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Man, I have some great friends. Not only did one of y’all come a thousand miles to spend most of your time riding around in the back of my car, but a bunch of y’all got together for an expensive dinner, gave us presents and otherwise had a fantastic time. So, thank you: Scawt & Leighanthrax, Megan & Carleton; The Family Pants, Chris, Mrs. Hattendorf, Dar & Jeff.

Big props to Chris for flying in to hang out and for having a rude Old Fashioned recipe.

The birthday beer turned out very nice as well and will improve considerably with some age in the keg. I think I could have added a couple more ounces of hops to this IPA without making it too hoppy, if such a thing is possible.

Despite US Scareways’ best efforts, my lady FINALLY made it out to Santa Barbara for her conference. If they cause the same delays in bringing her back, I will gladly drive straight down there to retrieve her and ship the biggest flaming box of dogshit to us scareways. POSTAGE DUE! HAH.

Chris and I were mesmerized by this video.

Oh, heh. Baron Willrad von Doomington sent me these questions back in April. Whoops.

Waffle House seems to serve as a convenient marker for the North/South cultural divide. Will they spread northward (or recede southward) as the cultures integrate (or clash), or is this divide permanent and immovable? In short: will the North ever get their hash browns scattered, smothered, and covered?

Probably not. In fact, I recently read an interview with one of the founders (I don’t recall if it was Joe Rogers or Tom Forkner) that they purposefully stay out of the snow belt.

When I win my Mega Millions, however, I will totally open one in Chicago, their wishes be damned.

Being the Chief Engineer of the American Booze Council, have you ever considered building a still and distilling your own boozes? What would you make?
I have considered it, actually. It ain’t rocket surgery. You just need something with alcohol in it, a boiler and a condenser. Put stuff in the boiler, heat it to at least 78.5°C and relatively pure alcohol comes dribblin’ out the condenser. Repeat a few times and you can get it mighty strong.

Should I ever engage in this activity, I think it would be naught but blasphemy if I did not make my own corn liquor to honor my heritage.

Smokes: awesome, or completely awesome? Why? Do you ever plan to quit?

Awesome and repels noxious self-righteous non-smokers at the same time! I believe Kurt Vonnegut Jr. said it best, “The public health authorities never mention the main reason many Americans have for smoking heavily, which is that smoking is a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide.”

I’m sure I’ll quit in some capacity at some point. Sometimes I switch to cigars or to my pipe. Sometimes I don’t smoke at all for weeks.

Can biodiesel save us from the coming Peak Oil Wars, or is it just an expensive way to produce french-fry-smellin’ exhaust and self-satisfaction?

In its current state, no, it can’t ever save us from the coming Peak Oil Wars. Any fuel that competes with food crops is not going to work. Using it, however, shows a demand for alternative fuels and the only way we’re going to be able to get to second-generation biofuels. 2nd gen fuels can be made from damn near any organic matter – corn stover, wood chips, lawn clippings, rotting fruit, human bodies – and the cracking process can be tailored to produce whatever fuel you want. 60 cetane zero sulfur diesel fuel from what I was gonna throw out yesterday? Sign me up. If anything, 2nd gen biofuels will be less energy intensive than current biodiesel (~3:1 NROEI) or ethanol (~1.3:1 NROEI) production since you won’t have to use nearly as much fertilizer or good arable land to compete with food crops.

If you had one coupon good for One (1) Night Kickin’ Back And Drinkin’ Beers with any living person, who would it be? Similary: how about a coupon allowing the bearer to administer One (1) Ass-beatin’ Yelldown Warhellride?

Crapola, you pigeonholed me into living folk.
1. Chillin’ & Hell of Drinkin – David Lynch. I enjoy his films and every interview I’ve ever seen with him, he seems like a nice enough guy with all sorts of wild stuff in his head. Even if we just hung out at the Bob’s Big Boy he frequented and had hell of coffee and got all hopped up on sugar & caffeine to hear his weird ideas, awesome.

2. Thrashin’ Within An Inch of His/Her/Its Life – Dick Cheney. No explanation necessary.

SAY YEAAAAH

I love this video.

They are not actually filming a movie called “Rory’s First Kiss” in Chicago. It is actually the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight.

Unless Rory’s First Kiss has Gotham City Police cars in it, I guess.

