"How could Oklahoma botch an execution? If there’s one thing I would expect Americans to know how to do by now, it’s kill somebody.”" - From @TheTweetOfGod

...A Modest Proposal (apologies to Jonathan Swift)...Oklahoma has again highlighted the moral bankruptcy of the so-called "Bible Belt" by torturing to death inmate Clayton ("Botched It") Lockett, who mumbled and writhed on his gurney for 45 minutes before dying of a massive heart attack rather than by the lethal injection that was supposed to murder him...referring to Lockett’s vein, Oklahoma's director of corrections Robert Patton said “the line had blown”...so here's my proposal for Oklahoma, Texas, Virginia and other leading State death merchants -- send your executioners to Saudi Arabia for some on-the-ground training in how to stone people to death or for beheading lessons - both arguably more humane and effective...

...Or they could take lessons from Texas....The Lone Star State of Execution was enthusiastically looking forward to its next killing, scheduled a mere two weeks after Oklahoma murdered Lockett...Governor Rick ("Scary") Perry proudly noted on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that “I’m confident that the way that the executions are taken care of in the state of Texas are [sic] appropriate”...David Dow, a law professor at the University of Houston, had a more succinct assessment: “I think Texas probably does it as well as Iran”...
                    

 They do kind of look alike!

...enough hypocrisy to go all around, and around...new National Basketball Association Commissioner Adam Silver ("Bullet") promptly banned Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald ("Not Very") Sterling from the league for life for racist comments he made to his girlfriend, one V. ("Vamp") Stiviano...Sterling was recorded ordering her to stop hanging around black people...the ironies are endless...Sterling is 80 and white with a fake last name...he tries to hide his age by putting so much artificial coloring on his hair that he looks top-heavy and and tries to hide his ethnicity by legally changing his real last name from Tokowitz to something conspicuously Anglo-sounding but with no family connection whatsoever...Stiviano is 31, part African-American (yep - we didn't make that up!), with no known first name (maybe her Sugar Daddy could come up with a white-sounding one for her), and zero identifiable credentials other than the obvious, who has been prostrating herself (literally and figuratively) to a racist old fool for years...according to a lawsuit brought by Sterling's wife against Stiviano, "V." has received a Ferrari, two Bentleys, and a Range Rover from good ol' Don, not to mention another $2 million or so in cool cash for "services rendered" (wink wink)...the NBA for its part is now puffing out its chest with righteousness despite having tolerated and enabled this guy for over 30 years...and all the NBA players are suddenly parading their new-found moral indignation but were more than willing to continue playing their kids' games for creeps like Sterling so they could collect their obscene salaries without interruption and have raised not a single peep about Sterling's sexism or other owners' gay-baiting actions...as John Mellencamp might say, ain't that America!...

Sterling and his Vamp:
"This girl is half his age" (well, not quite)

....speaking of leadership, and the lack thereof...President Obama has hit a new low in approval ratings as even his supporters are thoroughly disappointed by his actions and non-actions...Deporter-in-Chief, spy agency defender, drone cheerleader, drug law defender, foreign policy double-talk and failures...New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd on April 30 contrasted the President's lack of leadership to the NBA Commissioner's strong action: "You should take a lesson from Adam Silver, a nerdy technocrat who, in his first big encounter with a crazed tyrant, managed to make the job of N.B.A. commissioner seem much more powerful than that of President of the United States..."...Ouch!...but true...

Sterling Silver

"Uh...do you have...uh...another bullet for...uh...Assad?"

...the "Christian way of life," Southern style (I)...after winning an election pledging to “defend our Christian way of life,” Representative Vance ("Fancypants") McAllister (Hypocrite-LA) figured he should spread a little love among his staff...but he didn't figure on getting caught on videotape passionately kissing a married aide while leaving a tryst with her...the aide's husband said "I loved my wife so much...He has wrecked my life”...in response, McAllister took a page from the playbooks of fellow "family values" Republicans Sen. David ("I like prostitutes") Vitter and Sen. John (“put your pants on and go home”) Ensign, and Gov. Chris ("fire the women and call them stupid") Christie and forced the staff aide to resign while declaring that he has no intention of doing so himself...touchingly, though, he promised to come clean with his wife...another real "family values" Republican...

...the "Christian way of life," Southern style (II)...Georgia Governor Nathan ("Straight") Deal has signed legislation that allows anyone to carry guns anywhere, including into church...just in case any stray Roman soldiers get any  funny ideas about the good old days...we're sure Jesus feels relieved...

