The theme of the night is...

PETE POSTLETHWAITE IS NOT KOBAYASHI

What the fuck?

I value my time, and if there's a way I can shave off even a few minutes of doing some mundane task, I'll do it. Yes sir, real mind-bending and asinine things I speak here, huh?

This morning I was at the local supermercado to fill the void that is my gaping caffeine addiction and to pick up another 2 gallon pump-jug of soy sauce-- if there's two things I can never get enough of is a slight buzz and an elevated and irregular heart rate.

It only took a few minutes to grab my items and head towards the checkout lane, when I was stopped short of throwing shit at the head of a four person queue--each person with ten items--in the only goddamn open lane. I closed my eyes and pictured each of the four trying to buy Similac with expired food stamps, too, but I'm demented most of the time.

But, when I scanned one lane to the right and noticed that all four self-checkout lanes were open, and totally empty. Praise Jesus. I sauntered, or swaggered, depending on how you'd like to picture my ass in your imagination, up to the first open kiosk and deftly motored my way the process, and out the door in less than three minutes.

I gave everyone in line my patented "walking away, middle finger over the shoulder salute", hopped in my BMW 13 series and tried to run over 3 hobos and 2 prostitutes and 17 transvestites on my drive to work. I didn't succeed in any of those, but I so totally proved myself worthy of life by saving 1 minute and 45 seconds by trusting a computer.

I. AM. AWESOME.

Really, though, would you wait in that long of a line when you could use an empty self-checkout lane, and also not have to talk to a supermarket employee that hates living life? Granted, I understand that using technology is hard, almost sometimes as hard as addition and subtraction, or even radical ideas like chewing and breathing, but it's not that difficult once you realize that the whole secret is that the damn self check-out kiosk is a scale located underneath where you supposed to put your scanned items, you know, so the store knows you're not a thieving asshole, you hoodlum, you.

I'm looking right at you, Guy That I'm Usually Stuck Behind.

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My job consists of a large amount of downtime, downtime that's normally filled by the internet. In order to become a better employee and curtail bad habits should I ever escape this cubicle gulag, for the past few months I've been trying to cut out my internet usage, or at the very least keep away from sites with the words "tight" and "teens" in the url. It's harder than you might think, no pun intended.

My most recent great idea--one on the same level as the Segway or taking a vow of celibacy--was to install a time tracker on Firefox.

It was working up until about a week ago, when I looked at the time and it said I'd spent 9 hours and 3 minutes on the internet. In and 8 hour workday. Now I just feel depressed.

I look back at all the things I've purchased for homebrewing since I started in September(less than 7 months ago--really?), and all the time I've spent on forums or random blogs, reading and absorbing beer knowledge, and I realize that isn't that far removed from how I took to poker in 2003. That my almost retired poker blog is going to be 4 years old is odd to me.

Anyhow, when I started off brewing, I really didn't have a clue what I was doing, or why. Still don't for that matter. Same with poker. I do know that all this beer has started turning me into a tubby tub tub fatty fat, but I think that's a role I could really dig into, if given the chance. Many of you have done the same, I see. Also, Molly has said that she'll leave me if I ever put on a lot of weight, so hey--newer model girlfriend, here I come!(...slowly lumbering, out of breath, wheezing, in desperate need of a cheeseburger and some chili cheese fries).

But, much like poker, or any new hobby for that matter, it's tough for me to get past a certain point when none of my local friends enjoy the same thing. I don't have the daily face-to-face conversations about brewing or beer, or with someone that knows much more about beer than I do(not tough) to tell me if my beer sucks or not. My friends have liked certain styles so far, but I suspect that they would drink almost anything that's free and doesn't taste like swamp water.(No offense, Drizz!)

I started off gangbusters in September, brewing something like ten to fifteen 5 gallon batches of beer in just a few months, but I haven't brewed since the end of January for no other reason than being too awesome right out of the gate, which almost seems like cheating, or like I've done no real leg work in making what amounts to good beer, or what could be considered good beer by people who know the difference. That's boring. Ok, fine, perhaps I've grown a little too lazy as well.

What this amounts to is that I've got to get out of my comfort zone(hmmm, once again like poker)--that area where I just allow my friends drink my beer, because that's the safe thing to do-- and either enter competitions(not likely), or join a local club and get input from those much more experienced than am I. We shall see about that, though. That would mean I'd have to deal with real people again, and I hate real people. I might just have to start a beer blog...

So, yeah, I need to make more beer pronto. I'd post a picture of my empty kegerator, but I figure that it's Monday, and people are having a tough time dealing with the day as is--no need to make you sad about that, too.

On NYE day, I drove to the neighborhood Rainbow Foods to pick up--yep, you guessed it--art supplies. By "art supplies", I mean "food". The only artistic bone I have in my body is the one best used in bed, if you know what I mean. To fingerpaint on my sheets, duh. No euphamism there, people.

In the special, as in stupid, words of Vanilla Ice; "Bumper to bumper, the avenue was packed...", as was the parking lot of supermarket. Makes sense, I suppose, that the streets outside of said supermarket parking lot were just as busy as were the streets adjacent. Brilliant, this one. As it was, it took me a few minutes to navigate my way through people that looked like they'd eaten their way lunch the self-serve candy bins(trough), and decided that 1 mil contractor bags were also practical as a muu muu, until I found someone backing out of their spot, way, way back in the far corner.

