10. Sun King - Dragon's Delight Belgian Style Golden Ale

“Dragon’s Delight is a legendary Belgian-style ale formed over the flames of the golden dragon, with grain raided from the Drundag Ridge, and hops foraged from the Askrean Plains. Hoard this glorious golden ale while this dragon sleeps.”

This is the beer that Sun King brewed especially for the 2017 edition of Gen Con, and it’s all right. I guess. It’s bready and almost sweet, which is maybe supposed to disguise its high alcohol content—but it’s not my thing. Browsing the interwebs tells me the alcohol is 7.3%, but that’s either wrong, or my system metabolizes this brew in such a way that I don’t feel it. Not even a little. Maybe if I drank more than one at a time, but I didn’t like it enough to drink more than one—and it’s a limited edition, so I guess we’ll never know.

Deep Thoughts #149d

They can forestall embarrassment next time by voting less like uninformed retards and more like humanoids who stop to think before they act.

Deep Thoughts #149c

They own this racist old white man. The world would be a better place if they had not voted. Hopefully they all use effective birth control.

Deep Thoughts #149b

To paraphrase George Carlin, “Fuck [them] in the asshole with a big rubber dick. And then break it off and beat [them] with the rest of it.”

Deep Thoughts #149a

The people of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin are embarrassed? Their aggregate 77,744-vote margin gave us a fake President. Fuck them.

8. Daredevil Brewing Co. (Indianapolis, IN) - Lift Off

“A bounty of American hops deliver the signature clean and crisp finish of a perfectly balanced West Coast style IPA.”

Aggressively hopped and punchy, like a spicy grapefruit wearing boxing gloves. I’m beginning to realize that it’s probably not a good idea to day drink this one if you still have things to do later. Sixteen ounces at 7.2%…yeah, you do the math. This is an aggressive and lovely West Coast IPA that would go toe to toe with Sun King’s Osiris. On the other hand, it’s exactly what it is, and nothing more. The finish is a little too bitter for my taste, and that bitterness tends to linger; but the citrus and spice up front are pretty good. A very good beer, but one at a time is probably enough. (Which for me is, indeed, damning with faint praise.)

Fifth Grade

Much more timely than last year, here is the fifth grade gallery. It's finally starting to look like we actually feed him. (Which we do. Seriously, nearly every day. Please don't report us.)

2012 - Kindergarten

2013 - First Grade

2014 - Second Grade

2015 - Third Grade

2016 - Fourth Grade

2017 - Fifth Grade

7. Daredevil Brewing Co. (Indianapolis, IN) - Slipstream Pale Ale

“An exotic blend of hops provide a blast of flavor and break away aromas in a golden ale built for maximum momentum.”

Nice balance and strong hops, but more refreshing than aggressive. Feels to me like it might be a bit heavier than the 5.5% they advertise on the can. Approachable and uncomplicated, this is another one that would be good to talk about, if perhaps not quite as much as the One Night in Bangkok at Cannon Ball.

6. Cannon Ball - One Night in Bangkok

NUVO posted a list of 10 Indiana beers you should drink this summer, and this was the one that caught my eye—not least because I knew that Erin Kem is the chef at Cannon Ball. Before that, she was the sous chef at R Bistro. If that name doesn’t ring a bell, it should. R Bistro was the first important local and independent restaurant in Indianapolis. Long before words like locavore and foodie were fashionable, Regina Mehallick was dishing up a new menu every week at the far end of Mass Ave. She ran that show for fifteen years before closing the restaurant in early 2016, but she had been easing herself away from the day-to-day grind of the business for some time before the restaurant closed. That’s a long way around saying that the chef at Cannon Ball today was previously, in all but name, the executive chef at what was arguably the greatest restaurant to ever open its doors in Indianapolis.

