The rain is coming down. Outside the yellow blossoms on the trees rejoice in the special kind of wetness that brings out the greenness in things. Down the side of the street, a crisp packet swirls in the gutter on its way to an unknown elsewhere.
In the café it is not wet. People sit. The tables are slightly worn. In a corner dried flowers stare at the window. The television is telling them about a shooting in a school, tanks in Israel, a new kind of toothpaste. They are looking out, past the people, at the falling rain washing the darkness out of the air; and splash in big wet drops on the muddy earth. I brush past them as I leave and think that I am missing something very simple. Life breaks around this moment.
Friday, April 26
1:33 PM
Miller, it's Carla.

Um, I just got the keys for "Davey Jones' Locker". Um, it is locker number four hundred twenty nine. Four-two-nine. None of the keys have this number on it because I had to make ten copies for us. So, uh, I'm in the middle of running a bunch of errands.. I'm going to be thinking about this but I wanted to recruit your creative brain power. Um, we need to come up with a riddle of some kind to get them the number "four twenty-nine". I don't want to give it to them - that would fuckin' suck!

Uh, so think of something clever. Also don't forget about making up an anagram of your phone number. And the last thing that I have to do with you is give you your instructions to leave your phone message later tonight. Um, so, you can give me a call by my cellphone, I should be home.. it's like 1:30 - I'll probably be home by 2:30.

Bye!

An acual cellphone message as well as a behind-the-scenes look at the planning that went into the I'M GUNNA BE WICKED RETAHDED: Come for the scenery, stay for the BAP (another E2 nodah pahty) Scavenger Hunt.

"Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans." ~John Lennon

As I sit here and type, my twin boys lay in their car seats asleep. I saw one's head turn completely red as he grunted hard more than an hour ago when I strapped him into his car seat. I then heard what will inevitably turn out to be a mound of baby shit explode into his diaper seconds later. I fully intended to change him when I returned from taking my daughter to school, but he and his brother both fell so soundly asleep. And for the moment, all I have is myself to worry about. Besides, it's not going anywhere. And any moment now he'll awaken to inform me of his shitty diaper with a shrill scream of discomfort. But, until then, I'll just worry about myself. I love my babies. I don't even resent them as I feared I would, having gotten pregnant less than a week after I got married; as I feared I would because I was so happy that the daughter I bore at sixteen years old was almost ten now - old enough to make her own food, clean her own room and tend to her own sanitary needs. But, I don't resent them. They're cool. They really, truly are amazing little men. Even with shit in their drawers. But still, I enjoy these moments when I can do whatever I want. And I can't say that I don't wish there were more of them. There's a garden that I never got to plant, a husband that I never get to hang out with and so many projects that will never be completed. But, when I catch myself pining away for all of the other things I could be doing, I catch one of my new babies staring at me. And when we make eye contact he smiles his big toothless grin. And I realize that it's okay. I'm doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing.

April 29, 1992
There was a riot on the streets
Tell me where were you?
You were sittin' home watchin' your TV
While I was participating in some anarchy
-Sublime-

Today's the ten year anniversary of the Los Angeles riots following the acquittal of the police officers who beat Rodney King by an all-white, Simi Valley jury. All over the news and radio, there are stories about race-relations, retrospectives on the beating and "How far have we come," kind of stories.

Bullshit, really, epsecially when most reporters are living on the right side of the 10 freeway, where the separation between white and black is so complete that you can pass weeks without seeing a black man or woman. In The Big Nowhere, the city is still sliced into wide swaths of racial separation. North of the 10 are the cities of Hollywood and Beverly Hills, stretching to Pasadena and the Simi Valley. South of the 10 are Watts, South Central and East L.A., stretching to Inglewood and Compton. Is there still racial tension? I can't tell. I don't live where there's tension on the streets, where I'm faced with it every day. This is L.A. I drive from point to point, never stopping where I don't need to. In the car, it's out of sight, out of mind. And that's a problem.