...Patriot Wars...Mr. Cliven ("Hoof") Bundy, a rancher in Nevada, would like you to know some Patriot-style truths about them people he calls "Negroes"...“I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro...because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do? They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves"...what Mr. Bundy doesn't want you to know is that he is an expert on government subsidies because he has poached his cattle on government land for years and refused to pay published land-use fees, and now owes the government (i.e., me and all other taxpayers) over $1 Million...two Senators and the Texas Attorney General fell all over themselves praising his American character...and now Sen. Rand ("Pathetic") Paul (Racist-KY) and Dean ("Ain't he a") Heller (R-NV) are tripping all over themselves backpedaling from Bundy's moronic, racist comments... for Paul at least, this is curious, since he previously has expressed his belief that discrimination against blacks should be legal and the Civil Rights legislation should never have been enacted...

               

Some of Mr. Bundy's supporters

...time to drown our thoughts of all these creeps...so this month we'll go with Blue Moon Belgium Wheat beer...now on tap at the Gaelic Nation...
- the Brewmeister -

SEAMUS HEANEY AND HIS LEGACY

...I spent last week in Belfast week at the Seamus Heaney Conference and Commemoration hosted by Queen's University's Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry...Belfast.2014.4 is a fascinating, accessible city growing in confidence and optimism about its future but still struggling with its legacy and how to best deal with it...when Sharon and I first drove through Belfast in 1994 it was an ominous, scary place that we could not get out of fast enough...while things may not yet have "changed, changed utterly" in Yeats' term, the positive changes brought about by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement are quite dramatic...we could walk anywhere night or day without fear of danger...most of the pubs are now wholly integrated religiously, gender-wise, and in all other respects...there is an abundance of delectable restaurants of infinite variety (though they still close too early)...and the city has a definite "vibe" to it..

Queen's University - Langford Hall

Queen's University courtyard

Belfast City Hall (West front)

City Hall - interior rotunda

                               

       

Silver cross in St. Ann's Cathedral

          

  

Street mural in West Belfast

...Seamus Heaney, the Nobel Laureatte who died last year, is revered as a universal figure, perhaps the only one, in Ireland...Digging is perhaps his best-known poem but others are of equal power, such as The Tollund Man, Death of a Naturalist, Follower, Mid-Term Break, Station Island, The Otter, Requiem for the Croppies, or Postscript...in a keynote lecture the noted literary critic Peter McDonald spent an hour and a half deconstructing a single poem, The Harvest Bow, which I had never read or heard of...when asked later what I thought of McDonald's presentation, I responded that I left the lecture thinking The Harvest Bow was the greatest poem Heaney ever wrote...

...one afternoon we embarked on a tour into the Derry countryside to visit Heaney's home townland, Ballaghy...Heaney was raised on a farm and wrote often about his family and the farm and the strong values it gave him...

    Under my window, a clean rasping sound   

    When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:   
    My father, digging. I look down...
...
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.
    ...
   Between my finger and my thumb
   The squat pen rests.
   I’ll dig with it.

Sculpture of turf digger - Heaney museum, Bellaghy, Co. Derry

...Heaney was sometimes criticized, alternately and inconsistently, for not directly condemning (take your pick) either a) the British security apparatus or b) the IRA, yet anyone who made the effort to read his poetry would know that he wrote movingly and effectively about the impact his country's difficulties had on him as a Catholic from rural County Derry who attended Queens University...Seamus' best friend, collaborator, and friendly competitor was the Protestant poet Michael Longley, who described their friendship as that of an "agnostic Catholic" and an "atheistic Protestant"...I was privileged to meet Heaney once and can attest to his special aura, his reassuring presence of being, his universal appeal as a person as much as a poet...

Seamus and Marie Heaney, 2007

...I am also fortunate enough to have become friends with Michael and Edna Longley, a leading literary critic in her own right who helped organize the conference...Edna and Michael have been extremely kind and encouraging to me in welcoming me into their wonderful literary world, often over several pints of Guinness, which both of them also love...

                               

                                              Michael Longley

Edna Longley

                                         

..the collective psyche of Belfast is still strongly influenced by the so-called "Troubles" of the recent past and the people are still purging their emotions and real pain from that era...I went to the Lyric Theater to see Quietly, a new play by playwright Owen McCafferty which focuses on two middle-aged men - a Catholic and a Protestant - who reluctantly meet in a bar to try to come to terms with their violent past...a difficult, hard, but excellent performance which ended with the audience virtually exploding out of their seats in applause and catharsis...only one other time have I experienced such emotion at the end of a performance, when the first act of Riverdance concluded during its premier run in Radio City Music Hall...  
                                      

...I must add that a highlight of the visit was the cask-conditioned Irish ale Scullions sampled in the iconic Crown Bar and Liquor Saloon...a real treat for your Brewmeister's taste buds...since this delectable is not available anywhere outside the Crown, my recommendation for April is Alewerks American Ale...so grab yourself a copies of one or two of Seamus' poems and your favorite brew (or other libation of choice) and raise a glass to the poets in all of us...