So after our last brewery get-together fell through, I suggested Cannon Ball for the next one. To my surprise, everyone agreed. I did a ride-by on my bike a few days beforehand, to see if it was workable; and since I found that it was, I arrived ahead of the group and wrote for a little bit while working on my first beer—the aforementioned One Night in Bangkok, which is a golden ale with Thai basil and ginger. It’s a light, easy-drinking ale with very subtle notes of Thai basil and ginger. Reminds me a little of how subtle the flavors are in the brews at Black Circle. If the words basil and ginger weren’t in the description, you might be hard pressed to guess that they were there. I missed the ginger in the first beer, (during which I might have been a bit off from a 20-minute bike ride in the heat and humidity) but picked it up on my second. Just a hair lighter than I prefer, but eminently drinkable and very fine for conversation.

Oh…and did you want to know about the food? The only thing I tried, apart from a bite of the potato salad that came with Dione’s sandwich after she threw in the towel, were the deviled egg tacos, which I had been lusting after since I first looked the place up and read the menu. And I just want to stop you right there. You’re either in or you’re out. Nothing I can say is going to change your mind. You’ve got deviled egg, beets, and beet greens salsa verde all piled on—wait for it—a beet tortilla. You get a little sweet in the deviled egg and beets, and a little savory in the cumin and chile in the salsa verde, and just…you know…holy crap. You can’t even believe it until you taste it, because it takes everything you thought you understood about the concept of a taco, and subverts it. It even made me slip into second person for a minute there.

Deep Thoughts #148

Fake President Donald Trump is a piece of shit. Jeff Sessions does the right thing and recuses himself, and that’s unfair? Fuck you, Donald.

5. Black Acre Brewing Company - Saucy Intruder Rye India Pale Ale

“American style IPA with large amounts of rye malt & Falconer’s Flight hops, creating bold notes of citrus and & earthy spiciness.”

The large amounts of rye malt are very evident in the dry, almost bitter, finish; but the strong citrus notes in the Falconer’s Flight hops bring it almost into balance. They probably want it to be a little bitter so you recognize that earthy spiciness. Or I just like to make fun. Who can say? I’m not really making fun—at least, not of the beer. Sometimes the descriptions get a little precious, though, don’t you think? My reading and research into beer has not yet yielded hints as to what makes rye malt so freaking delicious, but I hope one day to find out. The only con to this one is the high alcohol (7.2%). I don’t enjoy a hard buzz anymore, and that’s sort of what I’m feeling after drinking two of these. Then again, I haven’t eaten anything today, either, so.

Deep Thoughts #147

If Melania Trump wants to end social media bullying, she should start by telling the ignorant liar she married to shut his fucking pie-hole.

3. New Belgium Brewing Company - Citradelic Exotic Lime Ale

“A crisp, refreshing golden ale bursting with juicy Persian lime, freshly ground coriander and a hint of cracked black pepper.”

Aren’t we ambitious? I’m not too proud to say that the hint of cracked black pepper escaped me, but I did taste the lime and the coriander. “Crisp” in this case tasted more to me like “dry to the point of being bitter,” though not necessarily in an off-putting way. This one just didn’t work for me. (If I had two or three on a hot day while mowing the grass, that might be another story.)

2. 3 Floyds Brewing Co. (Munster, IN) - Zombie Dust Pale Ale

“This intensely hopped and gushing undead pale ale will be one’s only respite after the zombie apocalypse. Created with our marvelous friends in the comic industry.”

I’ve never been bowled over by 3 Floyds, but as a collector I appreciate scarcity—so I was always going to covet Zombie Dust until I had the chance to try some. The “intensely hopped” part is entirely accurate, but it’s Citra hop, so there is less bitterness and the illusion of balance. That’s not balance, though; it’s the moderate alcohol (6.2%) kicking your ass. Entirely enjoyable, but I’m sorry 3 Floyds, I’m just not that into you. It’s me, not you. Okay? Can we still be friends?

1. Urban Artifact (Cincinnati, OH) - Phrenology Wild Style IPA (Batch #5 March 2017)

“An IPA with the wild yeast Brettanomyces can be drank young or old.”

And then below the tagline is a timeline indicating that the beer will be hoppier right after it was brewed in March, becoming funkier as it gets older. March, of course, was three months ago, and there is, indeed, some of that funk beginning to develop. The foamy head lingers after the pour, and the first taste is all Brett, with a dry, hoppy finish. Oddly drinkable for a dry, high alcohol (7.3%) IPA.

