Groove Neuter’s blog

I Am My Own Charity

nobody@vox.com(Groove Neuter) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 13:56:30 -0500

I was all set to challenge myself to eating only PBJ sandwiches and ramen noodles for the month, when the doorbell rang.

A friend of my wife from a meetup group had a whole car-load of groceries to drop off.

They had sold their house and were moving in with the in-laws and simply didn't have anywhere to store their pantry, as the in-laws already had a full kitchen.

I found myself swimming in all kinds of name-brand foodstuffs that I would never buy for myself.

So there I was pondering when it occurred to me that this is a pattern.

A good chunk of the things I have around me came from other people who donated them because they were moving or some such, and I was just around and willing to take their stuff.

My plates, mugs, and silverware are from a pair of Japanese college students I worked with 15 years ago as they gave away all the stuff from their apartment that they didn't need to move back with them.

My heavy winter coat is from an apartment I had in college. When we moved out we discovered that nobody living there claimed it. Apparently, it was left by a guest during some party or another and they were in no condition to feel the cold when they left and it had been hanging there ever since.

My light coat and various shirts came from a former co-worker as we distributed his possessions from a rental house to various neighboring apartment dumpsters as he left town hurriedly.

My music collection came, largely, from a radio station I worked at.

Our tables and desks came from my wife's deceased grandfather.

My glassware came from an old job that gave out pint glasses each year on the company B-day (St Patty's).

The amount of beer a former company provided over the years would have to be measured in gallons.

My guitar was handed down from a cousin.

I have house decorations from a Chinese English literacy student.

My headstone should read: Drop-offs accepted.

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I Know The Band

nobody@vox.com(Groove Neuter) — Thu, 29 May 2008 18:09:31 -0500

So, I've been in Nashville right at one year now and I finally started making contacts with the local music scene.

There was a backyard BBQ this past weekend with one of my meetup buddies, who apparently has quite a history.

Should you get the chance, check out the music of any of the following three acts with my blessing:
(and tell Blane to "eat his fruit". There was a jungle juice incident.)

You can find some of their upcoming schedules on their sites.

Guy-Michael Grande

Erin Easterling

Shane & Blane (click cancel through the lamespace pimp-my login to hear some samples)

I wound up behind the charcoal grill working on teriyaki chicken for the crowd and talking (read drinking) with the musicians and helped them break down their equipment back to their cars when they were done.

You know, the fun part of the party.

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Feeling all classy and heady...

nobody@vox.com(Groove Neuter) — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 19:00:26 -0600

... Like a beer in a martini glass.

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Beer snobbery, conspiracy, and me

nobody@vox.com(Groove Neuter) — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 18:54:06 -0600

As mentioned in an earlier post, I will cop to having purchased a pack of domestic macro brew this week.

The aforementioned beer was in fact Michelob Amber Bock (Anheuser-Busch product).

I have had it before, a long time ago at a university far, far away.

It was in my exploratory phase. I tried one of everything I could get past my liver.

There being so many options in the wide world of suds, and it being widely available, I just never circled back.

Standing in the beer aisle there were always other options that I'd never tried before that called to me instead of something that I'd had before. And I figured it'd always be there if I needed it. Afterall, it seems every store carries the majors and their sub-imprint labels. The benefits of a massive distribution logistical empire and marketing machine.

And you know, Michelob Amber Bock is not bad. It is actually quite a good beer. Roasted, caramelized malts with Bavarian hops, rich and smooth.

Here's why I generally avoid macro produced beers:

I harbor a streak of beer snobbery combined with conspiracy theory.

Even though the macro producers are now serving up alternatives to the ubiquitous light American lager (Coors, Bud, Miller), I simply don't trust them to continue doing so if the little guys weren't there taking market share.

It's not that I think the big brewers have inferior product. They produce a reliable product on mass scale efficiently and at low cost.

They are very good at what they do best, mass-produce to the lowest common denominator and marketing blitz.

My problem with them is that I find their motives for producing alternative craft styles suspect.

They didn't offer anything other than a lightweight lager style until the small craft guys challenged their domination and proved that their was a market for the alternative styles.

If the beer consuming public begins to choose the Macro alternative versions now instead of staying loyal to the innovators that revived the craft styles, then the small guys will dry up and blow away.

This would leave the market in the hands of the big macro producing giants again, and they might just as easily cease production of anything other than their light rice-beers again, having regained the market share and seeing no point in continuing to produce expensive smaller niche alternatives to their main brand recipe.

There shareholders might well demand that they do so, to drive expenses out of the business.

This is a concern because unlike most of the smaller houses they are all publicly traded entities and are beholden to shareholder interest.

Note: Sam Adams Boston Beer Company is publicly traded and yet is defending the high cost basis of their quality ingredients and broad lineup as integral to their product and brand. For the purposes of this conspiracy theory and snobbery, I'll classify them as a craft brew house, not a macro brew.

So, I try to buy the small craft brews as a way to keep the market for choice open and to force all the players to provide more than one style of beer.

However, my selection at the local grocer here is alas, limited and I'd tried everything else multiple times. So, I gave in and grabbed an Amber Bock sixer.

I will only regret my decision if I hear that one of the three local micros is going out of business because I didn't purchase their product instead.

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Bad Meetup, Bad

nobody@vox.com(Groove Neuter) — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 19:21:48 -0600

So, the map to the beer meetup was wrong. Horribly wrong.

I spent an hour driving around a sketchy part of downtown on the wrong side of the river at night.

I kept going convinced that I was just not seeing something obvious and all would be made clear should I persevere.

