Oh, See, That's Just Adorable

I swore this wouldn't happen. I swore it. I told myself, "Brian, thou shalt not." I made God, in my head, and He told me in His infinite wisdom not to do this thing.

But I have failed my self-God. I have lost track of all those things I thought I hold dear and I have failed.

I have fallen completely, totally, head-over-heels in love with my daughter. I mean, I already was, but it's like that Sting lyric "every little thing she does is magic." I love her smile - the way that if I smile at her, she'll take a minute to think about her reaction and then give me this big goofy toothless grin back. And if she gets really into it she'll sort of squirm and get shy while she smiles - which is just all the cuter.

Or that damned bear. I swear to self-God, and real God, I hate that bear.

Maybe I should clarify.

When Lorelei was having trouble getting to sleep at night, around the time she was two weeks old, Kirsten and I broke down and bought her a little bear with a recording of a heartbeat (apparently as filtered through the muscle and amniotic fluid of a womb), which is supposed to soothe her. Problem is, it sounds like this evil tympani-pounding demon. The exterior is all teddy bear, of course, but the inside? Satan. With rhythm.

So we brought it home, and turned it on during the day, so Lorelei could get used to it. She was totally nonplussed, but the cats freaking freaked. They both came pelting down the stairs to see what this terrible slave-driving viking music was, eyes wide, tails bushed. They just stared at this bear like it was something out of Edgar Allen Poe.

Interesting self-absorbed side note: I used to know The Raven front and back, and it remains one of my favorite poems.

Anyway, this demon bear is now one of Lorelei's favorite possesions. We can prop her up in the corner of her crib (she can't sit yet, or at least not perfectly, which in and of itself is adorable), and just plop the bear in front of her - and she goes all googly-eyed and coos at what is almost certainly an escapee from the seventh circle of Hell.

But because I'm all gushy over this kid, I think it's cute that she's such a fan of her unholy monster toy. Sort of like I imagine Claus von Stauffenberg's parents thought it was cute how much he liked briefcases.*

In fact, I'm so tickled pink about this little daughter of mine that if her first words are "Demon Bear" or "Unholy Hell Beast," I might mist up a little more than if they're something stupid like "Dada," "Mama," or "Four Score and Seven years ago..."








*Yes, that's really a plot-to-kill-Hitler joke. Don't like it? Tough.

Difficult Snobbery

There's a pair of pubs in St. Louis that are both called Growler's - though they're not similar architecturally, they do share a menu and they both have an awesome beer club, probably one of the best in the nation. It may be hard to believe, but there are people who go out and rate these sorts of things. They tend to be fun people who die young.

Cirrhosis of the liver aside, one of the best things about the Growlers beer club is that it gives you a reason to test beers like Staropramen, Framboise, or Pabst Blue Ribbon, none of which a normal human being would ever deign to drink.

So while I don't often go to Growlers anymore, I *do* occasionally find reason to drink a beer or two - but not the bad ones. I've finally reached the age where I realize that Bud Light is kind of skunky even at its peak. And I've never liked Miller Light, because that gives me the runs.

As an aside, if you haven't heard me tell the story of the Keystone Light that Berney, Pratik and I had in our apartment on Delmar for 5 months: we bought a case for a Halloween party, which was not as well-attended an affair as we'd hoped. So we were left with about a dozen beers, which we would occasionally grab one of as we walked past. Eventually, October became March, and one of us - Berney, I think - realized that Keystone Light tasted exactly the same after five months out in the kitchen as it did new. So we did the only responsible thing we could, which was to wait until the evening and start chucking cans at the dumpster of the apartment complex behind us.

In theory, it's not hard to be a beer snob - there really are some very good beers out there. Most of the Sam Adams stuff is a great value, O'Fallon brewery makes a delicious pumpkin ale, Boulevard has an absolutely outstanding series of bottle-conditioned ales called the Smokestack series that are so alcohol-heavy they should be served in a brandy snifter. They do this through a process called bottle conditioning, which is pretty neat stuff.

The real problem comes in modern society - you can always ask the waiter what a good wine would be with your duck confit; ask him what a good beer would be, and he'll give you a look that says, "None, you boozehound."

So, I've been secretly collecting bottlecaps from the beers that I've had. A Czech brew here, an Anheuser-Busch product there, maybe a cap from something Scottish when I thought nobody was looking. And last weekend I finally got my crap together, took the glass out of a picture frame, and mounted 48 of them - nearly all unique - to that sucker and hung it in my bathroom. You can find a photo of it on my deviantart page, here:
http://shapu.deviantart.com/gallery/#_browse

Honestly, I'm pretty proud, whether that makes me a boozehound or not. And I can remember almost all of those beers and ciders that are represented on that thing. I have quite a few more, but my next project is the wine bottles that Kirsten and I have also been draining over the years. That'll give me a chance to work on some other beers that I've been meaning to try anyway.

By the way, something dark and malty would go well with duck - a nut brown or an IPA, perhaps. Don't go too sweet (meaning no Guinness, sorry), or you'll overpower the fattiness of the bird.

Obviously, this is a Lie.

A fortune cookie from a company that has obviously never met the cats in my house.


When I first opened this, my first reaction was, "Oh bullshit."

I Have a Brazilian!

Two of them, in fact.

At least, according to this map from Google Analytics.

Now, I should point out that neither my esteemed visitor from Porto Alegre (in the south) or Teresina (in the north) stuck around very long, nor did they read much. That makes sense, of course, as this blog is not written in Portuguese, and as I have learned from past experiences, online translators aren't always very accurate.

See, THIS is why the Internet was invented. Not to spread information between academics, not to improve the outlook of the porn industry, not even to allow presidential candidates to raise ungodly amounts of money. No, the Internet was invented because visionaries like Tim Berners-Lee knew that someday in the future, idiots in Missouri would want to know whether people from other nations cared about the crap they spouted.

And now I know that they do not.

You Know What? Don't Read this One...

...or at least, don't read it at work, where a member of the clergy could see it over your shoulder, or near your mother.

Now that the warnings are out of the way...

Some years ago (in 2007, to be precise, which is in fact three years ago, not "some," but "some" is a more fun adjective to use, so just bear with me), I wrote two posts basically focusing on how attractive I think Giada de Laurentiis and her rival Rachael Ray are.

So the other day I'm cruising around the internet, not looking for anything dirty, mind you, when I came across an absolutely hilarious image of Ms. de Laurentiis.

A thumbnail of the image, below, links to the original:


Honestly, I saw this and laughed for like five minutes. In retrospect, I can see why the people in the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport were giving me weird looks.