No, I haven’t been drinking (yet), though y’all know I do fancy the sauce…

This is going to confuse the hell out of my out of state eConservative friends who only know Chuck Schumer as the entrenched Washington insider who demagogues and vilifies his opponents everytime he’s in front of a camera. While he is that, he’s also the senor New York Senator who is always trying to promote local business throughout the state, and now he’s chosen one near and dear to my heart…beer.

Craft beer is a booming industry and New York has SEVENTY-SEVEN breweries and brewpubs throughout the state. Schumer has launched a campaign to encourage local restaurants and businesses to sell more of them.

The campaign, called “I Love NY Brew,” calls on restaurants, bars and convenience stores to help out the industry. Breweries and brewpubs in New York account for more than 59,000 jobs paying over $4.6 billion in wages, said the Beer Institute, a Washington-based industry lobby group.

Schumer sent a letter to the state Restaurant Association and the National Association of Convenience Stores and Fuel Retailing asking their member restaurants and stores to offer locally brewed beer.

Schumer said New York City restaurants and convenience stores are a large, untapped market for upstate and Long Island breweries.

That last part is important for me, because I stumbled upon the craft beer scene on Long Island this year, and beside the people who run the breweries and brewpubs being some of the nicest people I’ve ever met, the beer is sooooo good.

So three cheers to Chuck Schumer. The next time he’s on The LI, the first pints on me!

That’s why I love this answer from Speaker John Boehner. While the Obama Campaign ties itself in knots trying to explain the President’s struggle with smoking that he’s had for some time, he’s how Boehner responded on Fox News Sunday when ask why he doesn’t quit…

Oh, why do we bring this up again? You know, smoking. It’s a bad habit but I have it. And it’s a legal product. I choose to smoke. Leave me alone.

‘Nuff said.

And I thought bailing out the porn industry was the most ridiculous story I’d read all day, until…

Canadian model Liskula Cohen has sued Google for a number of snarky remarks that were made by a blogger using the company’s Blogger service. The NY Daily News reports that the former Vogue cover girl has been called ‘skanky’ and ‘an old hag’ by an anonymous blogger on a website called Skanks in NYC.

The defamation suit, filed in Manhattan, seeks a court order compelling Google and its Blogger service to identify the anonymous blogger. Google declined to discuss any specifics, only responding to the claim by saying they sympathize with victims of cyberbullying but “take great care to respect privacy concerns and will only provide information about a user in response to a subpoena or other court order”

Where to even begin? We’re getting to the point where, because it’s so easy to say whatever you want aboot someone without having to man up and put your name to it, something’s going to have to be done. And if you were, say, a candidate for vice-president and there were anonymous douchebags on the Internet spreading a rumor aboot you faking a pregnancy…I could see a case.

But this? A model upset because someone is being mean to her? Does she realize that the blogger in question is probably an overweight, Cheetos addicted fifteen year old who has probably never left his parents basement and kissed a girl before?

Or could this just be because none of us has ever heard of the model in question until she sued Google?

You be the judge.

P.S. No, I’m not the blogger in question.  I’m older than fifteen and am more of a Funyons kinda guy.

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The names on his list: Gina Carano, Jake Shields, and Robby Lawler.

I’ve long professed my love for the oh so sexy Gina Carano. “Conviction” is my favourite nickname this side of the “Irish Hand Grenade,” but more importantly than that she really is a sick fighter. I’m not really familiar with any other female fighters than Tara DeLarosa (who is supposed to be sicker), but as long as I get my Gina she could be fighting Walt Flannigan’s dog in  a wig for all I care.

Dana has mentioned wanting Jake Shields for a while now, and Shields himself has said he wants to go to the UFC. It’ll be curious to see what division he fights in. He was WEC’s welterweight champion (I think), but near the end he was thinking of going up to middleweight and/or fighting in both division. If it was me and I was running things, I’d sign him for 185 and debut him as the other coach opposite Michael Bisping in the next “Ultimate Fighter.” He’s got a big enough name to draw some viewers, plus what away to debut to make your first fight against Bisping…and possible your second one against Anderson Silva.