[Please note: all photographs by Peter Kissel; all rights reserved]

- the Brewmeister -

"I'M NOT REALLY LOOKING FORWARD TO BEING 77 AND BEING OUT THERE DIRECTING CADDYSHACK XII"
- Harold Ramis

...Sadly for the rest of us, he got his wish...we are indeed sad to bid too-soon a farewell and a happy eternity to Harold Ramis, one of the funniest, most talented and influential comedy writers ever  to tickle your funny bone who died at age 69 of autoimmune deficiency...Harold arguably made more people laugh than anyone else...I first became aware of him in "Ghostbusters" where he played the absurdly nerdy super-brain Dr. Egon Spengler alongside Bill Murray...but far more than his acting Ramis was the genius behind many of the most memorable comedies of the '70s and '80s, including the classic "Ground Hog Day" which is worth watching over...and over...and over...he was also credited with writing "Animal House," "Caddyshack," "Analyze This," and "Stripes," all of which are considered classics of a progressive comedy genre that suffuses an underlying social message with sophmoric humor that makes its audience think as well as guffaw...Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote that Caddyshack “tears the lid off the apparently placid life at a WASPy country club to expose bigotry, ignorance, lust and a common tendency to cheat on the golf course”...Ramis himself said “comedy is inherently subversive, we attack the winners”...so what's the career path for a comedy writer like Harold Ramis?...as a kid, Harold loved TV so much that he would get up early and stare at the blank screen until the kids' shows started (yes, there was a time some of us can remember when TV was not programmed 24 hours a day!! -- though others of us stared at the blank screen after it went off at 1 AM)...he then went on to work in a psychiatric ward and as a comedy writer for Playboy before joining SCTV and Saturday Night Live...to this day I actually start laughing whenever I see a picture of him...I'm sure Harold would appreciate that I even chuckled upon seeing his picture in his obituary...yes, he was that funny...

Bill Murray, Dan Akroyd, and Harol Ramis in "Ghostbusters"
Credit: Columbia Pictures

...From Berlin (1936) to Moscow (2014) with love...inspired by Hitler's taking the Sudetenland shortly after hosting the Olympics, Russian "President" Vlad ("the Invader") Putin took over the Ukrainian region of Crimea last week...the parallels to 1930s Germany are deeper and more frightening than has been acknowledged...consider: that in 1932-33 Hitler seized power via a crooked and secret dirty deal in defiance of elections, and in 2012 Putin returned to power in an irregular, highly questionable election...that in 1936 a clueless and corrupt International Olympic Committee awarded the Olympics to a bully dictator under the false pretense that it would encourage him to behave more responsibly, and in 2014 a clueless and corrupt IOC once again awarded the Olympics to a bully dictator under a similar pretense...that in the 1936 Olympics Jewish athletes were prohibited from performing, and in the 2014 Olympics gay athletes were prohibited from even showing their faces...that shortly after the 1936 Olympics Hitler brazenly invaded the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia and claimed it for the Fatherland while the West bowed and scraped, after which 97% (imagine that!) of the population voted for their conquerors...and immediately after the 2014 Olympics Putin brazenly invaded Crimea and claimed it for the Motherland while the West fiddled and fumbled and fretted while watching helplessly, after which - in a truly amazing historical coincidence -- 97% of the population voted for their conquerors (you can't make this stuff up)...of course the West's hands are far from clean, with the US having actively cheered and enabled an unconstitutional revolt that chased the democratically elected Ukraine President Victor ("Victor") Yanukovych from his country, and England saying and doing absolutely nothing so as to not upset its own filthy and corrupt financial collaboration with Putin's Russian tycoon buddies and other interests...all of which demonstrates once again, as in Lebanon, that the US and its allies are all in favor of democracy only as long as it elects people we like...with "friends" like us, God help the Tatars and other decent freedom-loving Crimeans...

Vlad in his KGB finest:
"Would I look better with a little mustache?"

