Ratios.

It is not about the big thing, or the little things. It is really just about the relationship between them. It is all about ratios.

This was going to start as another "fuck all of this bullshit, I am out," but now I fear it will be a bit more reflective. Sure, I could rant about my bullshit neighborhood, full of people who leave their dog's shits on the sidewalk, Scientologists, and parking that, frankly, sucks my ass. I could rant about my bullshit car, which is a slowly dying by degrees, no thanks to the vandals, thieves and assholes who live in this city. And I could rant about how I will never be able to afford to replace it with one that has all the modern amenities, like AC and a working lock. I could rant about my bullshit tiny, over cluttered apartment and how, beyond having no flat surfaces to be found, is impossible to even turn around in with a fucking avalanche of shit coming down around your ears. But I won't. Anyway, it would mostly be working up to ranting about how the odds of gaining employment with my bullshit skill set are about as good as otherwise ameliorating anything else with my bullshit mindset. But, since this shitstorm is all of my own doing, I can't really lay that on you.

And so I reflect.

Turns out, that in a few short seconds, I can trace the putrid streak of bullshit back upstream to January 8th, 2006. In one night I managed to not only end up in jail but also to pause long enough to lay a steaming pile of failure on pretty much everything else. And now, in one way or another, I am doing exactly what I've been doing for the last five years: trying to dig myself out of my own shit.

Well, say I, fuck that.

Take all of those little things, the petty, the relentless, the inescapable, the insurmountable, the mundane, the gnawing, the poisoning bullshit and weigh it against the big picture. It is all about ratios. And it takes a whole lot more than five years of borderline depression, stress, doubt, and self-loathing to outweigh feeling at home, feeling satisfied, feeling loved, and feeling, despite everything, generally OK. It is all about ratios.

So, thanks a bundle 2010. You tried your very best to shit in my cereal. And sure, I did eat a few bites from the top before I noticed, but the rest of the bowl was fine, even tasty. It is all about ratios, right?

And so, I would like to quit complaining for one fucking second at the end of the year and say thanks to you all--the number one lady, my friends, my family, blood-related and otherwise-- because I am still here to happily extend my central digit to 2010, and even smile as we head for 2011 with high hopes.

Can we have one last chance?

Happy New Year.

Literated and Obliterated #2:Everything Matters by Ron Currie Jr.

I read most of this book on a twelve hour flight. Thankfully, it was an international flight and the lukewarm pilsners were easy to come by. However, if you are going to undertake this book at home, you have more options. I will warn you that the protagonist is a drunk. I will also warn you that his drink of choice is Southern Comfort. Straight. To really do this book justice, I would have to say that you just need to buy a handle of SoCo when you pick up the paperback and store them together. Whenever you sit down to read, just tug on the bottle. If done correctly, the last swig should line up nicely with the last page.

But...



I fucking hate Southern Comfort, and I think too highly of most of you to suggest that you subject yourself to such inhumane literary libations. So let's consider your other options shall we? You could just drink whatever you have on hand, so you can really focus on the book (which is really very good), without worrying about a special trip to the store. Or you could really over do it and try to be as varied and off the wall cracked as the story. I recommend the later; let your palate be as surprised as your brain by each new development. Go to your local liquor mart . Fork over $20. Ask for as many assorted mini bottles as you can get for $20. Put them all in a paper bag and draw them randomly, as needed. Enjoy the book and the grab bag, and be sure to savor all of it, since everything really does matter. At least I think it does...

Hey guy...

Hey guy, yeah, you. Guy. You Koreatown shitfuck tweaker asshole who decided that it would be a good idea to break into my car. Yeah, you. Nice work, really well done. Rather than just break the window, ruin my stereo and then sleep in my car like your average chemically dependent halfwit, you thought (in your desert born bathtub speed three day genius kind of way) that you could do me a favor by just picking the lock and then closing up when you were done. I appreciate the consideration, except that what passed for your key was probably a flat screw driver, or (I really hope) what meth has left of your front teeth. Either way, you, guy...guy who slept in the cold because you couldn't get in. Yeah, you. I really love not being able to enter what's left of my piece of shit car through the driver's door. The mangled lock really made me happy to come home to this polished turd of a city. Tony V. should give you a goddamn medal. Thanks, guy, thanks a bunch. And guy? Yeah, hey, guy? Fuck you.

