Politics, beer, and pizza. Wait, that actually sounds pretty good.

February 13, 2004

I’ve been watching Black Hawk Down tonight, and it was remarkably well-timed with my completion of the book about the Rwandan genocide. The situation in Somalia wasn’t a genocide, though by the time the US got involved more than 300,000 people had starved to death in a horrible famine that was a by-product of a war between factions in the country. Somalia is a textbook example of what my PoliSci classes referred to as a collapsed state, and thus is probably wasn’t the best place for the UN to get involved. Without a central government (what was left of the Somalian government controlled around 15% of the state), the UN forces had to rely on the weak and ineffectual UN madate that governed their actions. One example that I don’t know if it’s a true event or not, though I can imagine that many like it have occured, are when the militia opened fire on civilians receiving food aid, and the American chopper circling the area to make sure that the aid was distributed was prohibited from opening fire because THEY weren’t being fired upon. Just the people who they were there to aid. I mean really, what’s the point then?

It was a similar situation in the Balkans, Rwanda, and any other place in the last fifteen years where the UN has gotten involved. Troops go in, they can’t do anything despite the fighting going on around them because it’s not directed at THEM. Tens of thousands of Rwandans were killed when the Belgian UN troops were ordered to evacuate and they were forced to leave the Tutsis they had been sheltering in their compound behind. Guess what happened to them all? Same thing in Srebernicia, where 7,000 Muslim men and boys were massacred in a textbook case of genocide during the Balkans war. The UN troops that were there were helpless to prevent it because their mandate didn’t allow for it.

Again, what’s the point, then? It finally took NATO in the Balkans, a well-armed force, to put a stop to things. Mostly. I mean I knew how the story of Black Hawk Down ended and before the movie came out I only had a vague recollection of the events, but it was a topic of discussion in many of my classes. UN forces are remarkably easy to get rid of, as it turns out. Kill a few UN troops from specific states, and hey, you’ve just made a combat force withdraw. Works every time. They can only defend, not attack.

Oh well, the world sucks, we all know it. I have respect for the United States wanting to do the right thing in Iraq, but it seems like it was done for all the wrong reasons and in all the wrong ways. Weapons of mass destruction? Seems that not only are there none there now, but the the White House knew that almost a year ago. So why use that as the primary reason? Just talk about Saddam Hussein’s aggregious human right violations and his past usage of chemical weapons. But that can’t possibly be a reason justifying an invasion of a sovereign state, beacuse we’d have to invade about a dozen or so other states for the same reasons. So why Iraq? The mystery boggles the mind.

But on a lighter note, my Dad and I discovered the best place to buy beer in the city of Portland, nay, the entire Northwest, most likely. Prior to today, Whole Foods on Burnside was my selection of choice due to their huge selection of exotic, micro-brew, craft, and foreign beers, but today at John’s Marketplace on Multnomah Blvd, I discovered nirvana.

John’s Marketplace stocks–get ready for this–nine HUNDRED beers. That’s 9-0-0. The aisles were so close together, there wasn’t room for my Dad and I to both be in them at the same time. We couldn’t even begin to look for specific beers there were so many. We had to look for ones that stuck out, though my Dad was looking for a specific Full Sail brew called “Imperial Porter” that he found out about when he was recently in Hood River and took a tour of the Full Sail brewery (without me, no less!). It seems that this particular brew was aged in Jim Beam barrels, which ads a bit of a punch to it, I’d imagine. We got enough beer, though, that we’ll have a lot to try. We were going to have the Imperial Porter tonight when we got home, but he accidently opened the wrong one and instead we drank one of our bottles of Double Bastard. The Double Bastard is the Arrogant Bastard Ale that I’ve mentioned before, though it’s been aged twice for a bit of extra alcohol in it. My Dad and I have tried a few Tripels in the past (deliberately spelled that way, because all the Tripels we’ve had have been Belgian), but never an “overclocked” type of one we’ve both had in the past. I think we have a bottle or two of Tripels that we got today, as well as a QUADRUPEL brewed by the Trappist monks who have been brewing beer for about oh, say, four centuries or so.

Now mind you, a double, tripel, or quadrupel doesn’t have twice, three, or four times the amount of alcohol in them. A regular beer is maybe 4-5% alcohol by volume. The double we had today was maybe, 7 or 8%, tripels have run about 10-11% at a minimum (highest I’ve seen is 13%, I believe), so the quadrupel will be around 13-14% alcohol, I’d estimate. It’s not printed anywhere on the bottle that I could see, and unfortunately I can’t read Dutch. I guess I’ll find out tomorrow when we drink it.

On one last note, they sold giant, three-foot bottles of beer there for about $60. If I ever throw a party, I’ll know where to go shopping. I wouldn’t need to buy a keg anywhere, because some of the bottles were tripels, and thus have about twice the amount of alcohol. Although buying a three-foot bottle of beer would be worth it just to keep the bottle, no?

So tomorrow I’m making my trademark cheese-less pizza for my Dad and Cindy, but it has a few twists to it. Firstly, I’m going to use a red pepper instead of a green pepper, just for a twist. Secondly, no roasted garlic. I love the taste of roasted garlic, but let’s just say that when I ingest garlic in that amount it’s not a good thing and leave it at that. Thirdly, I’m going to use corn MEAL instead of corn flour, which will add more of a texture to the crust. OK, so only a quarter of a cup of corn flour goes in normally, but it’s an interesting twist. Lastly, I’m going to cook it on the pizza stone that my Dad gave me for my birthday last yeat. As you can tell, I’m slowly getting around to using all my kitchen stuff. I’ve made a few pizzas since I got it, but I haven’t been able to use the stone because I didn’t have a paddle that I could use to load and unload the pizza from it. I took a trip to Kitchen Kaboodle with my Dad today when I went downtown to have lunch with him and I picked one up, though, so I’ll get to experiment with different pizza texture. Hopefully it’ll taste as good as from the pan I bought at Wal-Mart in Beloit.

That makes a nice crispy crust, so we’ll see how this turns out. Yay pizza! I almost went out and got a slice or two for dinner tonight, but then I remembered I’m making it for dinner tomorrow. I ended up with a turkey sandwich and a bag of chips from the grocery store which I thoroughly enjoyed nonetheless. My Dad and Cindy went out for dinner tonight since by the time they tried to get reservations for tomorrow, everyplace they called was booked up. Anyway, tonight was their Valentine’s Day dinner, and tomorrow is just for fun.

And for the last time, no, I’m not doing anything for Valentine’s Day. To do something for a romantic holiday, you need someone to have a romantic holiday with. Having a lot of female friends doesn’t equate to having someone to do something with on Valentine’s Day. So for those of you who have asked MULTIPLE TIMES (and you know who you are), please just let it drop.

And on that note, I think I’m going to move my computer into my room and lie in bed and browse the Net while I watch “Seinfeld” and “Cheers” before nodding off. *Sigh* Another Friday night.

Catch you all later.

Posted in Beer, Beloit, Geekery, General