how sports are like members of your family
this just cracked me up....
The Intimidation Station: its a family affair
is it me, or has bush's presidency just devolved from merely evil into a complete farce. check out this lovely quote from a recent bush appearance
DubyaSpeak.com : Fresh Dubya:
"DUBYA: I fully understand, however, that there will be a Russian-style democracy. I don't expect Russia to look like the United States. As Vladimir pointedly reminded me last night, we have a different history, different traditions. And I will let him describe to you his way forward, but he shared with me some very interesting thoughts that I think would surprise some of our citizens. Now that I've lured you into the deal here, you know -- like, for example, how do you promote land reform. So we discussed land reform. You know, one of the interesting decisions a government has to make, particularly this government would have to make, is how do you encourage private ownership of land further than that which has already happened. Anyway, he shared some thoughts with me. Sorry to put -- lay the trap out there for you -- but it was a good discussion. He's a strong man. Look, he's willing to listen, but he also explains to me, he doesn't want anybody telling him how to run his government. He was elected. And so it was a cordial relationship. But he can speak for himself.
PRESIDENT PUTIN: We certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy as they have in Iraq, I will tell you quite honestly. [Massive laughter erupts]
DUBYA: Just wait.
-- Dubya suffers from a zinger issued by Russian President Vladimir Putin, and issues sad retort: 'Just wait.' Strelna, Russia, Jul. 15, 2006"
it's friday, you ain't got no job, you ain't got shit to do
so this past few weeks have been real ball-busters. as many of you know, i got laid off from my job... only a few months after starting there. so i was basically back to square one. things were looking kind of rough, but luckily i found another job... one that i'm super excited to start. I'll be working in the archives department of a major textbook publisher (finally i get all that money back!). the job is in boston, actually right across the street from copley square. lovely area. nice office. supposedly a very good place to work.
return of the sneaker pimp
i ALWAYS want new pairs of sneakers. it's been a while since i've gotten a new pair, unfortunately. them's the breaks when you're unemployed and broke. oh well. i just saw these today and KNEW i have to have them: they're a reissue of a rare puma running shoe that was released only in france in the late 70s... until now. ha.
we all have iTunes at work and we can play music from each other's mp3 collections thanks to being on the same network. a couple of coworkers have the new madonna album in their collection. i admit to actually liking the song "hung up." but it's another song, called "i love new york" that truly stands out for having possibly the worst song lyrics ever penned:
don't like cities, but I like New York
Other places make me feel like a dork
Los Angeles is for people who sleep
Paris and London, baby you can keep
Baby you can keep (8x)
Other cities always make me mad
Other places always make me sad
No other city ever made me glad
Except New York
I love New York
I love New York
I love New York
If you don't like my attitude, then you can F-off
Just go to Texas, isn't that where they golf?
New York is not for little pussies who scream
If you can't stand the heat, then get off my street
Get off my street (8x)
Other cities always make me mad
Other places always make me sad
No other city ever made me glad
Except New York
I love New York
I love New York
I love New York
I love New York (Get off my street, get off my street) (4x)
(Get off my street) (10x)
i didn't think madge could top last year's embarrassing faux-rap that involved rhyming "pilates" with "moccha latte."
in da brewery
jay just updated our homebrewing website, da brewery. Check out our pictures of each batch we've brewed, plus some videos and pictures of our brewing hijinks.
this is a picture of our second beer ever: a raspberry wheat beer.
suck it, world!
fifa released its national team rankings today and the u.s. is, ahem, cough, um, errr, fourth best in the entire world. we're now only behind brazil, the czech republic (who we will play in the world cup) and the netherlands. we're actualy ahead of a veritable murderer's row: spain, france, portugal, argentina, england, italy and germany. now i love our team and wish them well, but there's no way in hell we're that good.
da next batch
jay and i are gonna be brewing again this weekend it looks like. i can't friggin wait. last week jay built a wort chiller to cool down our wort (the boiled malt) to a low enough temperature that won't kill our yeast cells. should be a fun new toy.
we're leaning toward doing a simple ipa this weekend. here's the recipe i came up with:
10 lbs. german pilsner malt
mash at 155
1 oz. chinook at 60 min.