If only I had more knuckles on each hand.

I have never been huge on reductive philosophies, being a guy who comfortably dwells in the grey area almost all of the time. However, I am open minded. And, as such, I like to think that I am willing to admit it when I come across a good idea. I don't go in for good vs bad, black vs white, etc but, if I had to pick one dichotomy to reduce my existence to, it came up today:

Nature vs Culture.

This is of course contingent on how you define both Nature and Culture. But, so long as each of us defines them consistently, and truthfully, to ourselves, the reduction will still work for each of us. Allow, for the moment, that we are each capably of this, and give it some thought.

Obviously, this ties in with a whole metric assload of outstanding issues (nature vs nurture, god vs science, greenpeace vs BP, etc) but I think I would argue that this very open ended status is what makes Nature vs Culture the most compelling reduction I have stumbled on for a while. It acknowledges the broad complexity of both sides of the equation and does little to reduce either one any further than needed. For a guy who thinks philosophy is the major for people who can't turn off their cerebral shitstorm enough to slack off and get a normal, useless, expensive liberal arts degree, I am pretty stoked on spending the next few days looking at the world through this new lense and trying it out.

I've spent the day applying it to my previously mentioned foody situation, as suggested in The Omnivore's Dilemma; while it does not offer any weight to either side, it is the perfect way to break down the constituent issues of the larger argument. At first pass, it fit my views of religion too, albeit with the caveat that I buy into "science". Getting confused? Exactly. The perfect thing about Nature vs. Culture is that imposing this prism DOES NOT impose an implied judgment on either side of the issue, but rather using its broad reduction only to contextualize the factors.

Think on it, when you are done not worrying about anything at all. Then get it tattooed.

-OSB

Time flies when you are doing sweet fuck all.

So it turns out that, while I was busy not writing blog posts and doing other stuff, a whole year went by. Last October I started this shit to see what it would be like, and I guess it ain't so bad. Granted, I post rarely, rarely write about anything relevant and probably swear too much for most audiences in most red states. But, either way, here am I is, pecking away at the same old POS mac laptop with the same two fingers on each hand. Though this fall finds me significantly less employed, I should add that this development has been for the best (I think, I hope...)

So, whether or not you are in the same place (mentally, geographically, spiritually, literally, etc) as you were last October, thanks for reading all of the hot gas horseshit that I have managed to drum up. I would promise to do better as we go forward, but who knows. Maybe I'll get some ambition someday and find something actually worthwhile to write about. Or, god forbid, I might get a job and actually not have time to blast the cybercloud with my hourly mysanthropies. Who knows.

What I can say is that I will probably keep making some beer, and drinking some other folks' beer, while listening to obscure, mediocre music no one cares about. You might hear about it. And if I don't stay the course to end up in the same exact fucking spot next October, you might hear about that too. I'll worry about me, you all worry about... well, whatever it is you feel like you aught to. Or fuck it, one up me and don't worry at all. I hear that is really the way to go. Maybe you can try it and get back to me? I'll be right here...

Just don't forget to vote next week, or I will send Mike Huckabee, a komodo dragon and the security guard who tasered that kid at UCLA to stomp your ass. Really though, please consider voting.

Think its gonna rain rain down, thinks gonna rain!

Well, it would hardly be fair if, after my rant about the heat, I did not give the weather its due: its finally raining. We endured the gross humidity for the weekend, and sure enough, it payed off. Rain. Washing eight months worth of shit off the road and sidewalks, this storm is sure to make the already questionable drivers in LA a little more annoying, and a little more likely to skid into each other. Be careful if you are driving in LA today.

Also, look out for all of the deathwish hipster high school kids who have jumped on the fixed gear band wagon since last winter and have never ridden a bike on a wet street. Those cute little side to side bunny hop skids that make you look so fucking bad ass all summer will not work today. Oh no. When you try them you will either a.) not stop, keep going, skidding with no control, or b.) stop, laying your bike down flat, either into the curb or into oncoming traffic. Ooops. And, if, when it happens, there is some guy with a thermos of coffee and an umbrella sitting at the corner of the intersection in a lawn chair, snickering, it is certainly not me. Nope, some other guy.

