Alcholic what?!

Well, the wife is out of town visiting her mother, so I suppose I have time for an update, and seeing as I haven't written anything here since last I set foot in Texas, then perhaps now is a fitting time.

Texas is huge, but mostly empty, much like the inhabitants' heads. A note to anyone driving here - they drive ten miles under the speed limit, AT LEAST. Being from Southern California, I'm used to everyone driving ten miles OVER the speed limit. So to me, everyone here is driving twenty miles too slow. My barber told me that things are a little slower here, and he wasn't kidding.

Well after several weeks and nigh unto a hundred applications, I got tired of watching my pitiful savings dive bomb, I took a job at another liquor store. Yes, this is what having a Master's degree in English will do for you, make you fit to work in alcohol. Just look at my coworkers. Two others have Masters in English, another two have Bachelors, and yet another is studying for his B.A.

English degree = Alcohol.

Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald et al. Let's face it, writers are born to booze...

hang on, I need another beer...

Right. Where was I? Beer. Check.

Texas has the most asinine liquor laws. There's still a lot of blue laws on the books. Liquor cannot be sold on Sundays, and no Beer and Wine before Noon. Any beer coming into the state must pass a "Label Commission" which apparently smokes crack before passing judgement on which beers are allowed in. For example: Dogfish Head's Raging Bitch was ok to enter, but Dogfish Head's Bitches' Brew was not. Apparently they have a problem with alliteration.

There are two breweries here. 2. I just moved from a place with 40+ breweries.

Still, at least it's not Utah.

Right, so the Girlfriend. Not many of you know that I proposed to her a year ago. Not officially, of course, since I didn't have a ring, and I didn't get down on one knee...but a year ago I already knew I wanted to marry her.

Our first night here in our apartment I got down on my knee and gave her a ring. Thanks to my good friend Janessa for helping me get a ring. Two re-sizes later and it fits my loving wife's insanely small hands.

I'm pretty sure her hands are small enough to get work as a hand model. If Palahniuk's 'Invisible Monsters' was right, that is...

Anyways, we're getting married January 15th, fyi, for those of you have haven't noticed my numerous Facebook updates proclaiming this. Yes, it's short notice, yes, I'm sorry, yes, we're aware that means many people won't be able to make it.

So anyways, back to Texas and the strange new world I find myself in.

I made Chili. I make good Chili. Last second changes to my Chili tend to throw off the spices, but still, it came out tasty.

Back to Alcohol...

In case you didn't know, alcohol and caffeine is a stupid idea. Downers and uppers. A couple kids up in Washington were drinking one of those insipid drinks and died. Legal ramifications? All caffeinated liquor is being pulled form shelves. That means Pink vodka, Belvedere Intense, a few others. Google it, don't make me be your source of news, that's John Stewart's job.

There is, however, alcoholic whipped cream. Yes. And it's flavored. Chocolate, Vanilla, Raspberry...and something else, i forget. I bought one of the Chocolates....and I'm sure you want to know how it tasted.

Taint.

You shake the bottle, upend it and spray some cream into your mouth. It's chocolate, yum....there's alcohol...hmmm, alcoholic chocolate, like a mudslide, cool...hrmmm, doesn't quite taste right...ick, aftertaste.

Basically the alcohol is cheap grain spirits, like the vodka I drank to get through District 9. It makes the chocolate taste like it's a year old and not worth eating. There's a bit of an aftertaste, though not quite as bad as Heineken.

Still, amusement factor alone, Alcoholic Chocolate Whipped Cream.

Think I'd rather have a Brooklyn Brewery's Black Chocolate Stout. Or a Harpoon Chocolate Stout. or a Youngs Double Chocolate Stout.

or some Godiva Vodka.

or a Mudslide.

Still, I suppose this would serve as a garnish for a Mudslide...

I am the Rev. Dr. Godzilla, with whipped cream.

Tex Jex

Know, O reader, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars--Nemedia, Ophir, Brythunia, Hyperborea, Zamora with its dark-haired women and towers of spider-haunted mystery, Zingaria with its chivalry, Koth that bordered on the pastoral lands of Shem, Stygia with its shadow-guarded tombs, Hyrkania whose riders wore steel and silk and gold. But the proudest kingdom in the world was Texas, reigning supreme in the dreaming west. Hither came Jex, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandaled feet.

Apologies to R.E. Howard, but since Texas was his homeland, I deigned it apropos.

I am having a Viking rebirth. Everything I own has been loaded into my ship, and I have set forth not to burn at sea, but to carve my kingdom upon the earth.

My Manifest Destiny is not to load my wagon and head west, but to load up my truck, Bucephalos, and conquer my known world.

I was driving for 12 hours, of course there's going to be multiple esoteric references. Deal with it. And yes, I named my truck Bucephalos.

Today is the first day I have set foot in Texas. I have come through the fires of the Arizona Desert, and the wind and rains of Hurricane Alex. This state is trying its damndest to expunge the Jex, but we're tenacious little bastards, and we're going to rip its bloody throat out.

Stay tuned, true believers, stay tuned.