Tonight I was in the mood for a little something darker, so I actually dug through the stock pile and pulled out OscarÂ’s Chocolate Oatmeal Stout by the Sand Creek Brewing Company in Black River Falls, WI (Hey Company guys, this is up by winter camp!) This is another Beer Tasting left over. Graumagus of the now defunct Frizzen Sparks provided us with this beer, this also is his first donation and puts him up on the Enablers list. He is now part of an elite few.

This beer comes in a standard 12 oz brown bottle. The lable is brown with a picture of a bears head in an oval. OscarÂ’s Stout is prominent across the center. In the top of the oval are the words Chocolate Oatmeal. At the very bottom is the picture of bearÂ’s footprint.

There is a nice dark brown color to the beer, light passes through with difficulties around the edge of the glass. Even though you canÂ’t see through it, it is thin enough that you can see that it appears to be clear. There was a nice inch thick tan head when I poured it. It was dense and made up of tiny bubbles. It slowly faded, but there was still some head when I finished the beer 15 minutes after pouring it. Lacing did form on the side of the glass that lasted for a while.

The smell is a mix of roasted malts, chocolate, coffee and oatmeal. It has a taste that starts off as a mix of dark chocolate with a coffee finish. There is a touch of bitterness that enhances the flavors and really opens it up to the pallet. The flavor leaves a mild aftertaste that isnÂ’t distracting.

This is a medium bodied beer. There is a creaminess to it that coats the mouth. However, for a stout this is a bit on the light and watery side. It is still heavier than your average beer.

This is one of the beers that scored really well at the tasting. At that time I gave it a 7 and IÂ’m going to stick with that rating. ItÂ’s a solid stout, good for drinking by itself or with a sandwich. Definitely a 7 out of 10.

Posted by: Contagion at 04:47 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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For those of you that don't live in the state of Illinois, or even if you do, you may not have heard but the Winnebago County Board is considering approving it's own concealed carry law. For those of you that don't know, Winnebago county is where Rockford is located, my home city. This goes against the laws that the State of Illinois has in place. Illinois is one of only 48 2 states that doesn't have some kind of concealed carry law or permit. The other is Wisconsin.

Now, none of this is new information. As you can see in the above article which was dated May 8th, 2008, this has been discussed or written about a lot over the last month. Over at IllinoisCarry.com they have a whole thread dedicated to this topic. If none of this is new, why am I posting about it?

They had another meeting with the sub-committee on it tonight. Unfortunately I was not able to attend due to work and family. Since I was not able to attend, I thought I would voice my opinion on the whole matter here. Plus if I did attend, they would have limited me to two minutes and anyone that knows me knows I can't introduce myself in under two minutes!

First off I applaud Doug Aurand, D-3, and Randy Olson, R-1 who are chairing this committee. It's nice to see two politicians of different parties putting lines behind them and doing something that not only is right, but also actually beneficial for the community. In this state of strong anti-firearm sentiment, AKA Chicago dictating policy to the rest of the state, to have two politicians buck the questionable legislation in this state to keep firearms out of the hands of honest, law abiding citizens is refreshing!

Secondly, anyone that has done any reasonable research into gun control knows that concealed carry actually does deter crime! There are numerous sights that support this, one of the better free online resources is GunFacts.info. There are other sites out there that also confirm the fire arm statistics. It's hard to argue with the statistics, well you can if you want to completely just ignore they exist. Firearms in the hands of honest citizens that own them legally deter crime, plain and simple.

Now I know that if Winnebago county passes this, the State of Illinois will bring down it's full wrath upon it for going against them. The whole thing will end up in the courts and what not. I'm hoping that this legislation and, more than likely, upcoming lawsuit is something that brings about freedom to the rest of us living in Illinois.

It will let us take back our streets.
It will let us take back our neighborhoods.
It will let us take back our cities!

And more than likely, it won't be because we fired a gun, but because criminals hate an armed populous and the fear of honest, armed citizens will push them back into their holes.

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It’s time for our first extra-curricular beer review! Tonight we have Summer Shandy (Not shanty as the ladies like to yell at us drunks when we miss pronounced it at the Beer Tasting!) by the Leinenkugel’s brewery in Chippewa Falls, WI. This beer(?) was provided by blogspawn Bruce. Why am I questioning calling this a beer? Because it is “Beer with natural lemonade flavor”. Yea, it’s beer and lemonade.

We have the standard 12 oz brown bottle. There is a yellow label on it that has the standard LeinieÂ’s design. You can see a lake with a boat on it in the background. There are lemons in the upper right corner and on the bottom ribbon there is a lemon flanked by wheat stalks.

