Mike Davison here are my daughter’s and my moves for the joust:

1. daughter (Safira): base 5; FP 4; DC 3.

2. me (Dusana): base 4; FP 3; CP 3.

thanks!

Donn Beach’s Dr. Funk

names after Dr. Bernhard Funk, obviously, a man who had two dubious distinctions: of pronouncing Robert Louis Stevenson dead and of having his signature cocktail misquoted. This is the misquote:

3/4 oz. lime juice

1/2 oz. grenadine

1 tsp. absinthe

1 1/2 oz. light rum (misquoted again: I’m using Bacardi 8)

1 oz. soda

Combine all in shaker, save the soda. Shake well, then add soda and stir. Pour unstrained into pilsner glass and top with fresh ice.

The original is probably better but I don’t like anise if it gets too strong, so:

1 1/2 oz. absinthe

1/2 oz. grenadine

2 small limes

8 oz. soda water

Combine is a glass on the rocks. Consume to “restore self-respect and interest in one’s surroundings”.

this all from Doug Winship, who has more of the story:

http://www.killingtime.com/Pegu/2012/02/13/tiki-drink-dr-funk/

But if you really want to know about the redoubtable and loquacious Dr. Funk, you have to go over here:

http://www.tikiroom.com/tikicentral/bb/viewtopic.php?mode=viewtopic&topic=29020&forum=10&start=30

Chris Kutalik do you need more Cantons mixology? Or editing?

I guess we can take down that beware of the pelgrane sign.

Infusions of (l-r) rhubarb, galangal, thai basil, thyme, cilantro, in Everclear

Tasting notes:

all of them taste how you’d expect, like essence of the thing in question – I didn’t get any obvious weird taste deletions or whatever. All were diluted to about 30% ABV for tasting.

The rhubarb is pretty mild (I infused 2 batches of rhubarb in the same alcohol. For a bitters I might have to do 4 unless I come up with a trick to make it more intense). After 2 days of sitting the solids and weird egg yolky flavour of the rhubarb fall out and it’s clean and sour and delicious – would make a nice drink but isn’t really robust enough for mixing.

Galangal becomes a bit “hot” but is really really nice… again, maybe mild for mixing, but I have hopes of making a rhubarb/galangal “gin” or something.

Thai Basil is superb – a little anisey, mostly darkly herby. I could definitely see this being the basis for an alternative genepi/chartreuse type thing.

Thyme is also really nice and cut-grassy – interestingly complex back-of-the-mouth flavour, slightly bitter

Cilantro is the only one too strong to be drunk in this form and is more suited to use as a bitters inclusion – where I think it could be very nice in a martini.

None of these is going to replace my Chartreuse any time soon and I really have no idea how to go about mixing. I do understand why liqueur manufacturers load their products with sugar – they have to make something that’s appealing to drink right out of the bottle. My goal is slightly different: I don’t need them to be nice on their own, I need them to make nice mixes. I have no idea how to make amaros but it seems to me there could be some mileage there.

Any advice/suggestions?

Received an LSD tea party invitation this morning.

“I thought those days were behind me.”

Turns out the abbreviation was for my kids’ after-school activities and stood for three quite different words.

Originally shared by Steampunk Tendencies

Steampunk Bike by Jeff Ylagan

Magic item: Glitchy Shield

This jousting shield of uncertain heraldry is cursed with poor collision detection – it will only defend against attack rolls that yield odd numbers.

It is prized chiefly as a climbing aid – if you bash it repeatedly against a wall, on 1 on a d6 it will get stuck half-in and half-out of it, making a handy platform. The shield can be freed again by repeated tugging (1 on a d6). Oddly, it never glitches out while a character is standing on it.

Animate Device 2nd level spell, brings any valid* heraldic emblem to life. The emblems fight as monsters with 1d6 HD and whatever weapons you’d expect (dragons breathe fire, spear-wielding wolf-boars fight as paladins. Caltrops can scuttle deliberately under foes’ feet, chevrons… do whatever chevrons do. Probably redirect traffic).

* https://archive.org/stream/completeguidetoh00foxdrich#page/n5/mode/2up

e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_tincture

I have nothing more than this, today.

