Illegal Mushrooms

So yeah, funny story. Since we moved recently I went through boxes of crap that I have been saving for some years. I come from a long line of hoarders so it's quite cleansing to just throw shit away. Well in one of those boxes I found a CD I haven't seen in a while. Actually it's a whole album, with 19 songs.. can you believe it? Even better. It's the only copy in the world since I wasn't as big on backup's back then. You feel a bit special now, don't you? A little tingly inside? Oh the tension.. what has Carlos got in store for us now?

Well.. until I can get my shit together and actually record a new song this will have to do. Scraped from deep within the boxes of "whatchamacallit", hidden behind layers of "Oh, here is this random thing I looked for three years ago but never found"...

I present you with "The Cerebral Project - Remastered". This track is entitled "I Toad I Told You Mushrooms Should Be Illegal". And yes, I have made this.. a long, long time ago.

Those of you with eyes as nails
who sees no wholes but details
Make my digit all clear
and more tunes will appear
Comment the correct answer!

Released under: Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0 Licence.

Fucking Idiots!

Bad news for people moving to England.. i.e. me and my family. And for those more inclined to law-speak, here the Digital Economy Act 2010 in all it's unholy glory.

I Had a B-Day

For those of you that didn't know.. my birthday was three days ago. So why not blog about it when it was more relevant? As it turns out.. the older you get the less significant your birthdays become. I sort of forgot to mention it.. also I was super-busy at the time. But yeah, I have now had my 21st birthday for the sixth time. I mostly spent it with my family, eating tortillas and just generally chilling whilst my awesome wife gave me the gift of time.. time to do nothing. When you have a three-year old, that is actually something you value. I also went for a beer with the Godfather and his non-married romantically linked non-cohabitant. All in all, very nice and relaxed.. just the way I like it.

So.. about my birthday.. I wonder if it's noticeable that I have been kind of obsessed with coffee lately ?

The missus gave me a random wooden box (amongst other things, pictured below..) that is clearly meant to house ground coffee or whole beans, but as anyone more knowledgeable with coffee knows, I won't be storing anything like that in there. Because it's a non-airtight wooden box. But I will think of something to have in it.

My mother-in-law got me a KRUPS F203 Grinder and some yet to be verified point of origin whole beans. I received both of these yesterday. Both also pictured below.. if anyone happens to know the origin and/or blend of the beans let me know. I already sent a inquiry to the company in Netherlands (ICS) and I am curious to see what they have to say.

Obviously I have already tried out the grinder, and well..

PROS: Small yet stylish. Fits 75g of beans (Brasilia only does 30g). 10 or so seconds of electric grind time as opposed to the rough 1 or so minute of workout I get with my manual grinder. Makes about the same amount of noise as the manual grinder albeit at a higher frequency. About the same amount of sludge as the Brasilia at my preferred setting.

CONS: Static makes the ground cling to the machine, which reduces the amount of usable coffee. Sure it's only by .5 grams or so but still. Coffee ground has more chunky bits in it (more uneven) because of the F203 being a blade grinder, instead of a burr. A female dog to clean.

STALEMATE: Significant amount of aroma, texture and origin specific sub-flavours got lost with the F203 ground compared to Brasilia ground. In any other case I would put that as a CON, but I happen to have some beans from Mexico that has a very unique origin flavour (one that I haven't noticed anywhere before). I don't like this flavour at all and luckily for me the F203 dampened that a lot. Hence the stalemate, but in any other case I would put that as a CON.

Coffees of the World, part One

So here we go I suppose.. a lot of pressure to perform.. well adequately at least. Not that the pressure is being adequate, but that the performance probably will be. Don't you just hate when you feel like you have to explain a joke?

Anyway. The most difficult part is going to be to remember the different nuances between all the coffees I have consumed so far. Some coffees by their virtue of awesomeness have obviously stuck with me a bit more, but like this first one my list, some just haven't stuck with. I will be biased and I want you to know this before you start using my judgement as some sort of frame of reference.

