It seems like forever since we had one of these. Did anybody see the Golden Compass? Picket it?
One more question for discussion. Let’s say that you have a wee heavy fermenting for eight days (OG ~1.080) and the outgas smells a bit like hard cider. Is that a bad sign?
Chat about whatever.
demimondian
It would depend upon what strain of yeast you were using. Given what you’re making, I’d assume a non-reducing ale yeast, in which case it’s absolutely normal. Many beer yeasts throw esters, and those absolutely give the fermenting wort a fruity smell.
ImJohnGalt
Michael, I’m aware you probably have already let your challenge slip away down the screen, but:
Here’s the Balloon-Juice frontpage author kill script.
As I said in the previous post down on the Huckabee thread, I’d appreciate it if instead of paying me the $20.00, you’d go to Kung Fu Monkey and donate it to Fisher House. Rogers will match your donation, and the Republicans can still accuse me of hating the troops because, after all, it was you who donated, not me.
I will, however, accept your apology as promised.
It’s not terribly complex and would work for any one (but not multiple) front page poster(s). There’s an option in the script to completely remove front page posts or just the body text, so you can see if it might be something not so trolly and therefore worth reading.
Also as I wrote in the below thread, I seriously hope that people don’t use this. It took a long time for John to come around and to develop his thick skin. Michael might one day too, but completely ignoring his posts ain’t gonna solve the problem.
Cols714
Question, how do you get a block quote box around text? And how do you change the color of the box?
jake
Let’s hear it for abstinence-only programs!
Quick, how can we blame this on Clinton?
Perry Como
I missed that entire thread and the challenge. Bugger.
David
I honestly can’t see the point of adapting His Dark Materials. It’s either going to be faithful to the overtly anti-religious originals, and get tons of bad publicity, or bastardized for a “family” audience and get tons of bad publicity anyway. The books weren’t even particularly good.
12across
Bob Owens has a pretty insightful post up today. A lot of people like to joke that the Democrats hate America and want us to loose. I don’t think that’s true. I personally think they’ve just sold their souls to the far left and have been posturing as such for so long they can’t acknowledge success for fear of losing their base in ’08
dslak
I saw the film. Dazzling CGI animation with gaping plot holes and characters so undeveloped that no one would care if they were brutally murdered, thus eliminating any possibility for drama.
And I say this as someone who liked the books (the first one, anyway).
ImJohnGalt
Perry, it was at the end of the Huckabee/Fair Tax thread. I made a flippant remark saying I should modify the ILikePie! script to get rid of Michael’s front page posts.
Michael said I was a bullshitter, and offered me $20.00 and an apology if I did it.
So, although it was said in passing as an idle threat, I thought, “Hey, $40.00 for Fisher House!”, and decided that it might be worth it for anyone who prefers the old blog.
dslak
If you see where the Democrats in Congress fall on issues on something like the Political Compass, relative to actual “far left” groups, the more intelligent among us are unlikely to reach the conclusion that the problem with the Democrats is that they pander too much to that particular constituency.
RSA
This is insightful?
I thought the whole point of the surge was for the sake of political progress, which is nowhere to be seen. Military progress, sure–how long should we stay in Iraq waiting for political progress?
jrg
I’ with jake on the abstinence-only programs (although the outcome of the discussion here would be predictable). I’m also wondering about the resident collective take on the Huckabee Fiasco.
Krista
No. Nicole Kidman’s shiny, lineless, motionless forehead frightens me.
jake
Um. Would someone tell Bild O’Rly that the term Great Orange Satan is a joke?
Ted
That’s a shame. It was hilarious. LOL!
TIDOS Yankee? Uh, yeah. Not likely. But I will be nice and not call him what TBogg calls him, cuz that’s just mean.
Agreed. It looks like it’s been stretched more tightly than a snare drum head.
Bob In Pacifica
12across, how much for an ounce of that stuff you’re smoking?
RSA
The New York Times agrees:
Krista
Besides — it always irks me when redheads go blonde. Why this desire to look like everybody else in Hollywood?