Me too.

In fact, if you’re facing a hate crime and you’re in upstate NY, write to me, I’ll be willing to help.

…actually I do have one more thing: intolerance based on sexual orientation or gender identity, intolerance based on religion, intolerance based on colour or origin or any other identity marker – they’re all the same hate. Write me if you need help resisting them.

Originally shared by Michael “Draco” R

I know there are a few (many, really) of you who identify as part of the LGBTQ community here.

You have my unwavering support.

somebody has no idea how scale works.

This, though: this is great: http://www.dorkly.com/post/58442/voldemorts-assistant-kevin

I’ve used Tom Waits songs for magic items, plot points and NPCs before. Much as I’d like to mine Elvis Costello the same way…. I don’t know that I want to be sad and angry enough to sell that flavour while running a game.* But if I did make an Elvis Costello East End Sopranoid thing this guy would be in it. And he’d be played by Tom Hollander.

There`s a tuppeny hapenny millionaire

Looking for a fourpenny one

With a tight grip on the short hairs

Of the public imagination

But for his private wife and kids somehow

Real life becomes a rumor

Days of Dutch courage

Just three French letters and a German sense of humor

He`s got a mind like a sewer and a heart like a fridge

He stands to be insulted and he pays for the privilege

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J76dprNEOgE

*maybe if Trump wins, then I could do some really bitter satire game about nauseating pointless vampires who are not super-powerful but still have enormous egos.

hi Mike Davison, here’s my son Cindern Block ready to send you a knight for the tourney!

for a longer colder war campaign

Mateo observed:

1. Ivanpah Solar Farm catches fire after a “misalignment”

2. A piece of Peter Thiel’s conspiracy is revealed

3. One of the greatest Dis Asters in planetary history is unearthed

4. Unprecedented octopus bloom

Originally shared by Kam-Yung Soh

Success! “The effort to drill into the Chicxulub Crater off the coast of Mexico has been declared an outstanding success.

A UK/US-led team has spent the past seven weeks coring into the deep bowl cut out of the Earth’s surface 66 million years ago by the asteroid that hastened the end of the dinosaurs.

Rocks nearly 1,300m below the Gulf seafloor have been pulled up.

The samples are expected to reveal new insights on the scale of the impact and its environmental effects.

[…]

From the rocks, the research team should be able to tell better how the crater formed, the energy involved in its excavation, and the volume of material that was dispersed.

This will put new limits on the nature of the environmental changes that enveloped the globe.

Other intriguing questions will be also be addressed, such as how fast life was able to return to the sterilised impact zone.

There is even a suggestion that the hot fluids moving through the fractured rocks left by the impact may actually have embraced and fostered micro-organisms. The team now has the material to test this idea.”

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-36377679//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

there is so much that’s gameable in this link.

If Harrison’s hunch is right, then… life on Earth began hundreds of millions of years earlier, almost as soon as the planet was ready for it. Such a scenario would raise hopes for the speed and ease with which biology can take hold, and of its aptitude for sticking around in an unfriendly cosmos. According to Harrison, “it makes the notion of life elsewhere in the universe that much more likely.”

Earth contained significant quantities of gold and platinum as far back as 4.1 billion years ago – even though these metals were thought to have been delivered only later by the Late Heavy Bombardment… [when] asteroids in the band between Mars and Jupiter were dislodged from orbit… [leaving] deep craters on the moon and given our fledgling planet a serious knock

Both the Nice model and the anti-Nice ideas presented offer fodder for Long Space War thinking.

I’m finally going to make  a Gameable Astronomy collection. Apologies for the flood of reposts that will follow as I gather previous stuff under this banner (hey Google+  how about finding a way for people to launch/recurate a collection without spamming everyone?)

Originally shared by Jenny Winder

How two tiny dots defy the history of life and the solar system

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23030700-400-how-did-we-get-here-a-lot-earlier-than-we-thought-it-turns-out///cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Mike Davison OK I have 2 kids now wanting to joust. I hope I’m not destroying your game.

Can my son  and daughter join? They will each have their own google+ account this time.

man emerald green is right.

Cilantro and thyme diluted to 150 proof

interestingly similar to a Dr. Funk, available earlier, uses holland gin. hm.

