Yesterday, we went out to Poway to visit with some of dark_of_night's cousins and Aunt Toni @ Teresa & Jay's house, where they had practically a block party with their neighbors. It was fun, but my name buffer overflowed rapidly.

Last night, I finally experimented with one of the absinthe cocktail recipes from my Old Mr. Boston Bartender Guide. Most of the absinthe cocktails don't sound all that great to me, but this one sounded the best, and it turned out a winner. Here it is, straight from the book:

Knock-Out Cocktail

1 teaspoon white creme de menthe
1/3 absinthe
1/3 Old Mr. Boston Dry Gin
1/3 French Vermouth

Shake well with cracked ice and strain into 3 oz. Cocktail glass. Serve with a Cherry.

As made by me (approximately - I just pour by eye):
A dribble of green creme de menthe
1.5 oz. gin
.75 ounce vermouth
.5 ounce absinthe
Served with a cherry.

It turned out a cloudy, pretty green. The different herbal tastes were distinct, and went together well. I said to myself, "Oh there's the gin. Wait, over there's the absinthe, and that flavor over there must be the vermouth." The mint was pretty faint, but that's okay.
You'll notice there's no stupid fruit juice or anything to dilute this puppy. This is pretty common in the old recipe book. These are stiff cocktails, dammit. Or maybe it was just living up to its name.

I love America

Hanning is a co-founder of San Fermin in Nueva Orleans: The Running of the Bulls in New Orleans... Modeled after the festival of San Fermin in Spain, ... the local event involves hundreds of people in white and red gathering at 8 a.m. to run through the streets of the French Quarter. But instead of running from bulls, they will be running from something equally fearsome: the Big Easy Rollergirls. Armed with foam-core bats and wearing horns on their helmets.
...
This year, the Big Easy Rollergirls will be assisted by "roller bulls" from derby teams from Houma, Baton Rouge, Jacksonville, Fla., and Houston.
"They've been instructed to hit hard, " O'Donnell said. "Every year people complain that they weren't hit hard enough."

I hear that EQ/CA will be near the homestead in Inglewood on Saturday:
Talk to Los Angeles Voters at our Door to Door Canvass
Holy Faith Episcopal Church, 260 N. Locust St., Inglewood
Saturday, July 11, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

We'll be visiting relatives, but maybe some of you folk can make it.

I knew Obama wasn't perfect, but I can't bring myself to blame him for this.

dark_of_night wins for being the only person out of 26 to choose Juliet. It was indeed the choice chosen by the fewest person.

9 people, more than a third of the sample, thought that Mike would be the least picked response. It was the most popular choice for least popular answer.

Paradoxically(?), Mike was the option that was most picked by those attempting to pick the most picked answer. Kudos to: me, zorker, hagdirt, postgoodism, ladyeuthanasia, dustchick, bellwethr, collenky, jsadler, and karteblanche. I will note that dustchick, collenky and jsadler were clearly hedging their bets by choosing Mike for both options. Either that, or they just like choosing me. Or my name, anyway.

Victor was the least popular most popular choice, with two votes.

Fox News stays classy as host Brian Kilmeade complains that Americans marry outside their species too much. Americans have fallen so low that they will even marry Irish or Italians.
Mike checks calendar for century.

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Canadian PM Stephen Harper sneaks off with Jesus' body, causing an indignant poutine, as I believe they call it in Canadia.

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Hey, it's a Fox News 2-fer, as an intrepid reporter girds himself to visit and report on the outlandish practices of a militant country.

Am I a bad person because I internally snicker for a few seconds every time I hear about the plight of the wiggers in China?

dark_of_night came by the office so we could lunch together. We ventured into the Chalet Edelweiss. Dark opted for the Wurstsalat mit Käse, which was very yummy indeed, while I tried the Bratwurst & rösti -- ah, sausage and potatoes...
Our hostess was a friendly Swiss miss, obviously fond of the more-than-occasional sausage, potato and beer. The food was tasty, the Erdinger was vom Fass. The chalet/alpine/biergarten decor walks the line between charming and tacky and mainly stays on the charming side. How can you not love a Matterhorn on Sepulveda? My only negative comment is that the food is a bit pricey.