Paul L.
Our lady of perpetual outrage is swiftboating/staking more victims of the institutional racist in this country.
Free the Baltimore 9!!!!
Are you with me The Other Steve?
jake
Snerk.
I move we declare a five year moratorium on using the word “Spunky” to describe child actresses just so movie critics will be forced to crack open their damn thesauruses. And “serviceable”? Are we talking about person or an old car?
Anyway, I can’t deal with more than one actress named Dakota at a time. This young lady will have to change her name.
maxbaer (not the original)
Leaving aside the fact that we’re not winning or losing, which is the definition of quagmire and the joke of the Dems want the terrorists to win and convert us all to Islam.
The point is that the word which is the opposite of win is lose. It has one fucking o. Loose is the opposite of tight. Is this internet thingy like using teh for the or is it just the inability to spell?
grumpy realist
Totally OT, but that reminds me of a waspish comment made by a reviewer about Jacqueline Bisset in some forgotten movie: “Ms. Bisset looks like a sex object on which the warranty has just expired.”
Snerk!
grumpy realist
Oh, and I’d propose that the term “serviceable” never be used around anyone who’s done any work in animal husbandry, if you catch my drift….
D-Chance.
Isn’t there also another Narnia installment hitting the theaters?
Prediction: All the fundies flood that film, it outgrosses Golden Compass, fundies scream, “WE WIN!”, end of controversy.
RSA
I’ll suggest Minnesota.
demimondian
I’m with grandpa realist here — the use of the term serviceable to describe a human, particularly a human child, and PARTICULARLY a female human child…is kind of…nasty.
JWW
Tim,
Of the 30 or so comments, I see two that are of normal sane people. Your crowd either has enough money to not give a shit or totally out of their minds.
Do you read all the responses or only those addressed to you? The jackasses above really don’t care. They don’t know how to care because the have “NO” common sense and they are very limited in respect, for themselves and the country they live in.
You shoud find a better place to blog, these idiots only drag you down. Why? You ask and prepare very good blog questions and ideas, you get a 10% real response, the other 90% is pure venting BS.
Off Colfax
Carolina? Montana?
Just not Iowa.
chopper
it’s an open thread, retard.
12across
As long as it takes frankly. The consequences are too severe otherwise.
12across
Yes because a web toy like the link is a very accurate indicator of someones political posturing.
All I have to do is look and I know all I need to know about Democrats.
12across
Care to actually discuss the article? Or are you too obsessed with typos.
demimondian
Umm…chopper? Please don’t feed the troll unless you want it to follow you home. There are several conservatrolls out there right now which I think we should be thinking of taking on as pets (besides the inimitable Paul L, who has already contributed upthread, there’s Cassidy and Peter “Pricky Prick” Johnson, for instance). JWW…not so much.
demimondian
12across? I think that the article has already been discussed and discarded.
“As long as it takes” is no longer an acceptable answer to the question “how long will we stay”, and “Congress is not doing exactly what I, TCY, wanted it to do” is not an answer to “The Iraqi Parliament is a failure which shows the surge to be a failure.” That’s enough right there.
tBone
Until the lemon-soaked paper napkins arrive.
Wow. JWW is either a really big Nicole Kidman fan, or he’s posting this in response to some other thread. Possibly one from a different blog entirely, or an alternate dimension.
12across
Well things have just started to settle down there, now the Iraqi parliment can start to do their thing without having to worry about being killed.
Why is “as long as it takes “no longer acceptable?” ACceptable to who? You?
tBone
Speak truthiness to power!
Respectfully disagree. I love JWW. His non-sequitur mojo is second only to that of Birdzilla.
Xenos
I can’t think of a more clear and explicit admission that the invasion of Iraq, or at least the Administration’s handling of it, is an irrecoverable disaster. That is the very definition of ‘quagmire’.