As you might have noticed this will a two part story. Mostly because I can not imagine anyone sitting down, noticing "Hey, Carlos has finally written about coffee!", and then actually reading the whole damn thing. So I'll spare you the back pain and in return you will.. well.. I suppose we will have to come to some sort arrangement won't we?

I will also have some brackety looking thingys next to the different names of beans. This is simply an abbreviation of where I purchased them in case anyone feels like exploring the great(meh) city of Vaasa and buying some coffee for themselves.
[RV] = Ryytivakka, Saluhallen
[LK] = Liisa Koski


The Peruvian Yanesha [RV] was albeit not bad per se just too "meh" and had too much acidity for my taste. Sure there's probably someone out there who thinks that this is the best coffee in the world. For them. My point is, some coffees I liked, some I thought were shit. They weren't actually shit (I don't actually know what shit tastes like) but in my world of "Do I like this or not?" there are only two options. Beans I want to have more of.. and beans that I don't. Yanesha is unfortunately not a bean I will be keeping in my cupboard.




Barahona [RV] from Dominican Republic was actually one of the first coffees I tested. I kind of liked it at first (oh what a fool I was) but as my taste buds got used to tasting coffee this one felt, although heavy bodied with a very rich taste, it was too earthy for me. I also came to be not very fond of it's after-taste which had a little bitterness to it. This one will probably not be making a return. No rose for Barahona.






Switching continents completely I now happened upon an Indonesian that although I decided to only give it a 2+ I might want to revisit this one later one. I feel it might have Manhattan Blow Job potential. I give you the Indonesian Sulawesi [RV]. More light and quite fresh although with an slight acidity that never really agreed with me. This by the way also happens to be one of the beans Starbucks sells as a part of their selection. One friend who visited liked when I randomly did a 50/50 blend of Sulawesi and Bucaramanga (more on that one later).




Aaah, my wonderful wife. She went to Denmark a couple of weeks ago and of course I told that her that if she happens to "stumble" upon some nice coffee beans, she should bring me some. I present you with the Brazilian Daterra Sweet Collection [!]. It took me until last week before I could try this one (didn't have a grinder). I quite liked this one, definitely more of afternoon coffee than a morning one. I like it sweeter and fruitier in the morning.. and with a bit more bite in the afternoon. So why only a 3? Well, mostly because in the end it tasted too little. Bitterness was appropriate as well as acidity, but it lacked taste. Not to say it was tasteless, it had hints of dark chocolate with a dry nuttiness on the side. Some Mango or similar taste the end the experience would have made this a keeper. Right now though, I don't know. Maybe I'll import some more and see later on.

Speaking of Brazil though I just remembered. I also had something called Conquista Blend [RV] from Brazil. But I didn't like that at all. So I'm just going to lump it in with this one and call it a day. Okay?

Like I said. Two part story, you're just going to have to stay tuned (or not) for part Two.. the interesting part, the part where I start talking about the coffees I really liked and why I did. Part Two will also feature math (gaah, run for your lives!!1) since I figured that might be a good time to bring up what kind of water to coffee ratios I've been using. Basically I will be indulging myself like the true narcissist I am.. and probably not be paying that much attention to whether you listen or not.

At some point I also have plans of trying to find a good cup of coffee in Vaasa. I might have to lower my standard to a "decent" cup as I fear the coup de grâce for my intestines will be the moment when I reach Shell gas-station, who in my opinion should be notorious for their awful coffee. Hmm, maybe they are and I just haven't heard it. Anyway. Next time.. some random filler because I don't feel like writing part Two.. and then after that, totally.. part Two.

By the way, awesome illustrations, right? Yeah, I totally made them especially for you.

Return of LOL-kent

Curse you tommix for encouraging us to make more LOL-kent's!

