Your Daily Dose (Maintain Safe Distance From Screen)

Hangar One spiced pear vodka + chipotle vodka in 1:1 proportions is weird.

It is cinnamon spicy and then the pepper burn becomes apparent as the cinnamon fades.

Awesome, tasty, but weird.  In the aftermath of Wednesday's experiment, my tongue may not be up for this challenge.

But I just got my minion quite loaded for his 21st birthday before sending him on his merry way to further celebration.

That's right, I have a minion.  Truly, the student is now the master.

On Tuesday he asked me what he should do for his 21st.  I gave an evil smile and he immediately declared that what ever suggestion I had was going to be good.

I grabbed one of my business cards, wrote the following message, and paperclip'd a $10 bill to the back on the back to my favorite Evil Bloody Genius at St. George Spirits:

"It's his 21st birthday.  Attack him, kindly, and leave him in good enough condition for the wenches.  -Phil (the red haired madman)"

Sadly, none of his friends seemed to be interested in driving to a goddamn distillery!!!  What is wrong with college students these days?  I declared this to be unacceptable, took off from work early and took him to St. George for a more than complete tasting.

I set him loose staggering on College Avenue to go get a keg for his party.  I think I have just become part of his college experience.

Moo hoo ha ha.  Minions.

I have just created a new alcoholic beverage.  I am tentatively calling it the Alcoholic Lemon Cooler though better names may apply.  The preparation as I did it:

In a half pint glass with four ice cubes.

100mL of Real Lemon lemonade using the recipe on the side of the bottle using C&H raw cane sugar crystals
40mL of Hangar One Buddha's Hand vodka
80mL of Caravallo limoncello
Dash of St. Germain elderflower liquor

Stir vigorously and serve to the woman you love after tasting it to make sure its not poison.

It is left to the student* to complete this preparation.  It should be intuitively obvious**...a trivial exercise even***...

Let me know what you think of it.

*: I apologize to all science majors for writing that.
**: I apologize even more for that.  Couldn't resist.  It might be the 250 mL dewar flask full of Manhattan that made me do it.
***: I can't help myself.  Please stop me before I start reading Mary Boas' "Mathematical Methods of Physics" for more terrible question set phraseology.

But two Manhattans and an 100mL Ultra 7-Up+ have made me want to find a cobbler.  Not a shoe fixin' dude, but someone to make shoes custom fit for me.  Shoes that will fit my bizzare mutant asymmetrical wide feet.  I want fine boots made for me that are actually comfortable.  If anyone would like to nominate themselves as birthday shoe fairy, I will volunteer my feet for fitting (I'm required to remain attached to my feet in a living condition).  Hell, I'll settle for a reference to someone within a 500 mile radius of Livermore that will actually make shoes from scratch.

Internets...I set you to your task.

I just picked up the Twin Peaks gold box, which is what dredges the story up from the depths of memory.

Mark the Science Electrician, Patty the Cargo Mistress, and I tried to organize a Lynch-A-Thon over the course of several weekends during the summer.  This didn't work out well since the only day off during the summer is Sunday and people generally decided to devote that to drinking (or the recovery from).  Understandably, it ended up being just the three of us in the Summer Camp Smoking Lounge.

Oh the poor smokers of Pole.  They only had two indoor places to hide and both are gone now.  The new elevated station is decidedly non-smoking.  There had been plans for a smoking lounge but they were changed.  If you want a smoke now, it's out into the wastes for you.

I really can't do justice to the windowless, thick point sharpie marker graffiti'd, place where furniture came to die that this was.  Every time you sat down, you were enveloped in a fog of ash and cigaratte funk.  The only thing you could ever find left in the bar was a bottle of Jack Daniels but there were never any shot glasses.  The profane scribbles on the wall spoke to a heritage of five decades of drunken, surly construction workers and Navy enlisted men.  Once upon a time, it had been the Last Chance Saloon, its facade somehow constructed from crates.  Truly, it was heaven second only to Club 90 South.  I long to be seated behind the bar there with my feet propped up on the cooler still....

