Yankee Tag Blog

…is back. Our kickoff brew is a Black Butte Porter clone. We started the brew yesterday, and this morning fermentation is in full swing. It’s fermenting in my coat closet. Here, have a look:

As you can see, “Top Hat” is a pretty classy brewery. We should be able to rack in about a week, and hopefully will be bottling in three or four.

I don’t believe in god, but if I did, I would thank her for making me Irish.

Go sign the petition at http://proposition317.com/ to make St. Patrick’s Day a national holiday!

Bunny Hunt ‘08 was a huge success. Sure, we only came back with one half of a bunny, but we shot dozens. You see, in light of my dedicated interest in sustainable hunting, we implemented a new program which I call “Shoot and Release.” The premise is simple: we’re sportsmen and enjoy the thrill of the hunt, but we don’t need to take the bunnies with us. It’s the challenge we’re after, so after shooting the bunnies we simply let them go. We got the idea for “Shoot and Release” from the fishing tradition of “Catch and Release.” Of course, bunnies are quite different than fish. While fish swim away anxiously after release, bunnies tend to play dead. What jokesters.

One of the great aspects of hunting is how close to nature it brings you. When we headed out, I figured there was only one kind of bunny, but in fact there are countless types of bunnies. It’s a good thing we practice “Shoot and Release” because bunnies come in a variety of sizes and shapes and some are quite large. One especially large type of bunny we shot had a long tail and short ears. This bunny must have been part of some type of study because it had a collar and name tag on it. We even saw one bunny that had ears that looked like they could have belonged to a human. And this bunny was huge! It was easily the size of a small child. We almost didn’t recognize it as a bunny, because it was wearing clothes.

The bunny we brought home was the “traditional” kind. My buddy got it with his 12 gauge tactical Mossman 500 from about five feet away. We found most of it. I insisted that he pose with his new trophy:

I believe, if you’re going to kill an animal, you should use all of it. We found a use for every part. Even the head. “What could we use the head for?” you ask. Well, we stuck it on a stake as a warning to the other bunnies. Bunnies, we will fuck you up.

My buddy, the infamous Sacramento Artist St. Ofle, has recently designed a shirt print that we felt was perfect in consideration of my upcoming Bunny Hunt. The genius of the design is the “two-sided” approach: one side of the shirt (the front) will show a bunny print and the inside of the front of the shirt will be the recipe, so that it shows through a little. Brilliant.

This weekend, for the first time in my life, I’m going hunting. Bunny hunting, to be specific. My fellow hunters and I figure that we’re men, and must do what men do best: hunt bunnies. (Still unsure what a bunny is?) So we’re going this weekend, and we’re bringing lots and lots of ammo.

I went to a gun show last weekend. I was really excited, I had been looking forward to it for awhile. I got there and looked around for an hour or so before I overheard one of the vendors ask a customer if her address was correct on her driver’s license. Apparently, if you don’t have a current ID issued by the state of Oregon, you can’t buy a gun at a gun show in Oregon. I was pretty disappointed because I’ve been wanting to buy a skeet shotgun, but I haven’t yet updated my driver’s license since moving.

I went back to the gun show the next day with my buddy, Colin. I didn’t see anything particularly exciting on the first day, but now with Colin I found the perfect gun at a great price. I asked the guy running the stand what the rule was specifically. It’s a very fun rule: if you buy a gun at a gun show from a dealer then you need current Oregon ID. If you buy a gun at a gun show from a private collection (non-dealer) then you need current Oregon ID. If you buy a gun from a dealer outside of a gun show you need current Oregon ID. But, if you buy a gun from a private collection outside of a gun show you don’t need ID. It’s a pretty stupid law, but hey, you voted for these guys.

So, my buddy Colin hooked me up. He bought the gun. For himself. And then we left the gun show and went to a parking lot across the street. All of the sudden, he decided (quite unsolicited), that he wanted to sell the gun. Fortunately for him, I happened to be interested, and it was now legal for me to buy it. So… my new gun:

I think economics is interesting, which is why most people don’t like me. Ok, that’s not why they don’t like me, but I imagine it doesn’t help. Nevertheless, I’ve been appalled in recent weeks over the announcement of various politicians promoting “economic stimulus packages” (Like this, this, or that). So, in light of the ongoing debate, I’d like to throw my two cents into the mix: you’re all idiots. Here’s why…

First, understand that the US economy is a market of over $14 trillion (that number looks like: $14,000,000,000,000). The economic “stimulus” is estimated to be at $150 billion ($150,000,000,000). That sounds like a lot until you consider that it’s only about 1% of the total economy. If everything went on sale by 1% would you go out on a shopping spree? No. It’s not enough to greatly influence spending. That’s why stores don’t have 1% off sales. They have 10% off sales, or 20%, or 30% (which would require $1.4 trillion, $2.8 trillion, or $4.2 trillion respectively).

Second, the whole idea of a “stimulus” is misleading to begin with. A stimulus is an outside force that creates a reaction. But what outside force are we talking about here? The $150B has to come from somewhere within our economy. The proposals take money from one hand to place it in another. It sounds nice, it creates nice news clips, but it’s meaningless. It’s like taking a bucket of water from the deep end of the pool and dumping it in the shallow end: you don’t end up with a higher water level.

