BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

I have a hobby.

No… Not the one where I dress up in my wife’s lingerie and sing “I’m So Pretty” while playing badminton with the mushroom tripping squirrels in the back yard.

Errr… Ummm… Forget I ever said that, okay?

But seriously, I do have a hobby. A couple of them, in fact, and if book sales don’t pick up soon the IRS is going to consider my profession a hobby as well. But, that a different story…

The particular hobby in question here, however, is Home Brewing. Yeah, the making of drinkable fermented beverages such as Beer, Wine, and Mead. For someone who enjoys cooking as much as I do, well, brewing seemed like a no-brainer in the hobby department. Now, the truth is I don’t get to engage in my hobbies as much as I once did. This whole writing, touring, promotional marketing of oneself thing takes up far more time than I ever imagined it would. But, I still brew up a batch of Beer or Mead when I have some downtime and I’m looking for a fun activity.

Before we go any further here, I suppose I should define Mead for Brainpan Leakage readers who don’t happen to know what it is… Mead is basically a wine. In its purest form it is nothing more than Honey, Water, and Yeast. Mix Honey and Water, boil, skim off impurities, cool, add Yeast, allow to ferment. From there things can get a bit interesting with variations on the old standby – these being Pyments (fermented with grape juice as an adjunct), Melomels (Meads containing fruit), and Metheglins (Meads containing spices and/or herbs)…

I have made all varieties of Meads over the years. I have even made Meads fortified with other alcohols, and named after characters in my books. Most notably, Miranda Mead.

Emblazoned upon the risque label, Miranda Mead carried with it a tagline which read: Guaranteed to hurt you…  Bad… (Yes, I know, It should be badLY. It’s a label, gimme a break…)

Beneath this was an explanation which went on to outline exactly why those of us involved in the bottling of this particular Mead thought such (which is, of course, why it was named after Miranda in the first place, what with the character being a homicidal dominatrix and all…)

Of course, those eagle eyed among you probably noticed the words “Felicity O’Brien Sweet Dessert Mead.” Well, yes, that was the base for the Miranda Mead, what with their intimate connection and all. We won’t go into that here since some of you blog readers may not have read that far in the series just yet. So, the long and short of it is, yes, I created a recipe for a special Sweet Mead which was named after Felicity. Its label even contained the O’Brien Coat of Arms.

At this point I should add an important disclaimer so that I don’t end up getting a mess of email about this – None of this Mead is for sale or commercially available. It is home brewed for personal use, so please DO NOT even ask. It ain’t gonna happen. Hell, my brother-in-law is an ATF agent, so breaking that particular set of laws would be a doubly stupid move on my part now wouldn’t it?

So… Now that you are armed with the above information, I have a confession to make… No, not the thing with the lingerie… What I need to admit here is that I really cannot stand Mead. Seriously. It just isn’t my thing. There are a few meads I have had that are drinkable – Miranda Mead being one of them, Moniak another, and a Hot Ginger Mead made by a friend of mine the third. But if given the choice I’d reach for a beer instead. This is not to say that there is anything wrong with mead. It’s just not my thing.

So, I am sure you are wondering why I would bother to brew something I don’t particularly like. Well, that’s simple. I make it so that I have it on hand for my friends because several of them really do like it.

A lot.

In fact, I have one friend in particular who will crawl naked across shards of broken glass, layered on top of hot coals in an unmapped mine field while being chased by starving Basset Hounds just so he can kiss E Kay’s arse to get some… (Some Mead, that is… Not some… Well… You know…)

Yeah… You heard me. He sucks up to E K who wouldn’t even know where to start in the process of making Mead. Remember the Tuna Helper incident? She may be the Queen Bitch of the Whole F*cking Universe, but she knows better than to mess around in the kitchen. She has a lackey for that sort of thing, namely moi.