Originally shared by Alex Scrivener

The great-grandmother to the Margarita (the word “margarita” translates from “daisy” in Spanish), the Daisy itself was born from the sour. Its original late-1800s version combines spirits (often “Holland gin,” or genever) with gum syrup, orange cordial and citrus, while the “modern” variation from the 1910s includes grenadine and a splash of soda.

Gin-centric Whitechapel in San Francisco shakes up a version that sticks close to the more modern of the two takes. “Our intention was to present that this drink—even over 100 years old—is still excellent,” says Whitechapel owner Martin Cate, noting that genever, orgeat and maraschino provide a backbone of maltiness and nuttiness to balance the lemon. “If all the ingredients were bright and light, it would be one-dimensional.”

1¾ oz. genever

¼ oz. maraschino liqueur

½ oz. orgeat

¾ oz. fresh lemon juice

Tools: shaker, strainer

Glass: coupe

Shake all ingredients with ice, then strain into a chilled glass.

http://imbibemagazine.com/genever-daisy///cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

thyme, thai basil (already drained), cilantro, galangal.

Suggestions?

Paolo Greco were you ever thinking of publishing CORSICA? I know I sat on it for far too long, I’m just wondering at this late remove.

…the same goes for Tartary Mechawrestling. Is that something you still want to see finished and sold? We never really talked about it – I’ve been cheerfully making it for free, I’m just wondering if I’ve screwed up your expectations.

cannot stop watching this. Its applicability just keeps diversifying.

Originally shared by Charles Filipponi

This came via a semi-private share (OK it was Rolando Garza hehehe) via Amy and it seems apropos to the current political process.

Seldom has an election year involved an analogous twofer like this but there ya go.

Jet Pilot variant – for Joseph H. Vilas

Because I was short of grapefruit…

3/4 lime

1/2 fresh pineapple

3/4 falernum (bitter truth)

1/4 cinnamon syrup

1 smith & cross rum

1 aged cachaca (Sagatiba, home-barreled)

1/2 el dorado 12

1 dash angostura bitters

8 drops absinthe

Shake, pour, 2 cherries

Absurdly delicious. It’s the darkness of the rum + Angostura that does it. Calling this an Amazonian Bush Pilot.

there’s no way I can get everything I want to say about Tiki and DnD in one post, so I guess this will have to be the first in a series. If I ever figure out how to say anything actually useful.

https://lurkerablog.wordpress.com/2016/06/08/tikid-1-garys-hawaiian-shirts///cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

so here’s a highly irritating mystery: if you hashtag a bunch of posts and then search for the hashtag… google+ will only show the first 3 results. At least on my computer. Is anyone else getting that?

Mike Davison for the next tourney:

Dusana the Amazon, squad leader of the Hill Cantons,

human fighter 2

STR: 17 DEX: 11 CON: 11 
INT: 17 
WIS: 11 
CHA: 18

HP: 5 
AC: 4 (Chain and small shield), light warhorse


Shortbow and 100 arrows, longsword

Adam Thornton Joseph H. Vilas

you have some experience steeping things and making bitters… I’ve got some everclear, I’m planning to make a few tinctures… and it seems to me self-evident that I should just infuse/steep one thing at a time, keep clear labeling/records, and then mix up the single-ingredient steeped things later, at will as if I were mixing perfume, rather than trying to mix ingredients in a single batch.

1. Is there any reason why this supposition might be wrong?  (ie are there interactions between ingredients as they’re being steeped that I should be aware of?)

2. do you have any advice about how to do it?

I’m planning to do galangal, thai basil, fresh cilantro, coriander seeds, cardomom, maybe Vietnamese coriander. Any other suggestions?

