Flat Earth Brewing Company

This is for those who are still in the St. Paul/MN area: a new brewery has opened up in Saint Paul. Started by a former brewer at Town Hall, Flat Earth Brewing Company promises "Brewing on the Edge!" The first beer out is the Flat Earth Pale Ale, which the site describes as...

"...a Belgian pale ale. Inspired by beers like Orval and Rare Vos. It is made with imported Belgian malt and a Belgian yeast strain. Our Belgian pale ale has a sweet malt aroma with traces of orange, plum and pear. Its complex malt backbone of biscuit and hints of toast compliment the spiciness of the yeast."

Sounds awesome to be, but why am I writing about this? Well, according to the forums at beeradvocate.com, Flat Earth Brewing will be tapping a keg at the Happy Gnome this Thursday, March 1 at 6pm. I may stop by after the Thursday night TV lineup (or before, I guess), but probably more likely just end up at the Muddy Pig, because it's in walking distance. But, it's always exciting to have another brewer in the area.

Details here.

Flow Charts

Wellington Grey, of whom I know nothing, has created two different flow charts. One shows how people use the scientific method to come to their conclusions, the other shows how people use faith to reach theirs. It'd be funnier if it weren't so true for so many people.

Via Boing Boing.

An Unholy Beard

Methinks this guy has been watching way, way too much Stigmata. He was recently sentenced to 14 years in prison for the death of a nun. He was, of course, simply attempting to exorcise a demon from her frail physical shell, but he probably shouldn't have chained her to a crucifix and starved her to death. The article states,

"She was treated for schizophrenia, but when she relapsed, Daniel Petru Corogeanu -- a monk who served as the priest for the secluded Holy Trinity convent in northeast Romania -- and the four other nuns tried exorcism."

Yeah, or, perhaps you should have had her treated for schizophrenia again. She must have been diagnosed with it at some point if she had been treated for it. But, you know, you can never trust those pesky scientists.

The church, since the incident, has condemned this particular case of exorcism, but it reeks of a simple, political "cover your ass" moment. Oh, but don't worry, on top of the jail time, they were excommunicated.

It's also good to realize that "Church officials noted he had dropped out halfway from the church's religion school. Despite leaving the program, he was anointed as a priest because of a shortage of priests to serve in new convents and monasteries." I'm always pleased to see when large institutions who have the power to banish your soul start hiring the dregs when they're in need.

Mostly, though, I think he should have been jailed for another 5 years for Unruly Beard Management.

DVDs vs. The Librarians

So I have switched over to the new account finally and have actually decided to post. Weird huh?

With the great book crazy sweeping thru our small group of friends right now, and me owning not so many books, I was feeling quite inadequate. In order to make up for my short comings I decided it was about time to catalog my DVD collection. There are a number of tools out there for use, and some are quite a bit better then others, one of the ones I know the most about is DVD Profiler. There is a free trail version of it out there and I believe you can load back-up libraries on the net to check your collection from other systems. But to stick with the Library Thing idea I decided to find an actual on-line database, that and until I get myself a laptop I didn't want to bye the nice version of DVD Profiler. So I have created an account at DVD Spot. Its not the greatest of all set ups, but you never have to pay anything and they have a very large selection of movies in the database (some times too many seeing as you can't tell which one you own and need to use the UPC).

To view my collection you can go here. Its in the works so not everything is there yet.

Some things to note:
1. Its a little weird looking thru a whole collection seeing as everything is placed in the 'owned' folder and then listed according to the 'Sort By:' field. I find it works much nicer to go to the advanced search page and look by genre. (the subgenre field is anded with the genre, not ored, so I don't like to use it).

2. Also there are filters that you can add/create on your own, selected by the 'Filter By' field. As an example, I created a Criterion Collection filter which will show all my Criterion films.

And we're back...

Well, as probably no one really noticed, we've changed over to New Blogger. I've spent the last two evenings updating the template, changing the layout (slightly), adding labels to a ton of posts (still more to do), and getting haloscan back up and running.

I changed VotW and QotD to VotM and QotW now, just to be more realistic. Otherwise, you probably won't notice anything, other than maybe we'll start posting more.

Oh, and bm_oran, you won't show up as a contributor until you change your login to google rather than blogger.

That's all.

B[ow]log: Wii

I just hope this, like other bowling videogames, isn't horrible. I'll try not to get my hopes up. But, really, just think about it: a fantastic bowling game with motion sensing controls and online play...it would be the end of my (already diminishing) social life.

In other videogame news, I beat Freebird on Expert [in GH2] last night. I was really proud of myself until I tried to conquer Buckethead's song. So difficult.

Stanhope

So, Doug Stanhope is going to be stopping by the Triple Rock on April 14. I know that if Sam were still around, he'd be down with going in a second. But, he's not. So, anyone interested in going to the show? If you don't know Stanhope, this is what you'd be getting yourself into:

A trailer or two

Ok I did have a bunch of trailers ready for posting and then I lost it all some how. So here is a quick two that I think need to be talked about.

Sunshine- Im sure everyone has already seen this, but it still looks awesome. I do love Danny Boyle and there had been a lack of good sci-fi movies in the last year or so...a genre that I greatly miss.

Hot Fuz- Shaun of the Dead, but about cops not zombies. Can't go wrong with this one.

Inland Empire will eat your soul

I don't think there is a whole lot I can write about Inland Empire. First of all I loved it. It is Lynch at his most Lynchist. I have read that it is going to be impossible to figure out. I don't think is true. It will take multiple viewing and probably some long discussions with people, but in the end we will be able to get some idea of what the movie is kind of about...maybe.
The first 30 min or so absolutely fucks with your head and then things start to become more and more normal and about an hour or so into it you are wondering when the Lynchness is going to kick back in. Then it does, and it doesn't stop. It makes Mulholland Dr. look like a Michael Bay flick. I think I'm going to go see it again in the next few days so I might have more to say about it then. If your a Lynch fan you will love it for sure and if your not a fan you should still see it just in case.
Anyway if you have seen it (or when you do) you should give me a call and we can talk about how fucking awesome it is.


I also just started watching the first session of Carnalval, and so far it's pretty damn good. Not what I expected at all, but still enjoyable.

The Bitches over here want to send a big congrats to Micah and Jess on the birth of Jaime Matthew. Good job guys. The kid kicks ass.