Still, that simple fact doesn’t stop Mike… Just the other day we were having a BBQ and there he sat on our back deck nursing what dregs were left of a bottle of Felicity O’Brien Mead. Just for the record, he has almost single handedly wiped out the entire batch, which means it is time for me to make more. Not that I mind in the least. I’m ecstatic that he likes it so much… But I digress… (So what’s new about that?)

You see, he had no more finished the last swig from the bottle than he looked up at E K and said, “I really can’t believe that you are XX years old.”

“What?” E K asked, blue fire kindling in her eyes at the very idea that someone might be implying she is a liar.

“You don’t look a day over 40,” Mike returned.

“Dude, you’re in trouble now. She’s only 27,” I told him. Unfortunately, my bid to trip him up fell on deaf ears.

“42, tops,” he continued, totally unfazed.

E K, not sure what to make of this, went inside and stood in front of the liquor cabinet angrily tapping her foot until someone had the presence of mind to crawl into the kitchen, mix a drink, and present it to her with much ceremony and the appropriate level of deference to her status as Eebil Queen. Satisfied for the moment, she returned to the deck with her Vodka-Tonic in hand.

“37,” Mike announced before she’d even stopped moving. “You’re just gorgeous. You don’t look a day over 37.”

“Dude… A minute ago you said 42,” Johnathan jibed.

“Yeah, right,” E K replied, then took a sip of her drink.

You could hear the amusement in her voice, but at the same time you could see in her eyes that she was basking in the glow of his effusive Redhead worship. Still, those of us who know E K well were perfectly aware of the fact that she was trying to figure out what was handy that she could beat him with in case he slipped up and said the wrong thing.

I wandered down the stairs to the grill and flipped the Bratwursts, then closed the lid and made my way back up to the picnic table. It had been quiet for a few minutes now, but I had no more planted my rear on a seat than Mike looked up at E K and began to gesture.

“Look at her,” he announced. “I’m telling you this woman is absolutely gorgeous. She doesn’t look a day over 35.”

“Did anyone else notice that the number keeps going down?” Johnathan asked.

“Johnathan,” E K replied coolly. “Do you really want me to knock you down and stomp on you?”

“No ma’am,” he replied.

“I didn’t think so,” she observed, then turned her attention back to Mike. “You were saying?”

Mike became even more animated than his normal cartoonish self. “I was saying you’re just gorgeous. You don’t look a day over 32… No… Make that 30. Not a day over 30…”

Now, remember where we left off folks – 30… This will be important later in the story…

It was at this particular moment that I spied the empty bottle of Felicity Mead and realized what he was doing. As it happens, his wife, Anastasia, was on the same wavelength with me – what with us both being a little brainpan bent and all – and she spoke up before I had a chance.

“Mike,” she told him. “You’re sucking up to the wrong person. Kat didn’t make the Mead, Murv did.”

“I’m not after more Mead,” he objected.

“Yeah, right,” Anastasia replied. “Sure you aren’t.”

“Really,” he persisted.

E K took another sip of her drink and like the ice-cold, redheaded assassin woman she is, went in for the kill. You could see the giddiness in her eyes as she told him, “It’s all gone, Mike.”

“It’s all gone?” He asked.

She nodded then grinned her evil grin. “Yes. All gone.”

“Yeah, dude,” I added. “She doesn’t have anymore. You drank it all.”

He was quiet for a minute then countered with, “Well, that’s okay. I wasn’t trying to get more Mead anyway. I’m serious, just look at her. She really and truly doesn’t look a day over 40…”

To this day, Mike swears he wasn’t sucking up in order to get more Mead, but I’m a little suspect of that, given how the years seemed to melt away from the Evil One without the help of Botox or even Oil of Olay.

Not that she needs any years to melt away, trust me. And I’m definitely not just saying that so she won’t stomp on my head. It doesn’t matter, because she’ll find a reason to stomp on me anyway.

The thing is Mike was so close to the prize it was scary – There was actually another bottle of Mead in the house and if he’d ratcheted her age down to 25 or so she just might have given it to him.