I appreciate your admitting that George Bush has committed the most egregious act of governmental malpractice since Napoleon invaded Russia. I mean, it was not entirely clear that Vietnam would end so badly, and even Hitler had a chance of tying up the Russian oil fields before winter hit. This approach to Iraq? Never had a chance.
maxbaer (not the original)
Acceptable to the 60-70% of Americans who have more than had enough of it.
I don’t believe it was a typo, I think you don’t know how to spell.
My reaction to the article is that it doesn’t matter if Congress cuts off the money, because Bush would find it elsewhere. It would be sort of like Rudy paying for his police escorts for mistresses.
The article makes a snide comparison of the Iraqi Parliament and American Congress. My reaction to that is thank God we don’t have a foreign power in this country arming the enemies of our legislative body. That is what our military is doing by arming Sunni miltias.
grumpy realist
Hmmm, my view of trolls was more as cat toys to bat around….
….unfortunately, JWW has the consistency of jello.
caustics
Someone should write a script that automatically appends wingnut troll links with the LOLinator.
Notorious P.A.T.
To put blockquotes around text, use [blockquote] [/blockquote] only with >
incontrolados
I’m trying to get someone besides my ‘observer’ to have an interest in Africa — specifically Somalia and the Horn of Africa and Condi’s visit there this week.
I’ve never overtly blogwhored before here, but I feel strongly about what’s going on there (or not going on there) and since this is an open thread, and I’m shameless (this evening exclusively), and I’m only thinking that maybe there’s a few people who might be interested in talking about Africa. . .
I promise never to blogwhore again, really.
12across
Even liberals think the NIE is about as worthless as toilet paper.
jake
Or Idaho.
Darkness
snerk! Shouldn’t it be Lakota anyway? Why name someone after a mis-translation by the French?
I haven’t seen the movie yet, but it will be the one I go to for the year. I liked the books and was shocked, shocked! I tell you to see that they’d made a movie. I felt as Lyra did in Church as a child, like my unique, creative humanness was the target of forcible extraction by those who feared and saw only a threat to their power in it. And were control freaks anyway.
Eh, the books spoke to me. What can I say? Maybe others not raised Catholic wouldn’t quite get it.
demimondian
Hmm. OK, about 12across…I’m giving it an 8.5. High scores for correct use of talking points, but taking half a point off for poor spelling, and a full point off for link farming.
Cindrella Ferret
He said, Iraqi parliament.
How will a weak, Shia lead parliament settle differences with the Sunni parliament members who have no control over Sunni militias run by former Baathist Generals? The former Baathists have zero incentive to do ANYTHING. They have not been defeated. Period. Local militias wearing Iraqi Army uniforms, with the blessing of local US military commanders, have routed out most of the AQI elements, but they HAVE NOT defeated the militias run by former Baathist generals. Therein lies the rub.
Why would these Sunni militias lay down the weapons that have served them so well?
Until the Jordanians, Saudis, and Syrians are brought in to pressure the Sunni militias, and the IRANIANS pressures its
Shia constituency we have ZERO hope of ever leaving Iraq. Period.
If indeed we get all these parties involved, the US still has no guarantee that the shit won’t hit the fan when we leave.
And … the Kurds. What about our “allies” in Northern Iraq? They exponentially complicate the calculus. Which is unfortunate, because the people currently running the Executive Branch can’t even do simple arithmetic.
I have little faith in the Diplomatic skills of the Former Cheerleader and his Gang of War Criminals. Condi Rice poked her head up from her foxhole recently, but she’s still out gunned by the Twelve Pork Eating War Criminal with a Pacemaker. She is no match for him and David Addington.
Jesus Babbling Christ! Will somebody please tell these deadenders the military options can go on until Sisyphus gets that fucking boulder up the hill and we won’t STRAIGHTEN out the Iraq Abortion until we get some competent goddamn diplomats in the mix!
demimondian
Um, 12pct? Would you like to make the case that “things have settled down” in Iraq? Be warned…it’s hard to defend a false claim here, and you should be prepared to be eviscerated. Still, it’s a boring Friday night, and I’m waiting for a job to finish, so I’m game to let you try.