Poll #1427009 Prime Made Me Do It
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: None

Pick the option that you think the *fewest* other poll-respondents will pick

Pick the option that you think the *most* other poll-respondents will pick

Had a strange dream a couple nights back. It was vaguely Asian-themed. It begins (or my memory of it begins) in media res, with me riding on a sort of a futuristic jet-ski, with several of my fellows on nearby jetskis. At first it's strangely videogame-esque, as ninjas(?) would pop out of the water in front of me, and I would dispatch them with a swift slash of my katana. After a few rounds of slice-a-ninja, the team was reassembled in the cellar of the alchemist. We were searching for some alechemical doo-hicky and found an elaborate sliding and locking mechanism in the floor. Long metal pieces would slide along tracks in the floor, and when they were in the right arrangement, the floor within their compass would depress a few inches, at which point, they had to be slid into a new arrangement. And... that's it.

I finished reading Bad Astronomy. It was fine, but written for a general audience, so I didn't derive very much that was truly new from it [but not nothing -- although the Hubble can't exactly image the Earth, it can be (and occasionally is) pointed at the Earth, so that one camera captures 'streak flat' images to help calibrate it.]. I have a problem with some of his analogies and writing, but most of this beefing is just me wanting to push him out of the way so I could write it more goodly.

On the 4th of July, as I mentioned before, the Creamer kids came by to plant some pumpkins in the garden. It seemed to be a big hit, particularly with Tristan, who watered the entire garden, I think. They are neat kids, and possibly prime examples of the superintelligent futuristic species that will replace us.

In the evening of the 4th, we had a few friends over to eat, drink, ignite explody stuff, patriotically play Rock Band, and envy the people with the illegal fireworks that lit up the sky.

It's getting to be toddler central around here! The Creamer twins plant pumpkins in the goth garden. Say goodbye to every other plant you see in this photo... they will soon be overrun by pumpkiny goodness.

Once again, I am forced to acknowledge and confront my white privelege.

"The Forum likely will be the primary venue [for UCLA basketball] during the 2011-12 season while Pauley Pavilion undergoes renovation."

... the best canine moonwalk I've ever seen.



Of course the all-time champeen moonwalker is the Red-Capped Manakin:

Someone in the atheist community went to a Pride Parade (SF?) and ran across an unusual booth with a banner:

No God
No Evolution
Let's welcome our creators from space!

The group is associated with the Raelian Movement, which believes life on earth was started by the Old Ones aliens. You may also remember the Raelians for their (unsupported) claim of having cloned a human being.

Anyway, the booth was for ARAMIS, the Association RAëlienne des MInorités Sexuelles, which supports gay rights in a Raelian fashion. The website's a little wonky, but the masthead graphic does have some sort of subliminal imagery that probably reprograms your brain. Their solution for homophobia is a little strange, too: "ALL TOGETHER, LET`S APOSTATISE!"

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Another good link that's been passing around is the story of the group of palaeontologists visiting the Creation Museum.
Reactions varied from defensive hostility: “I’m speechless,” said Derek E.G. Briggs, director of the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale, who walked around with crossed arms and a grimace. “It’s rather scary.”
to curiosity: “I’m very curious and fascinated,” Stefan Bengtson, a professor of paleozoology at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, said before the visit, “because we have little of that kind of thing in Sweden.”
But, like the author, I'll let Dr. Sato have the last word: Dr. Sato likened the museum to an amusement park. “I enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed Disneyland,” she said.

Did she enjoy Disneyland?

“Not very much,” she said.

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In more personal news, I am saddened that there will not be a fireworks stand within drunken stumbling distance of the house this year. Looks like the nearest will be more of an inebriated stroll away.

The set-up: I have four cards. Each card has a letter on one side and a number on the other.

Suppose I suggest a possible fact about the cards: "Statement#1 - A card that has a vowel on one side must have a prime number on the other."

The four cards are lying on a table, and the faces you can see are:

E K 4 7

Which of the cards should you turn over in order to determine whether Statement#1 is indeed true? (ok, you could turn them all over, but suppose you are extremely fatigued, what would be the minimal amount of work you would have to do.)
( Ready, class? )

Brief Intervals of Horrible Sanity is the story of poet Elizabeth Gold's one year teaching at a progressive charter school in NYC. She is woefully unprepared to handle inner city youth with poetry as her only weapon.

This is not a great book. It's probably not even a good book, as she allows her poetry to migrate into her prose far too frequently [and there is a reason you have not read her poetry]. But it's still an interesting book. It combines the horrors of the modern educational system, the horrors of the modern teen, and a narrator who suffers from an inability to acknowledge her own failure.

As a failure in the high school milieu myself, I can sympathize, but I like to think I was more realistic.