Back to Beer-sics

Olympia, WA - Although it is easy to describe my recent posting pace as sluggish, my beer-specific reports have been downright glacial. I don't know if it is because I have been drinking less (nahhh) or if I just haven't experienced many new beers lately, but this horrible drought ends tonight.

I'm reporting live from the Fishbowl in Olympia tonight, two cask Hodgson's in, and probably no more to go. This is the first time I've seen Hodgson's on cask in ages, so I figured I would partake for two days straight. The Hodgon's translates pretty well to cask, though it does sit on the bitter side of the fence without the floral base to really make it a cask winner. Still, as any good cask, it goes down like water, only more magical.

Also wanted to give a shout out to the spruce and juniper infused Winterfish they had pouring this week. Neither flavor was enough to overpower the beer, instead they mixed in a way that almost made it seem like every other sip was earthy, alternating with a delightful gin overtone. Liked it so much I bought a growler. Three cheers!

Senate Watch

Olympia, WA - This is just a snapshot, but according to Publicola Sen. Murray stands with Sen. Shelby in trying to protect evil defense contractors, while Sen. Cantwell stands with Sen. Bernie! in trying to keep industry insiders out of the commodity futures trading business.

Quite the difference.

Whatever. They both voted against Dodd's credit card bill.

Lil' Lebowski

Olympia, WA- A real life story in The Times of a Little Lebowski urban achiever, and in an eerie turn of events, the benefactor's name is Brandt.

They're not his, huh huh, they're not literally his children. They're the Little Lebowski Urban Achievers. Inner city children of promise but without the necessary means -- the necessary means for higher education so Mr. Lebowski has committed to sending all of them to college.

You think he's got room for one more?

Deja Vu

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Hammer, Sickle

Olympia, WA - Does anyone else think it is funny that Huck's new PAC t-shirts are red with a yellow star?



I mean, come on.
Fuckin' commies.

BTB's Gangstarita

Olympia, WA - Yo, I need to know how much can I get for this sweet ass margarita mix recipe??

8 Squeezed Limes
2 Squeezed Oranges
2 Oz. Triple Sec
2 Oz. Alizé Gold Passion
Lime Juice/Cane Sugar to taste
Tequila to feel


Damn, shorty! That shit is the bomb.

Go Joe!

Tacoma, WA - The hits don't stop with Samuel Wurzelbacher, alias Joe the Plumber. They really don't. Peep this interview he did with an apparent publication called Christianity Today.


Highlights:

• "People don’t understand the dictionary—it’s called queer. Queer means strange and unusual. It’s not like a slur, like you would call a white person a honky or something like that."

• "God is recognized as, if you will, America’s religion."

• "I like Sarah Palin a lot, actually. I just don’t know if that’s where God’s leading her. I just know the Republican Party’s done its best to blackball her. I don’t know what her agenda is. If she ran, would I vote for her? Absolutely. John McCain was the lesser of two evils."

Joe is fast becoming the worst name in politics.

Bury My Heart on Some Sweaty Dance Floor

Olympia, WA - My intellectual confidence is bruised and battered after a winless night spent on the yahoo! chess boards, leaving me sitting on my bed in a pair of orange rowboat boxers listening to Jack-FM and rolling a joint on top of a copy of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee in the type of comfort that could only come from the repetitive slaughter detailed in the aforementioned book.

Huzzah, let us honor the memories of the fallen and be grateful for the fruits, tainted though they may be.

The only thing left to do is dance, and possibly meet some folks willing to have a late night conversation about who can best define America's major political parties in 4 ideas or less, two negative. Or at least listen to some Whitesnake, or even The Scorpions.

Deep Thoughts

Olympia, WA - What if Rip Hamilton was 7 years younger and an emerging star on this Blazers team. It would make Rip City the coolest incidental NBA phrase ever.

The Links

Some well good linkz from the last few days

Bankers OWN Congress

Fishless Lakes in Maine

NBA Playoffs So Far

Local Robber Nicknamed "Man Hands"

McCain on disclosure: Leave it to the Nicaraguans

Olympia, WA - Just as it was so many times on the campaign trail - John McCain is either willfully ignorant or completely naive.

Da Henvironment

Olympia, WA - John Tierney had an interesting post in his NYTimes science column earlier this week where he predicted, somewhat dystopianly, that people would never have the will to enact some great energy revolution.

Tierney cites Jesse Ausubel of Rockefeller University.

Over the past century, he says, nothing has drastically altered the long-term trends in the way Americans produce or use energy — not the Great Depression, not the world wars, not the energy crisis of the 1970s or the grand programs to produce alternative energy.

But he also predicted that, as the world gains wealth our environmental problems will fix themselves, notably citing the Kuznets Curve that predicts a Laffer-like scenario where the wealthier a country becomes, the more dramatically it will curb its atmospheric pollutants.

America, btw, is that the top of its game. Good job, us!

Who is to say if that curve really works (does anyone even talk about Laffer any more?), and certainly it works only in cooperation with cultural attitudes, but an economist can hope.