SGEW
Yeah, just caught it. My take: great casting choices (but Ian phoned it in), a pretty decent screen adaptation of a densely plotted novel, acceptable CGI (well . . . mostly), ham-handed direction, really lovely design, and the absolutely worst editing I’ve had to sit through in years.
Seriously. A tremendously painful final cut. It’s as if the editor was told “good job, but make the whole thing 20 minutes shorter without losing any dialogue or plot points or CGI shots,” and they had to snip a second here, 10 frames there, ad nauseum. Pacing? Tension? Transition? Flow? Breathing space? Punch? Sweep? Bah! Get it under 1:50 or we’ll find someone who will! It’s like a car commercial (without the attention to detail).
Sorry. Had to put my B.F.A. to use sometime.
JWW
Grumpy,
You are as usual, worthless. Your name is not a joke it is a reality for you. Such a shame, you may at one point in the life you have never had, no longer a gutter rat. Suicide is not the way. Why, because nobody will no that you are gone. Be more dramatic, eat live goldfish until you burst.
12across
Abortion solves everything, eh?
SueinNM
12across:
I look at you and Dumbya and I know all I need to know about Republicans.
RSA
For some categories of trolling, I add points for poor spelling. BIRDZILLA wouldn’t be the same if he could spell. (Or use punctuation, for that matter.)
12across
Cute…the handle insult game. I’ve read this blog for a while demimondian, I thought you were above that.
To your point:
“The number of Iraqis killed last month fell to 718, an Associated Press tally showed, the lowest monthly death toll since just before the 2006 bombing of a Shiite shrine provoked a vicious cycle of retaliatory sectarian violence.”
link
12across
Sorry hit the submit button too quick:
link from the liberal AP
12across
and what is up with y’all and typos? I see 5 on the front page alone.
12across
Nice. Just like a liberal to lower the conversation to insults. The President deserves the respect the office he hold deserves. Even when Clinton had his “troubles” I never demeend the office, although he did a pretty good job of that himself.
tBone
I’m with RSA. Poor spelling just adds to the verisimilitude.
C’mon, demi, how can you not like this stuff? A good JWW post is like a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an empty Cheeto-stained vodka bottle.
demimondian
Oh. Now let me understand something: 718 murders (reported by a notoriously inaccurate government) is “settling down”? Even if the figure were accurate, that would be a horrific murder rate. And then couple it with the continued exodus from the country, and the fact that 20% of the population of Iraq is internally displaced, and in excess of 10% of the civilian population is dead…and try, with a straight face, to really tell me things are “settling down”.
Oh, and hey, things are better in Baghdad — the electricity is on for seven hours a day now!
demimondian
Oh, and 12across — I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to mistype your nick. I wish I had thought of it, but, sorry, I just typed wrong.
12across
demimondian, deaths are down, things are calming down. I don’t know what that’s so hard to accept. The surge has indeed worked to this point. Now without all the chaos the Iraqi people can get to the buisiness of starting their Democracy.
12across
So you are just projecting. *grin*
haha, not a problem. I admit I was ammused.
SGEW
Now, now. One does have to admit that things appear to be relatively “improving” in Iraq, objectively speaking. I strongly disagree with the phrase “settling down,” but it is good news that the situation doesn’t appear to be markedly deteriorating, as it has been for so many years. I think we can all agree that the most recent civilian death rate numbers are a sign that an outright descent into genocide and civil war may not be as imminent as some had reasonably feared.
After all, Iraq now seems to be in a better place than, oh, say, Somalia. Or Sudan. Or the D.R.C.
Not exactly comforting (to say the least), but not hopeless (I hope).
Now is not the time to bitterly argue over whether the civilian casualty statistics can be deemed “settling down” or not. It is the time to bitterly argue about the causation of the civilian casualty statistics. Have at it!
demimondian
The surge has worked to the same extent that it has brought things back to where they were before the ethnic cleansing began in earnest? Back when there was no effective government, and no hope for establishing one? That’s not working, that’s a waste of lives.
stickler
Whoa. Krista, really?
