Forgot tetrachromat again, and that the "background music" of a rap song is the beat I guess, unless there's some more accurate word I really don't know. Also I've been listening to a great song "Can't Hold Us" and I couldn't remember all the lyrics to Little Nephew's algebra rap.

Well the main thing I forgot yesterday was healing Jenny, which is why we lost last night's game of Last Night on Earth. This was after I'd been reminded to heal by Barry, and after several turns of not wanting Brooke to fight with her super-powered character because there was a slim chance she could die.

In part I was soft-pedaling it to be polite, but I also represented atheism poorly, by forgetting the 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence' tenant that separates the lack of belief from any other arbitrary belief. The belief in god and the lack of belief in god may both be acts of faith at a trifling logical level (and then only for atheism vs. bare-bones deism I'd imagine) but one supposes far, far more than the other.

Also, the blonde on Community is named Britta — spaced that out.

Tried to be facetious earlier today, pretending to have confused the new-to-me word hasp (fastening, clip) with asp. Unfortunately this attempt was marred by actual ignorance: for years I've thought that those narrow-waisted black wasps you see occasionally, the truly terrifying ones, are called asps. Maybe this is some bit of local dialect that I picked up, but if so I can't find any evidence for it.

So I'm not sure where this came from. I was definitely aware that the snake Cleopatra supposedly killed herself with was an asp.

Fun discovery though: the asp caterpillar, a wonderfully fuzzy guy that takes its name from its venomous spines.

Also someone referred to it in a forum as an "asap caterpillar" and as much as I like the way Language Log has expanded our vocabulary for speech errors, I like that this seems to be a real, old-fashioned thoughtless malapropism rather than a pail or an eggcorn or what-have-you.

Was the name of the show I recognized the priest in this week's episode of Psych from. Reaper had some potential but I got bored of it pretty quickly.

Played Ticket to Ride Last Night (there is no reason to play Risk when you have that boardgame available to you. None) and couldn't remember the name of another boardgame I'm interested in: Betrayal at House on the Hill.

The quote is:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Wasn't sure if it was history or science or philosophy.

I've been thinking it over, and I don't know that I've used my ratings here more than once or twice. So I'm re-purposing this site to help me keep track of something else: the tip-of-the-tongue facts and garbled anecdotes that I have to deal with, not necessarily just when I've been drinking, but more often than not. Call it a memory aid, or maybe penance. Updates will be spartan-to-occasional.

I'll start off with tetrachromat. I've had "colors vision: look this up" in my phone notes for a year or two, because I could never remember the term. Some women apparently have an extra type of cone beyond the standard blue-green-red, somewhere between green and red, and this boosts their color perception from the standard 1 million to around 100 million. Searching again for info it sounds like human tetrachromancy has been confirmed but only in a few cases.

Oh man, before I forget: Craft Beer Week was, two weeks ago I think? My Facebook status all week was "Craft Beer Week is the new Shark Week."

I didn't go to the bars every day, but I went to the Muddy Pig two or three times: once with Barry for some tasty New Belgium's Ranger IPA and a very cool free glass, once with Jess and Rae for a middling Bells glass, and I thought I went for the Fulton Sweet Child of Vine with Markie, Matt, Jess, and Rae — but if so I've no idea where I put that particular piece of swag. Somewhere.

(Very nice to get enough glasses to replace the blue plastic drinkware I had left over from college.)

On Wednesday of Craft Beer week I met up with Markie, Matt, and Cari at Stub and Herb's for a Flat Earth night (there was a wide selection of stuff they'd made in the past available in various sizes) and while they didn't have Curly Tail (which I've been missing this baseball season), they did have two new-to-me beers that I liked even more: Hemispheres double-chocolate and another one called Black Forest that tasted just like Black Forest Chocolate Cherry cake. Fantastic.

Labels: Bell's Brewing, Fulton Beer, New Belgium Brewing, Stub and Herb's, The Muddy Pig

Went to a housewarming yesterday night for the place Jess and Rae are renting.

The main problem with that idea was that I've got some aches and such from being ill earlier this week that make it uncomfortable to stand or sit in most chairs — the whole thing reminds me of a much more serious medical issue I had last summer, which means I'm not as bothered as I otherwise would be — and so I had to spend a good portion of the night sitting right up against a wall. Luckily we spent most the night hanging out in rooms where I could find a free wall.

In retrospect I complained a bit more than I should have: This was a party and complaining is almost always boring.

Jess had a lot of interesting beers to try from their trip to Oregon; I liked both the Caldera Pale Ale and the Nikasi Tricerahops Double IPA quite a bit.

All in all it was a good time. I talked to Barry or Markie for a good chunk of the night about topics including Lost, and ended up staying up to near the very end of the party even though I knew I'd be getting up early today to drive up north.

(Normally I'd be back at Jess' tonight for Craft Night but it has been a long long day. I brought back 20 or so plants and had to go into emergency gardening mode as soon as I got back to the Cities.)

Tried to describe the Roller Town trailer to Shelley at one point and failed. I like a bunch of the other videos picnicface has done as well.

I've been ill all week, but better enough today to drink a few beers with my brother Matt, who came over for our old trifecta of videogames (i.e. the Halo Reach beta), beer, and pizza (initially from Italian Pie Shoppe two miles away but they don't deliver north of 94).

I had a Goose Island 312 which was OK, a bit of something to it but more his style than mine, and a Sam Adams Longshot Old Ben Ale that I really liked, very fruity and complex. And here I thought I hated Old Ale, but this may be better than the other two Longshot beers this year.

Matt left before Fringe, but this turned out to be the perfect beer to sip during paranormal drama.

Went to Town Hall yesterday with Jess, Markie, Matt, and their friends Ben and Eric for the Blessing of the Maibock. I had the Hefeweizen, Belgian Blonde, and the aforementioned Maibock and wasn't really blown away by any of them, but the blessing itself (sample prayer: "From thinking beer has made us clever when we've only begun to sound stupid. Good Lord, de-liv-er us.") was pretty cool. Yes, actual priest.

After getting terribly lost — I have to remember that it's 10th Ave next time we take University over — Jess and I got to the bar around 3:30 or so, and even then we were lucky that Markie and Matt had grabbed a table for everyone. By the time the ceremony started at 5, the place was packed.

A few drinks in at Town Hall I missed a perfectly good Back to the Future joke setup after someone hypothesized that this guy who dreamt the winners of several horseraces was actually a time traveler.

Later we went over to my house and Cari joined us for pizza and a showing of Pineapple Express, which I at least was plenty drunk enough to enjoy. I was nervous that the movie would be crummy because I've heard mixed things, but I think everyone else liked it too.

Labels: Hefeweizen, Maibock, Town Hall