Speaking of middleweights, middleweight champion Robbie Lawler was the third name on the list. This was interesting because he was only 3-3 the last time he was in the UFC, and was mocked accordingly by White when EliteXC first debuted. However he has gone 8-1-1 since then, and it’s not like Dana would have been the first promoter to talk shit. Lawler’s got sick knock-out power and would be a great addition to the middleweight division.

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1. When buying a bottle of booze, always see if what you’re looking for comes in a gift set. The cost is the same, and you get free glasses or assorted other bar accessories. I got a bottle of Jamesons one time that came with six metal coasters. And if you’re buying a gift for someone, they get the bottle…you keep the free schtuff.

2. This was the second time in as many weeks at the same liquor store where the cashier starred at me all throughout the transaction like they didn’t know if they wanted to and/or should ask for my ID. It wasn’t until they bagged the bottle and took my money that they wanted my proof of age.

3. As I was perusing the Vodka section an older lady was asking the clerk a hundred and one question aboot the Vodka assortment. There was one question that caught my attention:

“Will I like that?”

It seems odd that you would ask someone you’ve never met before if you’d like something or not, but if you’re an old lady who mixes her vodka with V8 juice, maybe it’s not so odd for you.  Did I mention she smelled like moth balls?

Maxim claims she was number four on the list, but got knocked down when “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough said “fuck” live on the air. Maybe it’s me. I know Maxim is around more hot girls than I am (I usually have to wait for my cooler friends sloppy seconds), but I’m having a hard time seeing the logic in how someone saying a cussword somehow makes Mika not as hot…especially when you see the other bunnies on the list.

This is only one bloggers opinion, but Mika is at least a three behind Kelly and Bartiromo. It’s an absolute travesty.

Actually…that might not be true.

Dana White, president of the UFC and my own personal Jesus, isn’t too keen on female fighters since there aren’t enough good ones for an entire division. However he has started to waffle a bit, and said he might consider promoting single matches in the WEC. Gina Carano vs. Cristiane Cyborg?

Just so long as I get to see my Gina. There’s something innately beautiful aboot a girl who can kick your ass eight ways before you hit the ground.

Most recently, as many of you have read, I have had issues with dating, relationships, and the opposite sex. I have come to realize that most of my issues stem from the fact that half the women I know are crazy, and the other half are totally fuckin’ nuts. The crazier they are, the more likely it is I have dated them. In fact – if you know a woman who is wearing straight jacket, likes to make sculptures out of her own feces, and constantly tries to bite her own eyelids, then if personal history is any indication, I have probably professed loved to her at some point in my life.

I once dated a woman who called me ’Daddy’ during sex. That’s not a joke.

She did not call me Big Daddy.

Not Daddy-o.

She screamed out ’Fuck me, Daddy!’ during her . . . let’s call it her ’peak moment’.

I’m not sure which one of us was more shocked, or more uncomfortable. We both looked at each other with our jaws dropped. Complete silence.

Let me say this – it’s hard to get back into the moment after something like that. I am pretty sure if she ever reads this, I will receive some anthrax-laden hate mail.

Although, I will say this – I have never used the phrase “Who’s your daddy?” since that day.

It has gotten to a point where most of the women in my life, whether it be my sister’s, or my close women friends (a.k.a. my drinking buddies), or my recent ex’s (whom I still talk to even though I shouldn’t), the women that I know well and openly trust will profess to me that they are in fact completely insane. Most women have learned to accept this. Some of them are married, some are in serious relationships, some are single, and while most are completely dysfunctional in their personal lives, each one will admit that emotional insanity is in fact in their own personal make-up.

They also believe that we as men better learn to find these mental breakdowns and general nonsensical episodes endearing, because the truth is if we don’t, we will have to get used to downloading our sex partners.

Women have not only accepted being crazy, many have begun to embrace it. They have not decided to change; in fact most of them enjoy being crazy. They get off knowing that most of us men live in complete fear that we are one passing comment about the way they wore their hair three weeks ago away from setting off a massive killing spree.