Now to go dry off my bike that was parked in the rain and find some deserted hills to skid down. Maybe I'll grow a mustache while I am at it..

-OSB

Literated and Obliterated: Pursuit of an idea that may prove to be more than a little stupid...

So I am going to try a new "thing" on this here web-log, a sort of Special Feature for me to bust out from time to time when I have nothing more interesting to say. A while back I mentioned the idea of drinking while reading. It was specifically in reference taking a shot at the end of every stanza of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, a game that a younger me played with alarming regularity back during the campaign years.

However, it could be so much more. Re-reading that post, and coming on the phrase "literated and obliterated" got me thinking, thinking that there are websites, and probably even library full of drink pairings for every dish imaginable, drinking games for every movie, special cocktails for every occaison. Without actually researching this hunch, I have decided to just assume that I am correct and proceed under the assumption that (despite the irony of storing this information in libraries) such a database does not exist for literature. Again, research could prove me wrong, but since I won't be doing any research, I'll assume I am right. That's what you'd do in my shoes, yeah?

So, if you are sitting down with the latest New Yorker, or your new audiobook from the library, or whatever you actually call whatever it is that you read on a Kindle, consider enjoying a beverage simultaneously. This new Literated and Obliterated feature will be about pairing written works with their best mixological counterpart, hopefully providing useful information about both. In true OSB form, it may not happen again for months, or it may happen thrice this week. Who knows, but its my parade and I will stop and smell the funnel cake if I damn well please.
-OSB

Literated and Obliterated #1: The Waste Land, by T.S. Eliot.

Written in 1922, this wild piece of poetry is not to be undertaken lightly. Don't let that discourage you, it is well worth the effort, but you might want to read it sitting down. The work is conveniently broken up into five parts, so that you can get up periodically to refresh your beverage and scream into a pillow, or at the very least flip your record to side B. Speaking of music, I recommend metal. Nothing fast or grindy, but something heavy, ponderous and a little spacey. With titles like "The Burial of the Dead,""A Game of Chess,""The Fire Sermon,""Death by Water," and "What the Thunder Said" its easy to see how each part of this opus could be and has been inspiration to throngs of over-read under-socialized hessian youth.

For fear of boring you any more than I already have, I will leave all of the lit crit to many under-employed English majors in the world, and stick to my strong suit: booze. Without giving away too many juicy bits of the poem, I can say that its a bit on the dark side, and, coupled with an appropriate soundtrack, will require some careful planning on the liquor front. I recommend a five tiered approach, one per part.

To begin, you'll want something strong and stable to sip on as you settle in and get used to the meter. Something tasty but not distracting, allowing you to focus on the reading while you can still focus at all. Beer. I suggest Hopworks Rise Up Red, from Portland. If that's not around any high gravity craft brew should do just fine. Enjoy your beer, get into the poem and by the end of "The Burial of the Dead" you'll be ready for something a little stronger.

Part two, "A Game of Chess" is a good time to savor that whiskey you've been saving for a special occasion. For me its Stranahans Snowflake Colorado whiskey, but to each their own. Try two fingers on ice. Let it sit and mellow on the rocks while you flip the record and then settle back in. You should be feeling melodramatic and a little fuzzy by the end of this section. Remember, this early 20th century poetry. Everything sucked back then, seriously. No twitter, very few cars with A/C, half of the western European male population offed each other in the Great War, civil rights were unheard of, and then this Eliot asshole goes and subjects you to this morose onslaught. Heavy stuff no? Yeah, its ok to top off the whiskey...

Part the third, "The Fire Sermon," is time to really get down in the shit. By now you are drunk, a little confused and trying justify your growing interest in whatever the hell it was that Mr. Eliot was drinking or smoking in 1922. Its time to start checking out, so you can wind down by the end of the poem. Good smoky mezcal, as much of it as you can stomach during part three.

"Death By Water" is only ten lines long, so just have one more tug on the mezcal, and then for the love of christ put that shit away before its too late. No seriously, I mean put it away, somewhere that the sober version of you would never look for it.