My method so far is to wash and then crush up the steeping ingredient, then throw it in a jar and cover with everclear. I am nervous about handling 95% alcohol (flammable!) so I’m diluting it to 65% (2:1 with water). I know that might reduce the dissolution of oils but unless you guys tell me I’m doing it wrong, I’m more inclined to stay with this relatively fire-safe approach.

try these

Originally shared by Joseph H. Vilas

Ran into this trio of anise-flavored drinks. I didn’t realize Peychaud’s had an anise-flavored component. I guess I should have done a shot of it like I did with Angostura and figured it out that way. 🙂

http://drunklab.tumblr.com/post/71019115800/mxmotue-lxxx-the-one-where-rafas-late//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Rum taste test #2

So here we’ve got 3 aged, wooded Jamaican rums, and as outliers 2 non-Jamaicans: El Dorado from Guyana and Lost Spirits “Polynesian” from California and the Lost Land of Tiki.

The whole point of this post is to figure out where the fabled Smith & Cross Pot Still fits into the general rum pantheon. I’m planning to use it mostly for mixing, but it’s been this great divisive myth and mystery since it first appeared a year or two ago so maybe this will help others here.

Here’s what some other people think: https://www.rumratings.com/brands/902-smith-and-cross-navy-strength

So. Of the Jamaicans, Appleton Signature is pretty much the standard: rich, mellow, versatile for mixing, if you go to a really good cocktail bar, this is what they’ll use for a Mai Tai.

In this company it tastes distinctly commercial/mass market. There’s nothing wrong with it but it won’t win over any whiskey drinkers. It’s good. But it’s not really memorable.

Monymusk Special Reserve is a little something I picked up while I was in Jamaica (breathes on fingernails). It’s pretty comparable with the Appleton but a whole lot woodier and more characterful.  I’ve had Appleton 12 and it’s probably close to that, but a bit…smokier. More complex. https://distiller.com/spirits/monymusk-plantation-special-reserve-rum

So here’s the thing: both of those are bottled at 40% ABV, so they’re… kinda watered down from the straight-from-the-still experience.

SMITH & CROSS Pure Pot Still  OTOH comes in at 57%, making it an overproof rum.

And as you’d expect, then, it has much more concentration of flavour and also fire. But.

Most of all, it tastes well made. Everything’s actually quite well-controlled for an overproof. It tastes kinda cleaned up in comparison with the Monymusk – full of fruity and woody flavours, rich, strong, but… nicely balanced. Like it means to be what it is.

….it’s not as tasty as my overall favourite for drinking neat, El Dorado 12 – not as complex, not as hard to classify. But it’s a drink I could drink a double of (if I’d just come off a tough night sailing in a storm). It’s not as interesting as the Lost Spirits (66%) but it’s also a lot less fiery. When you drink Lost Spirits neat, it feels a bit like you’re drinking paint stripper – delicious, super-fruity paint stripper, but nonetheless…

No. Smith and Cross – I can see why it’s got a strong reputation among cocktail mixers – it has good concentration of flavour, it has a lot of alcoholic power, and it’s still got balance and poise. But it’s not unreproducible with other rums (unlike the Lost Spirits and maybe the El Dorado). I bet if you searched long and hard among Jamaican overproofs you could probably find another that was at least as good at doing the same thing. But it’s here, it’s available, and it’s mighty tasty.

Next test: mixing in a Your Tie. 

I would settle for a world with no password or login bullshit.

COMPLAINING:

It’s possible that I need to reconfigure many, many parts of my life and my world-view. I am probably leading a deeply unhealthy life and have terrible ways of looking at things.

But what I apparently need to reconfigure most of all is my attitude to usernames and passwords. Whenever I am interrupted in the act of living life by the need to come up with new account credentials, I do not treat this as a moment of religious self-realization. I do not think to myself this is the most important thing now in my life I will never forget this moment this is me deciding who I am from this moment forward. Instead I’m like bite me why can’t I just make this damn thing do it now just write anything. More recently (the past 15 years or so) it’s been just do the same thing every time and don’t listen to the security guy in your head going are you kidding me?  But then… it doesn’t work. Invalid username or password. And there’s no way around it. so I’ve got a fucking brick instead of the machine that would do the thing.

And I lose fucking months of my life to fucking password bullshit and it’s every day and the whole family asks me “what’s my minecraft password?” and I’m like “just pass me the knife.”

Every fucking day.

Every fucking day.

Do you guys deal with this, or is it just me? Is there a simple fix?

Originally shared by Mikael Andersson

http://poorlydrawnlines.com/comic/portal///cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

this is good and right and as it should be.