Now, during my brief stint back in college recently, I majored in mathematics. I devour books with mensa puzzles and math-based riddles in them. I pride myself on my ability to find and decipher the most intricate patterns in not only math, but in nature and life in general. I am a puzzle-solver. Most recently, however, I have realized that in regards to trying to figure out women, I’m as capable as Paris Hilton at a spelling bee. My various attempts at trying to figure them out is actually driving me to the brink of insanity myself. Sometimes, when I’m out with a group of women, I feel like Jane Goodall observing the awe-inspiring razorback gorillas, but unlike her, I seemed to be adopting some of my subjects more eccentric tendencies.

I think I am going crazy.

So I wondered… Is insanity contagious? Seriously, can we contract insanity from others? Let me start by saying that I hope to hell it’s not hereditary, or you can just pick out my padded room now. But let’s go on the notion that this is a beatable affliction. Is my time spent with so many different women lately (mostly as friends, settle down people) – is it slowly deteriorating my mental health?

I date, I hang out with them as friends, and I spend time with my sisters. Could it be like an over-exposure to crazy-radiation? Seriously, I may have to be quarantined soon, locked in a room with nothing but Mamwich and UFC DVDs. With football season over 5 months away, I may not be able to be fully cured until autumn.

So I’ve decided that while I can’t figure out women, I can at least still try and beat the crazies. I am smart enough to at least overcome this emotional deterioration.

One of the key components of insanity is when you start believing that what’s not real actually is. I needed to make sure my perception is real, not skewed through fantasy or illogic. You know – like women do.
Like when a woman dates a guy who treats her like total shit because she thinks she loves him – that kind of skewed fantasy perception. I want to make sure I am not lost in that realm of illogic.

So I have decided to beat being crazy by doing something that may be infinitely more insane. I decided this past month that I will be direct, honest and completely candid from this point on.

I do not mean honest in a way that we all think we are. You know these ass-clowns who pride themselves on being ’straight-shooters’. Those people who are ’honest’ about everyone else’s flaws. Not wanting to sugarcoat the truth to others is not quite ’honesty’ – that is just being an asshole. You can be diplomatic AND still be honest.

No – I have decided to be openly honest about myself, to myself. That is something most of us are not, and trust me – it’s not as easy as it sounds. We all can admit our faults when we think others will find them endearing or when we can spin them into a little self-depreciating humor, but unless we admit the ugly stuff, the stuff we ourselves try to hide from, we will probably never change those things about ourselves. Sounds crazy, right? Of course it is. And it just might be crazy enough to work.

I have decided to fight insanity with even more insanity. If I force myself to look in the mirror and see myself for what I really am, I may just stop thinking like a crazy person. And if I’m wrong, and this causes me to go the other way, totally snap and go completely postal, well, then at least if I am insane, I may actually start to understand how women think. Takes one to know one, right?

This feels like it could be a win-win.

But that’s just crazy talk.

So it all started two weeks ago when I went on a pseudo-date. Both my date and I agreed it would be just as friends, as this woman wanted me to go with her to an event where she expected her recent ex-beau would also be. She didn’t want to go unaccompanied, of course, just in case they ran into each other and there was that awkward post-break-up meeting. She was honest with me about her situation, and I appreciated it. I was being used, but I knew about it from the start, and I chose to do it. I was going to be the guy that her ex had never seen before, and in case he saw us, he was supposed to believe that she had easily replaced him in the few short weeks after their break-up.

Believe it or not, I was supposed to be the upgrade. Ridiculous maybe, but as I already told you – women are all completely crazy.

Truth be told, I went on this non-date date because I like messing with strangers. I live for this kind of shit. Fucking with some random guy by pretending to date his ex is somethig I’m built for. I knew my role, and her honesty would be rewarded with my devoted pseudo-affection and unyielding attention in the event that she came face-to-face with her past. I would play this role like I was on Broadway. Sure, I knew that on his night I was a hired gun, but hell, I was happy to oblige.

Now, while she was honest with me, she is still one of the masses of the general populous – the one’s I referred to earlier – who was not yet honest with herself. She must have told me a dozen times how she was “so over” her ex during the date – a classic and obvious sign that she is in fact NOT over her ex.

Of course, she said she was over him, regardless of the fact that she was pseudo-stalking him, representing a relationship with me that she wasn’t even in, and of course, her stomach was in knots thinking of what would happen if they met up that night. But if she said out loud enough times that she was over him, then someone may actually start to believe her. Maybe she will even it.