Aside from being the most epically titled passage ever, "What The Thunder Said" is your last taste of Eliot's genius for today, so savor it. And savor it the way they did back then, with some absinthe. Didn't see that coming did you? By the time you get to the last line of the poem the Hindi should look like English and vice versa. Take a moment to reflect on the whole experience, finish your absinthe, turn off the record player and check your watch. Oooh, look, not as late as you thought. Your mind might be on another planet, but you haven't missed Glee yet. Head for the boob tube and forget the whole ordeal...
-OSB

Hot, like temperature, not like spicy...

Yeah, I know, anyone who has ever met me saw this one coming, but I couldn't get up tomorrow and look myself in mirror if I did not come through: Fuck this heat. While today is back down to the balmy 90s the record breaking 113 on Monday is still (literally) burned into my memory. September huh? Jesus.

In all fairness though, this was, weatherwise, the best summer ever. It was never hot, all summer long. Clearly El Nino, or Thor or whoever the fuck controls the weather was just biding their time, letting the blast furnace heat up a few extra degress before opening it up and pumping the bellows at Los Angeles. Which is nobler in the mind? To sweat a little bit all summer long, grumble about the heat and put up with my incessant shit talk, or to enjoy a three month June gloom that burns up in September like Georgia in front of Sherman? I guess I would have to choose the later, even if it means I have to pack a whole summer's worth of bastardry into a few weeks. At least I don't have a job to distract me from bitching about the heat, right?

Peaches and Beer

So, as I sit down to finish Micheal Pollan's The Ominvore's Dilemma,(which I previously abandoned for some flavor of the week fiction) I find myself back into the seemingly eternal, liberal guilt ridden, first world dilemma of food politics.

I think what I actually mean is food culture, a thesis supported by Johnathan Safran Foer in his first non-fiction book Eating Animals. I would quote him more effectively if I had actually finished the book, but I have to admit to making a tactical retreat from anthro-culinary theory in the middle of the chapter on egg factories. This choice was made, months before the latest ovo scandal, because I wanted to keep eating eggs. I could tell from page one of the chapter on egg factories that if I, in the name of academia, or masochism or whatever, soldiered through the rest of the chapter I would never eat "conventional" eggs again. So I put the book down and remained un-enlightened until the shitstorm of salmonella tainted eggs hit the major network fan and I was forced to resign myself to $3.99 a dozen guilt free eggs from the farmers market, or a voluntary exile to veganism.

But, anyway, food culture right? Without filling pages with the fine points of the millions of arguments for and against veganism and vegetarianism, and volumes more with the inherent hypocrisy of my own practice thereof, I am willing to admit here on the internet, before you, god, myspace Tom and Al Gore that being vegetarian is getting more complicated.


It is quite clear that the food culture of the typical California veg-head is in no way more sustainable than any carnivorous diet. Factory farming soy for meat substitute and cheese substitute and all other manner of "fake" food is as problematic as grazing in the rain forest, albeit on a smaller scale. Can you be a sustainable vegetarian? Sure. But it is as labor and cost intensive as being a conscientious omnivore. The really responsible thing to do is to eat everything, so long as you can vouch for its origin (with the added asterisk: and can afford it). This was recently modeled by a friend of mine who nose dived off the vegan wagon in pursuit of an humanely raised hog who spent its last days in Oregon on a bender of peaches and beer, or whiskey, I can't remember.

So, if for the moment we pretend that a meager paragraph puts the whole sustainability question to bed, it seems that the politic choice of diet is clear no? And here we run into the more abstract notion of food culture, which is very thoroughly covered in Eating Animals (before the egg factory, of course). Without trying to paraphrase Foer's explanation and without citing his well constructed examples, my word will have to be good enough to convince you that food culture is a more driving force behind almost everyone's dietary choices than politics.


Since this is my blog, and, in this case, my dilemma, we are obviously working up to talking about my food culture. When I gave up meat, it was easy. I didn't really miss anything (except for all beef hot dogs, boiled not grilled, with brown mustard) and there was a whole world of veggie options for me to try. But beyond the simple dietary logistics of my choice, its cultural implications helped ease the process. When I gave up meat, and to some extent still, I was waist, if not chest deep in punk rock. Posi high fives, vegans on bikes and Tragedy backpatches made giving up meat really easy. It was another cultural rallying point beyond tattoos and shitty bar chords. Even the worst domestic beer is elevated to a higher level of culinary relevance if its paired with the latest recipe from some vegan blog from Portland or Brooklyn or Olympia or wherever the fuck.