...Let them eat cake, or nothing...for a little decadent palace humor, Yanukovych's over-the-top palace has to be seen to be believed, so cut and paste this video link into your browser and check out the personal golf course, the spooky fake cat curled up on a carpet, and the gold-outfitted bidet...makes Marie Antoinette look humble by comparison...
http://www.nytimes.com/video/world/europe/100000002732759/inside-the-museum-of-corruption.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20140225...  
...good thing he wasn't toting his standard-issue AK-47...next time you put your hard-earned money into a vending machine and it gives you nothing in return, who ya gonna call?...I suggest Robert McKevitt of Milford, Iowa...McKevitt, an army veteran of Kosovo and Afghanistan, was working his shift as a forklift operator at Polaris Industries when he decided to grab a snack from the company vending machine, so he deposited $1 and pulled the lever for a Twix candy bar...that's when things got interesting...the candy bar got snagged on a hook and wouldn't fall so Resourceful Robert hopped on his forklift, picked up the uncooperative machine and dropped it onto the concrete floor just like anyone would do...three candy bars fell out but just as he was scooping up his treat, McKevitt's boss happened by..."That machine was trouble," McKevitt said after he had lost his job, his unemployment benefits, his girlfriend, custody of their child, and his home...pretty pricey candy bar...

Robert McKevitt: "Where's my forkin' lift!!"

...Man's best friend, indeed...our canine story of the month comes from California's Gold Rush country...while out walking their pooch in 'them thar hills,' John and Mary spotted an old rusty can sticking up out of the ground...since it was closed tight on both ends they took it home and pried it open...imagine their surprise when out popped America's version of Spanish doubloons - $20 Liberty Double Eagle gold coins from the San Francisco mint dated from 1847 to 1894...the lucky couple eventually recovered eight cans of loot containing over 1400 coins, many in mint condition, worth up to $10 million...they said they'd keep a few coins and sell the rest and use the proceeds to help those in need...no word on what their dog's reward was but we're thinking John and Mary could afford to spring for a nice juicy T-bone steak...maybe now Fido can locate those missing Bitcoins!...http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/05/22/technology/22JIF/22JIF-custom1.gif... 

That oughtta buy some nice steaks!

...What!!!  How DARE they spy on ME!!...Senator Diane ("I Am") Feinstein (D-LaLa Land) wins this month's award for double-talk and good old-fashioned phony posturing...Feinstein, who's vain obsession with coloring her hair brown well past the age of consent has long since made her look ridiculous, has blasted the CIA for actually having the gall to spy, snoop and steal from the Senator's own Intelligence Committee files and computers...what makes the Senator's sudden outburst ring very hollow is that she has long been one of the CIA's and NASA's biggest cheerleaders -- as long as they were only spying on ordinary citizens like the rest of us peons...but as Maureen Dowd wrote in the New York Times, "It was an astonishing 'J’accuse' moment because Feinstein has been the bulwark protecting the intelligence community against critics worried that we’ve become a surveillance state, 'the privacy people,' as she has called them. But she saw things differently when she was the victim of government spying"...we can only surmise that she was afraid they found her stash of Clairol AgeDefy...

Senator Di: "Don't you understand,
spying could make my hair turn its natural grey!"

 ...The sun also rises...This month we found a delicious new brew on tap in Newport, Ireland: Clew Bay Sunrise, a golden ale from Mayo's new local brewery in Islandeady...so hop on over to Mayo and quaff a fresh pint...and if you can't make it there, toast the first day of Spring anyway!....

- the Brewmeister -

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHARON!

...(today is the day and I just had to get that in)...

...how about some good news...(since you won't hear about it in the mainstream media)...it was announced today that the International Commission of Verification of Ceasefire in the Basque County has verified that the resistance group ETA has put a significant portion of their arms beyond use, and the Verification Committee considers this an important step toward complete disarmament...the effort toward a peaceful resolution of the conflict started in 2010 and has drawn heavily from participants in the Irish peace process for guidance...it remains to be seen how the Spanish and French governments react to the latest development but progress continues on the ground and we applaud these efforts...
....the Beatles were right (and so was Marcus Garvey)...two new studies have concluded that some present-day humans share the DNA of Neanderthals, according to a report in the Washington Post...although the last of the Neanderthals died out 30,000 years ago, genes taken from the toe of a 130,000-year-old female found in a Siberian cave (presumably she was dead) match those found in the skin and hair of East Asians and Europeans...but not in indigenous Africans, proving that only whites and Asians interbred with the cavemen, as touchingly suggested by the 1953 movie promo below...

"I'm a Neanderthal boy,
You're a Neanderthal girl..."