Beer Run

So a few of us from the old juke joint went out to Big Lug Canteen a few weeks ago for the third stop on our local brewery tour, and we were joined by the lovely and beguiling Shane White, who has a whole blog devoted to his quest to quaff one thousand different malted grain and hops concoctions. We discussed the pros and cons of pouring into a mug versus drinking from the container, whether said mugs should be frosted or not, and the quality of the brews they’re tapping at Black Circle. Alas, Shane and I did not agree on much—except that Black Acre’s Cherry Ol’ Fritz is freaking awesome—but that’s okay, because lively debate is good for the soul. Plus, sharing one’s experiences with the metastasizing phenomenon that is craft beer can, I think, lead to only one thing—discovering and enjoying more fine craft beer.

Naturally, I decided to steal Shane’s idea, but with a couple of differences. (Those of you who remember Vanilla Ice explaining how the bass line in “Ice Ice Baby” differed from the bass line in “Under Pressure” because of a single one-eighth note will likely see where I am coming from with this argument.) I’m not shooting for a thousand, and I’m not making a whole new blog. See how different it is? So yeah, I’m stealing Shane’s idea. And I’m going to post pictures of beer I poured into frosted mugs.

Deep Thoughts #146

Does anyone happen to know the odds of randomly stumbling across a reference to the musical group Limbomaniacs while browsing the interwebs?

Deep Thoughts #145

So according to Paul Ryan, if you’re ignorant and unqualified, it’s okay to commit a federal crime. What the fuck is wrong with Republicans?

Deep Thoughts #144

How long will it be before Mike Pence starts to feel like one of the musicians on the Titanic who kept right on playing while the ship sank?

There Are 10 Kinds of People in the World: Those Who Understand Binary, and Those Who Do Not

Jackson is ten years old today. That's really all I have. I don't have the strength for anything else.

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

Deep Thoughts #143

Supporting Herr Trump is enough reason to bash someone, but the carnival scrambler that is Scott Baio keeps talking and giving us even more!

Deep Thoughts #142

Someone should conduct a study so that we can prove empirically that Scott Baio’s brain was more addled than Erin Moran’s this past weekend.

Deep Thoughts #141

Republicans do not believe in government, yet ask you to vote for them to work in…government. Can these monkeys please fucking die, already?

Deep Thoughts #140

I got to thinking this one should be more meta than deep; but since this is all there is to it, maybe neither of those qualifiers qualifies.

Deep Thoughts #139

To Mike Pence: Take your pretentious “Christian first” shit and go back to Columbus where you fucking belong, you cocaine-haired misogynist.

And Even Another Way is, He Was Thrown Out of a Window, by Marsellus, Because of You.

I don't regret supporting Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. Like most folks, I never really believed that a half-melted Cabbage Patch doll* could win the presidency; but I also had a hard time believing that a real liberal like Bernie Sanders could drive more than his wing of the Democratic party to the polls. I don't think the lesson of hindsight is that Bernie should have gotten the nomination; I think the lesson of hindsight is that we should have recognized the danger of Trump's insurgency and done more to shore up support for Clinton in the Rust Belt states that turned the election for the Nazi dumpster fire - Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

Still...every now and then...I guess you can't help but wonder...

"I"ll never hold what could've been...on a cold...and lone-LEE NIGHT!"

(You know you belted the part from the end of the song. So did I.)

Whence this bizarre outpouring of affection for Senator Bernie Sanders? Heather included a link to the following tweet of his in a comment to one of my previous posts:

*—I love you, Sadie Stein!

More Inauguration Photos of the National Mall

One is from Reuters, and I don't remember where I got the other one. It was on a flash drive I use for collecting evidence against the evil empire at the old juke joint. If I've breached someone's copyright, go fuck yourself. (If you're a Republican and you voted for the Nazi in the Oval Office. If you are otherwise, just give me a shout out, and I'll fix it.) Posting as many pictures as I can find of the difference in crowd size at the two inaugurations isn't going to accomplish anything; I am well aware of that.

