Post #742

I thought that perhaps I should write a new pust since I just popped in over at the Weblog and made some comments on the Tuesday Hatred. It's been quite a while since I checked in over there, so I figured maybe I'd get a little more traffic than usual.

As I shiver a little in my office/babyroom I thought about Adam Kotsko and wondered if his legs were itching yet.

Speaking of itching . . . [dead end segue]



Beer.

It's good.

A person who says they don't like beer should be forced to drink beer until they like beer.

I just brewed and bottled what is called an Affligem Abbey Tripel. This beer originates in Brouwerij De Smedt, Opwijk, Belgium. I've never been to Belgium, but I like words ending in edt and ijk.

Yes, I brew my own beer.

And this makes me Mighty.

The Affligem rings in at a whopping 8.5% alcohol content.

Yea beer!

I've been brewing for 2 and a half years and this is the first Begian beer I've tried my hand at. The first beer that I brewed this fall was a barley wine. It has 9% alcohol but is supposed to stay in the bottle for a year. Realistically, it won't make it that long if I know myself. I figure at about 6 months or so (or sooner?) I'll need to "see where it's at". Inevitably this will lead to a, "Hey that's not bad," to a, "I'm too damn tired to go to the store and buy beer. Good thing I've got the barleywine in the cupboard."

Anyway, I wanted to mention that Affligem Abbey because I used a new method of introducing the yeast to the wort. Usually I'll just dump my packet of [dry] yeast into the bucket of cooled wort and let it do it's thing. This time, however, I made what is called a "yeast starter."

I overheard this guy at the brew store talking about the importance of using a yeast starter when brewing beer. He stated that anyone that is serious about beer competitions uses a starter. I thougth to myself that I wasn't really interested in contests, but if it makes my beer taste better I'm all about it.

With this beer I used a packet of liquid yeast--something I have only done once before with limited success. Liquid yeast packets have a little poutch in the middle called the "activator." You smack this thing, break it open, and then it activates the yeast. I let the packet stand at room temperature for about a day and a half. It expands as the yeast starts working, so it's kind of cool.

After the yeast is ready you boil a solution of
1/2 cup of dry wheat malt extract
8 ounces of water
2 hop pellets (any variety)

You boil this for 10 minutes and then let it cool to below 80 deg. F

I sanitized a 24 oz. bottle (you can use 12 oz.), taking care to sanitize the outside and the mouth of the bottle.

I poored in the cooled solution, followed by the liquid yeast and put in a stopper and airlock. [for those of you novices, an airlock is a cool little doohicky that you put on top of an airtight container and it bubbles when fermentation is taking place (basically, releasing oxygen).]

My book tells me that activity should begin within 12 hours, however mine seemed to take a little longer.

At any rate, I brewed my beer as usual (although the ingredients in this Belgian beer are a bit different than what I usually use) and when I was ready to add the yeast, I just dumped my yeast started in the cooled wort [your cooled batch of brewed beer].

I only just bottled this on Sunday, so it'll be about a month before I try one of these (2 weeks?). I'm excited to see the difference the yeast makes in quality, and to try my first homebrewed Belgian beer.

Beer, it's what's for dinner.

Abby

Collect

Vocatus atque
non vocatus deus ader-
it on Carl Jung's door

The Prison Question

Big Boyz Bail Bonds
holds three offices in Baltimore;
their pen shows the addresses,
and their pen is pink and yellow.

Their competitors have names like
Come Get Me,
Break Out,
and Dem Boyz Bail Bonds.

I haven't thought much
about the prison question, but
I wonder if the Bondsmen's
feminine pens are aimed
to reach the same
target audience
as their macho man names.

The women who seek to secure
their sons' freedom, no doubt,
will remember a pink pen.
And no one, to be sure,
will skip out on businessmen
who answer to Big Boy.

The Blues

Damn, the last two weeks of the Blues After Hours on WNCU have been amazing. The sets that Bob Brown picks are a stroke of genius. You really should check this radio show out. It broadcasts every Monday night from 8:00-11:00 p.m. e.s.t. You can get the webcast over the internet. This whole station is great. I find myself listening to it more than any other. Also on Monday nights is Blues Before Sunrise from 11:00 p.m.-4:00 a.m. This program is out of Chicago hosted by DJ Steve Cushing. This week they are playing music strictly from female blues musicians.