More to come…

Murv

I’m calling this Version 1.0 because I have a sneaking suspicion that as my brainpan continues to leak, I am going to remember something else that fits this title and will need to use it again.

You know how it is… The leakage simply can’t be rushed any more than it can be contained. Believe me, I’ve tried. All the earplugs and cotton balls in the world won’t stop it. I’ve avoided having the little Dutch boy stick his fingers in my ears for the obvious reason – that being I don’t want any paint in my ear canal, of course… And, yeah, E K offered to plug my ears for me, but something told me I might not survive whatever she had in mind, so I declined. The point here being, the leak trickles on and what drips from the old brainpan doesn’t always happen in chronological order.

So, on with this little ditty…

Now, I want to point out that no matter what you read here, I am not in any way purporting, nor am I denying, the existence of “God”. Be it, ummm, he… uhhh… She?… I think we’ll stick with it… Be it the “one true God” as some would have you believe, or one out of an entire pantheon. My particular religious beliefs are my own, and yours are yours. In the interest of avoiding overt ridiculousity we should keep it that way.

However, there are  sayings that many of us use in our everyday lives that invoke this “God”, whoever he, she, or it may be. (BTW, if you ask Evil Kat she will tell you that God is in not only a she, but that She is She… However, she prefers to be addressed as “Oh High Exalted Queen Bitch of the Entire F*cking Universe”… Except in informal situations when you can just call her Mistress. She says “God” as a moniker is simply too passe.)

So, anyway, there are all these various sayings that invoke God, one of which is a bit of an exclamation I heard people use when I was growing up in the Southern U.S. –

“You don’t have the sense that God gave a goose!”

Fortunately, I don’t recall anyone saying this directly to me, but I definitely remember hearing it spouted at other folks who, in all honesty, didn’t have the common sense of a rock, so it wasn’t exactly a slanderous statement by any stretch of the imagination.

But, be that as it may, this very saying is what spawned the IBGG Local 747.

At this point I suspect you are wondering just what the hell the IBGG Local 747 is. Well, obviously it is a union. To my knowledge there have only been 3 members in the past 25 years – moi being one of them. None of us have ever paid union dues, but by the same token the union has never done anything for us either, so I guess we’re even.

BUT MURV! WHAT THE HELL IS THE IBGG?

Chill out. You don’t have to yell at me. Sheesh…

You see, to make a long story even more complex…

Well, no… I won’t do that. Let me see if I can simplify it instead… You see, I had this acquaintance who had a tendency to get tongue tied with every single sentence he spoke. Unless he was yelling at someone, but that’s a different story. Anyway, whenever he got frustrated and was trying to NOT yell, his tongue became so entwined in his eye teeth that he would go blind and you never knew what was going to come out of his mouth. One day such an instance occurred when he was trying to explain something extremely simply to someone, and said someone just wasn’t getting it. All of a sudden, we’ll call him Gary because that’s his name, shook his head, looked at this person with disgust and spouted –

“Dammit. You don’t have the sense to give God a goose, do ya?”

I dunno. It was pretty damn funny at the time. Maybe you just had to be there. At any rate, the IBGG – International Brotherhood of Goose Givers – was born. Our motto was, of course, “Go give God a goose.”

You are perfectly welcome to take that however you want.

Since I have God’s ear on a regular basis these days, I asked E K recently if she would like a goose. She slapped me, of course. Hard enough to rattle my brainpan and incite more leakage in fact. After she was through being a vengeful Goddess, she told me she could go for a Grey Goose and Tonic. I wasn’t surprised by this as she usually enjoys a drink or two after handing out a severe beating.

So… That’s all for now. I have to limp into the kitchen and mix a drink so I can go give God… Umm, I mean “Oh High Exalted Queen Bitch of the Entire F*cking Universe” a goose.

And as we know I’m all thumbs…

I wonder if this would be a good time to pay my union dues and look into their insurance options?

More to come…

Murv