Uncredited, due to journalistic ineptitude of blog author.

Reuters

But I don't know if I am going to survive the next four years. I haven't been able to think of how to affect this disaster in a positive way. I wrote in a previous post about how I was on the fence as to whether apoplectic rage or constructive criticism was the appropriate response to a Cheeto-hued despot (which description I first saw on the unofficial Twitter account for Badlands National Park, but which has since been removed), and I am leaning toward constructive criticism - though I don't believe either one is going to have much impact. If a Senate committee can endorse the nomination of Betsy DeVos, possibly the most ridiculous upright speech-capable organism with opposable thumbs ever to be nominated for a Cabinet-level position, then I mean what the fucking fuck?

Grizzlies? Really?

Fake President Donald Trump is a Fucking Liar

There were more people on the National Mall to watch the inauguration in 2009 than there were in 2017. People who claim otherwise, including the illegitimate Nazi currently occupying the White House in direct contravention of the will of the people of the United States, as well as the mental furball he appointed as Press Secretary, are liars. Even Fox News posted a story confirming that Trump had lied. (They didn't say he lied, or call him a liar, or post the widely-shared comparison photo - but they're spineless weasels who think Sean Hannity is a good idea. What can you do?)

The New York Times, a real journalism operation, actually posted two shots of each inauguration, as well as an illustration of the areas on the mall with the highest concentrations of people. They hedge just a touch by noting that it was cloudy for the inauguration of the dumpster fire, a condition that would impede a more empirical illustration of the difference in crowd size.

But give that one a second. It was sunny for the inauguration of Barack Obama and cloudy for the inauguration of his illegitimate and unwanted successor. Even the weather knows this fucking turd is a bad idea.

What follows are some of the versions of this photo that I have so far collected.

The Guardian

New York Times

The original National Parks Service tweet that made the unwanted President want to cry.

Deep Thoughts #138

Meet the dishonorable retard Lamar Alexander, the latest Retardlican to be confirmed by his verbal diarrhea as a dumbfuck piece of ringworm.

CUBS WIN! CUBS WIN! CUBS WIN!

On November 2, 2016, the Chicago Cubs won the World Series for the first since 1908. Six days later, a Nazi dumpster fire was elected President of the United States. Many of the teams that win sports championships are invited to the White House to meet the President, and I began to worry that the Cubs would not be invited to Washington until after President Obama had left office and the Nazi dumpster fire had taken over. I can't even imagine how disappointing it would have been for the Cubs if they had been forced to shake hands with a shit stain like Don Führer, after having accomplished something as momentous as winning their first World Series in 108 years.

As luck would have it, though, they were invited to Washington this past Monday, and they got to shake hands with the greatest President in my lifetime, Mr. Barack Obama - who also happens to be from Chicago; and President Obama, of course, delivered some thoughtful and eloquent remarks on this historic occasion. We will miss President Obama and his strong leadership and poetic words, but I am so happy that this World Series championship in particular (as good as the Cubs are right now, it probably won't be 108 more years before another one) came while President Obama was still in office.

Or Skip the Amendment Process Altogether

I still haven't made up my mind as to the best course of action to protest the abortion of reason that took place on November 8, 2016. Sometimes I just want to vent my spleen in the most vulgar way possible, partly because I know there is no fixing this. The people who voted for Donald Trump are like repeat-offender child molesters: there is simply no way to correct what is wrong with these knuckle-draggers. Michael Shannon is absolutely right when he says, "[I]f you're voting for Trump, it's time for the urn."

Other times, I think it makes sense to be stoic and roll with the punches. After all, this country has survived cartoonish goofballs in a lot of big offices - Ah-nold (a sexual predator like Trump) did two terms as the governor of the most important state in the Union, and it survived; Ronald Reagan was a puppet who did more to drive the rich and poor apart than any other President in history, and yet the country abides; Jesse "The Body" Ventura served a term as governor of Minnesota, and yet that state still had the good sense to send Al Franken to the Senate; George W. Bush destroyed the Supreme Court by replacing Sandra Day O'Connor with Samuel Alito, and yet that very same court voted to uphold the Affordable Care Act.