Are you gettin lippy with me, Tonto?

Visual proof that Abby, too, is a Chicago Bears fan.

Wisconsin

Hey, can anyone in Wisconsin get me a job? You have a little time. Apparently Emily will be done with her Master's Degree next fall (fall of 2007). Then we would be free to leave--and believe me, we are both ready to get the hell out of the mild winters and hot sticky summers of North Carolina.

Can anyone get me a cheap house in Wisconsin by the job that you're going to get me? Preferably a 4 or 5 bedroom house with some land to roam. No more than 30 minutes from a city. On your marks, get set, go!

Kankakee

I was wondering to myself, why doesn't everyone just move back to Kankakee. I figure I can at least work a shit social work job and like the town I live in. And maybe I can get some cheap art for my house over at the ONU art department.

I don't know if anybody's falling for it, though, even me.

Bears Offseason Update

According to the Chicago Bears' website, there are rumors that they might pursue Pittsburgh's Antwaan Randle El in free agency as their number 2 reciever and a return specialist. This would give the talented but injury rattled Rex Grossman a good target to throw to. Along with Bernard Berrian who saw the some of the longest receptions last season, Randle El would give the Bears more speed and another deep threat at the reciever position.

Also helping out the historically struggling Bears' offense is the fact that they have already signed three of their offensive lineman out of free agency and it is only March. Their offensive line is pretty much set.

A healthy Grossman in the off season is another reason for Bears Fans to be excited. He seems to be comfortable with the offensive strategy and will be able to fine tune things prior to training camp. Look for the Bears offense to add an uncharacteristic punch to their aggresive and dominating defense.

Ahhhhh, Saturday

While my wife lays in the bedroom feeding our daughter, her uncle sits in the living room reading a book about the civil war, a dog barks outside with a medium-sized-dog-sounding bark, and I read about Adam Kotsko shitting down people's throats. It must be Saturday.

Friday Mencken

I have realized the difficulties in keeping up with a weekly column when one has a hard time even publishing a post per week. Nevertheless, here is the second installment of Friday Mencken.

The following is from A Carnival of Buncombe--a collection of mostly political essays. Talking about candidates running for office, this particular selection is from an essay entitled Bayard vs. Lionheart, published in 1920..


Neither candidate reveals the slightest dignity of conviction. Neither cares a hoot for any discernible principle. Neither, in any intelligible sense, is a man of honor. But it is one thing to yield to virtuous indignation against such individuals and quite another thing to devise any practicable scheme for booting them out of the synagogue. The weakness of those of us who take a gaudy satisfaction in our ideas, and battle for them violently, and face punishment for them willingly and even proudly, is that we forget the primary business of the man in politics, which is the snatching and safeguarding of his job. That business, it must be plain, concerns itself only occasionally with the defense and propagation of ideas, and even then it must confine itself to those that, to a reflective man, must usually appear to be insane. The first and last aim of the politician is to get votes, and the safest of all ways to get votes is to appear to the plain man to be a plain man like himself, which is to say, to appear to him to be happily free from any heretical treason to the body of accepted platitudes–to be filled to the brim with the flabby, banal, childish notions that challenge no prejudice and lay not burden of examination upon the mind.

It is not often, in these later days of the democratic enlightenment, that positive merit lands a man in elective office in the United States; much more often it is a negative merit that gets him there. That negative merit is simply disvulnerability. Of the two candidates, that one wins who least arouses the suspicions and distrusts of the great masses of simple men. Well, what are more likely to arouse suspicions and distrusts than ideas, convictions, principles? The plain people are not hostile to shysterism, save it be gross and unsuccessful. They admire a Roosevelt for his bold stratagems and duplicities, his sacrifice of faith and principle to the main chance, his magnificent disdain of fairness and honor. But they shy instantly and inevitably from the man who comes before them with notions that they cannot immediately translate into terms of their everyday delusions; they fear the novel idea, and particularly the revolutionary idea, as they fear the devil. When Roosevelt, losing hold upon his cunning at last, embraced the vast hodepodge of innovations, some idiotic but some sound enough, that, went by the name of Progressivism, they jumped from under him in trembling, and he came down with a thump that left him on his back until death delivered him from all hope and caring.

