I have nothing to do right now

My coworker suggested I do a crossword puzzle and I said "OK," but then I suck at crosswords so I tried sudoku. I used to be good at Sudoku but that was years ago and now the things at which I shine are 90's alt rock trivia and picking wine pairings. What would really make my day is if the one of the dudes from like Hum started a winery.

Speaking of Hum they had a reunion show last NYE in Chicago and apparently Matt Talbott has lost all sense of tonality in his singing. Listen to this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3cqw71lKv8

Brace yo selves.

Week 2 in racism being over. Last night I stood naked before my bathroom mirror trying to utter racist epithets but all that came out was a jarble of consonants. It was fucking weird. I blame society.

In other stories this shit is the front fucking page of the NYTimes website:



Headline is: WHITE HOUSE UNBUTTONS FOR UNFORMAL DRESS CODE.

Larry Summers and Rahm Emanual, why are your jackets still on? Larry Summers looks like the type of dude whose candy store mysteriously closes after 6 months of business, and in that pic Rahm looks like he's got on Siouxsie Sioux makeup. Look at this picture of Larry Summers.



"MYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERG"

So um Larry do you have anything else to add?



"MYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERG"

Good to know. Check out Sheed being all "yes we can!":



Never forget.

I'm so doing this

http://www.cwtv.com/upload/file/cw-90210-clean-clear-video-upload

It is theoretically impossible that I will not win. I've already done the calculations. They're right here on my desk. Fuck you.

Some shit

The reason I never updated for more or less the entire month of December was as such: I would wake up at 9, go to work, and sell wine until 5 or 6. And then I would work on grad school applications until 10. And then I would sleep. And then I would go back to work and be hit with questions like "I want your best wine in a blue bottle," or "I want a merlot but not a sweet one."

One quick note for all casual wine drinkers: 99% of the wine which you see on the market has precisely no residual sugar in it. It is all converted to alcohol during fermentation. This is how you get "wine," and not "Manischewitz." Sure, dessert wines, ports, sec and demi-sec Champagnes, Moscato d'Asti and the like, Boone's Farm and the like, cream sherry, and most German Riesling on the shelf have residual sugar. But that's it. Merlot, Shiraz, Pinot Grigio, Cabernet, etc? No, not sweet. What people usually confuse as "sweet" is usually the a full-bodied wine combined with the fruit character from the grapes, and usually lack of tannin. They get that oily texture and fruit coming together, and none of the sandpapery feel from the tannin, and somewhere along their synapses these combined sensations convert to a word which we pronounce "sweet" and which signifies the presence of sugar. But there is no sugar. Note.

Speaking of beverage nerddom, my favorite customers are beer customers. Wine customers generally have an idea what they want, and also trust us more to make good decisions (which I think we usually do) when it comes to pairings, gifts, recommendations. Beer drinkers assume that since their beer of choice is Guinness (because their great-great grandpa was Irish and they are therefore just as Irish as I am, shalom) and because GUINNESS RULES they are therefore beer experts and need NO HELP of salespeople like my coworker who has tried over 4,000 beers and is an excellent homebrewer. We call these customers mustache people. Why?, I don't know, they probably have mustaches. Also note some customers talk about how FUCKED UP they get from drinking two Guinnesses without knowing that Guinness has a smaller ABV than Budweiser. I just ruined all your Irish pride.

Anyhow one day a customer wanted me to help him pick a keg. I suggested to him Pilsner Urquell and when he asked me to describe it I said it was a "golden lager" at which point he interrupted me and said "BAH, I hate lagers." He then asked me to describe Sierra Nevada, which I said was a Pale Ale and then "Bah, I hate ales" (yes he really said "Bah"). Keep in mind that by saying that he hates ales and lagers, he denotes that the only beer he likes is lambic (which is sort of an ale anyway), hard cider, and kvass. Mustache people.

I'm kvetching. Pride of the Irish y'all.

-9

This one's for you, Harrie.

There are two bank thermometers a block apart in Iowa City. In the afternoon the US Bank thermometer, because it gets some daytime sun, consistently reads about 10 degrees higher than the Midwest One thermometer. And right now the US Bank thermometer is reading "-9".

People who say "talking about the weather is boring" has never lived in the midwest. Science fact right there. This weather shit is fucking epic. People write books about the Iowa weather, and you know what: the books are actually pretty good. I probably will never experience anything as intense as weather in Iowa. And I've been to concentration camps.

In fact, I was going to catalogue, right here, the intense weather that I've experienced in my six years here, but I realized it would've taken too much time.

But for example, the Saturday of flood week last June I was part of a large crew of sandbaggers working by the University library. I was in a chain of people moving sandbags down towards the levee. After doing this two hours, a guy with a megaphone tells the crew that there is a severe thunderstorm warning and that we must leave. So we go to a bar. And the baseball game on the bar TV is interrupted by the local weatherman, saying that we're in a tornado watch. I go outside and there are two shirtless people. One minute the wind blows and it is humid, and then another minute the wind blows in the opposite direction and it is crisp and dry. Then it hails. Then I look up and clouds are moving in all kinds of directions, forming a funnel cloud. The people I am with decide we should all take off our shirts so we do and we flash cars. Then it is sunny, then it rains again. It is downpouring across the street but sunny and warm on our side. The bartender is blaring country music. Every cloud in the sky, of which we have a clear view, is moving in a unique direction. The funnel cloud is to the south. Then the funnel cloud passes.