Am I jaded? Maybe a little. Suffice it to say that the non-dietary trappings of my chosen food culture have started to annoy me. Portland, that idyllic liberal utopia, is still the stuff that punk rock dreams are made of, but is now also maybe so wonderful and idealized that I fear that a final relocation would be inevitably anticlimactic. If I see another fucking fixed gear bike in day-glo-forbidden-zone-misfits-green I might call off the whole thing and buy a Hummer, with a gun rack and some truck-nuts for good measure. Not really, but you get the point. My cultural vegetarianism is slowly choking itself out, and I need to decide whether I can continue on political grounds, or if the responsible thing to do is to choose peaches and beer. I still stand behind veggie/vegan culture, and most of the other trappings of punk rock, but as I cook more, grow up, read more, and generally let my self doubt second guess everything I have ever done, I cannot help but pose the question: why am I doing this? The answer is far longer and more complicate than ever this verbose rant can address, but this is a start.

So, maybe I'll just ride my fixie down to the local vegan restaurant and eat some animal free food, rub elbows with some dude with a Jawbreaker tattoo and ponder my next homebrew. Or maybe I'll let another field of soybeans go fallow and go stuff my face with some local sausage.

Who knows? Eggs for breakfast anyone?

Brewdog's Atlantic IPA

Disclaimer: Stupid beersnobbery follows...

To shamelessly cop the Hot Knivez style: my soundtrack for this is (appropriately I think) Seasick Steve.

Without going into the backstory of this beer, which is in fact quite interesting, I will cut to the chase. Poured from the bottle, the Atlantic IPA is a deep, slightly hazy orange coppery color, very grainy scent and epic head, not unlike a poorly made rootbeer float. The roasted grains dominate the flavor, though it has some fruity moments at first. Unfortunately, the leave behind is a sour/bitter aftertaste that hides any subtleties of subsequent sips. The hops are there, though for someone who has come to think of IPAs the way we make them out west, they are quite understated. It is pleasantly carbonated, and, despite the time it must have taken for it to even reach me and for me to get around to drinking it, fresh tasting.

Is this good beer? Yes. Is this the best beer in the world? No. Does it have a fucking killer label? Hell yes. Is it worth all the wait, the hype and the price*? Nope. Should you go and watch the trailer for Brewdog's newest beer? Most certainly.

Next up, beers from the righteous font of all things, hip, vegan, crust and generally fucking rad, Portland, OR.

*Thanks EP/AV

-OSB

Sunday Nights Are Slow Surrender

As the weekend winds down, I want to take this moment to encourage everyone to resist the urge to just settle into the couch at 8:37 and fade out in front of some ABC family programming and/or the latest offering from Netflix. Tomorrow will come either way, so take a couple hours tonight and do something fun. There is still good weekend left, so grab it. Grab it and wring every last drop of freedom out of it. Yup.

I will break my silence for this horseshit.

Hi. Been a while I know, but that is just the way we do. However, this self indulgent medium is the perfect forum for me to share my thoughts on The Woods, one of the Vintage Bar Group's LA watering holes. The Woods is a slightly Lincoln Log themed "whiskey" bar, where they offer a decent selection of Scotch, Irish and North American whiskey, some house cocktails and boring bottled beers. Whatever, its a fucking bar right? It is located in what could safely be called the heart of Hollywood, and its prices reflect that, with whiskeys starting at nine dollars each and stretching ever upward from there. Whatever, that's about par for course right? Get this though, on the bottom of their drink menu, in fine print below the list of highest shelf bourbons, it says:


"A one dollar upcharge will be added to all drinks ordered on the rocks or neat."



What the fuck is that shit?


