrible spasm of tastelessness could drive me to name a fusion German-Egyptian beer "Desert Fox?"

[wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?] No seriously. Twelve hours into the fermentation and I've had to take the risky step of removing the blowoff hose and replacing it temporarily with a standard airlock while I cleaned the crud that had totally blocked the hose out of said hose. Five minutes was enough for the foam of the fermentation to fill the airlock, force its way out of the tiny holes in the top of the fermentor, and begin pooling. Now that I've replaced the blowoff hose, I sincerely hope this is the last I'll have to screw around with this damn beer until bottling day. Is the yeast just Conan-strong? Did I manage to introduce a very hungry bug that's eating everything in sight (very unlikely)? Will I post yet another follow-up to this saga? Stay tuned!

Consider the phrase, "Behind every great man is a woman". We're all familiar with the thought, if the precise wording varies: that there is causation between the presence of a woman and the success of her affiliated man.

Does it follow then that behind every loser is a bad woman? Does the causation flow downhill too?

Discuss.

And they've been shot down.

Wine maker's mass nude run promotion scrapped

BEIJING, Dec 21 (Reuters Life!) - Police in central China have scotched a wine maker's plans for a mass Christmas Eve "nude run" which the company said was a public interest event to discourage the use of "excessive packaging" in the industry.

Jixiang Ruyi Tobacco and Alcohol Company offered 284 people 10,000 yuan ($1,280) in cash and prizes to participate in a naked dash through Zhengzhou, capital of Henan province, the People's Daily reported on its Web site on Thursday.

The company's advertisement called for "auspicious" men and women under the age of 30 with "healthy bodies" and "regular features" to apply.

"The goal of this streaking event is to raise consumer awareness and declare war on the excessive packaging of 'baijiu' through the language of the body," the report quoted a manager surnamed Ma as saying.

The police "scotched" the PR trick for pretty understandable reasons:

Zhengzhou police rejected the company's application for a permit to hold the run.

"Public commercial events ... must meet moral standards," CCTV quoted a police official as saying. "Such mass streakings do not."

But oddly enough (no surprise, in an article from Reuters' "Oddly Enough" series), the Jixiang Ruyi Tobacco and Alcohol Company was apparently going to have several sorts of trouble filling the field, anyway:

Over 1,700 people had applied in four days, China Central Television (CCTV) reported on its Web site, the overwhelming majority of them men.

Well, that would clearly have been a problem - who the hell wants to watch a bunch of hotdogs flopping through the streets of Zhengzhou? And then there was this:

"We have already invited experts from the beauty industry to conduct physical checks on the applicants. Their mental condition must also be sound. According to the tests, there are only 30 or so that qualify," CCTV quoted a company official surnamed Cao, as saying.

Whoops. But it is refreshing to see a case where efforts to uphold moral standards, whether that works or doesn't, indirectly uphold some basic standard of good taste.

[wik] Hmmm. I wonder which hurdle most rejects failed to cross, mental or physical?

There was a time, several years ago, when my life was all vodka dinners and spite. Yep, those were good days back in the music business. To take our minds off the spite, me and some friends got together and did stupid shit. Some in this situation get into fights. Some guys play rugby. Some golf; some collect stamps or fly to Singapore to perform acts of unspeakable beastliness.

We, we screwed around with media.

There's a tape out there in the world somewhere, that features -- yes -- me and Jenna Jameson. But not in the way you think. No; think the opposite. It's real funny.

And there's also the following, recorded shortly before Christmas, the year 2000, by the Jersey City Taberknuckle Choir. That's me on lead vocals and drunken bass.

Interesting article on the making of LEGOS - I had no idea that the LEGO Group is the world's largest tire manufacturer. Or the largest maker of very small tires, anyway. I envy the children of today, who have Star Wars Legos to play with. When I was a youngin, Star Wars figures and Legos were my favorite toys - to the exclusion of all others. One of my greatest frustrations then was that the two groups of toys were almost completely incompatible. Star Wars figures were just too big to fit into any reasonably scaled Space Lego creation I could make. For years, decades now that I think on it, my mom has bought me a small Lego set for my stocking every Christmas. Maybe someday someone will buy me the Legos Star Destroyer. It's only $300. That's not much. Really.