Budget

Olympia, WA - Here is some schwag I wrote for Horse's Ass about the state tax structure. Don't worry, I spiced it up.

http://horsesass.org/?p=15473

I am a little worried that I might get in trouble. But I always think that. I'm such a coward.

Oly Weekend

Olympia, WA - Just wanted to let y'all know how it drops down here in Budd City. I got KAOS double streaming stereo style on my laptop and on the radio in my bedroom down the hall.

DJ Brady Rainey is closing it out on Whatever You Want to Call It with a Mock Orange cover of Only in Dreams while we wait for my boy DJ Luvva J with Live from I-5. Luvva J still owes me some mp3 copies of St. Ide's commercials from the early 90s, but I won't hold it against him. His show rocks.

But tonight is the real deal. Arts walk. Unlike Brattleboro, where arts walk goes down on a monthly basis, here in Oly it's just twice a year - once in the fall and the big daddy in late April. Tonight. Shit's supposed to be off the hook. Support your community.


Tomorrow comes the other Oly main event, The Procession of the Species. I don't even know what that shit is, so I suggest you peep the link.

Plus the legislative session is about to end so hopefully there will be a bunch of drunk pols roaming around babbling about how they can't wait to get the fuck out of this shithole town and back to their big cities and beloved farms. I might be saying the same things myself. Depends on if this cough clears up or not.

Greetings from the capital city which truly has no nickname, other than perhaps Cheet Woot, place of the bear, or maybe Smithter, where Doc Maynard used to split wood and make doctorin' calls.

History, folks. Read about it.

The Hermit

Olympia, WA - This marks my first ever Hermit post from the Oly homestead, having finally gotten around to installing internet this morning after a four month post-Politicker hiatus.

And what a way to ring it in - feet up, door open and bottle of Anchor Steam in hand. Sunshine and a large window inches from my head recall summers in Quabbin Qountry, while the bare warmth of a Toshiba laptop bring back the glory days of sitting on a dock at Snow Pond, stewing over some way to trifle with the latest campaign foible.

But here, on The Hermit, there is no audience; there is no subject. Not yet. In the meantime, there are a few more sips of Steam left. And another one in the fridge.

NBA Playoff Predictions

Tacoma, WA -

WESTERN CONFERENCE

Lakers over Jazz in 5
Nuggets over Hornets in 6
Mavs over Spurs in 6
Blazers over Rockets in 7

Lakers over Blazers in 6
Mavs over Nuggets in 7

Lakers over Mavs in 5

EASTERN CONFERENCE
Cavs over Pistons in 5
Celtics over Bulls in 6
Magic over Sixers in 5
Heat over Hawks in 7

Cavs over Heat in 4
Magic over Celtics in 7

Cavs over Magic in 5

NBA FINALS
Lakers over Cavs in 7

Oly

Olympia, WA - Yo, I really need to start diversifying my datelines. For real.

Not Peepers?

Olympia, WA - I came into town tonight to check my e-mail and listen to some Creedence. Specifically their version of The Midnight Special, which I first heard on Chronicle Vol. 2, which has since been lost to me along with disc 2 of Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits and a bunch of other classic cds when I had one of my cd cases stolen or misplaced.

Given the hurricane aftermath state of my Nissan Sentra's backseat and the amount of travel I did last year, into Republican strongholds and otherwise, it could have been either.

Still, here I am. And once I'm here it is always easier to have one more hot toddie than it is to have one fewer. There are many arguments for why this is, but one of them should involve spring peepers, because the sound of them will always play a major role in my life.

About three weeks ago I had what I thought at the time to be a completely no sequitur notion that I wouldn't hear any spring peepers this year, and the silence would be deafening to my spirit, causing me to break out in a mad dash for Gulf Road in Belchertown, Mass., where I would spend at least a full week lounging on a rock next to Knight's Pond and repleneshing my soul with the consistent evening croak of the peepers (Pseudacris crucifer).

Yet within days of that thought I began hearing frogs in Olympia, and just as the weather was starting to turn toward the better. Simply on faith I had assumed them to be my own little peepers, but a quick internet search just now reveals that my guys don't live much further west than Kansas.

Again I am fooled, but who can blame a pacifier?


P.S Long live the Chuggypig Unlimited Express. I am glad that I came into town to write tonight, but I still have some regret over missing the second half of the show. KAOS comes through in the most mysterious ways.

The Snake.

Olympia, WA - Back to politics: Do we realize that Terry McAuliffe may become the next governor of Virginia? Not that all politicians aren't scum, but Heaven help us.

Dew Point

Olympia, WA - That old nicknameless backwater city of the Puget Sound, Olympia, has been humid the last two days, and I don't know if it is because the legislative session is nearing a crippling, blue-balled and grumpy end or if it is some sign from the Gods telling me to beat a path to Eastern climates, and fast.

Still, when I step outside my front door in sandals, underwear and a cum-stained t-shirt at 9:30pm, I feel ten degrees short of a heavy sweat.

It is still early April, after all.

Nevertheless what a stark reminder, that kiss of humidity, of the vast difference between winter and summer even in a Marine West Coast climate like this.

I should mention that I am glad to have felt the onset of stickiness. Nothing gets you down the line like some swamp ass and a moist head of hair.