i just had a good warfish turn….nothing like a good warfish turn to bolster your mood. i must say, ben’s civil war map has always treated me well. the way i word that makes me feel like i’m talking about some vegas game. which brings me to the next natural point: why don’t me and all my friends make warfish games interesting by betting money on games? how would that change everything? i mean, “ranked games” translate easily into “skins games”. the whole medal system? jesus. I’ll let ben read this before i go shooting my mouth off. a very interesting proposition though, i would say.

on to more immediate things! coming home with a complete beer recipe and all your hardware cleaned is awesome. you walk in the door after finishing work, and turn on the burner, since you left your clean pot with 3 gallons of water on the stove with the lid on. that was a nice little treat. the carboy even has about 2.5 gallons of water that has been sitting capped up and wrapped in a towel outside in the concrete alcove. you clever bastard!

so some other quick tips that you think were clever and awesome while you were brewing. get the pot stirring in a good vortex while adding all the malt, then lean the end of the spoon on the edge of the pot and barley dip the tip of the spoon in about 2/3 of the way to the edge of the pot from the center, in the foam that comes from adding all that sugar all at once. it spins for about a minute, keeping it from boiling over. more tests needed, though.

pinning the grain and hop bag down in the pot by pushing in the middle of the bag with the spoon, then using the strings on the straining bag to tie the other end of the spoon to the pot handles, keeping the bag in the boil, without pinning it to the bottom of the pot. it does force you to untie the spoon to stir the pot up though, which will happen more often than you think. more tests needed.

simple chemistry hit me upside the head during this brew as well. although i hope to not be using liquid malt extract too far into the near future, there’s no reason while i’m using it now not to get it as hot as possible in the pan of warm water without melting the plastic, so that it won’t pull so much heat from the wort when i add it. i’m not sure how far to push the whole plastic melting thing on my own right now. more tests needed.

i feel like i should be doing this with every batch i brew (making sure i always remember to wash my hands when going from computer to beer). online blog journal thing, in my corner of the internet, why the hell not. ben, is there a reason there’s not a brewing link on the friv mainpage?

you know, when i think about it, is there a reason we aren’t somehow collaborating to make Friv Brew? create the beer to match our sensibilities? goods god, there’s a tag-line right there “the beer to match your sensibilities”. copyright friv enterprises!

my head is swimming with ideas. i’ll admit i’m tipsy, but an idea of this caliber probably wouldn’t have popped up otherwise, and dammit, this feels big. i’ll let my head simmer while i wait for ben to read this.

but that’s just the one-liner to open some dialog of thought. some statement of intent, a scientific paper summation of some ideas hashed out. jesus, whatever, just spit it out, ditch the flowery language and cut to the chase.

it’s not a matter of dumbing it down, but a rearrangement of terms, of taking ideas you are familiar with and expressing them differently, where you have to be able to boil it down into something that actually makes sense when you try and explain it. put it into words, dummy. isn’t this the measure of a clever man? the ability to take ideas that are so central to life and putting them into words?

so there it is! this is why language is incomplete and feels like it can only express a fraction of what is actually felt. it’s there to be explored, to be expanded on. it’s not set in stone, it’s waiting to be discovered, waiting to be expressed.

luckily, real estate is cheap these days, in terms of raw idea expression. i’m typing free words into a free formatter, leading to a free website (thanks, ben.) where people are free to choose to read this and respond however they choose, as long as it doesn’t involve physically harming me. this corner of the internet isn’t checked very often, but it doesn’t mean i’m anonymous, just ignorable, congrats!

you think too much.

i was walking up to a bar a few nights ago to meet some friends, and a random black man on his way to do something threw up a pound which i returned. he smiled, shook his head and said “man, you too tight.” surprisingly, my natural reaction lined up with the one i feel like i would have dreamed up in an idealized situation. all i did to make myself so proud was to say super-earnestly “you are so right.”, then spend half a week reflecting on it.

go soak in your privileged white-boy pain, sucka. you deserve it. why? why not?

there’s this thin line in reality. having a sense of humor is a good start in blurring that line, but that’s only part of it. what difference does it make if you nail it down? it’ll be in the same area nailed or not. you too tight. caught, so caught! what else can i do?

i’ll tell you what! embrace your foibles, be what you know deep down what you are, an idealized version of yourself. that person exerting flawless control of oneself, building a mystery. so true Sarah, so true. ideas expressed lyrically…

sweet jesus enough, your words are failing you, THIRD PERSON RYAN.

go back to your corner, do something constructive, or just shut up.

fine! maybe I will! pbbbtttttttttttttt!