booze nooze yooze can use

how much cider could a woodchuck upchuck cider...Why pay big bucks for your chick beer when you can now make your very own ciders and perry? A tenth of the cost of Smirnoff Ice, and far more pretention-worthy than anything out of a can or a plastic bottle, plus full of nutritious vitamins and minerals. Also, phytochemicals. That’s right; we’re here to help you get shitfaced responsibly. Your liver may not thank me but research (and my luck in singles bars) indicates your colon will.

The best way to thank me is to invite me over to sample a batch and send me home in a limo with a couple of cases.

From The Real Cider and Perry Page. Give it a go and let me know when you’ve got GrowersMerridale, and Strongbow on the run.

…The juice was collected in a 30 gallon plastic bin that was once used to carry Strawberries around. We added 5 LB’s of Raisons and let it ferment outside for 3 months. After 3 months we racked it off into 5 gallon barrels and started drinking it a few months later. Next time I’ll wash the hessian more thoroughly since the cider had a distinct hessianny taste! – this lead to some wag christening it as “Sacks’N’Socks Cider” (Anglo pun intended!). The cider also matures much better in the barrels than it did in bottles – it keeps so well it doesn’t seem worth the effort to bottle.

So all in all very successful – and sooooo easy compared with beermaking!

Snakebite! Cider and lager and hangoversand here, for ease of use even when drunk, is the recipe index.

Cider Recipes

Perry Recipes

Yup: play along at home as Gillian busts her Perry Cherry.

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bisexual bat sex demon attack prevention

Frank Frazetta's Frankenstein and Dracula 

Well, that title should draw the Buffy fans like flies.

The BBC reports that men in Tanzania live in constant fear of being attacked and raped by a bisexual demon in the form of a giant bat.

The story goes that the bat is able to transform itself into a man at night and it has also been blamed for rapes of women.

Sheikh Yahya Hussein, a prominent astrologer in Tanzania, claims that the demon is a spirit that is unleashed by witches to torment their opponents.

Naturally, in an effort to prevent such attacks, the men are sleeping rough (it being, presumably, well-known that sex-crazed bat-shaped demons have difficulty performing when they’re out in the open and prefer a more intimate setting for their acts of incubation/incubattery) and, of course, smearing themselves with lardons, which has the not-entirely-welcome effect of repelling gay bat sex demons yet attracting Mario Batali and his fingerling.

Also, no sightings of said sex-crazed bat demon have in fact been reported in Tanzania at all. So ask yourself…have any sightings been reported around here? We will pause while you check the local paper.

And since the Tanzanian protections have so far proven 100% effective at deterring sex-crazed bat demon attacks, perhaps you should start thinking about the practicalities.

Just to be safe, get out the Crisco and the hammock. After all, you don’t want anyone thinking you were asking for it.

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win a date to the Oscars!

Halle-on-Adrien action...or was it Adrien-on-Halle?

Okay, so I’m pimping out a total stranger. I’d feel worse about it if it weren’t a stranger who was already advertising for companionship on Craigslist. Sue me; it didn’t say “do not forward/repost.” Those restrictions are, of course, sacred to me, as they should be to all right-thinking and discreet peoples.

So I find out, via Defamer, that this guy (and it is a guy, and furthermore an allegedly straight, single, blue-eyed blond one at that!) is a screenwriter type who needs a date for the Oscars. Writing Dreamworks off entirely, he asks that the date be of the opposite sex, and who are we to suggest otherwise, although rigidity in these matters is not exactly, shall we say, indicative of having the right DNA for Hollywood.

We at the ol’ raincoaster blog are here to help. Behold the original posting with contact deets:

Hello,

It looks like due to a huge screenwriting windfall they want to give me 2 tickets to the Oscars. Being single right now means, yes, I need a date. So I thought I’d try to find a “real” date with someone outside my ususal circle of friends.

