micahsaul

The Game is an insidious one.  The rules are simple:
1) Do not, under any circumstances, think about the fact that you are playing The Game.
2) If you think about The Game, you have lost The Game.
3) Try to make other people playing The Game lose, without thinking of The Game.
4) If you do lose The Game, you MUST inform any other players around you that you have done so; this does not make them lose The Game. Instead, they have 30 minutes to re-forget that they are playing The Game.
5) Now you know the rules, you are playing The Game.
6) Sucker.

We’ve been talking about The Game quite a bit recently, on our smoke breaks at work, mainly pertaining to interesting ways to cause others to lose The Game. Turns out, it’s very easy to get someone to associate a word with The Game. For example, when I hear the phrase “stuck in my head” I almost immediately lose The Game. For a friend, it’s Madagascar (merely because we suggested that Madagascar would be an excellent trigger word).

The same friend used to place an electric drill in front of a co-worker’s keyboard. Somehow, this became associated in the co-worker’s mind with The Game, and would cause him to lose almost hourly.  Auditory aids also work. We have weekly catered lunches at work, and the office manager will walk through the office ringing a large metal triangle when the food arrives. The immediate response of 50 hungry tech geeks rising from their chairs and wandering towards the kitchen is often pointed out to be incredibly Pavlovian (Pavlov, by the way, is another very common trigger-word). It didn’t take very long, of course, for one Pavlovian response to become another, and I now regularly lose The Game between 12:45 and 1:15 on Thursday afternoons.

Of course, there are many other exciting ways you can force people to lose The Game, but remember: only if you are not currently losing can you win.  Good luck.

A WORD OF CAUTION, ALBEIT A SLIGHTLY TARDY ONE:

The preceding blog post should not be read if you do not want to become involved in the most evil game ever invented. Few things are sadder then losing The Game by yourself in the shower, while taking a crap, while embroiled in a deep philosophical conversation, or mid-coitus (if the latter occurs to you, it is probably not a good idea to yell “Son of a fucking whore! I just lost The Game!” This tends to not be the sort of dirty talk your partner was looking for, and it does suggest that your mind is not entirely on the task at hand). If, however, you have already read the preceding post then The Game has you in its sticky claws and you have exactly 30 minutes to forget you are playing. If you are re-reading this post, I’d like to point out that you have now lost the game.

Blogged with Flock

I don’t remember when I started drinking whiskey. It was likely in 2001, during the first of my punk rock, dirty apartment, sleeping on the floor, sharing a small apartment with entirely too many fucking people phase. I know for a fact that it was certainly then or before, as I remember many nights during those six months spent kicking back glass after glass of Jameson or Macallan with my best friend Zane.

Well, seven years have passed, I’ve lived through two more of those phases, and Zane has passed away… but the love of whiskey remains, though it has changed form. I used to be an Irish man (not an Irishman, but a man who drinks Irish whiskey). Of course, that meant bottle upon bottle of Jameson, that particular tipple being the only Irish that deserves the name. I’d drink the occasional glass of Scotch, usually Macallan 18 year when we felt like splurging, but Irish was my drink. The reasons for this British Isles-centric taste were simple: 1) Scotch was expensive (excepting the shitty plastic jug scotch, but that stuff is glorified paint thinner, f’real) and 2) Bourbon was gross. Jack Daniels and Jim Beam, the only American whiskeys I’d tassted at that point, had about the appeal of an old southern man’s dirty bath water… and this is exactly what it tasted like. Ok, so in the later phases of my hipster lifestyle, I began to drink Ancient Age and Kessler’s, but this is merely because it was cheap, plentiful, and ironic.

Thus, my current love affair with Bourbon seems a tad incongruous. How did the lowest of the low become the highest of the high? In this case, I can remember exactly how it happened. And again, it is thanks to Zane. See, in 2003 I dropped out college for the second time, to travel across the country with Zane to go pick apples on an orchard on the New Hampshire/ Maine border. While living in his family’s old farmhouse, Zane introduced me to the most glorious liquid I had imbibed up to that point: Maker’s Mark. Here was an American Whiskey worthy of the name. Instead of Colonel Sanders’ bathtub, it tasted like a sunset as seen from the hills above Monticello. It tasted like what I’ve since learned the South to be: hospitable, beautiful, warm, inviting, dignified with a rustic edge. I was in love.