MTV showed their 10 nastiest moments of spring break 2002. Mmm... vacuous television. Couldn't resist.

One of the moments - David Holmes getting spring breakers to do outrageous stunts for a handful of pesos. One of the stunts - eat guacamole out of a spring breaker's armpits. The subject: this big, tan, darker guy lying on the beach, wearing shorts, sunglasses and a bemused expression. On the right armpit was some blonde girl. On the left armpit was a white guy from St. Louis. The one who ate more of the guacamole would win the cash.

After a minute and a half of unbelievable grossness, with the girl gagging on some of the armpit guacamole, it was over. The guys left armpit was cleaned of Guacamole. The white guy from St. Louis had a shit-eating grin after he was done. And David Holmes asks him, "Are you questioning your sexuality right now?" The white guy hesitates for a split second, then looks up at the host. He can't believe he's about to say what he's about to say. "Dude, I'm all about gettin' on him." Fuck yeah.

Take your parades and flags and such. I'll take the spring breaker, mouth still reeking of guac from someone's armpits, not backing down from the microphone shoved in his face, and outing himself on MTV. Now that's pride.

Plagiarism

I've taught this course a number of times before, but I never noticed anything that made me suspicious of plagiarism, so I never bothered bothered to check for it very carefully. I have, of course, gotten essays from students that looked better than I expected. But I told myself these were students who did better work on paper than in class. I know different students express themselves in different ways, and discovering where their strengths are is one of the pleasures of teaching. So I didn't let my doubts get the better of me. Until now.

Perhaps I was naive. As a matter of form, I have serious warnings about it in my syllabuses, and I discuss it early in every course where written assignments are required. And the University requires all students to take basic English courses in which plagiarism and correct citation are discussed and practiced. But I never imagined I would have to face and play policeman.

By the middle of the semester, two of my colleagues were complaining about plagiarists they had found in their classes - one apiece. They are teaching modern literature and film. I was smug. Such popular topics, so well represented on the Internet, so easy for undergraduates to get through with minimal work - I knew my subject area would make it much harder for students to cheat. I bragged to one of my colleagues that I didn’t think I would find a single plagiarist among "my kids". She dared me to try anyway. I turned to the powerful Internet search engines and other databases that faculty have available for such purposes, and started by typing in a phrase from a student paper, chosen at random. That was at 4:45 pm. I left the office close to nine that night.

When the dust finally settled some weeks later, I had found enough evidence to charge more than a quarter of the students in the class with plagiarism. All of them were found guilty by their peers in Honor Council hearings. I have noded a few of their excuses, in case you are interested.

Documenting the plagiarism was tedious. For me, it takes the same kind of thinking and the same kind of time as writing a scholarly paper. And as I did it I grew angry, so angry I could hardly drive myself to keep going.

Why? Oh, I knew this went on - I knew; of course I knew. It goes on at all universities, in every single ream of student papers, and not only in student papers, either. But I was shocked and dismayed all the same. A quarter of the class!

I can adjust myself to the knowledge that a large percentage of my students are taking my class solely to satisfy a requirement that they see as a form of intellectual red tape on the way to a degree. I know many of them have no actual interest in the subject matter, and are not inclined to read the assignments carefully no matter how I try to entice them. (It is clear from the in-class quizzes I sometimes give that roughly half of my students do not do the reading for any given assignment.) But I can live with all that. I rarely did the reading when I was in college, although I never plagiarized. I know how undergraduates feel in required classes. No, what I can’t live with is that most of my plagiarists are juniors and seniors. That means it is almost certain that they have been plagiarizing before now, and simply haven’t been caught. Many of my colleagues say they don’t turn in suspected plagiarists - they just give them a warning, sometimes fail them on the one suspect paper, and let them continue. That goes against University policy, and I think it fails to impress the student in any significant way. So I am spending my own precious research time to turn in people who my colleagues have declined to turn in. The necessary lessons aren't being learned because my colleagues are too lazy to take the time to deliver those lessons in a convincing way. That is what makes me angry.