Twice.

And, of course, don't forget the most cartoonish of them all, the Lipstick Pig herself, former governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, a talking bobblehead.

In a column for the New York Times, writer Roxane Gay, who is both brilliant and crass, and, therefore, beloved by me, put it very simply when she wrote, "The world will not end because of a Trump presidency."

I can't even sit back and hope that Donald Trump dies, because then Mike Pence would be President; and I'm not sure he would be any better than the Nazi dumpster fire. (Oops, there went my spleen for just a second.) He looks and sounds more reasonable than Donald Trump, but that's sort of like saying Ayman al-Zawahiri is less bad than Osama bin Laden by dint of the fact that he's a doctor. (Damnit. Spleen again.)

See where this is going? Remember how Dr. Jekyll couldn't stop turning into Mr. Hyde by the end of the story?

BUT WAIT A MINUTE! Stay with me. Stay with me.

Instead of petitioning your elected officials to support the Barbara Boxer bill to abolish the Electoral College, petition your local elected officials to pass a National Popular Vote bill that would bypass the sclerotic joke of an institution that Congress has become and guarantee that the winner of the popular vote would also win the Electoral College. The bill's website, linked above, has seen a huge surge in traffic and support since November 8th - and will only get more popular once the Nazi dumpster fire takes office and starts fucking the country in the ass. (Spleen. You can't stop it. You can only hope to contain it.)

And after all, it's only four years, right? The Retardlicans will get torched in the 2018 midterms, and there will be open speculation about running Mike Pence against the Drumpf in the primary. If the midterms go really well for the Democrats, you may even see the Warren/Booker ticket start to take shape a mere two years from now. And then in 2020, the Democrats win back nearly everything, including both houses of Congress. The icing on the cake, of course, will be the 2020 census, and the opportunity to re-draw the congressional districts. The Supreme Court obviously wasn't enough of a reason to get more Democrats to the polls this year. Hopefully they will do a better job of understanding the big picture issues four years from now.

In the meantime, this Dude abides; but I reserve the right to vent my spleen at the slightest provocation, or even for no good reason at all. (Also the right to move to Guatemala if things get really bad.)

Support a Bill to Abolish the Electoral College

There is no immediate remedy to the electoral miscarriage that occurred on Tuesday, November 8, 2016, a day that I suspect will live in infamy in the annals of the history of this (now much more rapidly) fading republic. For the second time in five elections, a Democrat won the popular vote and will be prevented from becoming President of the United States by the results in the Electoral College; and for the second time in four elections, the American people were tragically misled about the Democratic nominee—by the T. Boone Pickens-backed Vietnam-era Swift Boat lies about John Kerry in 2004, and by the gross distortions concerning Hillary Clinton’s private email server in 2016.

It is long past time to abolish the antiquated Electoral College and move to direct popular election of the President and Vice President. Senator Barbara Boxer of California has introduced a bill to do just that. There will be tremendous opposition to this bill, and it will almost certainly be voted down, if it even comes up for a vote. The full Senate, currently led by impotent jackass Mitch McConnell, is likely to do nothing more than glare in Boxer’s general direction while watching her bill wither on the vine. There would have to be an astonishing groundswell of popular support for the bill to even get a hearing in committee.

But anything is possible. Donald Trump is a Nazi, and his election is a repudiation of every single value to which the idea of the United States of America has ever aspired. Write to your elected officials and urge them to support this important bill. Nothing can be done to prevent an unfit psychopath from becoming the leader of the free world on January 20, 2017; but by passing this bill and amending the United States Constitution, we can almost certainly ensure that it will never happen again.

The Wisdom of the Trumpskyite #1

The guv’ment cain’t take mah guns away, and they cain’t make me get no health care, but they gotta get me a job. I deserve it as a Amer’can!

Deep Thoughts #137

When you register as Republican now, do you get a fitted sheet and hood, or is it one-size-fits-all, like your plastic mesh John Deere caps?