A little after 3am, after the the last of my victims passed out or staggered home, I packed away my portable bar and the three of us went over to the smoking lounge to watch the pilot of Twin Peaks which had just arrived in the mail for Mark.  He had shipped his complete VHS set to himself two months before leaving for Pole, making a total transit time of four months before it came off the plane in Antarctica.  After finishing the pilot, I dug into my portable bar and brought out the bottle of Hapsburg absinthe that had been smuggled to me from New Zealand by the pilots.  I figured that the green fairy was the only way to cope with Senor Lynch after nearly a decade without watching the show.  Mark and Patty agreed. 

After a glass each, we figured what the hell, we can watch the next two and it'll be time for breakfast.

After four episodes, and a few more glasses, we decided that alcohol metabolized to sugar just like all other food which meant, basically, that we were having breakfast already.  (I do not claim that this was good reasoning)

Eventually, we had watched it all including 'Fire Walk With Me', had drank an entire bottle of absinthe between the three of us, and hadn't eaten in 24 hours nor slept in 48.  We were, understandably, a little bit loopy when we finally emerged into the never-ending daylight glare of Antarctic summer.  When I turned around to look back at he entrance of the smoking lounge, door still open, it seemed an inviting gateway to infinite darkness.

That was when we decided to rename it The Black Lodge.  Shame they tore it town 4 years ago.  Probably still in trash boxes waiting to be shipped out.

I went to the St. George Distillery's release party for their second batch of absinthe, which they made on my birthday last year.  See here for photo documentation.

I just feel it necessary to show the new booze and a sampling of the new Scientific Drinking (TM) apparati now gracing my kitchen.  Behold!



The 2L separatory funnel (in the background behind the three bottles of absinthe) puts any conventional cocktail shaker to shame.  I invite you to seek elonwy_h and wookieluvin for testimonials about this fully operational glassware battlestation's effect on unsuspecting livers.

Also, a close up of the label for you:


Finally, all alcohol is improved by consuming it from an Erlenmeyer flask; I have them available in sizes from 20mL to 4L.  50mL of absinthe, 20mL are already gone.



Happy Friday.

Once upon a time, there was a nuclear reactor in England that was air cooled like a '60s Volkswagen Beetle.  It worked about as well as the average 60s Beetle too.  It was called Windscale and its fuel and graphite moderator caught on fire.  Who'd have thunk it, that graphite being pure carbon would burn...amazing!  After this happened, England was told to not drink milk for a good long while.  In order to get vital calcium and vitamins to children a "delicious", "healthy" drink called Ribena was created.  People still drink it today for some reason.  I find it only slightly less palatable than Manishevitz.  A couple of days ago, they finally demolished the reactor, long since renamed Sellafield to help with the public relations problems.

But, in celebration of the demolition, I came up with a drink and consumed it so that YOU DON'T HAVE TO, just like the benchilada eats the collective culinary errors of Asia.  Much like Jesus died for your sins, I created two variants of a drink I call "The Windscale" and drank it for you.  I recommend consuming neither of them.

Windscale Reactor One:
    Equal parts Ribena and gin
    Stir, chill, and serve.

VERDICT = Revolting

Windscale Reactor Two:
    Two parts Ribena
    One part green chartreuse (for that concerning plutonium solution look)
    Shake in a tumbler with ice and serve.

VERDICT = Stomping on a week old body probably makes liquids this color...possibly this flavor.

I was not willing to waste precious absinthe to create a Windscale Reactor Three after the results of the previous two.  The remaining Ribena has gone down the drain.

For the northern hemisphere, it is Midsummer's Eve.  Break out the maypole and frolick thusly.

To the denizens of the South Pole, this is Midwinter.  Every day from here on out is one closer to daybreak...which is still three months away...and a flight out.  There is still more darkness yet to go, more booze yet to drink, a further depravity left to sink into, but at least the goal is within sight.

Raise a glass to the Frozen Chosen walking the downward spiral of Toast.  Truly, Polies are mutants not meant for mass production.