Nicole Kidman is a natural redhead? And she dyed her hair blonde? Why did I not know this before?
This world is a cruel, cruel place. A true vale of tears.
jake
[Sigh] It was a good spoof while it lasted.
demimondian
You know, if it were real spoof, it wouldn’t have accepted my apology for the typo.
JWW
Has the Enlish language changed,
I really must be missing sometihing! I thought that speech to text should be punctuated as such. Maybe if you had learned to read correctly it would not be an issue.. I have said many times in the past, read as if I were talking to you face. I don’t see the difficulty in doing so, that is unless nobody ever talks to you, and you receive all of you correspondence via written text.
Is the , a new punctuation point I should understand, or does it only pertain to your style of reading.
It is, as used by me, a moment of pause, so you may grasp the content of the previous word or words. I know you are slow and have a fondness of self-love, but give it a try. Let me speak to you, not write. For the simpler mind I will seperate each thought by writing individual sentences so you won’t be interrupted by strange marks on your screen.
Ted
This is good stuff.
If the troll is actually using a speech-to-text program (one that apparently doesn’t understand how to use context to correct grammar and spelling), it’s got to be the laziest troll alive. Jebus, was Dragon too expensive for you?
12across
I saw a recipe on the front page a while back, I love to cook so I thought I’d take an interlude to share what I threw together for the wife and I for dinner tonight. Oh and my BBQ will make a vegitarian eat pork again!
Pork Chops with Pomegranent glaze and mixed veggies with cheese sauce.
Note, I don’t measure as such, I taste as I cook and adjust, so don’t expect exactness
Dredge chops in flour, salt & pepper.
Heat a pan up with olive oil and fry until cooked.
While cooking season chops again with salt, pepper & nutmeg.
When the chops are cooked pull ’em out and set aside.
Add Pomegranent liquor and scrape the pan.
Add pomegranent juice, about the same amount as the the liqour.
Add miriam, once around the pan and sugar.
Reduce to a glaze.
Glaze will thicken more if you turn off the heat and let it set too.
Steam veggies. While Veggies are steaming, heat a non-stick pan and make a rue (butter and flour in equal parts), add milk, then shreaded cheese and melt, keep adding cheese until sauce tastes..like, um…cheese! and is thick enough
Serve: put a chop and veggies on a plate and spoon the pomegranent glaze over the chops and cheese sauce over the veggie.
Have a nice white wine with the meal!
12across
So…you are saying that things got out of hand and now things have calmed down giving the Iraqi’s time to get their new democracy off the ground. Wouldn’t that mean, the surge, is…working?
you are contradicting yourself here my friend.
Jess
Long live Dada!
Phillip J. Birmingham
Jess: Long live Dada!
I’m goin’ ta DizKneeLand!
I’m also going to try and make Black Death Ale this weekend, if my sisters clear out early enough after my son’s fourth birthday party. The recipe:
* 6 pounds Briess Pilsen dried malt extract
* 3 pounds Trader Joe’s mesquite honey
* 0.5 pound 40 L crystal malt
* 0.5 pound chocolate malt
* 1 ounce Columbus pellet hops (13.5% α, 60 min)
* .5 ounce Cascade pellet hops (5.9% α, 15 min)
* .5 ounce Cascade pellet hops (5.9% α, 15 min steep)
* Safale US 05 ale yeast
Projected OG 1.077, 46.3 IBU
I may dial down the hops a bit and go with Safbrew T-58 for a more Trappist style of ale.
Randolph Fritz
I saw Golden Compass. I think it’s a film where the vision outstrippped the scriptwriter. Pacing was rotten–I actually checked my watch a few times during. The original has lost quite a bit of its edge and its ethical complexity. On the other hand, my god the design! The whole Girl Genius look of the technology (with a few more borrowings from the Air Force Academy chapel and Nazi architecture). And the choice of particle system dynamics to represent Dust was inspired. The witches were cool and sexy. So far, I don’t think the fundies have anything to worry about, though; the Magisterium of the movie is obviously evil, and so far it is hard to see that the books’s version of the story is a sharp rebuke of religious authoritarianism, on the one hand, and spiritual pride on the other.
jon
12across said, “Well things have just started to settle down there, now the Iraqi parliment can start to do their thing without having to worry about being killed.”
