Interesting Events

I have had two interesting events blogwise, or rather beerblogwise, this week. First, I was offered my first free sample for review. It is from a distributor in New England so we have to figure out how to get a free sample across the border. Free beer is an interesting concept. Until now, I have always bought my own for reviewing.

Second, I was contacted by a reporter from The New York Times about an item I ran last January and could she quote me for her article. Well, apparently, copy editor willing, there A Good Beer Blog shall be come Monday, Business Section on the Media page. I have alerted the good folks who lend me use of their servers in case there is some wave of A Good Beer Blogmania across the USA. We shall see if the coal-fires stay lit and the dykes hold.

Girl

I don’t know if I can forgive you. Have any of you told me about “Girl” from Beck’s release Guero of earlier this year? No.

Fortunately the timing was perfect despite your indifference, with this warm evening, the apricot light turning to candy floss, I could get six listenings in while in the car going about the town. Though you never shared, I will share: [3.3 MB, .wma file]. It could make me dance again, as long as the DJ played nothing else – except perhaps Franz Ferdinand and endless rocksteady.

Soccer Friday Night

It’s back. Grown men, many gone grey, dressing up in bright colours and short pants to run around like eight year olds. It’s great. With the league restructuring, not this one – this one, I am on a tentatively nameless yellow team, that sort of yellow yellow with a bit of orange yellow. Numbers of the shorts and matching socks, too. It’s like being in a bunch dressed up Action Man footballers, some with guts but without that nasty cheek scar Action Man had. I had a Man U Action Man. Odd as I’ve magic marker Keane on the back of the jersey now and stick it with pins. Or maybe not. I have seen how he gets people back.

The glee of running and sweating overcame my disgust at confirming that the song “This Is The Day” by The The is now selling pants in a Dockers ad. I had to play it and mourn. It is such a good tune. Here it is [.wma, 4.8 MB]. Note the instrumentation. You think it is synthesizers which, being 1983, is a pretty good guess – but its actually an accordion and fiddles.

The Tantrama Tapes

Shock, disgust and some confusion have spread from Ottawa to Atlantic Canada with the revelation of tapes of conversations between a senior official in the Tantrama City Government and a top cabinet member in the Federal Unity Government. In the tapes, made somewhere between 25 and 30 May 2007, Tantrama City’s Minister of ACOA Relations and Random Infrastructure Development Designate “Little Cousin” Kenny Archibald MacKay Morris, left, is heard seeking an arrangement with the Federal Government which is being described as “a transaction”. Also heard on the tape is recently appointed Deputy Prime Minister Ken Dryden, right, returned along with the balance of Paul Martin’s third minority government just weeks ago.

TRANSCRIPT:

Morris: Hey Kenny!
Dryden: (muffled) Why hello (unclear), Kenny.
Morris: Siddown, Siddown, Kenny. (whisper) Call me Skipper. (louder) ’72, eh, Kenny, pretty good, eh?
Dryden: What?
Morris: You know, Russia. Pretty fine…right on…eh? eh?
Dryden: Sure…ya…sure…you asked me to meet? We certainly could have met in my offices on the Hill, you know, Tantrama City issues are top priority for the new Unity Government, Ken…


Scene of the meeting

Morris: (whisper) Skipper! Remember to call me Skipper!
Dryden: Sure…ummm…Skipper. Have you got a problem with your coat? No? What can I help you with?
Morris: Well, I wonder if we might discuss an arrangement with…
Dryden: WHAT? (unclear) nuts?
[Background: sounds of chairs shifting.]
Morris: (whispers quickly) Siddown, siddown, Kenny, shhh. I’m not talkin about anything that it not done all the time. What I am suggesting is with the upcoming vote in the New Atlantica and all the crap coming out of St. John’s and Fredericton, you lads are gonna need all the pals you can get. So what I am suggesting is that I will accept an ACOA grant in the amount of $87,000 and in return I will accept a position in the Senate.
[Pause – 15 seconds.]
Dryden: (quietly) excuse me?
Morris: I will accept an ACOA grant in the amount…
Dryden: No, I heard what you said. It is just not really…umm…a deal. It’s just you getting…two different things.
Morris: No, it isn’t.
Dryden: Yes, it is.
Morris: No, it isn’t.
Dryden: Yes. Yes, it is.
[Pause – 10 seconds.]
Morris: Oh…well, what do people usually ask for?
Dryden: I don’t know. No one has ever suggested such a (unclear)(unclear)(unclear) thing. I have never done (unclear). [Background: chair scrapes.] Look, umm, I think we better leave it there for now (unclear) call in a few (unclear)…
Morris: (louder) Are you gonna finish that fritter?
Dryden: No (unclear) take that (unclear) for you troubles.
[Background: door slam.]
Morris: (whisper) Bonus. [Pause] Aw, friggit. Forgot to get my friggin’ hockey card signed. Frig.
[Tape ends]

There has been no response to date from the Office of First Minister Designate of the Tantrama City Provisional Government, John McDonald MacKay Archibald.