Deep Thoughts #136

The Drumpf will get about 70 million votes. If we offer those fuckers the Gulf States, could they please move down there and fucking secede?

Deep Thoughts #135

If you “think” either Benghazi or emails are relevant, you are not only immune to facts and reason, you’re also a sexist fucking misogynist.

Deep Thoughts #134

If you asked me whether Americans were more ignorant about Hillary Clinton or the Affordable Care Act, I’m not sure what my answer would be.

Deep Thoughts #133

Remember debtors’ prison? We should have an intellectual version in Siberia, and ship the sexist anti-Hillary Clinton dullards there to die.

Deep Thoughts #132

People as mentally deficient as the mort at 0:54 in this video should not be allowed to vote. He also needs lessons on how not to be sexist.

Deep Thoughts #131

You have been misinformed about Hillary Clinton, but you have time for some remedial learning before the election. Read this, or don’t vote.

Deep Thoughts #130

To the people who call Hillary Clinton a liar but then turn around and support Donald Trump: How do you fucking retards not shit yourselves?

Deep Thoughts #129

Hillary Clinton is one of the most qualified Presidential candidates ever. If you don’t recognize this, you are ignorant; please don’t vote.

Fourth Grade

And so hot on the heels of the timely birthday sequence, here is the equally timely first-day-of-school sequence.

2012 - Kindergarten

2013 - First Grade

2014 - Second Grade

2015 - Third Grade

2016 - Fourth Grade

The Back Nine of Little and Cute

We went to Cedar Point and Cuyahoga Valley National Park last month, and on the travel day between the national park and the amusement park, we wound up watching the 1998 version of The Parent Trap in our hotel room. When Meredith (Elaine Hendrix), the gold-digging wife-to-be of Nick (Dennis Quaid) first appeared on-screen, Jackson sort of perked up and said, "She is h-o-t!" Which, of course, is when you know it's over. He has also recently starting talking about posting Minecraft tutorials on the internet. He actually used the word "tutorials." I may have been in college the first time I heard that word.

So anyway, this is way late, but here's the birthday picture rundown for 2016. Jackson is nine years old, and he just started fourth grade.

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

Deep Thoughts #128

The Senate can’t even confirm a Librarian of Congress in a timely fashion? Mitch McConnell has to be the most useless person alive on earth.

Another National Park

Before this year, I had been to three national parks in my life: Grand Canyon (twice), Mammoth Cave (twice), and Mount Rainier. (Those are the ones that I can recall having been to, anyway. It's possible that we got one or two more during family vacations when I was a kid.) So far this year, we have been to five national parks, increasing my total by 167%. We hit Yosemite, Sequoia, Kings Canyon, and Joshua Tree on our pilgrimage to see a moose back in March. Today, we got back from a trip that was originally just supposed to be an outing to Cedar Point, but which happily turned into a mini-vacation that netted us another national park, due to my misinterpreting when Amy would want to leave for Cedar Point. That misinterpretation meant that I had to ask for an extra vacation day from the old juke joint - and the extra day meant that we got the chance to spend most of this past Thursday wandering around Cuyahoga Valley National Park, which is in northeast Ohio, between Cleveland and Akron.

Once again, I'm going to lead with just one photo of Jackson, and hope that this inspires me to write some more about this park, and to post more pictures of our little boy while he can still be considered a "little boy." I don't know what constitutes an official "growth spurt," but he's in the throes of something that's going to have him on the threshold of adolescence before long. He's really into Minecraft these days, and he spends more time than I would like for him to spend watching Minecraft videos on the magic internets. Tonight, he showed me something he was building in the game, and he said that it was for his Minecraft "tutorials." Not so long ago, this was a little person who was incapable of speech and who could not feed himself. Now he's developing tutorials for Minecraft - with plans to post them on the internet, of course. Darwin help me. This picture is of Jackson contemplating Brandywine Falls, at Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

Why are we here?
Because we're here.
Roll the bones.