I respond with, “That’s why their parliament decided to take the rest of the year off, go home, and come back at some undetermined time to do all this important work. And by all, I mean all of the important work: the disposition of oil revenues, fill all the positions, finalize rules, look like they are serious, and so on. The Iraqi Parliament is a fucking joke, and anyone who thinks otherwise needs an examination. It is not going to do a damn thing until it has to, so it’s a bunch of tribal assholes taking coffee breaks because it has Bush (and our military, GOP, and every single taxpayer or future taxpayer in our country) by the shorthairs. ‘Their thing,’ as 12across puts it, has already been done for a long while now: take breaks, don’t show up, don’t do anything, don’t risk compromise, accept check, go home. I have no faith in the Iraqi parliament and see no reason for a revelation.”
jake
No sweetheart, EnGlish has been fairly stable for quite some time so there’s plenty of time to learn it.
Bwa.Ha.Ha.Ha.Ha. Except for the talking to you face part: {Shriek}
Svensker
Well, glad to see that “as long as it takes” means you get to stay home and think up recipes for pomegranate pork chops. The folks out doing the “as long as it takes” thing for your pork-fed self aren’t so lucky. But, hey, somebody’s gotta sacrifice, right?
tBone
When you post vague comments like this, it would aid our understanding if you could blockquote whoever it is you’re responding to.
If it’s one of the voices in your head, feel free to transcribe what he/she is saying. I think we’d all it find it interesting.
demimondian
No. I am saying that things got even more out of hand, and are still out of hand. I am saying that the things which were out of hand before are *still* out of hand, and that the claim that they are “better” is total nonsense.
Jay C
incontrolados:
Your post yesterday prodded me to do some googling to see how much (if any) press Sec’y Rice’s recent African visit has (or hasn’t gotten. Amazingly (well, not amazing, sadly): your three links -which I noticed were all non-American sources – were IT.
Save for a very oblique mention in the NYT yesterday.
I’m not surprised, really: having egged on Ethiopia to get involved in its own mini-Vietnam next door, then seen the whole thing degenerate into the bloody circular clusterfuck typical of the Horn of Africa, it’s not surprising that US offcialdom would want to back-burner “developments” there. As long as there’s no Glorious Victory Over the Forces Of Eeeevil to trumpet, Somalia will stay well off the front pages; Condi Rice’s well-wishes notwithstanding.
Too bad for the folks that live there, of course: but then, they’re only Somalis. Tough.
grumpy realist
Whee. This thread, between our crossword-puzzle afificonado, and JWW, sounds like a Derrida meth-head on acid.
(Although not as coherent.)
Sigh. I miss Fafblog and the Medium Lobster.
Gus
Wow the quality of trolls here has really taken a dive. This 12across is the stupidest yet. As long as it takes? WTF does that mean? As long as it takes to do what?
BCT
I’ve never brewed a batch with that high a gravity. I was usually an all grain brewer and that type of beer would be a nightmare. Are you doing a secondary fermentation in a glass carboy? My beer got a lot better when I started doing that.
chopper
hey, he’s busy coming up with ways of cooking something that muslims refuse to eat. so when the dhimmocrats finally take the white house and hoist the white flag and hand over the reins to osama, he’ll be doing his part by offending the hell out of our new islamist overlords.
honestly. compared to losing your leg from an IED, he’s doing the real heavy lifting. you know how many seeds are in a pomegranate? what a mess!
BIRDZILLA
The GOLDEN COMPASS looks like another big time antichrietian anticonservative box office flop it looks like this holiday season wont be a very happy one for the hollywood left AND THATS GOOD SQUAWK SQUAWK