Provided it works well. Nobody likes a bad nargila.

http://www.porsche-design.com/en/Porsche-Design-Home/Shisha-2-0.html//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

HUH. Bitter Truth Golden Falernum is… very very different from Taylor’s Velvet Falernum. Much more clove- and ginger-forward. Much more rummy. Perfectly drinkable on its own as a liqueur. Mixing notes to follow.

OH BUT the discovery of the week is South Hill Cider’s Pommeau!

So if like a fruity Normandy cider is like a soft summery white wine

and a Calvados is like somewhere between Cognac and Grappa

then this is like a white port but apples. Delicious. For after dinner or an aperitif or with cantuccini and old movies in the afternoon.

via S. John Ross, The Meanderings of a Weapon Oriented Mind When Applied In a Vacuum Such As On The Moon shows the strangely short distance between 70s RPG fanzine and 50s government report.

“If the moon and other planets are explored and possibly colonized, the world could eventually see a second evolution of weaponry… through the mortar, howitzer, gun and tank stages until eventually you have missiles, antimissiles and nuclear weapons much as the earth had prior to World War III,” the report noted, curiously blurring the existing state of affairs with an apparent future of war in space above a ruined planet.

Scan of original report without paywall: http://cgsc.cdmhost.com/cdm/ref/collection/p4013coll11/id/2010

https://warisboring.com/the-u-s-army-s-gun-toting-space-soldiers-ea9f1f1d48d0#.ajv25f7qz//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

despite horrible reviews, went to see Alice Through the Brand Recognition Title with the youngest, who loves Johnny Depp like y’all love Lemmy.

…you know what? The art direction was great. If you’re OK with it just being another off-kilter Disneyfest, it’s fine. Not very meaningful, but pretty. The big lesson: you can learn from the past.

…unless you’re a Disney exec who was involved in the first Alice outing, in which case maybe you just keep doing that thing forever.

Biggest missed opportunity: Jabberwock is now just a dragon. GUYZZZZ that is not the whole point of the Jabberwock. No. At least the previous movie had it walking around on its knuckles all ricketsy and creepy-like.

I am surprised that Dr. John can still surprise me.

His musical commentary on Godel’s theorem:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cIcTgJx-EyQ//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Timely.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/how-world-war-ii-scientists-invented-a-data-driven-approach-to-fighting-fascism/#p3//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Alex Mayo sent me off down a Patrick Woodroffe rabbit hole and I came back, yet again, with Erol Otus.

Yeah yeah yeah everyone love Erol. Here’s why I’m a happy EO cultist:

is the composition clear and approachable? No.

do the colours help you navigate the action and draw you in? Not really.

Do you want to dive into those images anyway and try to puzzle out what the hell you’re looking at and where the hapless thief’s leg ends and the breath weapon begins? Hell yes. Get me that in higher resolution.

…I don’t know quite what the magic is, except for relentless imagination, a flair for the unexpected, and humour. He’s the best terrible artist I know, and I’d rather have Erol than… well, actually even more than Francis Bacon and that’s saying something.

Edit: so why, then, did I illustrate this post with a Peter Mullen painting? Because Google Image Search and laziness led me to think it was EO. D’oh! It’s the same issue though, formal rules flouted, curiosity piqued. Some actual Otus in the comments.

sometimes it just drops into your lap

http://scott-kikuta.tumblr.com/image/143913230800//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Paolo Greco it looks like I’m being grabbed to co-create this thing. Which looks like some kind of exotic island of adventure, which obviously potentially treads on the toes of CORSICA.

……I still want to finish CORSICA but I think I have more clarity about this. Not sure how to proceed, but I think we should talk with James Aulds who has no idea CORSICA exists and figure out some sort of plan.

That’s allI’ve got tonight. Tiki land has no cheese, that I’m sure of.

Originally shared by trey causey

Found at ntrpgcon:

Scott Martin​ and Richard Grenville​

Alex Scrivener thanks for moderating. I should have asked you to do so rather than replying.

I really ought to write that a hundred times on the blackboard…

Since I can’t actually reshare this as a poll, I’ll have to just ask you guys to vote or wail in the comments.