A Pilgrimage to See A Moose

When I was 9, we took a three-week family vacation by car - and when I say "by car," what I really mean is in a mid-1970s Buick LeSabre - to California, mostly to visit my uncle in San Francisco, but also so my parents could take me and my brother to Disneyland. They're not big Disney people, and we were never the kind of family who went out and did things only because other families were doing those same things and we wanted to fit in; but there was some kind of bugaboo buried somewhere in their collective psyche that told them they should probably take us to one of the Disney parks at least once while we were kids, just to have done it, so we would know what it was like, how much less satisfying it is than roughly any other amusement park anywhere on (Spaceship, natch) Earth. (Okay, I threw that last part in. They felt like it was something they should do as parents. I thought it was unsatisfying, at least in terms of the rides.)

And yes, we drove. Not because getting there is half the fun, as Clark W. Griswold would have said, but probably because it would have been much more expensive to fly. We camped overnight, in a Coleman pop-up camper, in places like Gothenburg, Nebraska; somewhere in Wyoming; and Winnemucca, Nevada, before arriving in San Francisco and staying with my uncle, who would have been 30 or 31 at the time. Being a tech person, he had a number of fancy gadgets in his apartment, and one of them was a laserdisc player. Remember laserdiscs? Same technology as a CD, but the size of a vinyl record album, and they played movies. So what did my MIT-educated uncle elect to play on laserdisc for his impressionable 7- and 9-year-old nephews?

National Lampoon's Vacation.

And we, much to my mother's chagrin, devoured it. We watched it over and over again, and we aped the lines; and for whatever reason, the pimp-daddy's reply to Clark's request for help getting back on the interstate, "Hey, fuck yo mama!", was the one we latched onto and aped the most. I have since maintained a deep and abiding love for that film, and the whole point of this digression is that, because of all of the fond memories I have wrapped up in the concept of National Lampoon's Vacation, I have come to think of any trip to California, from some place far enough afield as the Griswolds would have traveled in the film (Chicago, in point of fact - which is close enough to Indianapolis for government work), as a trip to Walley World.

We have recently returned from just such a trip.

We did not go to Disneyland. Amy took Jackson to Florida to visit her grandfather last year during spring break, and while they were there, they went to Disney World. That might just get me off the hook for Disney parks. Our trip this year was for the purpose of seeing friends and family, and visiting national parks. We started in Sacramento, ended in San Bernardino, visited five relatives and one of Amy's friends from college, and made it to four national parks - Yosemite, Sequoia, Kings Canyon, and Joshua Tree (and collected what I am roughly estimating as around a gajillion dead bugs on the front end of the car I rented when we landed in Sacramento).

I wanted to include more than one picture in this post, but - surprise! - it took me way longer to write the post than I had imagined it would. So for now there is only one picture. However, we have about a thousand pictures to go through, and I have a lot more to ramble on about, so there will be more posts about the trip. And more pictures. (No, really. There will be. Pictures of Jackson, too.)

So for starters, here's a picture that contains Jackson way down in front in the foreground, and Half Dome, one of the impressive granite landmarks at Yosemite National Park, way up at the top in the background.

Deep Thoughts #127

So let’s see…some lying monkeys make fake entrapment videos, mouth-breathing Retardlicans fall for it (again!), monkeys get indicted. Weird.

The Peddies vs. The Facebooks

So my brother, bless his heart, refuses to engage with Facebook, which is where my wife would have attempted to post the video shown below - attempted, because the original was close to 1GB. (I don't know if that would have worked or not, because - wait for it - I refuse to engage with Facebook!) The Blogger website just laughed at me when I tried to post it. I had to crop it quite a bit to get it under the 100MB Blogger limit - so Jess, if this is simply unwatchable, let me know, and I'll put the original on a flash drive and bring it with me on the Walley World trip.

Deep Thoughts #126

All of feminism doesn’t fail just because you couldn’t get all the letters in misandry into the adorable gewgaw mansplaining, right Rebecca?

Little Drummer Boy

Jackson at the Rhythm Discovery Center: "Mommy, do you want me to go into crazy mode now?"

Deep Thoughts #125

So did the President call the San Bernardino attacks terrorism in exactly the correct and proper way this time—or is this the next Benghazi?