What I didn't see was the asshole waiting around the corner, behind another parked car, that had presumably, judging by his extreme assholery, been waiting for that single parking spot since Christmas Day. The car that was leaving backed out towards me, which meant that the other guy was blocked for a moment, giving me first access to the spot. That is, until the guy tried wedging himself into the spot(even though two-thirds of my car was already in), while screaming at me through his closed driver's side window, through my driver's side window. He sounded more like Hellen Keller than a coherent, level-headed human-being, which made me stop my progress and laugh at him.

His displeasure then came in the form of random hand motions, and mouthing some profanities and, what I can only assume was his recital of the Declaration of Independence while playing I'm a Chubby Bunny. I couldn't understand anything, but it looked like he wanted the spot, badly at that. So, I backed out and decided to let him have it.

This didn't please him, either, because he started trying to squeeze past me to find another spot, coming so close to scraping his mirror down the whole of my passenger side. Of course, I did tried to rile him up more by not parking in the spot that he so desperately needed, and parking in another open spot that he fucking passed on the way to attempt to shit on my day.

What is wrong with people? I may hate a lot of people--and I do mean a LOT--but never once have I gotten even the slightest bit upset over something as trivial as a parking spot. I was sort of hoping that he'd try to confront me in the store so I could ask him just how miserable his life is, how much of a disappointment he was to not only himself, but everybody that he's ever been close to, that he went all Krakatoa over something so unimportant.

I'm sure that would've gone wasted on someone like him, though. Then I'd be forced to Forearm Shiver him, a la Bob, and kick the three kids that were walking by because they kind of, sort of looked like the asshole.

I suppose this could lead me to being less of an ass in my free time. Unless, of course, it's completely warranted, say, to people that refer to themselves as anything "licious", or people with monroe piercings, or even stupid parents that name their stupid kids with stupid names, like Deshauwvauntay WindLisp--last name Miller.

Get Real.

(This post was contstructed last night--All Repeal's Eve. Very timely am I.)

I currently have 7 gallons of a rye IPA boiling away on my kitchen stove. The two pots--I have to have two, because my stove burners aren't powerful enough to boil 7 full gallons--are situated among all four burners. Ingenuity at it's finest. It's also a good way to have the flames shoot out from under the sides of the pot and burn, say, the counter and, oh, I don't know, the refrigerator.

My apartment is hot, and because I didn't plan ahead and open the windows, they froze. I need to wait another twenty minutes before the steam will soften the ice around the storm windows so they will open.


You can clearly see this is after I was able to pry my window open. Also, please note the 17 lbs of spent grain in the background.

Of course, after completing tonight's tasks, I'll completely forget to close them, assuring a frozen, open window. In December.

I converted one of my closets, a closet that is very important to storage because my apartment is so small, into a make-shift fermenter. The buckets sit in cold water, which holds a fairly constant temperature compared to the air, allowing the fermenting wort to also stay fairly constant. The bucket on the left(it has a 5 lb weight on it because it wants to float away. You could say I n...you know what? I'm not going to go there. I'm not a racist asshole, no matter what mom and her boyfriend Darrell say) is...something. It's a double IPA, I think. The bucket on the right is a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale clone. It isn't the floaty type, I guess.





I haven't outgrown my apartment--my hobby has, though.

Oh. OH! I was just sitting on my couch typing this up while the wort boiled away in the kitchen, when I felt a small splishitty-splash hit my mouse hand. I passed it off as a weird muscle spasm, because I'm getting old and that's what happens to old people. But, it happened again. I looked up, and the molding around my windows were not only dripping, but bringing six months of unattended dirt down a make-shift waterfall. I may have to re-think this boiling large quantities of water in the winter thing, because condensation of this caliber might cause problems. Yes, might.

Fuck.

Last week I mentally tabulated all my beer-brewing expenses and was a little bummed that my hobby was getting too expensive. Is it a problem that I've considered eating spent grain from the brew process in order to save money on food and still be able to brew beer? It does? Oh.

Fortunately, though, I was able to track down all of my receipts* and was pleasantly surprised (probably a little drunk, too!) to learn that it wasn't as bad as I thought. Not even close to weekend's bar tab in Vegas. If I was going this weekend, that is.

Sigh. If you'll excuse me, I have 15 gallons of beer to drown my sorrows in. I might even drown my balls in it, I don't know. And the funny thing is, you won't know either!

*This coming from a guy that hasn't balanced his bank account in over 5 years--why in the hell would I save every fucking receipt from beer-making related purchases?

If I were to have a different vehicle other than my rockin' Prizm, what would it be? What would you picture me in?

Also, what type of vehicle should I stay the fuck away from?

Who was the genius that hired Bryant Gumbel to do play-by-play for the NFL Network? Whoever it was should be fired, flogged, then have their cheerios pissed in, just for effect.

Bryant Gumbel is barely believable as a human being, let alone as a knowledgeable football authority. I'm secretly hoping that Katie Couric pops her freaky skele-head into the booth--at least I'd be able to close my eyes and pretend I'm watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Oh, look, Woody Woodpecker.

Speaking of that, Chris Collingsworth on color commentary? Seriously? What's next- Joe Buck bringing up the rear with the on-field interview duties?

I can't believe I canceled FSC for this.

It's not Joe Buck, it's worse--Deion Sanders. Hey, Neon, stop trying to eat the microphone!