perfidy

Well... we did.

Linus John:

... and with a very sleep-deprived papa, enjoying the soothing tones of Cuban dance music played at deafening volume. Good kid. (Nota bene: even on no sleep with a new infant in the house, I still look at least 5-8 years younger than my actual age. Good genes, evidently!)

And, yes, I'm posting a mildly topical fake-blog item, just to nudge Sparky's junk (below) off the top half of the page. For the children.

There's a little lot near where I live now that usually has some sort of stand set up on it. In June it's fireworks. I've also seen sunglasses, cellular phone accessories, peaches, onions, and other things for sale there as well.

Over the weekend this stand caught my eye though. Hatch green chiles are common this time of year. But then I saw the adjacent tent and I just had to wonder...

Thank Goodness that Patton put up that li'l thing about Romanian IRS scammers, because I was about to go nucular in an attempt to spark some posting around here.
Namely, I was going to challenge my fellow ministers to kick this off the front page as quickly as humanly possible:

Comments are a service provided by the Ministry of Minor Perfidy to you, the gentle reader. This service is subject to revocation on a retail or wholesale basis at the whim of the Ministry. Only one individual has thus far incurred our wrath sufficiently to be permanently banned. Don’t be that guy.

Swear, curse and spit if it makes you feel better. Generally speaking, saying “fuck” a lot doesn’t improve the quality of your writing, unless you’re Charles Bukowski. I don’t think you’re Chuck, though. In any event, we won’t delete your post for foul language. As to general purpose offensiveness, we all have pretty thick skins and you’d have to be a real jackass to get a post deleted for that reason. So don’t be that guy.

Please note that any advertisement made in this space is subject to a fee of $500 per ad, per page view. Posting an ad indicates your agreement with this fee schedule. If you are a comment spammer, please immediately die a prolonged, agonizing and messy death. After you pay the fee.

To sum up: play nice, share your toys with the other kids, and pretend you’re having a nice conversation with friends at your favorite restaurant. Remember, we’re watching you. And don't forget that by submitting a comment you grant the Ministry a license to reproduce your words, name, likeness, address, phone number and sexual history in perpetuity.

In my time, I've seen examples of just about every scam possible via the Internet. It takes a lot any more to even get my attention as I'm one-button flushing my spam folders.

However, when someone goes above and beyond the call of scum-baggish presumption in reader/recipient stupidity, I think it deserves to be highlighted. I'm a "giver" that way.

Below, in its exact form, including the badly mangled HTML formatting, but minus the actual link to the scamster's site, the silliest and least plausible piece of spam I think I've received in at least a couple days:

Of course, I almost fell for it, because:

• The IRS always communicates with me by sending me email at my blogging email address, natch
• The IRS always speaks to tax payers that way, all courtly-like, and offers its "Regards"
• The IRS always gets things done in 6-9 days
• The IRS claims copyright on all of its email messages, just like normal citizens do
• While claiming said copyright, the IRS always makes sure the recipient knows that it's the "Internal Revenue Service U.S.A.", to avoid confusion with all the other Internal Revenue Services around the world.

It occurs to me that if we didn't have Russian, Romanian, and Slobovian hackers, we'd have to invent them, for our own amusement.

[wik] It further occurs to me that, in order to avoid appearing churlish, I should point out that if someone wants my $93.60 refund, let me know, and I'll pass along the link.

Heya kiddies, it's time for yet another installment of Johno's Hangover Food for Ambitious Drunkards! (I realize that this is the first time I've actually ever used that particular phrase, but look back through the extensive catalog of recipes I have posted to this site and you'll see that pretty much that's all I do.)

Check out these banana pancakes - I invented these this morning because I need potassium. And sleep. I need sleep. Y'see, I have a one week old infant in the house who's doing the usual sleep and eat and eliminate in no pattern around the clock whatsoever thing, and I've developed this persistent twitch in my left eyelid. Clearly a potassium deficiency, right? Right?

Anyway, these are incredibly delicious, like almost ridiculously good, and ridiculously easy to whip up on no notice.

Banana Pancakes
makes 4 big and thick pancakes, serving two. Doubles (or more) well.

1 cup (4.5 oz) white whole wheat* flour, or 1/2 cup all-purpose flour and 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 tbsp sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup milk
1 large egg, beaten
2 tbsp melted butter
2 small or 1 large banana, mashed

Combine all dry ingredients and whisk together. Combine all liquid ingredients except banana and whisk together well. Add banana to liquid and whisk thoroughly again.

Pour liquid ingredients into dry and stir with a whisk ten times only - ten! only! to combine. Lumps are OK.

Cook in half-cup amounts on greased pan or griddle with surface temperature 350 degrees.

I repeat: these are CRAZY GOOD.

*King Arthur offers flour milled from white winter wheat, which lacks some of the bitterness and whole-wheat character of regular red whole wheat. This makes it much better for pastry applications where the nutrition and added flavor complexity of whole wheat flour is desired - cookies, pancakes, biscuits, waffles, and if you use some trickery, even pie crust.

American Wheat Ale

5 lbs wheat dry malt extract (50% wheat, 50% barley)
2 oz Hallertau Mittelfreuh hops, in 1/2 oz plugs
White Labs WLP 001, California Ale Yeast

Brought 3/5 gallons of spring water to boil in kettle. Added extract and 1 oz hops at boil.
Added 1/2 oz flavor hops at 30 minutes
Added another 1/2 oz hops at 15 minutes

Pitched yeast at 68 degrees - fermented itself up to 72 and was done in about 3 days. Racked to secondary and let settle for 3 weeks before kegging.

This beer is fantastic. Smooth, creamy, with that clear hop flavor and faint tartness that California yeast brings. Oddly for a wheat, it's crystal clear and golden, not as pale or hazy as I might have expected. Well, I might have added some Irish moss to clarify; I just don't damn well remember. Nice sweetness, beautifully balanced bitterness with a great touch of noble hop flavor and a little aroma. I swear I'm getting some creamsicle notes off this, and it's really wonderful. I'll be making this one again, no doubt.

I don't know who the hell Ronald Jenkees is, or where he came from, but this freaky mothereffer has his shit together. Such a geek! Such incredible beats!!! How soon till H.O.V.A. calls Ronald up for his next inevitable comeback? How many of our readers thought that last sentence was total gibberish?

Support your local independent musicians, y'all!

(found via boingboing)

Too Bitter Porter

So, what I was after, was a nice dry porter with a good dose of spicy herbal hops in the flavor and nose. What I got was horribly overbittered and a good beer ruined. I ended up tossing the last half of this batch from the keg to make room for the next brew I did. So, that's pretty much a disaster.

5 lbs light dry malt extract
3/4 lbs crystal malt, 60L
1/4 lb chocolate malt
1/4 lb black patent malt
.8 oz Galena hop pellets, bittering (12% AAU)
1 oz UK Fuggles hop pellets, aroma and flavor
1 oz Tettnanger Tettnang hop pellets, aroma and flavor
2 packages SAFale 33 dry ale yeast

Steeped grains in 1 gallon of spring water and brought 3 to boil. Sparged grains in hot kettle water and added steeping water. Galena and DME added at boil
Hop addition:
Galena 60 min
1/2 oz each Tett and Fuggles 20 min
1/2 oz each Tett and Fuggles, 5 min

Pitched yeast at 72 degrees. Fermentation began slowly but wrapped up in three days. Racked to secondary and let rest for three weeks before kegging. Force-carbonated with CO2.

Almost, but not quite, a good beer. Actually, quite good with heavy food, but just too much bittering hop. A damn shame.