I’m 38, successful, I’m told I’m good looking, blondish hair with blue eyes, 185 pounds and 6 feet tall. The only thing I ask is that you can be discrete [sic] when staring at celebrities, and of course don’t be embarrassing while we are at the after-parties. Drunk is fine (and fun), embarrassing is not. [ed- I think I’m in love]

I’d think we should meet up before for a drink and see if we hit it off. Please send a couple pictures when you reply, not just asking me to send one first. I posted this weeks ago and ended up with someone who flaked.

Thanks!

Location: Beverly Hills

Reply to: pers-280353013 at craigslist.org

Well, what are you waiting for?

Defamer commenter and talented researcher Adele H has thoughtfully made a list of all the nominated writers, which we paste here with links to whatever images we can find, for blond-blue-eyedness-comparison purposes:

“Borat Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” (20th Century Fox)
Screenplay by Sacha Baron Cohen & Anthony Hines & Peter Baynham & Dan Mazer
Story by Sacha Baron Cohen & Peter Baynham & Anthony Hines & Todd Phillips
“Children of Men” (Universal)
Screenplay by Alfonso Cuarón & Timothy J. Sexton and David Arata and Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby
“The Departed” (Warner Bros.)
Screenplay by William Monahan
“Little Children” (New Line)
Screenplay by Todd Field & Tom Perrotta
“Notes on a Scandal” (Fox Searchlight)
Screenplay by Patrick Marber
Original screenplay
“Babel” (Paramount and Paramount Vantage)
Written by Guillermo Arriaga
“Letters from Iwo Jima” (Warner Bros.)
Screenplay by Iris Yamashita
Story by Iris Yamashita & Paul Haggis
“Little Miss Sunshine” (Fox Searchlight)
Written by Michael Arndt
“Pan’s Labyrinth” (Picturehouse)
Written by Guillermo del Toro
“The Queen” (Miramax, Pathé and Granada)
Written by Peter Morgan 

She's on the market, boys!Too bad all the good-looking ones are not blond (or are invisible to Google; assistants, get posting those headshots to IMDB, stat!).

There: don’t say I never did nuthin’ for ya. In case it goes well, you should know that I LOVE weddings…so save me an invitation. I promise not to sell the location to Rupert Murdoch.

I’d liveblog it instead.

Of course, if that doesn’t work for the lad, there’s always Castadate:

Look, people are busy...

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the greatest interpretation of Total Eclipse of the Heart in the history of music

Or the future, either, come to think of it. In a world which contains Bonnie Tyler‘s pared-to-the-bone proto-emo wail as well as the postmodern Total Eclipse of Good Taste by the Norwegian novelty band Hurra Torpedo, performed on electric guitar and kitchen appliances, (and now, from Defamer, comes word that even that staggery goddess of the trailer park Tara Reid has taken a shot at this tatty survivor…perhaps the last ditty that will have her) there is simply no rendition, extraordinary or otherwise, that can compare to the immortal Kiki and Herb performing an all-too-heartfelt version of Total Eclipse of the Heart.

Poor Coco!

(as for the Squid tag…what do you think happened to her, eh?
Kids don’t dissolve in seawater, my friends)

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The Valentines Day gift that keeps on giving: belly dancing lessons for men

Male bellydancer...well what does it look like? Click to enlargeWords.

Fail.

Me.

From the brilliantly twisted mind and elegantly restrained pen of that Bob Newhart of British politics, Jon Henley in The Guardian:

In possibly life-changing Valentine’s Day news, we are pleased to report that the many and varied attractions of Birmingham have just been enhanced by the addition of all-male belly-dancing classes. According to the Birmingham Mail, belly-dancing for blokes helps “trim porky stomachs, achieve ramrod straight backs and turn themselves into sex gods”, and while there are drawbacks – you have to wear a “tight top” so the teacher “can see your belly rolls” – we can, at this late juncture, think of few better ways to show her you really love her.