...and this proves it...more evidence confirming that the cave man walks amongst us was uncovered immediately after President Obama's State of the Union Address, when the appropriately-named Congressman Mike Grimm (Neanderthal-Staten Island) told a TV reporter in the hallowed halls of our Capitol building "I"ll throw you off this f---ing balcony" and then to be sure his statesman-like message was not misunderstood, told the reporter "I'll break you in half, like a boy"...if anyone still wonders how our country has become such a mess, it's because low-lifes like Mr. Grimm are making our policy...now that's scary...

Congressman Grimm: 
I'd like to apologize to all
my ancestors for talking
like a Homo Sapien.

...government blankets Atlanta with fake snow...well, this being loony-bin America, that's what some Southern crackers think anyway...the internet is ablaze with conspiracy theories about how our pesky government ginned up the massive (one inch/three centimeter) snowfall in Atlanta (one inch being massive in the minds of Southerners and conspiracists)...
http://mentalfloss.com/article/54845/snow-down-south-fake-say-conspiracy-theorists...probably the same gang that shot JFK, made up climate change, invented Darwin, sent black helicopters to spy on us, and inserted listening devices in my teeth... 
..."Roll over Beethoven and tell Tschaikowsky the news"...from Japan comes the strange story of Mamoru Samuragochi, renowned composer who has evoked comparisons to Ludwig von Beethoven because of his brilliance and his deafness...except...he didn't write the works he claimed credit for...and...he's not even deaf...good grief!...it emerged last week that a part-time lecturer at a music school in Tokyo, Takashi Niigaki, 43, has ghost-written symphonies for Samuragochi for twenty years for cold hard cash...a few days after this shocking news, the proverbial stuff really hit the fan when Niigaki also told reporters that he had many conversations with Samuragochi over the years and the fake composer is definitely not deaf...

Mamoru Samuragoch: 

More like Chuck Berry than Beethoven

...Better than WebMD - NOT!...so I got on the elevator today with a work colleague and she mentioned she had a slight cold when we both noticed the other guy on the elevator was staring with a weird, creepy look...now my colleague is a pretty young blond and I figured this other guy was just leering awkwardly but then he bursts out with "the way to prevent colds is an ice bath" -- real serious like...and as Blondie and I are grappling with how to respond to that without laughing he further offers that just one ice bath at the beginning of winter will prevent colds all year...about then the elevator opens and we all walk outside and the pocket doctor immediately lights up a cigarette...so  let's see...we're supposed to take medical advice from a smoker...yea, and now I gotta find a politician to teach me ethics...
...Who knew?...not to be outdone by Elevator Guy, John Sutton of Berekely Springs, West Virginia, in a letter to the Morgan Messenger, informs us that Democrats, Republicans, Tea Partiers, Socialists and yes, even Commies can now unite on an issue - to Impeach Obama!...the reason for this consensus is "because Obama has given himself the right to disband Congress"...but why didn't we know this?..."this has not been widely publicized because our controlled 'mainstream' media would rather keep it secret" and "if you don't believe it, look it up"...unfortunately, Dear John did not tell us just exactly where we can look up this terrifying revelation...
...Speaking of space cadets...our senior correspondent Murph reports that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has announced a public forum to provide a status on the agency's asteroid initiative...issues to be addressed include (we are not making this up) "Update on Asteroid Redirect Mission studies" and "Asteroid Grand Challenge engagement opportunities"...left unclear is whether the Asteroid Grand Challenge is a quiz game or a golf tournament on your local asteroid...and we don't even want to guess at what the Asteroid Redirect Mission involves...

...in closing...I believe that if Gov. Christie, Rep. Grimm, the Atlanta Fake Snowmen, Mr. Samuragochi, and Mr. Sutton would all just chill out with a Pete's Brew-recommended frosty, they might take themselves a little less seriously and actually have some fun...and this month that would be with a cold Great Lakes Brewery Irish Red Ale...

- the Brewmeister -

"TIME FOR SOME TRAFFIC PROBLEMS IN FORT LEE" 
-- New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's deputy chief of staff Bridget Anne Kelly in an email to the Port Authority of New York