It seems to me that this fear of ideas is a peculiarly democratic phenomenon, and that it is nowhere so horribly apparent as in the United States, perhaps the nearest approach to an actual democracy yet seen in the world. It was Americans who invented the curious doctrine that there is a body of doctrine in every department of thought that every good citizen is in duty bound to accept and cherish; it was Americans who invented the right-thinker. The fundamental concept, of course, was not original. The theologians embraced it centuries ago, and continue to embrace it to this day. It appeared on the political side in the Middle Ages, and survived in Russia into our time. But it is only in the United States that it has been extended to all departments of thought. It is only here that any novel idea, in any field of human relations, carries with it a burden of obnoxiousness, and is instantly challenged as mysteriously immoral by the great masses of right-thinking men. It is only here, so far as I have been able to make out, that there is a right way and a wrong way to think about the beverages one drinks with one’s meals, and the way children ought to be taught in the schools, and the manner in which foreign alliances should be negotiated, and what ought to be done about the Bolsheviki.

What's in a Place

My friends have been known to have good names for their houses. Like Entrance Ave. (pronounced intrints av). That's a great name for a place. A place that only lives in legend to me, for I never actually experienced the greatness that was Entrance Ave. It is like lore among my people. Tragedy. Drama. Laughter. Tears. Violence. A pissing couch. It had it all.

Then there was Atticus Hall. Aptly named that, for the cat called Atticus truly ruled the roost. Guests walked in fear of a strike from his claws without provocation. Atticus was a dickhead really. But Bryan loved him. At least I think he did. If so, he was the only one. Atticus Hall was also known for holding the First Annual Fukomori Foundation. I got second place. I still have the framed 2nd place award that was never signed by Mr. Fukomori. I guess Atticus wasn't the only dickhead, eh? I hope you read this Fukomori!

And who could but forget River Drive? I suppose some people would like to, like the downstairs neighbors, but heh, you can't please everyone right? Trigger. That's all I've got to say.
"Trigger's Doghouse is the place to be, Trigger's Doghouse come on follow me to Triggers, Trigger's. Trigger's, Trigger's, Trigger's, Trigger's. Trigger's Doghouse it's so much fun. Trigger's doghouse come on everyone to Trigger's, Trigger's, Trigger's. Trigger's, Trigger's, Trigger's." That was the theme that made me famous. It's been all downhill since then.

Old Farm Midcourt didn't exactly roll off the tongue, but it was definitely the best set up. Our neighbors were tolerant. Random Friday Nights were a thing of brilliance. We should all just move to some college town and do something like that again.

Well, I feel like for the first time, I live in a place that has a great name. Burwell Avenue. It feels good in the palate and sounds kinda tough. I figure a place with a good name's gotta be a place for a good party. So with Adam R.'s help, I feel there should be an event here. Perhaps Thanksgiving time, perhaps not. It could be called something like, Jason and Emily's Thanksgiving (Halloween, 4th of July, June 19th, etc.) Extravaganza. There could be a clown and a sack race and bunches of other cool stuff. Aren't you excited?

Friday Mencken

I have decided to publish a weekly column called the Friday Mencken. For now I will start off doing a quote from Mencken, but it should morph into something more.

"A man's women folk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and with something akin to pity."

--from In Defense of Women

Broome County Public Library, 01/28/06

Gladys sat at the edge of the coffee table and leaned over Estelle.

"I was making six or seven a day," Estelle whispered, "knitting scarves and caps for different stores around town. But my arthritis has become so bad I had to stop."

"I know so many people with arthritis." The women were dressed in the old style, wearing dark sweaters over drab dresses, their hair pinned back tightly. Estelle wore a wool overcoat and a red scarf with a subdued pattern. Everything about them suggested that they had never owned pants, and driving cars was a remarkable deal.

