The Final Untappd Badge

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Poor Putin

On the bright side, he's suffering about as much as everyone else.

Media's Plaything Broken

Ted Williams, the homeless man turned America's Media's One Minute Sweetheart / Plaything, with a face for radio - not to be confused with the ball player who's head is frozen in a block of ice - has left rehab.

According to sources - Ted vowed to television's Dr. Phil to get clean, get off the bottle for good and not take this second life opportunity for granted.

Dr. Phil put the Media's New Plaything into a rehab facility in Texas and he was supposed to stay there a few months to deal with his addictions to booze and the self destructive lifestyle he's maintained, well, his whole life.

The fairy tale of good intentions and tons of money being thrown at a problem to make it go away is not going as intended. Not surprising, as it seems this philosophy is the entire foundation of liberal society. So now that the fairy tale is over, what's happened to poor old Ted?

What reality is, Ted has left the rehab unit and checked out of there after only two weeks. He's pointing a finger at all the people who were using him. And I don't think that's his pointer finger.

On the bright side, he's back to doing what he loves most: Crack and Thunderbird.

The Light At the End of the Tunnel

Damn, it better not be locked!

Rocky Mountain High

File under libertarian:

Get caught possessing marijuana in the City of Denver and you could one day get less than a slap on the wrist:

DENVER - A city panel in charge of overseeing marijuana possession crimes in Denver recommended on Wednesday that the fine for possession be set at $1.

If Denver’s presiding judge accepts the recommendation from the Denver Marijuana Policy Review Panel, the fine would be the lowest in the entire nation for marijuana possession.

(…)

“By setting the fine at just $1, we are sending a message to Denver officials that the era of citing adults for using a less harmful drug than alcohol is over. It’s simply not worth the city’s time or resources,” said panel member and SAFER Executive Director Mason Tvert, who coordinated the successful Denver marijuana initiatives.

More

The Washington Post: Legalize It

The Washington Post ran an article today which read: Time to Legalize Drugs .

On the face, it almost seems like they're going out on a limb there, eh? The article opens by re-creating a drug deal straight out of Hill Street Blues or The Wire - and then say that drug dealers are disproportionately arrested on the South Side street corners, but not in college dormitories.

The article goes on to offer that States should decide their drug policy.

But hold on, it's not the actual opinion of the Washington Post, it's in fact an Op-Ed which means it's opposite of the editorial page. Bigger and better than a letter to the editor, but not a whole hellofalot more.

Anyway, we've all known for a long - long time that Prohibition does not work. Chris Rock said it best, "even if you got rid of all the drugs in the world - someone would still be trying to find a way to get high... check this out..."

But this is Blasphemes, so I feel that I should offer a new or unusual perspective to the debate. Let me offer a simple question. Do you own your own body and what goes into it? Or is the government in charge of your body and what goes into it?

Why do we allow our governments to regulate what substances can and cannot go into your body? Fluoride is great, but cocaine isn't. Twinkes are okay too, but not dope, according to our government. Our government subsidizes High Fructose Corn Syrup and nicotine production, but throws a teenager in jail for carrying too much weed. Seems kind of silly how it's all over the board like that.

But seeing as there are public health and public safety holes all over that Ad Hoc argument I just tossed up there -- let's look to history.

The temperance and abolition movement cultivated in the adding of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution. The movements realized that in order to curtail your freedoms, a change in the Constitution would be necessary. The government had to limit the freedom of the citizens. Note, up until then, the Constitution was meant to limit the reach and power of the government. Kind of a switch up there.

When it failed, and failed in such spectacular crimson blood spilled streets, the Constitution had to be fixed. Here comes the 21st amendment which repealed the 18th. Experiment failed.

What did we learn? Nothing. Not one thing. Nixon declared war on drugs, and for four decades his prohibition also been a complete failure. If the goal was to reduce overall illicit drug use, that's a fail. But if the goal of the war on drugs was to erode key civil liberties, well, that's a win for the government. Oh, and raising the prices. The government does a good job with that too.

Building prisons instead of schools, a militarization of the police and the streets, killing innocents... destroying neighborhoods, families, incarceration of generations of young men because of insane zero tolerance laws... the perpetual drug war that inevitably fuels the violent, underground market? Why would anyone embrace a philosophy of cruelty and insanity? There's just too much money to be made.

And, pound for pound, nicotine and alcohol are by far more hazardous to human tissue than most underground pharmaceuticals.

You Blew It - South Side Irish Parade is Over

You drunken idiots.

All 300,000 of you.

The party is over.