Originally shared by null

oh my god this is wonderful.

Y’know I think this Mateo kid’s got something. Excelsior!

Originally shared by Mateo Diaz Torres

Florida wizarding college founded by a despicable rail baron. Nephilim ensues.

So here’s a really interesting exercise in canon control – is Hermione black like Dumezweni or white like Watson?

Why not both? Happily the actual progenitor, Rowling, is available to make ex cathedra announcements and she says “White skin was never specified. Rowling loves black Hermione.”

OTOH, does this make the films, then, not canonical – are they mere adaptations rather than author’s statements of the visual world of HP?

(for a lot more in this vein check out the Ronbledore fan theory thing here: http://the-toast.net/2015/11/19/pbs-is-asking-questions-about-ronbledore/ ).

I already thought the HP films were a very interesting case of co-creation (like Game of Thrones is becoming) – was it possible for Rowling to hear Snape as anyone other than Rickman, as she wrote the last few books in the series? Did Hagrid become more Mummerset (I always read him as Scottish for my kids, and Robbie Coltrane’s ludicrous accent struck me as some kind of ingenious in-joke)? Now, though, I’m inclined to consider the concerns in the video above more seriously. Is Hermione now definitively black, because Rowling has now pronounced on the issue? Probably not – I can’t see Rowling willingly being captured in a prison of her previous pronouncements. So what sort of creation is the Harry Potter world? Are all our windows into it unreliable and/or contingent? Can we just not see properly past the privacy charms?

The fact that the current episode is opening on the stage is even more interesting: if you don’t go to see it in the theatre, you can’t get the authentic/authoritative version of this story at all. The original recedes, taking its aura with it.

There’s a separate issue regarding how marked the other racially Other characters are in the books – Cho Chang and the Patels spring to mind, and Hagrid, of course. If in fact the rest of Hogwarts isn’t lily white and we just can’t tell from their names, maybe that’s… better?

Is anyone in any doubt about the ethnicity of the Malfoys?

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-36424069//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

at the risk of just feeding the beast, this is the reason I remain pseudonymous on the internet whenever I can.

Not, I hasten to add, because I want to make ill-advised jokes but because I have had the experience of being misunderstood at least once in my life and I don’t trust mobs.

…this is also why I’m disinclined to join your mob, if you’re holding one.

Originally shared by John Salomon

Really enjoying watching this. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAIP6fI0NAI//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

What is the critical difference between a Pokeball, a Mi-go braincase and a lich’s phylactery?

Not a joke: wondering for CCH (which I’m not promising anything but this summer just might be the right moment finally)

Eva Green

Robert Downey

Johnny Depp

…who else can single-handedly raise a lacklustre production to greatness?

I reckon if you point a camera at any one of these three, you hardly need to do anything else. Who else is in that league?

Maggie Smith, but I’d be worried about starting any long-term projects with her. Maybe Jonathan Pryce. Probably Wagner Moura. Definitely Christoph Waltz, Javier Bardem.

….? Asking maybe for the Malacca pirates thing. No I’m not actually serious (yet).

Fee’s Orange Bitters: 5/5 goes with an amazing range of drinks. Versatile, controllable, always interesting. Seriously if you’re not making cocktails with orange bitters you’re missing out.

Fee’s Lemon Bitters: 2/5 not lemony so much as the bad time of licorice. Has ruined the 2 drinks I’ve added it to. It scores above zero because (a) maybe there’s a drink somewhere out there that wants that pithy licorice flavour that all good anisettes avoid, (b) it’s not Fee’s Cardamom Bitters, which defines the low point of the whole range.

new favourite heraldic animal: rearguardant spear beast. Paws say wolf, but that snout is all boar. 

you know what’s absolutely not going to work?

Multi-cultural Westeros where the local racists learn to live with a massive influx of Wildlings and Dothraki.

If the whole thing doesn’t just collapse in order to maintain the status quo, my guess is the angry paters familias of Westeros are either going to turn into a bunch of bitter old redneck/Taliban-manques or resettle north of the wall.

Cone of Obliscence

has been declared the geekiest cocktail name ever by my wife.