Alas, nothing fruitful came of my search and I was forced to admit defeat as I returned home.

Home, where a babysitter waited for me that still needed to be paid even though my night out was a bust.

I was bummed and a wee bit embarrassed that I had not navigated successfully.

The topper though, came the next day from the event organizer, who berated those of us who had RSVP'd but then not showed up to the event.

She admitted that the map on the meetup invite as well as the establishments own website were both incorrect, but then went on to tell us all how immature it was to say we were going and then to stand her up.

Of something like 23 Yes RSVP, only 5 showed. And those were really only one RSVP who happened to bring a gaggle of guests.

I'm guessing everybody else, like myself, were circling the same incorrect address wondering what the fuck we were all missing, feeling like idiots.

The thing I've noticed about Meetups is that they are most heavily used by transplants. People who have immigrated to a metro area and don't have an established social network, which is why they use the site to reach out to others of like interests.

That said, it means that we, the majority of Meetup users, have no idea where the places are that we are meeting at, and do not know the quirks of a city's street numbering/naming system, having not grown up there/here. Which makes an accurate map vital to a successful event.

But to blame the users for not showing up, after acknowledging, after the fact, that the map was the ass end of nowhere near the actual establishment is atrocious. For fuck sake. As organizer it falls on that person, especially if they are familiar with the area, to ensure that the map is accurate before leading the flock astray.

And then to have the balls to bitch at the group for being inconsiderate and not showing up?

Shit dude. I was out $20 for a babysitter, drove in to the city, then around a nasty bit of it for an hour (all my fault for being stubborn, granted) and had an all around fucked night, I'm just not going to feel sorry for the event organizer because she was embarrassed to have made such a large reservation, only to have so few actually turn up.

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QotD: My Peace Prize Goes To...

nobody@vox.com(Groove Neuter) — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 13:05:00 -0500

Al Gore was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work raising awareness on global warming. Who would you award a Nobel Peace Prize to?

Jim Koch,
Founder / Brewer
Samuel Adams

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Strike one off the list

nobody@vox.com(Groove Neuter) — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 17:29:17 -0500

So, that urban legend about drivers in the American South, while on the freeway, putting their vehicles in reverse to go back to an off-ramp that they've missed?

I saw it yesterday.

I've also seen vehicles on the freeway merging, I use the term loosely, come to a complete stop on the on-ramp as opposed to feathering into traffic.

Today, while in a left turn lane at a signal light, red for turns / green for through traffic, a truck pulled up next to me in the through lane and stopped for the light cycle.

Me?

I now get cold sweats at visions of approaching vehicles crossing double-yellow lane markers coming toward me on one-lane roads.

To cope?

Samuel Adams has a fresh seasonal out. Winter Lager. 5.8% A.B.V. Dark wheat lager brewed with winter spices.
A traditional bock steeped in German heritage brewed with German Noble Hops called Tettnang-Tettnanger.

Also learned of the strongest beer in the world. Samuel Adams Utopias. Must try.
http://www.internetwines.com/rws28347.html
http://www.samueladams.com/world_of_beer.aspx

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Nadir

nobody@vox.com(Groove Neuter) — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 20:51:34 -0500

On the one side, there's having a beer for breakfast...

And either explaining it away (as it being a Saturday, ahem) or getting confrontational about the expressed, or anticipated expressed concern of others. It betrays that the user/abuser was looking for attention all along.

Then,

Well then there's the other side...

And you say, "What? It's Saturday? Cool, that means I can have several more as I don't have to drive eldest child to preschool today!" Meaning that the user/abuser wasn't anticipating any response at all and is simply pleased that the indulgence can, all responsibilities aside, be prolonged.

When dealing with depression, you don't need any filters.

That in mind, pass on the ciggies and go straight for the cigars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadir

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Better than Never

nobody@vox.com(Groove Neuter) — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 14:09:56 -0500

Tis far better to have a known a breeze that passed, than never to have felt the wind at all.

Yes, I stole the spirit of that from Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem In Memoriam:27, 1850

When real life picks up I find I don't mind missing PC time at all.

Days or weeks go by without checking email.

Blog entries from others stack up that seem like they should be gotten to.

Meanwhile, mine are the anti-matter of the blogosphere.

I know things happened on those days, but nobody can see it.

Just gaping holes of nothing in the record.

Joined the YMCA these past couple of weeks and picked up the old routine without a beat missing.

Summer finally turned off and with it the humidity and the air conditioning.

The girls are active all their waking hours.

Eldest is a big girl now, with a backpack, lunch box, and school projects to be brought home for the front of the fridge.

Then a breeze picks up making it absolutely perfect out of doors.

I pick up a Shiner Bock from the fridge (Spoetzl Brewery, Shiner, Texas), the bucket of sidewalk chalk for the girls and make for the patio and my soft padded chair in the shade.

Begin the countdown until the wife comes home from work.

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The Alcohol Knowledge Test

nobody@vox.com(Groove Neuter) — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 18:34:23 -0500

http://www.okcupid.com/tests/16336235046633759176/Alcohol-Knowledge

Your Score: Bacardi 151

Congratulations! You're 134 proof, with specific scores in beer (80) , wine (83), and liquor (121).

All right. No more messing around. Your knowledge of alcohol is so high that you have drinking and getting plastered down to a science. Sure, you could get wasted drinking beer, but who needs all those trips to the bathroom? You head straight for the bar and pick up that which is most efficient.

Link: The Alcohol Knowledge Test written by hoppersplit on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

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