It just goes to show they’re right - you should always ask Dad first.

One Sunday last November, I was in Boston with some friends for a wedding. We were enjoying the football games at John Harvard’s brewery in Harvard Square, for a nostalgic trip to one of our former favorite haunts (all but one of us has since moved away; the remaining holdout now lives far out in the burbs).

Our experience was marred, however, by the apparent stink of manure that periodically wafted through the bar. After repeatedly checking our shoes, we dismissed it as a possible by-product of the local mounted police, brought in whenever the door opened.

I asked my dad (former brewmaster at a brew pub in Ohio), and he immediately recognized the issue. It seems that, after brewing a batch, if you leave the spent grain (the barley) around for a few days (after essentially accelerating the decomposition of the grain by using it to create the wort), it starts the stink up the place - really badly.

And the stink may be pretty close to what we mistook for manure, since you’ve essentially done the same thing to the grain that a horse/cow digestive tract would - brew it in a moisture bath, leaching out the sugars that can be metabolized, leaving behind bacterial waste and spent, indigestible fiber (a few days exposed to air takes care of the bacterial part of the equation).

He says they never brewed on Friday or Saturday if they couldn’t be sure they could get the grain hauled away (usually by a pig farmer), because the smell only took a day or two to develop. So he surmised that they did a brew on Friday, and we got the benefits of it on Sunday.

I’m sure you’ll all sleep better now that this mystery has been put to rest.

Again, thanks to Rob Sama, who seems to find an endless supply of these time-wasters.

I hate wearing the mask, but I gotta admit, if the shoe fits… er, mask…

Your results:

You are Dr. Doom

Dr. Doom 70% Lex Luthor 60% The Joker 53% Apocalypse 52% Magneto 52% Riddler 43% Juggernaut 41% Dark Phoenix 40% Mr. Freeze 40% Catwoman 37% Two-Face 37% Venom 34% Green Goblin 33% Poison Ivy 32% Kingpin 28% Mystique 21%

Blessed with smarts and power but burdened by vanity.

Click here to take the “Which Super Villain am I?” quiz…

Thanks to Rob Sama for wasting fifteen minutes of my life. Now I’d like to forward the favor to you.

At least I’m only 34% Robin. Honestly, I think most men would prefer to be Wonder Woman before the yellow-caped pansy. And I’m a Batman fan, too.

Your results:
You are
Green Lantern

Green Lantern 75% Superman 70% Hulk 70% Batman 65% Catwoman 60% Spider-Man 60% Supergirl 57% Iron Man 55% The Flash 45% Robin 34% Wonder Woman 32%

Hot-headed. You have strong will power and a good imagination.

Click here to take the “Which Superhero are you?” quiz…

Tis international talk like a pirate day, ya scallawags!

Shiver me timbers, hoist the main jib, swab the decks, walk the plank, your cliche here, etc.

Boy, pirates sure have good lobbying, to get a whole day devoted to them.  However, the ninja lobby is stronger.  Every other day is talk like a ninja day.

This is it - I’ve joined whatever century this is (21st?) and started a blog.

I have very few illusions about my own importance in the world (just one or two cherished ones), so I won’t advertise this blog as yet. If you stumbled on it, how the hell did you get here? For now, I will use this in the initially conceived manner - a log on the web.

I expect to be writing on, in no particular order:

1. The English language and teaching (I’m an English teacher - brand new last year, 2006, so excuse any grammar foibles - it turns out they’ll let just about anyone have a classroom nowadays).

2. NFL football (and the New England Patriots in particular) and Arena Football (and assorted other sports from time to time).

3. World of Warcrack, er, Warcraft, that is (and the occasional video game observation).

4. Cooking (simple recipes for dumb guys).

5. Hiking/camping/fishing.

6. Music (I expect these observations to be largely irrelevant to the public at large).

7. Toys (Star Wars and Transformers in particular).

8. Health care (or lack thereof).

9. Fatherhood (as of November 24, 2006).

10. Role playing games and rules creation.

11. And a huge section on CUSTOMER SERVICE, or the lack thereof.

In fact, one of the big recurring themes that made me want to start a blog was to have a platform upon which to hurl my impotent vitriol at the corporate schmendricks that mostly make our lives more difficult - in hopes of using the web to reduce the “impotent” part.

With that in mind, on to my next post - the first “on topic” post, whatever that means.