Seriously. If you don't want to order a mixed drink, which will come on the rocks, watered down with soda or whatever, you have to pay more? Fuck that one thousand percent. I propose a revision, which I will submit forthwith to the Vintage Bar Group, who, incidentally, can shove it:

"All mixed drinks served here are certified to be less than one ounce pours, though we happily charge full price. If you have grown accustomed to good service, standard pours and fair pricing at another establishment, we apologize that we cannot accommodate your special needs and kindly ask that you be prepared to pay one dollar extra for a full 1.5 ounces served either neat or on the rocks."

Current or aspiring bar owners, take note-- This will not stand, dude.

Eagle Rock Brewery, Fuck Yeah!

Although their beer has been around for your enjoyment for the last few months, you may now go to their Glassell Park facilty and drink their beer in their taproom. They offer their socialist standards, Solidarity (dark but mild), Revolution (extra pale, hoppy) and Manifesto (wheat, apparently with a hint of roses, no shit) plus their current special offering,the Libertine. They also have four guest taps featuring other tasty local brews. We checked out their "Grand Opening" last night, and even though we had to wait in line for about 30 minutes, it was well worth it to sample the beer and get the tour. I would recommend it to anyone who likes good beer and wants to support what is hopefully the latest manifestation of a growing east/north-east LA beer scene. Next up: Craftsman in Pasadena, or maybe just my thoughts on the latest homebrew experiment... Yup, get some!

Let us go then, you and I

In the coming weeks, when you head to your local bookshop or library in search of some literary betterment, be prepared. You will likely find that everyone else has the same idea.

The explanation is simple: They, like you, cannot for the life of them remember what exactly they did with their AP English copy of Catcher in the Rye, though surely it is still in their possession. Unfortunately, even before Mr. Salinger's passing this week, this particular opus became (and remained) popular with all manner of crazies who have kept it flying off the shelves for half a century. So all the would-be readers, like you, were forced to move on to some B-list Salinger works, driven by a vague recollection of the tingle of an adolescent intellect that was born during "For Esme with Love and Squalor" and the one about the Bananafish.

And so, dear reader, here we stand, watching as proverbial tumbleweeds slowly roll down the desolate shelves where J.D Salinger used to be. Through some twist of antisocial, final and triumphant irony, he actually managed to take all of his writing with him. Good on you, Jerome, you stick it to 'em.

But do not despair. Just because all of the other nostalgic bookworms out there were quicker on the draw than you doesn't mean you have to go back to Twitter. May I recommend some other forgotten gems from the days of yore: "Winesburg, Ohio" by Sherwood Anderson, anything by Anthony Burgess and, if whiskey and/or briar pipes are involved in your reading ritual, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Take a shot at the end of every stanza. I warrant you will get literated and obliterated at the same time!

Just be sure to pour one out for J.D., who is surely up there enjoying some good eats, good company, reruns of last season's Gossip Girl and some god damned peace and privacy. Here's to you.

El Griffin. (that's Spanish for "The Griffin")

The Griffin should be my favorite bar. It is medieval themed, and I love medieval shit. I even have a useless degree in Medieval European History, the product of four years of dorking out on Latin, dense books, church documents and footnotes, while all my friends got to watch ass loads of movies and make up their own words.

BUT, the Griffin actually kinda sucks. Read on..

Item 1: They turned me away for wearing shorts at 8:02 on a Tuesday in July because "sorry bro, no shorts on dudes allowed after 8pm." Regardless of how your feel about shorts in general, it was summer, it was hotter than Satan's grundle, and they turned down a potential paying customer. Some happy horseshit indeed.

Item 2: Most of the bars full-length-pant-wearing patrons are an awkward combination of Glendale chads and eastside hipsters whose self importance could not contained in the more modestly sized watering holes of Echo Park and headed out to the pseudo-'burb of Atwater for some more room. While its not my place to judge, it is definitely not my scene. Especially with Bigfoot down the road, where the Rocka/Horror/Psycho billy crowd seems to be taking back the joint from the Hollywood overflow. Ratrods? Check. Custom cafe racers? Check. It's like 2006 all over again...

My point? We went there (wearing pants of course) and not only got in, got to the bar unharassed by horny douchebags (that happened there once too) and ordered, but actually scored two stools, where we had unlimited access to bartending service and people watching. Then we discovered their special on Eel River Porter, which in addition to beings 3 bucks, tasty and certified organic, is not a non-achoholic beer. Some things are not too good to be true. And just as we started to entertain the idea that the Griffin doesn't suck, the clock struck midnight and Olympia went on sale for a dollar. A good time ensued.