The organizers of the South Side Irish St. Patrick's Day Parade on Western Avenue, in Chicago IL, said they would no longer hold the event "in its present form."
Mary Beth Sheehan, a spokeswoman for the parade, said the decision was not the result of any specific incident. She said, "It's a cumulative thing. We have a small, wonderful neighborhood here. Mashing 300,000 people in here is a little too much for this neighborhood."

The parade is a "victim of its own success."

Okay look, I probably agree that this parade has gotten 'a wee bit' out of hand. Seeing 500 people run behind a building to pee on it at any one given moment was kind of surreal. Yeah, I was number 42 in that crowd.

Having your friends park a car on the parade route a couple days in advance, loaded to the gills with beer... yeah, but that's part of the experience.

Having to dry out for about ten hours after a twenty minute parade - yeah, that's awesome.

Now it's gone.

Makers of Oui Oui Port-a-potties and the nice folks who own pubs on Western are going to need city bail out money or something.

On the positive note, there's a little baby-kid's Irish parade on Northwest Highway...
(which, is already twenty times as large as when the South Side parade started in 1979. The original was seventeen kids and a red wagon with one of the kids dressed up as St. Pat.)

Feel free to share your favorite South Side Irish Parade memories -- however few of them you have.

Authentic IPA to be Brewed

A Scottish brewery claims to have produced the first authentic India pale ale (IPA) in almost 200 years by ageing the beer aboard a trawler in the North Sea.

BrewDog, a Scottish micro-brewery based in Fraserburgh, has used an original recipe to produce the ale, which was traditionally matured during the 100-day sea journey from Britain to India.

While many brewers still produce IPA on land, BrewDog’s owners James Watt and Martin Dickie decided to make the beer the old-fashioned way.

The pair prepared eight oak barrels which spent seven-and-a-half weeks aboard the Ocean Quest, a mackerel trawler captained by Watt, who is also a fisherman.

During the journey the casks were lashed by towering waves and covered in snow. One barrel had to be salvaged from the sea after it was washed overboard. (gasp!)

Dickie said that the traditional India pale ale contained higher than normal levels of hops and alcohol, which acted as preservatives. He added that the beer was given its distinctive taste by the way it aged in the barrels, which were tossed around and subjected to large fluctuations in temperature during the journey.

“It had to be drinkable by the time it reached India, which is why it was very strong and high in hops,” Dickie said. “Ours were at sea for seven-and-a-half weeks, so it’s not exactly historically correct, but it was the best we could recreate.

“With all the motion of the sea, the oxidation in the barrel would have been brought on quicker than if they were sitting in a warehouse. Some interesting flavours were also introduced, like the wood of the barrel, but also the fruity flavours brought on by the oxidation.”

Dickie said he discovered the 200-year-old recipe among his collection of books on beer.

He added that he had already received a number of orders for the beer, which is 8% alcohol and will be bottled next month.

“There isn’t another beer like that made commercially,” Dickie said. “It gives beer enthusiasts a chance to taste what a beer like that would have tasted all those years ago.”

If anyone has the chance to get their hands on this - please write me a review. Perhaps we can swing an official BLASPHEMES T-Shirt your way.

Utah Dry No More

To explain exactly how bad it's getting out there - Utah, the driest of dry states is about to ratify the 21st Amendment.

Utah Legislators and Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. announced a deal Monday that would make the most sweeping changes in decades to Utah's liquor laws, including an end to the state's one-of-a-kind private-club law.

Huntsman, who made doing away with the nettlesome club law a priority before the session, said it was a task that "many thought to be quite impossible early on." Why? Because of the LDS "Mormon" church - which about two-thirds of Utahns belong to (and more than 80 percent of legislators belong), which eschews evil nasty alcohol consumption.

The idea, is of course, to generate tax revenue on those blasphemous tourists who bring in about 6 Billion to Utah.

But there's a catch. There's always a catch thirsty Utah Blasphemes readers... The private clubs are going away, replacing them with a scanner to verify the validity of the identification presented by someone under age 35. Data would be stored on-site for a week. There would be no centralized law-enforcement database.[so they claim]

Second, the mixing of alcohol must be concealed from the children. For restaurants that serve alcohol, the bill would do away with the so-called "Zion Curtain," a glass barrier that servers must walk around to distribute drinks to patrons. Under the proposed changes, bartenders would now be able to pass a drink to a patron across the bar.

Also, don't get nutty and even THINK about getting a DUI in Utah. Repeat offenders could forfeit their vehicles; underage drunken drivers could lose their licenses; and bar owners could face more legal liability if drunken patrons are involved in accidents.

No word on how high that tax is going to be. Hope you like the hot drunk chicks added to make this article better.