In case you hadn't noticed, TV Land has compiled a list of the most memorable tv character catch phrases ever. I was mortified to find that I knew most of them, but somewhat relieved at the same time that it wasn't just another list of Boomer nostalgic greatest hits. Plenty of stuff in there uttered after 1972. List available here.

So anyway it was interesting for about 15 seconds, after which I realized that many of them are utterly filthy. Forthwith, selective editing of some tv catchphrases into dialogue from a single scene from a porn flick:

"Jane, you ignorant slut!"

"It takes a licking and keeps on ticking..."

"Holy crap! Have you no sense of decency?"

"Sock it to me!"

"Hey hey hey!" "Hey HEY hey!" "heh heh heh" "aaaayyyy"

"Elizabeth, I'm coming!"

"Oh, my nose!"

"Bam! You've got spunk ..."

"How sweet it is! I can't believe I ate the whole thing...tastes great, less filling!"

"That's hot...baby, you're the greatest."

"Good night, and good luck."

"Who loves you, baby?"

exeunt and towel off

Ok... I'll play.

Your five desert-island comedies. Mine are:

Young Frankenstein
Ghostbusters
Waiting For Guffman
The 40-Year-Old Virgin
Sixteen Candles

And the runners-up:

Blazing Saddles
The Big Lebowski
This Is Spinal Tap
Airplane!
Schindler's List

I'm pretty damn down with the Belgian strong ale I made last winter, so this is a more or less reprise of that. More or less.

3 cans (9.9 lbs) Munton's extra light malt syrup
8 oz light Belgian candi sugar
2 oz Styrian Goldings leaf hops, about 4.6% AA
1 oz Czech Saaz leaf hops
8 oz aromatic malt
8 oz crystal malt, 60L
2.5 oz chocolate malt
1 whirlfloc tablet
EasYeast Trappist Ale Yeast

Steeped grains in 1 gallon water for 45 minutes at about 160 degrees. Brought 3 gallons spring water to boil in pot and added steeping water. Sparged grainbag in hot water. At boil, added extract, sugar, and Styrian Goldings.

Added 1/2 oz Saaz hops at 45 minutes. Added whirlfloc at the same time. Added 1/2 oz Saaz hops at 59 minutes.

Cooled in ice bath and added to fermenting bucket with about 1 1/2 gallons water to make up 5.3 gallons or so. Pitched yeast at 74 degrees. Placed blowoff tube and stashed bucket in closet. Within 24 hours it was gurgling like crazy. Craaaazy.

Atlantic Pale Ale, Mark II

5 lbs dry malt extract, light
1/4 lb crystal malt, 20L
1/2 lb crystal malt, 40L
1/4 lb crystal malt, 60L
1 oz Perle hop pellets, about 7.6% AA
1 oz Amarillo hop pellets
1 oz Cascade hop pellets
1 oz East Kent Goldings hop pellets
EasYeast British Ale Yeast (liquid)

Steeped grains for 20 minutes or so at 160 degrees in 1 gallon spring water, give or take. I probably should have let it go a little farther as I don't think I extracted the sugars fully. Added the steeping water to 3 gallons of water heating in the pot and sparged out the grain bag. Added extract and Perle at boil. Added 1/2 ounce of each of the other hops at 45 minutes, and another half ounce of each at 59 minutes.

Removed to water bath, and added to about 2 gallons of water in fermenting bucket to make about 5.2 gallons. Pitched yeast at 78 degrees.

Fermentation began within 24 hours and had begun to slow down within 48 - nice and vigorous.

[wik] Very delicious, which is nice. Good hop balance, nice ale character. Good yeast! Some esters, some minerals, and little to no masking of hop profile. Johno say "yes!" The only issue is that, for the third time, I have a little benign mold growth in the bottles. THIS time, it wasn't bad enough to ruin the beer, but I suppose it will in time. Time to replace my buckets!