Look, honestly this is a first draft, but I’m grabbing the name before someone else does. Expect refinements later. I’m convinced, for instance, that any Aperol drink is better as a Campari drink. Anyway:

1/4 oz absinthe (St. George)

1/4 oz Becherovka ( I may increase this)

1/2 Aperol

1/2 LS Polynesian Rum

1 Rittenhouse Rye.

shake, up, brandied cherry

Peggy’s parrot

1 Lost Spirits Polynesian rum

1 pearl diver mix

1 blood orange juice

1 lime juice

1/2 Aperol

2 dashes angostura bitters

3 dashes orinoco bitters

wash with absinthe

shake, don’t strain, brandied cherry

in a big-ass stemless wine glass

Dear HBO

hire me to consult on a Goodfellas or Narcos type treatment of modern Malacca Straits piracy. A portrait of organized crime, government corruption, finance fraud, and local jetski gangs. Where you get to know the international shipping magnates and the guys waiting out on the water for a giant container ship to pass by. The action starts with petty officials and bandanna-wearing gunmen but by mid season you can tell the money en at Lloyds and Capitol Hill are deep in the plot too.

Investigative journalist goes missing in Bangladesh because he gets too interested in a ship that’s gone to the breakers. Insurance money paid out for the tramp steamer that’s now a ferry in rural Indonesia, making the local boss a local hero. That sort of thing. 

Obviously hire proper writers with the right voice – I could provide research clippings and… maybe location scouting?

kids watched Pirates of the Caribbean 3.

I drifted in and out, rather than sitting and watching it again, and realised for the first time:

this film is still trying really hard after 2 hours and it still has 48 minutes to go. Those interminable battle scenes just carry on being hard to shoot and carefully composed and the visual communication, the clarity of the camera (as opposed to the opacity of the plot) just keeps being impeccably controlled. So when the iconic staircase destruction of Cutler Beckett happens, it’s not out of place because that level of attention has been kept up for the whole movie.

Damn.

I’ve always thought the PotC films should’ve been an hour shorter each, but maybe they should just have all been divided in 2, to yield a series of 6 episodes each with their own coherent plots.

have I mentioned how great this is? It takes 2 things I have no interest in – Imelda Marcos and Cindy Lauper-style showtunes – and makes them into something compellingly sincere and serious and still enjoyably funky.

Of course it’s David Byrne and Fatboy Slim.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lP5EZ8qJtBw//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

my mother has become a crazy Islamophobe.

Weird.

Depressing.

ask not for whom Death Pingu doots.

Originally shared by A Weeaboo Space Communist

NOOT

standard roleplaying MO.

black silk stocking and I can’t see a sausage to the bank with a water pistol in my pocket

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8JXmzPr6bkA//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

meta or what?

by the way these painted backdrops were just gorgeous. Such a good representation of King’s Landing behind rude Cersei’s head, with little repetitive wave signs. Superb.

I knew it. That voice.

http://metro.co.uk/2016/05/23/no-one-noticed-richard-e-grants-debut-in-game-of-thrones-5899605///cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

GRRM’s been getting a lot of credit for an epically long-running gag that just got its punchline this week, but I still think Tim Powers wins for setting up a whole novel and the perfect character voice to deliver the line “jawed from the snatch of Death.”

Yo, Paolo Greco, Jez Gordon, Joey Lindsey (why is he not coming up when I try to tag him?) — I only see Santicore 2011 and 2013 on Lulu. Where those links at for 2012, 2014, 2015?  

https://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?keyWords=santicore&type=//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Somehow I never noticed how Vancian the script for Barbarella is:

sometimes I like to go among my people, be like them, ordinary, ‘evil’ as you would call it. So, I’m your little one-eyed wench. I’m also the Great Tyrant.

Barbarella: Well, that’s nice.

The Great Tyrant: It amuses me immensely!

Barbarella: [as she is attacked by a flock of small birds] This is a really a much too poetic way to die.

Barbarella: Pygar! What does that say?

Pygar: “Chamber of Ultimate Solution.”

Barbarella: I don’t like the sound of that.

Dildano: A life without cause is a life without effect.

Barbarella: Well, I’m sure I could get you a substantial recompense from my government.