Finally, I challenge this notion that the politicians even know what they’re doing. They aren’t economists (at least not most of them) and they’re likely to cause more harm than good. If it were possible to “stimulate” the economy, why did they wait til now? Shouldn’t they have been stimulating the economy all along? The notion that your favorite politician has a “quick fix” up his (or her) sleeve is a fallacy. There is, however, one exception: Ron Paul.

Ron Paul proposes to cut tons of government spending (i.e. waste) to create a budget surplus (which would go to paying off the national debt). He proposes to cut income tax by 100%. This equals more money in your pocket. More money means you can buy more. If you buy more people need to make more, and if they make more they need to hire more people who will also not pay income tax and who also will go and buy more. This is the invisible hand that governs the economy. It’s not the one attached to Bush II, Clinton II, or Obama.

So yesterday my mom calls me up and asks, “What did you order from al-[insert generic Islamic organization name]?”

I replied, “Hi mom, it’s nice to talk to you, too. What are you talking about?”

And her: “You just had a package delivered from al-[insert generic Islamic organization name]. It’s pretty big. What is it?”

Me: “I don’t know mom, it got sent to your house? For me? From al-[insert generic Islamic organization name]? Don’t open it!” (I’ve made a few too many Mohammad jokes to take opening packages from Muslims lightly.)

Her: “I wasn’t going to open it… I was just wondering what it is.”

Me: “I’m not saying you’re snooping, I’m just saying… well, is it ticking or anything?”

Turns out, it was just a Qur’an. I say just as if the Qur’an isn’t dangerous. Probably more dangerous than a bomb, now that I think about it, but nevertheless I’m glad isn’t wasn’t a bomb (Praise Allah!). Anyway, now I have a Qur’an. And I need to figure out who sent it to me. I have a couple of guesses…

This segment went unaired on Larry King. Unfortunately the candidate with the most important message isn’t getting the press coverage he deserves. I aim to remedy this by broadcasting the segment on my site instead. I’ll give Larry King a run for his money.

Here are some interesting facts that you might want to know about Ron Paul:

• Ron Paul wants to eliminate the IRS (yep, no more income taxes!)
• Ron Paul wants a smaller government (when was the last time you heard about layoffs in the government?)
• Ron Paul wants our troops out now. Out of Iraq. Out of Afghanistan. Out of every country not called: The USA.

Go find out more about Ron Paul at www.RonPaul2008.com

I need to preface this post with a couple of quick notes. First, I swear on my atheism, it’s entirely true. Secondly, I’m not the kind of person who would ever believe it, if I hadn’t seen it myself. That said, two nights ago the creepiest thing ever happened:

My girlfriend and I went to bed around midnight. I was pretty tired and I fell asleep quickly. In the middle of the night (right around 3 am) I was startled awake. I sat up a little and looked around and I saw my girlfriend walk out our bedroom door and head downstairs. At this point, I wasn’t scared or anything, but I was surprised since I’ve never seen her get up in the middle of the night (she’s a heavy sleeper). I thought about calling after her to see where she was going, but I didn’t want to talk since it was late and I wanted to fall back asleep (you know that feeling…). I started to lay back down when I looked over and realized that my girlfriend was actually laying right next to me. At this point I start to freak out a little because I clearly saw her get up and go down stairs. Possibilities start running through my head — is it an intruder ( no, I know it was her), did I fall back to sleep (no way, it just happened), am I having some kind of dream/hallucination (it was so real)?

In the midst of me running through a million poor explanations of how I could’ve seen what I just saw, she sits up next to me and says, “I’m going to go downstairs to get a drink.” Let me remind you, in the three years we’ve lived together, she has never once gotten up to get a drink in the middle of the night. I’ve never seen her do it. NOW, I’m freaking out. I tell her to stay in bed, but she immediately asks why. (What do I even say?) I told her that I thought I saw someone walk downstairs and that, see, she really should let me buy a gun to keep in our room. (What? I’m not going to give up an opportunity to convince her…). So now she’s scared, and I’m scared, except I can’t tell her what’s really terrifying me: that I just saw something completely unnatural.

I don’t believe in ghosts. I don’t believe in God, the Easter Bunny, leprechauns, Bigfoot, the holocaust (just kidding — Ahmadinejad joke), souls, the Loch Ness monster, or Magic Jesus. These things don’t exist. So what did I just see? Well, two days later I’m still not sure, and I spent the next two hours bathed in sweat trying to figure it out. The easiest explanation would be that I had some kind of dream or visual hallucination (which I’m not prone to) in which I thought I saw my girlfriend get up out of bed and go downstairs (which she NEVER does). That would be the easiest explanation. Although, what are the odds that the first time in the 1,000 nights we’ve spent together she gets up out of bed for a glass of water, is the same night I hallucinate and see her doing just that, only seconds before. That is a coincidence that is just too hard to believe in. It’s not just that it happened on the same night. It happened just seconds apart.

So here’s what I think happened. I think I saw her intentions. Visually. We understand a mere fraction of how the mind works, and somehow there must be a way to transmit thoughts, that we just haven’t figured out. I don’t know. But I was scared. I’m still a little scared.

What’s your theory? theory@yankeetag.com