They spoke in hushed tones because we, all three of us, were in a library. I was seated close by them, and I eavesdropped as their conversation turned from knitting to arthritis to craft shops in town (the lady in Johnson City is nicer) to Estelle’s divorce. She stayed in Colorado for a while after she and her husband broke things off.

“I’m so unhappy with the religious right right now, I’ve pretty much turned away from the Church,” Estelle said.

“Oh, that’s sad.”

“I still believe in God.”

“Oh, of course.”

“It’s just that there are so many of them. There’s one God who wants war, one God who wants peace, one God who says the poor have to take care of themselves, one God who—”

“You’re going on and on.”

“Oh yes,” Estelle said. A girl rapped on the window behind us and ran away giggling. “What happened? I guess someone knocked on the window.”

“I was so mad at God when my son died,” Gladys intoned, hunching even further over Estelle.

“When your son died.”

“I was so, so angry at God. I can’t tell you.”

“Oh.”

“But the Bible says if you believe and are saved. . . . You just get so disillusioned.” Their conversation continued at a sincere and meaningful level for several more minutes until Gladys, who had run out of things to say about the choir, reverted to a platitude about still having a mission, which was why she was still here. And, somehow, the conversation returned to knitting.

“Knitting is a marvelous form of psychotherapy.”

The library was unusually active. A man with downs syndrome stood at a table several feet away, staring at a stack of books as if he’d forgotten what they were meant to do. He seemed really magnificent, almost cherubic, in his white sweatpants and tank top. Finally, he picked up the books and hugged them to his belly. He ambled away like that.

Next to me a young woman wearing a Riverdance tee shirt sat down to scan through some books about horses. She had just finished a book about training dogs. After a while she stepped away, then returned smiling broadly. She had another horse book.

And a sharp-looking man dressed like a hip-hop kingpin took a seat and read Newsweek. Estelle and Gladys continued talking.

“What have you got?” Estelle asked. Gladys showed her the videotapes she was borrowing from the library.

“I see, funny stuff. That Milton Berle. You know, I always tell a joke I think I got from Milton Berle. It’s pretty short. I always tell jokes quickly. This man has a job delivering a penguin to the zoo, but on the way his truck breaks down. ‘Oh no’, he thinks, but then he sees his friend coming and his friend drives a truck, too. So he waves him down and his friend says no problem, he’ll take the penguin. The man is very grateful and says, ‘Just remember, the zoo closes at 5’. Well, later on the man is driving home happily when he sees his friend walking down the street with the penguin following just a few feet behind him. The man quickly pulls over. He’s very excited. ‘What happened’, the guy says, ‘I told you he had to get to the zoo by 5’! ‘Don’t worry about it, the friend says. We went, he had a great time, and now we’re going to the movies’! Ha, ha,” Estelle laughed, “I just think that’s cute.”

A young boy wanted to look at Wired but his mother told him that it was a grown-up magazine. “Who cares,” he said. “I care,” she responded. “This is going to take forever,” the boy said. There was an article in Wired that featured Burning Man Festival, and a photo spread showed a fulsome girl with her breasts painted blue.

Behind where Gladys perched a heavy-set, poor-looking man sat down with a paperback novel written by Anne Rice. The women kept up their chat, despite his proximity. Estelle’s brother was a musician with the local symphony and the Cooperstown opera, and that meant she had to spend a lot of time taking care of her mother, but her own health wasn’t great, and her mother clearly favored her brother, who was also divorced (from a violinist who’s mother was a psychiatrist which made Estelle think they were a neat family) and, even though her brother really is busy, with the garden too, she was not excited about having to look after her mother.

The chairs at the library can rightly be considered an event. The chairs make sense of things, become a fulcrum of the community. After a while, Estelle excused herself and Gladys returned to her seat. The boy whined, “Mom, can we go home? I’m tired.” A woman across from where Estelle had been sitting screwed up her lips as she read a harlequin romance. Urban fashion suddenly made sense; bright yellow fabric with camouflage patterns render a person see-through in such a colorful society.

Gladys was sitting alone and had fallen asleep. There were plenty of people browsing the library’s video collection, but I was the only person in the chairs when her son came to pick her up.