I’ve had many Bourbons since then, and have recently gotten into the small batch craft whiskeys. Often higher in alcohol, they are also head and shoulders above the cheaper, larger batch bourbons most people know in terms of flavor. If Jack Daniels is Budweiser (and Kessler and Ancient Age are PBR), these are the Fat Tires, the Chimays, the Red Hooks. They’re certainly pricier than Jim Beam, but quality doesn’t come cheap. Here are my favorites:

Black Maple Hill 21 Yr. (95 Proof) - First discovered this one at Alembic, in San Francisco. I asked for a Bourbon that would kick me in the teeth with a velvet boot and it does just that, coming in strong with a very full bodied flavor and a sharp tang that subsides and warms as it goes down your throat. According to the bartender at Whiskey Thieves, it’s been discontinued, which is just about the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. Made by Kentucky Bourbon Distillers, Ltd, who also make the excellent Rowan’s Creek.

Bulleit Bourbon Frontier Whiskey (90 Proof) - Found out about them through Metafilter years ago. I stole their recipe for Mint Juleps, which has since become my signature drink. Only recently tried the whiskey, when it became available at Safeway. Similar to Maker’s in many respects, it’s smooth as silk with some slightly fruity and peppery notes. Made by the Buffalo Trace Distillery, who also make unemployed-Micah’s standby, Ancient Age (it’s hard to beat $4 for a pint of tolerable whiskey).

Bookers (125 Proof) - This is the stuff. If Bourbon could be a schoolyard bully, it would be Bookers. A barrel proof whiskey, it is not watered down after distilling and aging like most other alcohols; what comes out of the barrel is what goes into the bottle. Despite the very high alcohol content, this is a nuanced Bourbon, with a strong, smoky, oaky flavor. Perhaps the best way to enjoy it is to take a small amount onto your tongue and just let it evaporate there. The flavor spreads across your palate and warms your entire mouth and throat. It’s part of Jim Beam’s small batch collection, which also includes the very fine Knob Creek and Basil Hayden’s.

All of the whiskey’s mentioned are available at BevMo, and I highly recommend giving them a try. After a long day of work, be it physical labor on an apple orchard in New England or hours in front of a computer screen at a tech company in downtown SF, nothing is quite as nice as a good book, some good music, maybe a good friend or two, and a glass of damn good bourbon. Cheers, y’all.

Blogged with Flock

A week or so ago, I had dinner with my girlfriend, her family, and the family of her close friend. The father in said family happens to be a professor in the Stanford Creative Writing department, and we got to talk about writing: how to teach it, how to force yourself to do it, how to stay in practice when you’re no longer required to do it, etc. And I realized that it has now been several years since I finished a piece… poem, play, short story, anything. Thus:

My Resolution (which happens to have taken effect on the new year but is not, in fact, a capital letter New Years Resolution because said New Years Resolutions are destined to fail (see 2007s quit smoking resolution) and really, January 1 is such an arbitrary and occidental-centric milestone):

I, Micah Saul, do hereby swear to do the following three things every day of the following year:

1. Write at least two “observation journal” style entries per day in the newly purchased Moleskine 2008 Daily Planner.

2. Upon arriving home, regardless of how late it is or how tired I am, write for at least 20 minutes. This time need not be spent working on a project, but at least 20 minutes must be spent writing.

3. Update this blog with either the output of item 1, item 2, or a separate text unrelated to the previous two items. In addition, keep status updates on this blog, perhaps in a Twitter side-bar.

4. Invite all and sundry to taunt me mercilessly if any of the above three items are not performed everyday.

Until the sidebar is added, updates will go here:

1. Wrote two journal entries.
2. Spent 20 minutes composing this blog entry.
3. See item 2.
4. No taunting today!

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