Those colleagues say it isn't a serious issue. Well, I think it's an extremely serious issue. It's about honesty, the same thing that keeps marriages together and enables you to rely on your friends. Maybe it is the fundamental issue of society. Professors who are caught plagiarizing generally have to leave the teaching profession. Who would hire them after that? Pharmacists who get caught substituting drugs for what they've been asked to provide simply lose their licenses. An engineer who cheats in the construction of a building can kill people. I saw this in Taiwan during the 1999 earthquake - thousands of buildings collapsed because they had been shoddily built. In some cases, builders had used empty oil cans in place of cement in structural parts of buildings - oil cans are cheaper than cement, of course. One of my friends at Cheng-Chi University in Taiwan said, "What I fear is that our economy is no sounder than those buildings, and that our whole 'economic miracle' has been based on cutting corners." Yes, I think cheating is a serious issue. Students who are caught once should be turned in and made to take responsibility for what they have done. Students who will not learn the lesson should take a year off, or several years off, and come back when they're ready.

And I think the real reason my colleagues don't want to turn students in is that the paperwork is a heavy burden. Those colleagues who never turn in the students they catch are lazy. I'm not. So I got no research done last semester, because what energies I had were expent on this. Aside from the time spent preparing the evidence, I attended the hearings and presented my case. The hearings were stressful and exhausting.


After extensive discussions with colleagues and University officials, I made the decision that I did not want to talk to the accused students about this myself. I didn't want them to plead with me, to threaten me, to offer me gifts and favors. To those who wrote to me directly, I answered that I wanted all our conversation on the subject to take place through the Honor Council. The University's administrative response toward first offenders is what I would call reasonably lenient if time-consuming for the student, though second offenders are booted out of school. I tell the kids that the Honor Council is there to help us resolve the issue with fairness and dispassion. I really believe that. I believe in due process.

The University's way of dealing with a first-offence plagiarist is to put a mark on the student's transcript and require him or her to take a seminar about plagiarism. The mark looks bad (it says "failed for academic dishonesty") but it can be removed about 6 months after the seminar has been completed, sooner if the student has a pressing reason. Contrast this with schools where students are expelled or suspended after a single infraction!


Apart from the "legal" issue of plagiarism, what really bothers me is the feeling of being betrayed by these students. Now, it's true that most of them and I don't have an actual personal relationship. But in the Confucian empathetic sense I do treat each distant student in a big classroom in a way modeled on the way I treat the few students who are closest to me. The relationship is fundamentally the same, regardless of the distance. And so I feel a big part of my enthusiasm for sharing what I have has been torn out. I try to shore up the hole by reminding myself about the many others who surely don't steal - some of them really superb minds who awe me with their superior aptitude for literature. Superior to mine, certainly. But even shored up, there is a big hole in me now.

One problem is that these kids don't even realize that I would be hurt by their cheating. I'm unsure how to express that without going overboard, and making myself an easy target for one of the selfish students who occasionally turns up and would try to manipulate my feelings. Even so, it's clear that it's an important message. My ordinary way has been to let students figure it out, which they usually do by the end of the term. So I've got learn how to let them start figuring this out sooner in the term than they do now, but without losing the all-important subtlety.


About two thirds of the students I caught decided to challenge the accusation and had formal hearings. All were found to have plagiarized and received some form of "sanction" (punishment). Some of them are, I believe, sincerely chastened and will come out of this experience with more understanding of how to live in the world. Others, including one of the most flagrant cheaters, are angry and think they have been wronged. But I don't think any of them understand how I feel.

More material related to this subject may be found at my write-up on the Avoiding accusations of plagiarism node.


last day-log entry: April 26, 2002 | next: May 8, 2002

My life as a drug mule.