1 oz. cascade at 30 min.
1 oz. whole leaf fuggles at 3 min.
pitch onto yeast cake of
white labs 001 california ale yeast
madchester
di and i recently got around to watching "24 hour party people," a film about the 80s music scene in manchester. definitely a great music flick. it centers around tony wilson, a record company boss, club owner and local tv reporter. basically, he's the man responsible for bands like joy division/new order and the happy mondays. definitely a good movie if you like new wave.
the timothy leary of mdma
i stumbled upon a good interview with dr. alexander shulgin, one of the first pyschiatrists to conduct research on mdma, better known as ecstasy. he has some interesting points to make about our popular misconceptions of the nature of addiction and of the social uses of drugs.
Q. There is an assumption by a lot of people that MDMA has tremendous abuse potential and is addictive. Is it?
A. The abuse potential of MDMA is as real as the abuse potential of anything that gives pleasure and satisfaction. This applies to MDMA as much as it does to sky diving, mountain climbing and skiing.
I should also point out that to the authorities, abuse is the use of any illegal drug. It's not how you use the drug. It's the fact that the regulator says you can't use it.
On your second point, addiction, there is a tendency to use the word addiction in an almost pejorative or a socially condemning way. I personally tend to avoid the word addiction because of the baggage it carries with it - social unacceptability, legal involvement, pharmacological dependency. I like the word dependency because for one thing it avoids the addiction word; and secondly, it allows me to define two types of dependency - physical dependency and psychological dependency.
In the case of the former, your body will rebel if it does not get what it has become used to. In the case of the latter, you have the psyche, the spirit, the self image, the good feeling about yourself rebelling if you don't have more of the thing that feeds it. Neither are really addiction.
True addiction has traditionally meant being physically dependent on something, so that if it's withdrawn, you go through a crisis that may be life-threatening. Very few drugs satisfy that criterion, although barbiturates come close.
I remember a demonstration medical school about a cat that was given a barbiturate in a regular IP injection. The cat came to expect its injection and turned up every day at noon time to receive it. This went on for about eight months. One day, the cat got saline instead of barbiturate. Within two or three hours, the cat was dead. That is true physical dependency. That is addiction according to its archetypic definition. You do not have that kind of thing with MDMA. In fact, you do not have that kind of thing with psychedelics at all. For one thing they build up tolerance quite rapidly, or refractoriness. In other words, if you take it on the second day, it doesn't have that much effect, while on the third day, it has no effect at all. Nor is increasing the dosage the answer because of the side effects this causes. So you are almost blocked from becoming locked into a pattern of re-use. Physical dependency? Not at all.
You might have psychological dependency with some drugs in this area, such as Ketamine and marijuana. I know a number of people who use these drugs as a matter of habit and are very uncomfortable if that habit is broken. So there is a psychological component with some of these drugs. MDMA does not have that habit.
However MDMA does have a negative aspect. If you do use it with some degree of regularity, for example every week over a period of many weeks, that remarkable empathic magic is lost. Most people only have remarkable experiences with MDMA the first couple of times they use it. After that, the magic is somehow gone.
homebrewing heaven
jay and i got around to brewing last weekend while di was out in san antonio for her writers convention. we did our first all-grain beer, which means we mashed our own grains instead of merely using malt extract to provide fermentable sugars. we chose a very difficult beer to "clone". basically we took a recipe for brooklyn black chocolate stout, a high-alcohol dark-colored beast of a beer. despite some worries, it seemed to have come out very well. it's fermenting down right now, so it will probably be a few months of aging before we know the results. our next batch will probably be another all-grain beer... an IPA made with chinook hops.
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