Interesting perspective on the usefulness of Wikipedia - not so much as an encyclopedia, but rather a resource for those amongst our progeny who decide to study us. Kind of a backhand slap to the Wikipedians, too: "history won't care if you're right or wrong, but your quaint biases and loquacious misinterpretations and wrongheadedness will be so wonderfully useful to the grad students of the future." Might oughta be right.

Tomorrow I will be using the ticket that's been hanging on the front of my refridgetator for months... the black slip of poster board that will grant me access to the Return of the Belgian Beer Festival in Boston.

Here's the list of beers available for the Saturday sessions.

I feel like Saruman standing on top of the massive obsidian plinth of Isengard, holding out his arms in the classic DRAMA pose, intoning in a stentorian voice, WE HAVE WORK TO DO. Let's get it on!!!

This edition of Forgotten Punchline Thursday was made possible by a grant from Cthulhu's Own line of astral travel accessories.

For uncounted ages, He who lies dead but dreaming indeed dreamt of a line of suitcases, hardcases, and garment bags as tough as His hide. Only Cthulhu's Own could perceive the unimaginable evil of inter-plane customs, the otherworldy abuse that baggage handlers can inflict on your dread unmentionables, and the risk of losing your essence in transit. Leave the safety and security of the physical manifestation of your luggage to Cthulhu's Own.

Forthwith, this week's forgotten punchline:

"Nothing".

Well, the feces is hitting the fan-blades with even more alacrity at Gallaudet, the Harvard for the Deaf. Relative to deaf colleges, they bring to my mind Michael's view of "Jimmy", in The Ringer (sixth quote down).

According to today's Washington Post, "Student Rebellion Boils Over At Gallaudet". "Campus Shut Down; Arrests Threatened", &c.

They don't like the University's latest pick for president, the woman who's been provost for the past six years:

As faculty pressure tightened on incoming president Jane K. Fernandes to resign before she takes office in January, she repeated her refusal to do so. Students angrily confronted longtime President I. King Jordan, alumni flocked to the campus and a counter-protest movement grew during a day of upheaval.

This has been going on since May, and has periodically flared up in the news cycle.

Now, the football team, apparently irked that classes have been disrupted, has blockaded the gates to the campus. Complaints about Ms. Fernandes appear to circle around the fact that graduation rates have hovered around 40% during her tenure.

Asked for comment on that complaint, I'd hope she responded with something like "Well, graduation rates would be higher, but these students seem never to listen".

Complaints about university leadership coming from faculty impress me not-at-all, as I assume Gallaudet's faculty is statistically similar to many faculty members elsewhere, implying that they're functional morons with tunnel vision. I could be wrong on that, of course - maybe they're all geniuses, but I don't care enough to go try to disprove my hypothesis. At a minimum, I think we can agree, they're all employees of the university, and nobody offered them a vote. Rightly so, I'd add.

The protesting students, on the other hand, require no such quibble - college students tend to overblow their importance in the scheme of things. I know I did, and I'll assert that these are as well. Like the faculty, they, too, are absent from the table at the presidential selection process.

As such things go, it seems likely that the university will cave, putting expediency over principle. This will be a shame. On the bright side, it's probably been a fairly quiet protest, eh?

[wik] Update: In the Oct 13 WaPo, a story about Fernandes' meeting with the protesters:

...Fernandes said she would not step down -- even as the university's alumni association urged her to resign and declared that there is overwhelming support for her removal.

"She is not willing to come halfway," said protest leader Delia Lozana-Martinez, saying Fernandes wanted to talk to the students only about opening campus. "It disappoints and disgusts me. I don't think it was productive at all."

"She is not willing to come halfway"? Actually, her resignation would seem to be "all the way", and Ms. Lozana-Martinez is less right to be disappointed and disgusted than to be embarrassed for how inanely she thinks, speaks, or both. Turns out the protesters aren't just deaf, they appear to be dumb, too.