I get her on the phone in the middle of the afternoon and something bad has happened. A seizure, or a psychotic episode, from the description she gives. I can barely make out the words and I don't see the point in making her re-live it so I can figure it out a little better. Then there are boyfriend troubles, as in he's been broken up with and won't go away. Bottom line is she needs cannabis, and fast.

About an hour later, the boyfriend's car pulls up in front of my house and picks me up. I give them a small bag of dro, and some resin scrapings, because it's all I've got. She's cleaned me out completely this week. Now they're going to drive me to Greenpoint, which is the price I put on the bag. I'm supposed to go down there and help someone move a couch up a flight of stairs.

There is the usual pretense at civility. I find one of her Valiums lying loose and hand it to her. She is deathly pale and barely able to light a cigarette. I talk, because no one else seems to want to. We drive around, and when she sends him into 7-11 for more smokes, tells me, "this is impossibly weird". Later she says it feels like she's been swallowed up by hell and spit back out.

In Greenpoint the couch has already been moved without me. I score a nickel bag there; it's the best I can do on such short notice. I hear myself promising I'll score her a quarter-ounce from somewhere else tomorrow.

They bring me back here and drive off together. He's losing her, but he still has her. I will have her forever but I can't touch her.


I could waste all my time just wondering how to stop it, by why not just let it flow? Thoughts, feelings, fantasies; desire. The epiphany of my hearts content.

I want to be the centre of her universe. I want it all when _I_ want it, and I want it right now. Not selfishness, a longing.

I want them to fuck off with their, 'How cute!' bullshit. How can you get what you want when you don't even know what that is? I could cry right now, but what would it do?

I noticed the other day that when you do cry and you actually give in, that darkness, when you feel all the pain and pressure leave you, is beyond comparison. The only problem is that, if you force yourself to cry, you will end up twice as bad as before.

My poor mother, left to her own devices, would be so much better. She shouldn't have had children.

Dad Diary:

They induce Amanda's labor today, because the doctor's are afraid that the baby is growing too large too fast. Learned that ultrasounds are up to three pounds off in their weight estimate.

Scared shitless, by this time in two days, I will have a child.

I know I haven't been up-to-date on these kind of things. I know I've meant to send postcards to Sengbora-T and Girlface and others. I know I've got to finish my book.

It's been coming to this.

Random Thoughts that pop into my head include: Amanda dying and me raising our child on my own. Single Fathers are pretty rare, still. I think I'll have a hard enough time with two parents.

Time to get busy livin'.


Unemployed in Summertime
Don't need money 'cuz we're young.
--Emiliana Torrini

On Friday night I went to a club for the first time in nearly a year, and the first time since my wife left me about eight months ago. I had fun, I got drunk on Smirnoff Ice, I smoked a whole pack of cloves. I danced, I talked to people I hadn't seen in a long time, and then on the way home, my "date" (really just a friend I hadn't seen in a long, long time) and I stopped our bicycles at a stoop in the CBD and sat down.

We spent the next 45 minutes crying really hard and uncontrollably. Both of us, for seperate yet similar reasons.

She was crying because her former best friend and ex-roommate is moving back to Chicago on Tuesday, and she was lonely, and frequent, empty sex with various men and women doesn't really help to abate the loneliness she feels.

I was crying because of everything I had lost over the course of the past few years, because I was also lonely and I'm all but certain I won't be able to find anyone that I can really get into in that way in this city, and because all of my long-time/really important friends all live hundreds or thousands of miles away and are generally inaccessible except for ineffectual instant messages or emails.

We cried in unison because we'd both been dumped by the people we each thought we were in love with. We were both full of hormones and alcohol, and we both had a lot of really bad things cramped inside the both of us.

Collapsing together on a concrete stair and crying endlessly at 5:00AM as drunken tourists pass by was a release. It brought forth the realization in both of us that we are truly lonely, both in the same way, which made us feel a bit better; but then feeling better was quashed by feeling worse by knowing that there's really nothing either of us can do about it. It takes a lot of doing, and a good deal of hard work to find someone to love. It's going to be hard for her because she's a stompy, green-haired, alcohol-swilling rivethead girl. It'll be hard for me because I'm introverted and solitary, plus there's always that pesky gender status thing to worry about when thinking about the possibility of having a girlfriend.