...they all misbehaved but only the woman is ''stupid"...here we go again...Republican Governor Chris ("Chris") Christie is mired in a scandal surrounding his top aides intentionally causing massive traffic jams on the George Washington Bridge...for four days in September, Christie's top staff conspired with his appointments to the Port Authority of New York to close two access lanes to the bridge in Fort Lee, NJ, resulting in gridlock of, well, "Christie-an" proportions...the scheme was political payback to a local Democratic mayor who declined to endorse Christie for the Governor's race...in declaring that he was "shocked shocked" at the behavior of his long-time buddies, the Gov fired or forced out four of his cronies, three of them of the male persuasion and one woman...guess which one Christie singled out at his press conference as "stupid"...yep, that would be Bridget Anne Kelly, the lone female culprit...David Wildstein, Bill Baroni and Bill Stepien were bad boys, but are not considered "stupid" even though their actions were no different from Ms. Kelly's...but the Gov is concerned only about his own angst - he expressed not one word of remorse for the thousands of workday commuters who lost pay, or sick people whom medical emergency personnel could not reach on time (at least one elderly woman died of cardiac arrest after her trip to a hospital was delayed), or schoolchildren who were delayed on their first four days of school...a Republican strategist described Christie's press conference as "a troubling excess of first person singular"...meanwhile, Christie's ex-favorite rock star has weighed in with his take on the situation...http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/16/nyregion/christie-and-springsteen-a-tale-of-devotion-and-a-very-public-snub.html?nl=nyregion&emc=edit_ur_20140116...
...sorry honey, but if I'm going down, you're going with me...Virginia Governor Robert ("I am not a crook") McDonnell and his darling ex-Redskins cheerleader wifey, Maureen, have been indicted by a federal grand jury on 14 counts of fraud, misuse of office, and generally just being jerks...in the latest update, the Washington Post reports today that McDonnell was offered a deal by prosecutors that would have included no charges against his beloved wife...apparently loving husband Robert decided that "for better or for worse" has its limits...he rejected the deal... 
...let them eat cake...first up on Congress' agenda is extension of unemployment benefits...this issue, along with immigration reform, offers our Republican legislators another opportunity to make life even more miserable for the most vulnerable members of society...scrambling to show their new-found compassion, Republicans have said they will extend benefits for the jobless if if if...equivalent cuts are made elsewhere -- but not to their rich boys' favorite toys like deductions for yachts, etc...so let's do the math...unemployment benefits have been re-authorized over twenty times under Democratic President Bill Clinton (White-Ark.) and Republican President George W. Bush (White-Tx.) without such conditions but now something is different?...oh yea, that's right, we have a Black President...trust me, that explains a lot...
...Cheney Family Values...in ending her campaign for the Senate in Wyoming, Liz Cheney (there is no word or phrase to adequately capture the vile nature of this person), self-anointed daughter of former Vice President Dick ("head") Cheney, couldn't stop herself from departing with a lie, claiming her withdrawal was due to family health concerns...even the Wyoming Republican establishment had to cover its collective mouth to keep from laughing at that one...on the way to crashing and burning, dear daughter Liz carpetbagged her way to Wyoming from her longtime home in Virginia while shamelessly claiming to be a Washington "outsider", lied about her residency and her sporting interest to secure a Wyoming fishing license, torched her own sister Mary by suddenly condemning gay marriages, blew up her own family in the process, and pissed off virtually every Republican in the State by attacking a very popular conservative Senator Mike Enzi...“It was just one thing after another,” one top Wyoming Republican said diplomatically, “Given all the political expertise in that family, she made a lot of rookie mistakes”...we can't wait to see what drama the Cheney family brings us next...

Liz to sister Mary: "Can I drag you 
out from the bus I threw you under?  
But not your Partner."

...only in America...in another sign of the United States' wonderful diversity, it is fitting that New York Yankee slugger/doper Alex Rodriguez ("A-Dumb-Rod") has been suspended for the entire 2014 season for unnaturally enhancing his body...this completes a trifecta in that the three most notorious baseball cheaters in history are a white guy (Roger Clemens), a black guy (Barry Bonds) and a Hispanic...we are truly the land of equal opportunity cheating (and lying)...
...Compass dogs?...in our continuing coverage of the amazing qualities of man's best friend, Nature World News reports that another team of academic researchers has discovered that canines relieve themselves in alignment with the earth's magnetic fields...
http://www.frontiersinzoology.com/content/pdf/1742-9994-10-80.pdf...
http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/5516/20140103/dogs-relieve-themselves-in-alignment-with-earths-magnetic-field.htm...Specifically, after watching dogs pee 5,582 times (for a typical mutt this represents about half a day's activity) and crap 1,893 times (who volunteers for such observation duty?), the researchers concluded that "Dogs preferred to excrete with the body being aligned along the North–South axis under calm Magnetic Field conditions"...this dramatic finding is expected to greatly improve lives for humans around the globe...for example, I put these findings to immediate effect just the other night...it was bitterly cold (zero degrees Fahrenheit) when it was time to let our main dog Sammy out to pee before going to bed...being a typical dog, Sammy just stood there, completely baffled, looking at me as if I were insane to go out in such weather...so applying the findings of the Nottingham project, I studied the sky, checked the astronomical charts, and carefully oriented Sammy on a North-South magnetic polar axis (while quickly yanking my hand out of the way), and he promptly lifted his leg on our favorite shrub, "did his business," and ran back to the house...Brilliant!!...