Twisted Blankle

I must have twisted my blankle or strained my black as I can’t think of anything to blog about this morning. A pull bloin. Maybe its just fear of the impending first fitba game of the summer tomorrow night, dread at the prospect of the unknown way this corpse will fail me.

I am big on the web nostagia post most of all from yesterday’s slew. Nils took the bait….blait.

A Cursed Bloggy Game Of Book Tag

Ben at Tiger in Winter made me do this, though I hate the me-me thing.

Number of books I own: about 12 shelves worth shelf being about 28 inches makes it about 336 inches worth. About 35 on beer. Books not inches. I have owned many more and sold them. Books are like water: they go in, they go out. I have sold libraries. Right now I would guess I have 200 on hand in total but likely more but I am not counting.

Last book I bought: Para Handy, a book of 1930s Scottish newspaper columns set in a Clyde tramp steamer. My father has always referred to these columns as a font of knowledge for all occasions and taught me about characters like Lobby Dosser, the man who lived nowhere, taking naps in hotel lobbies where he could. Come to think of it, it was that or a amateur sort of publication called Winning Isn’t Everything bought also on eBay about the football team from my mother’s town, Largs Ayrshire.

Last book I read: On Reading the Constitution by Lawrence Tribe. An early ’90s analysis of how the US Supreme Court analyzes badly which makes me very happy to live in Canada where Supreme Court of Canada tests are seemingly written by folk of an overachieving librarian mindset, organized and clear, relied on and maybe wiggled but not made up on the spot under the guise of “tradition” and “values”. Interesting read but I fear I will have to read 20 more books to understand how the US Supreme Court might be using the tools time and law have given it. Relying on the founding fathers my arse. Have you met one person who you could rely on to keep or even understand what they meant as opposed to what is simply written? Add 240 years and an argumentative bunch of founders and you can imagine what that is worth.

Five books that mean a lot to me:

  • Under the Frog by Tobor Fischer, a Hungarian writer who in I think the late 80s wrote this book about a slacker bunch of industrial league basketball players who get caught up in the Hungarian uprising of 1956. The best book I have read in 15 years.
  • Wind in the Willows for the sheer mindless violence and the reference to best Burton, an almost extinct ale style all glossed over as a children’s book. Bought Christmastime circa 1988 in a line up at a children’s book store in Halifax. When the clerk said how nice it was to give books to children at the holidays, I pointed out that I had a rather nice single malt as well as a head cold and I was taking them both with the book to bed for the weekend, not packaging it up for some child. I am so glad I have changed into the little ray of sunshine I am today.
  • The Big Book of Brewing by Dave Line circa 1975 who gave me and many others a first understanding about the science behind a topic so as to understand the topic in a way that has given me so much joy.
  • The Yachtsman’s Weekend Book, by John Irving. A small 1930s encyclopedia in one volume of things you need to know on a boating weekend off Britian circa 1938: lines, silhouettes of other boats, how to get through Dutchcustoms, how to eat in a force 7 storm, what to drink and sing, the names of the stars. AND
  • Esso Power Players hardcover 1970-1971 sticker album. We worked hard to fill out that book. Most effort I ever put into one book. Kept us sane the one year we lived in Sydney Mines, Cape Breton.

Done: I tag Arthur in NS, Marian in Budapest, Alfons in Amsterdam, Blork in Montreal and Craig in PEI.

Internet Memories

Along with the lack of any coherent or useful organization or indexing, this medium suffers from a lack of its own history. Sure there is the Internet Archive capturing something like one front page screen shot in every 12,486,081,230 and those high level no details stuff time lines about when the first email was sent.. but you were not there. What we need to do is create anecdotes to capture what the experience was really like when you first plugged in. Here are some of mine:

  • German Web TV – around 1996 or so someone had set up a system where you could watch screen shots from German TV. I do not recall any audio. I do recall they were about the first site to try to do this and there seemed to be about 15 channels or so. They refreshed every 3 to 10 seconds. Soccer was hard to follow. Blue movies at suppertime were a bit of a startler in the days of far fewer cable channels in smalltown Canada.
  • Operating stuff through web cams – sort of related to the above but interactive. You could run the switching of a toy train set in Germany and usually you had to wait a few minutes for your command to come up in the line up of global command givers. Somewhere else there was a garden in a small room which you could look around with a camera, dig a bit and even plant a seed. Probably the most nicest most innocent amateur sites you will ever see.
  • Usenet – an actually working uncensored universal bulletin board system where you could find the greatest nerds in any topic you wanted debating the issue of their affection in fine and incredibly nasty detail. Killed by cross posting porn spammers and, I think, take over by Google.
  • The coffee pot and the aquarium – just so someone else won’t mention them first, there were two sites with extremely early web video. The cameras were static, one aimed at a coffee pot and one aimed at a tank of fish. We stared for hours.

Some of these things may sill be there but I don’t go looking for them anymore.

Share your web anecdotes. It’s been ten years now since I started playing with this damn thing so its about time to get nostalgic. If you have a link to that German toy train, it would be a nice touch.