I stared into the muddled sky with tears running down my face in small rivers, and I knew then that there was no hope.

This is your world
These are your people
You can live for yourself today
Or help build tomorrow for everyone
*

Which option shall I choose?

DIRECT FROM THE NEW YORK SCHOOL OF PARADIGM SEVEN

Noders are not what you'd expect.

Anecdote: during the marriage of ideath and zot-fot-piq, lit from beneath in front of the Pru, passersby asked what was happening. "Is this performance art?" one of them inquired.

"It's some kind of wedding. A pagan thing for Earth Day. Some Internet cult." (Amalgamated Creative Responses, INC.)

One body of assorted noders. Gathering mitosis creates cells of edevites and writers. A kitchen thick with perl audio. I'm sure entire sites were being written in the air above CowboyNeal, jaybonci, N-Wing, clampe, novalis and others. The living room was for those of us less in tune with coding esoterica. We had games, and were amused by glowing hands.

There is a cave under cahla's house, wherein could be found winky lights, delectable (and noxious) fumar, and display spectacular of arm wrasslin'. donfreenut wanted blood. Chihuahua Grub displayed his (nigh)undefeatable Zen-Slack School of bicep combat, complete with Visage of Total Relaxation and Dangling Cigarette of Peace. Walter transformed his arm into a mighty rod of steel.

Noder Iron Chef needs no judging. As cahla says, "everybody wins". The food line stretched into the living room.

Orange Julius would not channel Robert Plant again, no matter how many chemicals he was plied with. Still, there was music. Forgetting half the words is half the fun. Everybody sang the guitar solos.

It is impossible to actually confuse WonkoDSane with WonkoTheSane.

Truly we did scavenge all of Boston and even the vultures will go hungry. Remember: lateral thinking equals profit. Extra points for bringing back one of every bus schedule. Extra points for stealing shot glasses. Extra points for making jaubertmoniker's work day a little less painful.

The absence of computers does not stop us from /msging each other. As long as there are pens and paper tablecloths, the mail will go through. All praise to Hemos for covering our asses.

We have conquered Boston and with minimal casualties. The noder swarm will not be de-venomed. Your city is next.

This has been a fractalized remembrance of I'M GUNNA BE WICKED RETAHDED: Come for the scenery, stay for the BAP (another E2 nodah pahty).

We support DOD decision superiority.

That’s the logo for the defense information systems agency (DISA).

Don’t ask me how I know that.

Currently, I am wasting time thinking about things that I shouldn't be thinking on.

But I am wasting it efficiently.

It has got to do with something I read in one of the books Kris lent me:

On the whole, philanthropy seems sort of redundant-they're already giving seventy-hour weeks to the creation of new technology meant to empower the world. That's not enough? That said, one's job is still put to the old-fashioned halo test: You've got to be improving society, or what's the point?

But not everyone can design the Mac and liberate electrons. So a few tricks to passing the test have evolved over time. The first is the libertarian view: you believe that the vigorous pursuit of self-interest leads to the most efficient allocation of resources, which ensures continued development.

The second is related but far more twisted. It's the workaholic value system: nothing good comes easily, so if it's a terrific challenge, it must be good. By this self-referential logic, any project that is totally consuming is worthwhile. The corollary to this is that if you're not sure your work is contributing, you should work harder at it and soon it will.

It follows that perhaps one of the reasons people here work so hard is that they're not really sure how their little piece of the jigsaw puzzle fits into the big picture of a better society.

-The idea of self-referential logic is kind of scary to me. I always have the ability to make any choice I've decided on, good, bad, or otherwise, make sense to me, if I want to.

So the idea of bullshitting yourself to live with poor decisions isn't anything new. But when I factor in the really important issues of career-motivated action and an inner need to motivate something significant with my time on earth, it starts to get a little stickier.