I will easily admit I should have been paying closer attention, but it’s hard to do low speed driving through a very crowded parking lot and keep an eye on two dogs. So much so that Coltrane actually jumped out of the car.

Fortunately, he wasn’t hurt at all, in fact he seemed to have enjoyed it, there were two witnesses and it only took me about 10 seconds to notice Mr. Puppyman was missing. Thank you to the nice older Asian gentleman with his Jetta parked in what little shade was available for pointing me in the direction of the dog and thank you to the nice guy who had intercepted Coltrane and was about to call the number on the tag while petting him. I was the most shaken out of the whole thing, fortunately. I’m keeping a much closer eye on the rear windows now, at least until he gets bigger, which he is doing on a dramatic scale.

Sometimes when you least expect it, folks just help out of the goodness of their hearts. Thanks, guys.

More pictures up on flickr.

1601.1 miles in 42 hours and we’re back from Oklahoma City with a new greyhound puppy. Lots of biodiesel billboards in SW Illinois, which is good to see, but not enough availability of the fuel itself. Stank Louis ain’t so bad but other than that we both had our eyes closed the entire way through Missouri. Eastern Oklahoma is hillier than I remembered, is the home of some flogged-to-death Will Rogers shrines, some fairly questionable toll collection practices (pay full fare up front then get a refund if you get off before the next tollbooth?) and some of the smokiest diesel I’ve ever run through my car. I was able to molest it into smoking like a dump truck without much difficulty.

Ken was nice enough to graciously put us up for the night and have beer and cane sugar Dr Pepper waiting for us. Hell, he even turned on the air conditioning despite his love of tropical environs.

The folks from Fasthound were very nice and easy to deal with. We got back on the road mid afternoon, set the cruise control at 80 mph and headed northeast. Finally made it back to Chicago at 0230 with a belly full of ephedrine and (ugh) Red Bull.

And of course, Coltrane (that’s the little dog, mind you) was wide awake and HOWLING when we finally got in bed at 0400. It didn’t sound as good as his namesake’s solos. So, still having plenty of energy, I took the little widder out for a long walk. And to watch the sun rise. And to convince him that it’s OK to use the backyard as a bathroom – we really prefer it that way.

Finally got about 3 hours of sleep before waking up around noon, then the normal post-roadtrip slacking. Around 4 we loaded up the dogs back into my slobber-streaked hatchback and eventually made our way up to the dog beach (Lakeshore Drive & Recreation Drive – 3650 N). Mingus got the hang of swimming, kinda, and enjoyed running around with a bunch of other dogs. Coltrane tried to keep up with those that were several feet taller than he but wound up having fun with an Italian Greyhound and what looked like a Labrador puppy.

Damn, I’m tired.

Pictures to follow, especially those of Coltrane terrorizing the cats.

So, we have decided it would be in our – my dear Wife, myself and our greyhound, Mingus – best interests to add another greyhound to our house. It also just so happens that a greyhound rescue near Oklahoma City has a greyhound puppy up for adoption. Add to that a car that can get upwards of 700 miles on a tank of diesel and a weekend of cooler weather and you’ve got a recipe for a weekend roadtrip.

Yes, we are going to drive nearly 800 miles with our adult greyhound in the car to take a look at this little guy and maybe drive back with him in the back of the Golf.

My buddy Ken, who lives in OKC and will be putting the three of us up for the night this Friday commented that that little widder looks “like you transplanted a door wedge onto a headless puppys’ neck and shocked it to life” and I couldn’t agree more.

My lady is lobbying to call him “Monk”. After the hard bop jazz musician, not that retarded show. I got no beef with that but I think I would rather call him “Thelonious”. I’m also kicking around the idea of “Cannonball” or even “Julian” (Cannonball Adderley’s real first name) for the jazz and TPB connection.

Upon hearing about this plan, my Internet Lawyer, one Hazen Hammel, Esq., remarked “What are you, nuts? This is sounding more insane by the minute.” Today he provided me with a horrifying story about how to transport a large dog Romney style. While I do have a roof rack for my car, from my experiences with a rooftop carrier, this plan would cause a tremendous strain on my fuel economy and I would rather keep the dog(s) in the car. Not to mention, y’know, the disregard for animal life and borderline abuse.

With apologies to Chris Onstad,

India is hot in mid-June, real damn hot.