The score still stands stacked pretty steeply against the joint, but I felt in the interest of fairness I should share our little success story. Now if anyone can find something nice to say about The Brass Monkey, I would like to hear it...

-OSB

Echo Bravo

Through the miracle of the English language, we have discovered that there is, in fact, no "i" in team, and that to assume is to make an "ass" out of "u" and "me". Today, I was forced to come to terms with the fact that I was not going to get a raise. Ever. Just as I did not receive a holiday bump from the old taskmaster. And therefore, without further ado, I give you, from my co-workers and I, that this year our boss, Peter Carlson, truly put the "e" in "bonus"...

Today's victim is...

..."bloggiveways.cob" (name changed to protect the more or less innocent. But I bet you can figure it out if you REALLY want to). This site is a clearing house for blogs whose authors have gotten enough traffic to attract some attention from advertisers who decide that they can curry favor with the blogs preselected demographic by giving away something.

To take a step back in the name of fairness, I have never visited this site, and my exposure to it is only word of mouth. However, let me replay the conversation that led be to decide to "victimize" this site today:

A- So all you have to do is comment on the blog to entered into their giveaway!

B- But only blogs with a huge numbers of readers are selected to host these contests anyway...

A- I know that, so I only chose to enter the giveaways with the lowest number of readers and the soonest deadlines for entry. Clever no?

B- Quite clever. But, I am sorry to say, you should not have wasted those precious minutes of workplace procrastination, since I already own the complete cast of SeaQuest DSV action figures, so the ones you *may* win, will only be duplicates. Plus, mine are in the original packaging. Very valuable. And the dolphin will talk about Cathy Ireland if you put an AAA battery in his belly. Although, if you do, the package cautions you not to use it as a tub toy, despite the aquatic nature of Darwin, the character it portrays.

A- Oh. Asshole.

B- Yeah, just wait 'till we live in a house financed by my limited edition Capt. Nathan Bridger action figure with articulated shoulders for unlimited backstroking. And, if I could even begin to spell Lucas' last name, I would totally post that shit on ebay, since I have two of him, one with the Hawaiian shirt and one with no shirt at all. I could make bank. Serious fucking ducats. Seriously...

A- What? You are such a fucking nerd.

B- Yes.

A- Let's eat burritos.

B- Ok.

This shit is whack. But, if y'all want some free shit, hit it up. I don't even want a cut. Unless you win the 1993 Phillies action figure set. If you do, John Kruk is SO mine...

-OSB

Knives, big fuck off shiny ones.

If you, like me, have never owned proper kitchen knives, do not worry. If you need to cut some shit up so you can cook it, any knife will do and that is that. However, if you want to know what it feels like to enter your kitchen and smell the fear of every legume, feel the shiver running through the seeds of every fruit, and know at long last that even the fucking onion is crying and pissing itself, get a serious cook's knife. Money isn't the point, you don't need a matched set or a fancy wooden storage block. Hell, you don't even have to use the thing if you don't want to, but just having it there brings priceless peace of mind. I don't know about you, but I sleep soundly now, fearing no mango pit, no spaghetti squash, not even a frozen chunk of mock chicken. And if your bitchin' new knife fails to force all of your culinary minions into abject compliance, I recommend a machete from Thailand. They even cut garlic. But that is another story...

-OSB

2010 indeed.

Its obvious that the holiday beast successfully devoured the final months of my 2009, but this little soapbox has waited patiently for my return to At Hell (work) in couple of days and the barrage of assorted misanthropy that will likely accompany it. Until then though, things seem to be looking up. California's extra ten percent income tax is over. Sweet. W-2s should be here soon, meaning taxes are due. Not sweet. The holidays are over, which means that bands are out touring again, and there indeed some good shows coming up. My band, thanks for asking, is soldiering along, writing mostly, debating a name change and forever adding to the list of Things We Will Never Do Again. New Years Resolutions: Be less of a bastard, do more stuff, eat more Moroccan food, sleep occasionally, and generally not "let the bastards drag you down." Yep.