Is up here. This week's theme is easy and great weeknight dinners for the colder months. Check it out!!

Well, about damned time, I'm thinking.

Oct. 5, 2006
Tribune Co. said Los Angeles Times Publisher Jeffrey M. Johnson has resigned, amid disagreements over the future of the paper. Johnson had defied the company's demands for what he considered potentially damaging staff cuts.

All due respect to what I'm sure were good and strongly-held intentions on the part of Mr. Johnson, but when your boss tells you to do something, you can either do it or quit. Johnson's been taking the imaginary middle ground, to date, and invoking the Nancy Reagan Defense.

He may even be right in claiming that requested cuts at the LA Times would hurt the paper's viablity, and who am I to contradict him? Nobody, that's who. I'm not contradicting him, I'm just saying that he should have been fired the minute he refused a direct order. That's the way life works, and even though he's now "resigned", let's not kid ourselves - he was fired, rightly so.

Based on the shirt-rending hue and cry of the past month in Los Angeles on this matter, the cries of indignation seem likely be broad and loud. If so, they'll all be sadly misplaced. Local groups in and around the metropolis have made noise about buying the Times from Tribune, but haven't made meaningful headway yet. Over the past month, it's sounded, in fact, as though they were trying to insist that the Tribune Co. sell them the paper, but on their terms.

Here's another tip as to how things work: You can insist that, for the good of the community, the paper be sold to local ownership, and you can insist on your own set of terms for that sale. But in America, you can't do both.

And thus, the LA Times, for now, remains the property of the Tribune Co., and with that ownership, they can take whatever management & personnel actions they feel are required. If those actions turn out to be ill-advised, the LA Times, Tribune Co., and their stockholders will suffer, also rightly so.

That, too, is how things work in America.

From Thursday's Washington Post:

---

THE NEW SEASON TV Preview

Look Homely, Angel
ABC's 'Ugly Betty' Is Plainly Lovable

By Tom Shales
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 28, 2006; Page C01

"Ugly Betty" isn't just entertainment, it's therapy. Nirvana therapy. It's happiness in a tube, or rather The Tube. It's a pint of Ben & Jerry's with no fat or calories. It's tuning in to "The View" to discover they all have laryngitis. It's Florida without those disgusting bugs.
...

---

Mmmmkay... When I walked into the house Thursday evening, Ugly Betty was what the girls were watching. Aside from the fact that it was arguably too adult for my 11 year old to watch ("Too many icky parts!"), it was one of those painful 5 minute periods where I see a show and immediately tune it out as not worth any further attention. A total piece of crap, even before the girls had a chance to vote. Who gets off on watching the lead character be serially treated like crap by a bunch of hoes?

I had no idea, until they ladies stopped watching it, what the they were watching, and hadn't even heard of this new show, Ugly Betty. I thought, in the short time I saw it, that it was some spiced-up made-for-Disney movie, thus guaranteeing that it would be a one-time event in our house. It just had that look to it. Luckily, even though it was a series, not a movie, the girls were pretty merciless ("needlessly catty!", "deep, evil plot twist at the end!", "totally derivative of a bunch of earlier 'Girl Meets World' movies!"). It seems we won't be cursed, in my house, with its ongoing episodes between now and its cancellation.

So there's that.

But when I looked at what the WaPo section of my Google home page showed, I saw a story about a review of the series, excerpted above. I took a look, assuming that whomever reviewed it would have roughly the same views as those on the softer side of my house. Newp.

Gushing review. "...therapy", "Nirvana therapy", "happiness in a tube", "a pint of Ben & Jerry's with no fat or calories".

What the hell? Who could possibly think such a thing? And then I looked at the header over the review:

Well, never mind - that explains everything.

[wik] Hey, for all I know, he's otherwise a genius. (That is a "he", isn't it?) I'm only casting aspersions on this particular critique.

[alsø wik] Of course I can make such a catty swipe, because I'm perfect. Except for my yoooge head. He's apparently got more hair than I, but he also has more chins.

[alsø alsø wik] As la mia figlia would say "Woof!"