“Hey, Sweetie,” he said, touching her arm lightly. Gladys awoke.

“I met the most lovely lady,” she told the man. “We talked for quite a little while. She’s having a bit of a row with her mother, who isn’t treating her well.”

“Really?” said the man. “That’s too bad.”

Gladys looked over to where Estelle had been. “She isn’t here now.”

“Have you seen Becky? I dropped her off at the Salvation Army. She was going to walk here and meet us.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“I’ll see if I can find her, and then we’ll come to pick you up.” He walked away, stopped between a rack of books and adjusted his shoe, went on. Two girls were playing hide-and-seek. A woman moved her lips as she read.

More self promotion

I hope you'll take a minute to read the new poem I wrote, called "The Future Killer." It's my best yet, and I spent several hours writing it. Thank's chiefjason for allowing me to advertise here pro bono.

Rossiya

For those that have ever been to Russia or are interested in Russia, they are tearing down the Rossiya hotel that bordered Red Square. In this article they refer to it as an eyesore, but I remember kind of liking it. Oh well.

Also in the news were two bomb blasts in Iran. Read about it here.

HL Mencken

So, you know that Adam and Stephanie--Cardinal--are performing an operetta about HL Mencken on April 8th, and of course you're gonna be there and all. But do you know anything about HL Mencken? Well I sure as hell don't either, so I went and used my $20 gift certificate for Barnes and Noble that I got for Christmas from my wife's brother, Matt, and ordered two books authored by Mencken. The first, In Defense of Women, seems to be the better known of his works and was easy to find cheap, so I hooked up with that. The second, A Carnival of Buncombe, seemed like a good pick mainly because of it's title, so I "put that in my cart" so to speak.

Another thing you might not know is that I got the only bootleg copy of one of the songs that Cardinal will perform on April 8th. It's got me on guitar if I remember right. Yeah, that'll probably sell for a good chunkachange here pretty soon.

What am I reading right now you ask? Well, I'm about three quarters of the way through The Idiot but seemed to have been distracted from it. I came across some old notes from college--the notes from my semester in Russia and two notebooks from systematic theology. I even broke out a little Marion in there. The book I'm currently reading the most is The Wounded Land by Stephen R. Donaldson. It's a series I read in high school that I am enjoying again the second time around. Donaldson's actually a pretty good author if you feel like taking a break from all of your Socrates and Bacon and Lacan and what not.

Hm. Bacon and Lacan. Sounds like a sandwich.

Hey Adam

Hey Adam. I think you should damn ride your bike over to my house.

Jason

Cardinal

Cardinal, I guess, is now officially the musical collaboration of Stephanie Barber and me. So far, Cardinal has written an operetta about HL Mencken. You can see it on April 8, in Baltimore. Click the image for details.

Publishing Genius

I am delighted to use The Tarantular to unveil my new web space. The Tarantular gets over 15 visits every day, which will surely bolster my internet presence. I hope everyone likes Publishing Genius. Poems daily, archives, and links to the best poetry journals. At Publishing Genius, we publish genius.

I'm An Administrator

My name is Adam T. Robinson, and I'm an administrator.

Pure Bush League

Jason Lee had an error last night at 3rd base, struck out once, and worked a walk. I bat him third because he's hitting .290, but he didn't come through last night in several clutch moments. I like his patience at the plate, though.

Here's the batting order for today's game:

Adam Robinson 2B 0.407
Dmitri Lutsker OF 0.182
Jason Lee 3B 0.290
Stephanie Barber C 0.348
Bill Brower OF 0.182
Benji Bergstrand SS 0.327
Craig Griffin OF 0.130
Bethany Hamann 2B 0.125
Alan Robinson P 0.091

The second half of the lineup looks pretty weak. That is wholly thanks to Jeff Snowbarger taking his big bat and going AWOL. Apparently, he likes to watch "Friends." I considered putting my old roomie Jonathan Burks in to pitch because he hits slightly better than my brother, but Alan has better control and today's ump is finicky. Also, we're playing in a hitter's park, today.

Abby Lee

Abby's got a new post on her blog. You should check it out.

Update: I apparently remain unscathed, despite the tenor of the post.