Bad decisions always seem to stick with me over a cycle contained in month and year-measured chunks.

I don't mind this, really. The only thing you really learn from are mistakes. The perspective you gain from heaps and heaps of bad decisions.

But even after living a very bad, aggressively evil lifestyle, I still have ideals. I still have conceptions of things in its absolute perfection. So I do believe that a person can motivate an *ideal* lifestyle.

My concern now is that I somehow hinder the attainability of this by the really bad way I make sense of many ludicrous decisions with self-referential logic (many times I'll think about something, say to myself,"Well, I *feel* fine about it, so I must be fine").

Hmm.

I don't know what to base my decisions against as a measure of how good or bad they were.

God, opinions of my friends/family, personal perspective, things I’ve read in books.. it all seems very self referential.

So far, the only good, stable test of how good/bad a choice I've made is time.

...

Well great then. I'm screwed.



.

  • Delusion



it's starting again. shit shit they're looking at me. How is it that they know when to look, when it'll make everything crash crash up on top of the mountain when he kept climbing faster and then he must've been laughing (INSIDE) yes must have been laughing somehow at me going slow. Like water dripping out of a faucet. The anticipation makes it slower. oh but those drops soothe, yes, soothe in the end. But anyway, fuck, yes, I wish they would stop looking at me like that. Their eyes wander and stick on me. why on me? why why



  • Hallucination



They look like cells. Cells under a microscope. Transparent. There's a smallish depression in the center yes sort of like a nucleus isn't it isn't. and they float in front of me and swirl and move like they're propelled by currents in the water. when it's right everything that I see is made up of these cells they're reality particles but sometimes I call them other things other them. overcast days is when I see them best they see me.



oh and then there's the little black dot that follows my eyes. yes yes when I move my eyes around it will move with my eye, up and down. it pulses into different sizes but with auras; auras that are black are that auras?

·






"My manager had me working in the back all day today. It totally sucked!"
" ... Yeah. Yeah. ... the translation took me five hours. I sent it to the professor at 6:30 this morning ... heh, nevermind ... don't say anything ..."



  • Depression & Negative Symptoms



[       .`'              ··            .       '`        .      .   . .                                  zxzxzxzcxwheredoigonow

i don't know what to dobutiwishthaticould get awayand i'm fucking uglynoonelikesmexzxzzcxzxzcxz
             ]



  • Catatonia



...    ..  ...... when did i move ..   4:41 am  .. god the sky and leaves are the same color the same same same    .

.   -     
and..   .. 6:02 am  .oh . Avogadro's number         ..sun sunlight is back . .







Sealed in the vacuous cocoon
The abstract awareness of being
Eye the normals so represented
But never that my world will be

With repetition still nothing changes
Teleological battles for my mind
Eye the visions so constructed
This around which my world dances

.

.

You're scared of me now, aren't you?

.

.

Exhaustion rages duel with hyperactivity
Nights on end that no rest sees me
Days of constant fear give way to collapse

.

.

You'll never know; I hide it from you.



the phrase most often repeated in my head is "and fear ripped through me." oh yes, i forgot to mention all of my thoughts are spoken aloud in my mind. all of them; they don't leave me alone, CHASE CHASE CHASE

there are transparent bubbles and they float around on overcast days. i see them like little cells of life. and they seem to have life, they move around, cycling through and around each other it's more beautiful than anything else. and the edges of trees are brighter and more real. branches are more solid at their ends, don't you so think? and leaves are the same. only bright things on days of cloud and cold.