Sammy when the magnetic field is out of balance.

...Importantly, work in this field of study continues...the referenced report assures the scientific community that “Indications of different directional tendencies depending on which leg (left or right) is lifted are currently under study”...(and I am not making this up)...

...since it is now very cold and icy here in DC, I will close with my recommendation for a nice hot tea instead of the usual brew...Hah! not a chance...so I will gladly suggest that those looking for a nice winter brew sample Sam Adams Winter Lager...

- the Brewmeister -

GLAD TIDINGS OF GOOD CHEER...

...dogs love Christmas too...we've all heard that line many times but who really believed it...well our crack team of reporters has been investigating and we can now provide proof positive not only that it's true, but also the reason why our canine friends like the season of merriment...

...dreaming of a honkey Christmas....Faux News (Fox) blond bimbo anchor Megyn ("Megyn"-her own spelling) Kelly has set the record straight by assuring her audience that both Santa and Jesus are lily white...just sayin'...when challenged on such an irrelevant and myopic statement, Faux News doubled down by trotting out Bill ("O'Really?") O'Reilly, another open-minded Irish-American (NOT!), to rescue the poor little damsel Megyn...Faux never got around to explaining the supposed relevance of all this but their repeated claims of Jesus' alleged Nordic properties served to emphasize just how relevant skin color really is to people like Kelly and O'Reilly and their band of un-merry morons...but what can we expect from a person named Kelly who doesn't even know how to spell her own "Christian" name and names her newborn "Thatcher"...as they say, you can't make this stuff up...

"and I'm of North African descent - 

that's why Jesus looks just like me"

...fa-la-la-la-la la-la la-la...but away with those stooges...'tis the season to be jolly whether you're green or red, so in the true spirit I will share my favorite poem for this time of year...A Christmas Childhood was penned by Patrick Kavanagh, one of Ireland's greatest poets, and shows that even he was not the curmudgeon he is often portrayed as...herewith some of my favorite lines...

     One side of the potato-pits was white with frost -
     How wonderful that was, how wonderful!
     And when we put our ears to the paling-post
     The music that came out was magical.
     *   *   *
     My father played the melodion
     Outside at our gate:
     There were stars in the morning east
     And they danced to his music.
     *   *   *
     Outside in the cow-house my mother
     Made the music of milking;
     The light of her stable-lamp was a star
     And the frost of Bethlehem made it twinkle.

     A water-hen screeched in the bog;
     Mass-going feet
     Crunched the wafer-thin ice on the pot-holes,

     Somebody wistfully twisted the bellows wheel.

     *   *   *
     I nicked six nicks on the door-post
     With my penknife's big blade -

     There was a little one for cutting tobacco.

     And I was six Christmases of age.

...I tried to play the melodion but....this week your dear editor (not to be confused with Dear Leader) was kindly invited to give a presentation to an Irish literature reading group...the host invited me to bring along my melodion (Irish accordion) for entertainment...which turned out to be a humbling occasion reminding me how flawed and precarious we all are...as most of you know, I've been playing about 10 years now and have progressed to a point where I can play a number of tunes pretty decently...so I carefully chose my playing list, practiced ahead, carefully pulled out my instrument, explained the back story of my tunes, and started playing...and started playing again...and started playing again...and again...and again...and stumbled on and...in a word, I was horrible...so I have come up with a new and better use for my accordion....

...and finally the Brew of the Month... is Port City Brewing Company's "Tidings"...a very nicey-spicey ale just right for the holidays...but beware - this one carries a 7.8% alcohol content...

A HAPPY CHRISTMAS AND MERRY NEW YEAR TO ONE AND ALL!!