It pours a murky pale yellow color. ItÂ’s cloudy enough you canÂ’t see through it, yet it still lets light pass through. There was a half-inch head on it that faded to a ring around the edge of the glass. There is some lacing, but not very much.

The smell is a combination of overly sweet lemonade and cereal grains. Mostly what you smell is the lemonade. Fortunately the taste isnÂ’t as strong as the smell; in fact the taste is rather weak. What you do taste is lemonade and cereal. ItÂ’s almost like someone spilled lemonade in a wheat beer.

ItÂ’s hard to describe the body of the beer, because it is a mix, but IÂ’d say its light bodied. For the body it has, the carbonation was a bit on the heavy side.

Overall this is going in my “not a beer” category. In and of itself it’s not horribly bad; I’ve had much worse. Yet at the same time if you are looking for a beer with beer flavor, you are not going to be pleasantly surprised by this.

As a beer IÂ’m giving this a 2.5 out of 10. As an alcoholic beverage I give it a 4 out of 10. At the Beer Tasting I rated it a 3 out of 10.

By the way, Bruce... the next beer you donate better be at least a 5 you son of a beaotch! out of the seven beers you've donated you're average score is a 3! You're damn lucky I'm not giving you credit for the Chelada!

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My parents took Clone to the Rockford Airshow yesterday. They picked him up around 10 AM. They also kept him so that Ktreva and I could hit the Raptor's game together last night. Since they knew it was going to be a late night they offered to keep him until Sunday morning and they would drop him off after church. Basically we had 24 hours of no kids!

As two child free adults what do we do?

Go for a nice lunch in a sit down restaurant, go see a movie, meet up with two of my three blogspawn, Petey and Bruce at Carlyle's, hit the football game and end up having a camp fire in the backyard. And finally sleeping until a storm called us from bed.

Yea, I realize we were pretty lame.

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Guys, do you have a hard time finding the perfect gift for that special someone in your life. I always say, "You can never go wrong with jewelry." Well that was until today. Because today I found OctopusME! Jewelry made from REAL Octopus!

Thank you so much for stopping by the OctopusME! Store where most of the jewelry is made from REAL Octopus!!

The Octopus is a symbol of Transformation and Regeneration. Because of its reputation of changing colors to match its backgrounds, the octopus is also known as the Master of Disguise. Octopuses also have the power to regenerate. If an octopus loses an arm in battle it can grow a new one. Some can even detach and arm to distract predators and then grow another! Don't mess with the octopus because they can stun or kill you with one poisonous bite. The poison is called tetrodotoxin which is the same as Fugu, the puffer fish served in Japan. So treat your Octopus with Love!

Dirty Fingers Rock!!! : )

(o)(o)(o) (suction sound)

OctopusME!

Yea, I'm not thinking any of the ladies that I know would want something like this. Really, I don't.

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This is a compilation of different "space battles." Some of the scenes aren't in space and some of them aren't battles. Like the space station blowing up in Armageddon. There is a lot from the Star Wars sagas in there, but there are also from other movies, including Serenity.

The music is pretty good too.

Posted by: Contagion at 09:49 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Not that I play golf, because I don't, or that I would have this problem, because I wouldn't, but I found this interesting. The Uroclub.

How many times has this happened? You arrive at the golf course, and soon youÂ’re on to 18 holes with your best buddies. After drinking sport ades, water, beer, and whatever, youÂ’re on the 3rd hole with no rest room in sight. There are no trees or bushes around and you just gotta go, what are you going to do?

Basically it's a piss can made to look like a golf club.

Every aspect of this piece of equipment has been meticulously worked out to make it simple and trouble free to use. To start with, the UroClub™ is designed from a light weight resin with a molded grip. The cap opens and closes easily and is designed with a triple sealing system to ensure that it is leak proof.

The privacy shield hooks to the sides of the pants or belt and adds stability. This allows freedom of the hands to manipulate the club and zipper.

The entire club is made of a non-porous material. Therefore, caring and cleaning is effortless!

The UroClub™ is intended to eliminate anxiety and any feeling of uneasiness on the course. It can be emptied at the nearest restroom or later on, when the golfer returns home.

Capacity: Over half a liter, twice the volume commonly urinated.

Length: Like a standard 7 Iron

I give them credit for the genius behind the idea, but honestly when I did golf and something like this happened to me... I really did just pee in front of everyone. I maybe shy, but my bladder is not.