So what if she was a bit crazy; her type of crazy is what I refer to as ’surface crazy’. I can deal with that. She’s not a bad person, and as far as women go, I have known many others that were not only far more manipulative than her, but ones that more manipulative at 9 years old than she was as an adult. She was harmlessly crazy, and she was a friendly person. Besides, before we ever met up, we had laid out our parameters, so this was going to be fun. I again felt like Goodall, and I was back to safely observing the razorbacks in their own habitat.

But during that evening, during the many times I tried to change the conversation away from her ex, she asked me a question, and I had to answer her honestly. But – as I had already decided to be honest to a fault at this point – I realized it was more important to answer myself honestly.

She asked me why I was single.

That is a strange question, because I have answered it so many times before, but I am not sure I ever was honest about it.

It was a simple question. I guess she felt I should be attached to someone by this point in my life. Admittedly, I am sure she was just being nice. But in my defense – I had cleaned up nicely for this date, and I am aware that at my age, for most men, unless you are a complete social spectacle (which surprisingly, I’m usually not), people think that you should either be IN a relationship…or OUT of the closet.

This was my chance to practice not avoiding reality. I would not sugarcoat my answer, nor would I risk convincing myself of a convenient lie. This would only help expedite my decent further into skewed perception and insanity, the kind known only to estrogen-based life forms. I mean, she already had me on this date living out her anti-reality scenario, so being cordial and saying something like “I just haven’t found the right person yet” or “I guess I’m just very picky” would have slid in unnoticed and been fully acceptable. Then we could have just yet again turned the conversation back to her douche-bag ex, and the night would have progressed without abruption. However, those statements would have been distortions of the facts. I would again be lying to both of us.

I need to be honest in order to not be crazy. I am single. The fact that I have not found the right person is part of the truth, but not all of it. The fact that I am much more selective than I give myself credit for is also not completely the truth.

I told her the whole truth. I said it like this: “I am simply not compatible with most people.” That is what drives my selectivity, and it is the basis for why I have not found the right person. Hell, the ’right person’ for me may not even exist. I can get along with a lot of different kinds of people for a night or two, in short doses.

But after that… well, I don’t really like people in the long term. And people do not always agree with me after a long stretch, either.

Will this realization make me a better person? Not unless I decide to change that personal flaw, start being less selective, and start being more tolerant of others.

But that would take sacrifice, and right now I am blissfully content.

See – I’m less crazy already.
In fact, not caring enough to change proves that I’m thinking like a guy again.

It’s good to home.

As for the pictorial…she looks good naked. Nice boobs. We learned that she has a black heart tattoo on her right thigh, and the mystery of “shaved” or “landing strip” was finally solved. I wouldn’t say I was particularly impressed, but I’m also a guy and at less than a dollar a picture, it was money well spent.

Though, it reminded me why I prefer “Maxim” to “Playboy.” While the girls in “Maxim” aren’t naked, they’re still “mostly naked” and I’ve seen enough nudity in my day to make up the rest. What sells me on “Maxim” is the girls are way more popular than in “Playboy,” and the interviews are more revealing.

What say you: Playboy or Maxim?

So when Barack Obama promises to meet unconditionally with the Mos Eisley Cantina’s worth of terrorists and/or rogue leaders of the world, maybe there would be some benefit of him having Castro over for tea.

Two words: Cuban cigars!

I was tempted to go for the “weekend sampler” that consisted of eighteen cigars, but not only can I not smoke that much I don’t to meet the person who can. I opted for the CAO Sampler. All ten of them have a 90 or higher rating from “Cigar Aficionado Magazine” (which much mean they’re good), plus they have one called the “CAO American” and I’m mad patriotic like that.

So I place the order Sunday night over the internet like how I do all my shopping. Tuesday morning, I got a phone call from the company.

Was there a problem with my order? No.

Was there an issue with my credit card? Not this time.

They called me because they already wanted to sell me on membership, which isn’t out of the normal, except they HAVEN’T EVEN PROCESSED MY ORDER YET. They wanted to sell me on extras before they even sold me what I wanted in the first place.

::blinks twice::