VISIONS DREAMS VISIONS DREAMS are comfort. my connection to the concrete is gone. i am only an abstraction of an abstraction of an abstraction that continues back and back until it will be blinked from existence, vanishing like ripples on pond water.

i talk to people. real people. people i know in the real world. but when no one is around i have conversations with them and they love me and are nice to me and i am (SMART SMART SMART) perfect but how i can never be sure. perfect perfect perfect. it's hard to know.

i try to fall asleep but it doesn't work. my thoughts never never leave they like to cling like something charged with static. but static also shocks one careless, so i watch it. and "static" can mean "unmoving" too isn't that just perfect? i think so. then i get out of bed and stay awake all night because i need to think think think and pour out these thoughts cause if they stay in sometimes i want to burst but pouring them out is hard cause they are viscous oh very viscous so they stick. hard.


one time i tried to make a map of all of my thoughts and it was horrid and scary i didn't realize how bad it had gotten. stats there was a plane i was looking at the stars but then a plane came by and i realized that even the stars were no longer mine. it had become a man-made sky. (FEAR FEAR FEAR)

if you know me you know that i don't talk much. quiet. quiet times are nice. i don't know what to say to anyone since it never seems to make any sense to them and it seems like they'll think i'm crazy.


crazy. i prolly am. i wish my mind would let me rest.





Today was unusually cold. Three people were killed by a tornado and 90 something more injured. From what I heard, it barely missed us.

So I woke up, got dressed, and headed for the bathroom. After washing up, I put on my eyeliner, lipstick, and concealer with powder. I went down for breakfast which consisted of rose jam on toast with tea. Then I pulled on my black boots, adjusted my bondage bracelets, and walked out of the house.

At school, they were doing this stupid Every Fifteen Minutes Program which was about drunk driving and they took a student out of class ever fifteen music to pretend that they are dead to show that every fifteen minutes a person dies from accidents caused by drunk driving. Then they set up this fake car accident and covered the guy's face with fake blood while his parents took pictures of him. That was sick, so my friends and I decided to skip it.

I hate my sixth period class. It is English and it is the worst class because I hate the teacher and I hate the girl who sits behind me and I hate all the pro-communist remarks written on my desk. The teacher is a pedophile. I see his eyes moving up and down my body and I can see how disgusted he is for thinking this way about a young girl and even though he is like this, he still manages to give me unreasonable grades. With his other students he laughs, but with me he grows unusually quiet, stutters a little, and I watch his eyes and see them glance downwards at my tight shirt and tight pants and I guess in a way I'm inviting it, but the tease is fun. But he wasn't here today and I was glad for this.

After school, I went to work and was happy to finally relax. I'm one of those book shelvers. I love this job, it's so peaceful. Then I sneaked into the backroom and indulged myself wih my beloved NNY. What a wonderful day.

An unscheduled broadcast of Irregular Zymurgy - batch number 02-5

Last night I brewed another batch of ale. I've had all the materials lying around for some 12 days, I had actively procrastinated by brewing a different batch this weekend. Tonight, it will be done. Tonight, it must be done. If we all are lucky, this batch will complete primary fermentaion and be force-carbonated in time for grundoon's barbecue on the second weekend of May.

    As with every other batch, I set water to boil. Since I had burnt the grain bag on the last batch, I simply dumped in
  • 3/4 lb crystal 80L malt (crushed grain)
    and let it come to boil while I searched the freezer for hops. Once it boiled, I strained the tea into a larger pot, and stirred in
  • 4 lbs wheat malt extract,
  • 1½ lbs amber malt extract, and
  • ½ lb wildflower honey.
    This too was brought to a boil, at which point
  • 2 oz Mt Hood hops
    were added. After 30 minutes, more hops,
  • 2 oz Fuggles,
    went into the pot. This all continued to boil for another 20 minutes. (The wort boiled for about 50 minutes total.) As finishing hops, I threw in the remaining
  • 1 oz Mt Hood hops
    and let it steep for 20 minutes. It was then poured over 6 lbs of ice, and decanted into a carboy. This wort was pitched with White Labs strain #300 "hefeweisen ale", which should contribute banana and clove notes to the aroma.

a poem
two jugs of beer in the corner
in the early of the morn
murmer to each other
what do they conspire?
what do they dream at night?

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