- the Brewmeister -

                        

DOGS RULE AND OTHER TAILS OF FOOLISHNESS

..."just the facts"...with the help of our Boston correspondent Kelly, Sammy the Shih Tzu was declared innocent of all charges on Nov. 1 by DC Superior Court Judge Wright...increasingly irritated by the Plaintiff's hedging, hawing, equivocating and flat-out lying as he dragged out the trial to a whole day, the Judge provided a cryptic history lesson to Plaintiff by recalling the old TV show Dragnet, where Sgt. Joe Friday would instruct witnesses to state "just the facts, ma'am, just the facts"...the highlight in a day of many highlights and lowlights was when the Plaintiff repeatedly asked Kelly "how do you give a dog a pill in a cheeseball"...to which she patiently deadpanned that you wrap the pill up in a ball of cheese and give it to him and - surprise! - the dog eats it...after many minutes of this nonsense, the Judge cut it off with the comment "I think I know how you give a dog a cheeseball"... or as the old joke goes, wrap the pill in cheese and toss it in the air...or go to
http://video.about.com/vetmedicine/How-to-Give-a-Dog-a-Pill.htm ...so ludicrous were the Plaintiff's questions to your editor that most of them ended with the Judge turning to me and saying "Don't answer that" or "You don't have to answer that"...in the end, the exasperated Judge summed up that the trial should have taken one hour at most but had lasted all afternoon, and ruled that rabies shots were completely unnecessary since Sammy was obviously vaccinated at all times...Sammy is now considering counter-suing for defamation of character...

                Sammy's Revenge

...Hizdizonner...What is it about North American Mayors?...we've had Kwame "(show-me-the-money") Brown thrown in jail in Detroit, Bob ("Filthy") Filner thrown out of office in San Diego, and now comes Rob ("the taxpayer") Ford in Toronto...we could go on about how he explained smoking crack by saying he was in "a drunken stupor" (oh, that explains it)...or how he knocked over a gray-haired councilwoman during a public meeting, or how he denied pressuring a female staff member for oral sex by saying that he got it at home, but we really think one picture of this guy says more than we ever could about how fit he is to run a major city...

 

...Say it ain't so, Joe...Vice President Joe Biden was so excited that Marty Walsh won the Boston mayoral primary that he rang him up to offer congratulations...trouble was, it was the wrong Marty Walsh...it seems that the name is legion in the Boston area...we hope the Veep eventually got the right guy...
...the Royal "we" - that explains everything...Sen. Rand Paul (Liar-KY), having been exposed of plaigerizing others' work at least three times, including in a book he published, has responded like - well, like a plaigerizing hypocrite...instead of "manning up", Paul is blaming his staff...“What we are going to do from here forward, if it will make people leave me the hell alone, is we’re going to do them like college papers,” he said...in case his attempt to shift blame from himself wasn't clear, he added that “we’ve never intended to deceive people, and we’ve made mistakes"...reminds me of what Tonto said when the Lone Ranger told him we're surrounded..."what you mean we, white man?"...      
...Oops!...expressing European outrage at the US Soviet-model spying network, Le Monde pitched up a rare English language headline saying "No You Can't", a caustic turn on President Obama's campaign slogan of "Yes We Can"...no word on whether the Paris newspaper is considering a retraction since it has now been revealed that the European governments, including specifically the Froggies, were in total cahoots with the US in gathering information on its own citizens...hey, what can we say, we Americans learned this stuff from you guys...

   

      US to Germany: "Hello Angela, how's your phone service?"

  ...it ogles the mind...in a shocking development, Faux News has reported that men actually "ogle" women's bodies...in a study that probably took all of two seconds due to the ready availability of willing and eager subjects, Dr. Sarah Gervals of the University of Nebraska fitted men with an eye-tracking system which measured how many milliseconds their eyes remained on a certain feature...milliseconds!???...incredibly, Dr. Sarah found that men look at women's bodies more than their faces, and in particular, "women with bigger breasts, narrower waists, and bigger hips prompted longer looks"...in a related development it is also reported than men's IQs drop more than 50 points while looking at women...

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/10/29/science-confirms-men-ogle-women/  (note from the site address that this ranks as "science" to Faux News)...

...if you ask me, they got off cheap...just read in the Irish Independent that a pub in Dublin charged some sucker $9.50 (€7.15) for a pint of beer...if one considers Coors to be a beer (it isn't)...the pub in question was the classic uber-touristy Oliver St. John Gogarty in Temple Bar...so there you have 1) the ultimate clueless American (who else would order a Coors?) 2) go into a faux pub 3) named after an upper crust Anglo 3) in the least-Irish part of Ireland and 4) order panther pis manufactured in Colorado...I say they didn't charge enough - there should have been an "idiot's surcharge"...

 

Eejit's Delight

...which brings us to our brew of the month...Old Jubilation Ale gets my nod for the upcoming holiday season...from Avery Brewery in Colorado, it has a fresh, clear taste, lighter than most ales, very crisp, with a nice finish...

 

...speaking of which - I think I'm finished, and it's time for a couple of REAL beers in a REAL pub that doesn't charge an Anglo's ransom...

 

- the Brewmeister -