Posted by: Contagion at 09:43 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Okay, I thought I had posted this years ago, but I can't find it in my archive. As we all know I have a bit of a zombie infatuation. Yes, I admit that it may be a bit on the unhealthy side, but that's okay. It could be worse, It could be candles.

Much to Ktreva's chagrin, friends of mine encourage my obsession with zombies by sending me news stories or articles. Well this morning I log on the computer and T1G sent me a link to Zombie Pinups.

Yea, Ktreva is not going to like this at all.

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Lets see... two days of non-stop interviewing and most of the candidates really just wasted my time. I mean seriously people my partner and I felt embarrassed for these people after the interviews. I finally finished it off. After interviewing 15 candidates I had only one that was passable to the second round. ONE!

If I wasn't interviewing I was in stupid meetings. It was either on topics that didn't involve me or were just so drawn out by the gaggle of women I work with each having to voice their exact same opinion as the person before them only using slightly different word combinations. I seriously started dozing off in one of the meetings. When someone asked me a question and pulled me awake, I just honestly said, "Sorry.... I was sleeping." After that I kept asking some of my peers that I liked if they wanted to go for a beer after work. Unfortunately no one could take me up on it.

Bruce then contacted me and asked if I wanted to go to Fritz's tonight. Hells yeah! So right now I'm waiting for him to get off of work so we can head down for some frosty beer goodness.

And since it's seriously warm in the house right now and humid as all hell. A good beer in a bar sounds mighty perfect.

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After tonight IÂ’m starting a twice a week beer review. I have a backlog of beers to review and with it being summer, I want to drink them before they start to skunk on me. IÂ’m going to keep with my standard Wednesday beer review, but IÂ’m going to throw an extra one in sometime during the week. It will fit in whenever I decide to do one.

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Tonight we have another beer from the Beer Tasting. It is Mocha Porter by the Rogue Brewing Company in Newport, Oregon. Shadoglare gets credit for providing tonightÂ’s beer.

It comes in the standard 12 oz brown bottle. There is a black label with the word Rogue in large red letters across it. In the top in a slight arch in blue is “Mocha Porter”. The bottom center of the picture is a guy in a blue shirt holding up a clinched fist and holding a mug of beer. There is also a star with a yellow border in the middle of the O on rogue.

When poured into the glass, it has a nice dark brown color to it. ItÂ’s almost black. Light barely passes through and itÂ’s so dark you canÂ’t tell if there is any cloudiness to it at all. . It poured a three quarter inch tan head that faded to a film on the top of the glass. No lacing was noticeable.

The first thing you smell is a strong scent of hops. It is followed by a kind of sweet chocolate. The first thing you taste is bitter hops, but it turns to a dark chocolate flavor. There is a roasted malt accent that comes through as your drink it as well. It has a very dry finish. The after taste is a bit bitter.

This is a nice medium bodied beer. There is some creaminess to it. The carbonation isnÂ’t over done.

I liked this beer at the tasting. ItÂ’s not too bitter for a beer, but in my opinion it is too bitter for a porter. Porter should be a bit maltier and less hops. Easily drank with just a very mild hint of bitterness. At the beer review I gave this a 5.5. It was the seventh overall beer of the event. After giving it a proper review, IÂ’m giving this 6 out of 10.

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I've been spread so thin at work that there is really almost no chance for me to successfully get anything accomplished. Too many projects, too little time, not enough resources. I'm almost getting the feeling they are trying to set me up for a fall.

I'd say they were, but my office management isn't that devious. Hell, I'm the one they use for such plans.

Needless to say, I just got done killing a crap load of robots in Robokill and now I plan on kicking back a beer or twelve.

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I have a new Mortar Maiden up, Liosag MacNamara. The sad things is that the young lady that posed with the mortar did it three years ago. After I've used a series of photos from one girl, I move them to my "used" folder. Somehow I accidentally moved hers into that section. While cleaning out the files today, I found them. So, better late then never.

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I finally got around today, a month later, to updating the Spoon and Blade with pictures and reviews for the last two re-enactments I did, The Gathering at Macktown and Bloody Lake. If you want to see some photos and just read the stories, head on over.

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1 LOL I love the photo of the lil one & Wil - you'll have to keep that one on file for when the boy starts dating

Posted by: Shadoglare at June 01, 2008 07:34 PM (yUtP2)

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...funny, but not right. I'll warn you now, that this video has mature content and could be questionable for work. There is no nudity nor harsh language. All I can say is that this is one warped babysitter.

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