Some time ago, tommix made his own meme entitled LOL-kent. Obviously I had to contribute to it by making a picture as well, since he encouraged people to do so and what not. Blah blah, featured here. Anyway. Now he's created a sub genre of that entitled LOL-kent-tärna. Yeah, I know it makes no sense, or rather the little sense that it does make is too far fetched for us mere mortals.

So obviously.. again.. I had to do my part and contribute to that one too. So without further ado, here it is. As well as the original LOL-kent because I felt this post required two pictures instead of one.

The return of LOL-kent.

My first LOL-kent.

Coffees of the World [pv]

[pv] stands for Preview. I've just decided this. Go with it.

Anyway. I'm still very much experimenting and exploring the wonderful world of coffee. This I am going to write about in so intricate detail that you will probably even get slightly annoyed at me, but then you will remember how much you all love me and you will calm down. From then on out.. maybe you will even keep calm. And who knows someday.. just someday.. you will be able to carry on. (I'm truly sorry to all non-native English speaking people, who might not get that.. and in case you did. Well good for you!)

Anyway.. again. I will write all about it, but for now you are going to have to be okay with just a picture. Simply because I'm too knackered to do it now. Enjoy this preview, and don't fret. It will all make sense in due time, unless it already makes sense. In which case this whole part feels pretty redundant but since I have already made the effort to write it, I refuse to delete it. Or edit it. Or even pretend that it isn't there. Instead, what do I do? I make a big deal about it, so big that it borderline overshadows the entire point of this post.

So in summary. Tired now, coffee talking later. Goodnight!

O Holy Night

This is awesome.. and if you can bare with it, listen right until the end, the awesome-ness gets awesomer at 3:30. A cover of O Holy Night.. well.. kind of anyway.

But really.. it's penis.

Gone Fishing

Well, obviously not so much gone.. since well.. I'm back now, and you didn't even know I wasn't here.

The sun has been shining insaneously (not a word) for the past week.. the temperature has been at around 30°C and more.. in the shade. It's sort of felt a bit like what I imagine Satan's anus feels like. I'm not complaining, I like it warm although I have had my weak moments of "Are you freakin' kidding me?!". Still.. I prefer this over -30°C which it can get at winter sometimes.

Living in Finland is.. well.. a bitch at times. We get to enjoy both versions (temperature wise at least) of hell every year.

Anyway. That wasn't why I was going to blog. I was randomly going to share about how I went fishing yesterday. Just like that, out of the blue. Two friends (who choose to be anonymous, so I will call them Ted Bundy and Jerry Brudos from now on) was out fishing and with the weather being borderline unbearably hot I wanted to be outside more than I wanted to be inside. So I joined them. Apparently I suck at fishing. Or to be more accurate, I didn't catch anything except a nice tan. Ted Bundy had a lot better luck and kept catching fish constantly, so when he managed to catch the smallest one for the day.. I decided to snap a picture. Then two minutes later when he caught another one I figured I might as well take a picture of that one as well. So dear readers, here you go. My good friend Ted Bundy having caught two fishes, that we of course threw back since they were still quite small.

Obviously not altered using Apoop Photoshop™ at all.

Because I would know.. I've seen things.

The One With All The Pictures

This picture has nothing to do with anything else, I just liked how it looked and wanted to show it to someone.. anyone?

So finally the wait is over. Our internet has arrived and I no longer have to blog from my phone, which was albeit an okay experience, nothing I would enjoy doing on a regular basis. Too fiddly to write and I could never see everything either so I spelled things wrong and didn't notice. Yeah, maybe no one else noticed either but it still bugs me.

Still waiting for our new fridge though, which should still (hopefully) arrive this week.

So yeah, new apartment and I'm sure at least some of you (the two readers whom I don't actually already live with that is) would like to see some pictures and who am I to disappoint? Well technically I am the douche who blogs about whatever I feel like at that particular moment.. once I had a moment of "ooh, I'll do a Carlos vs. Lady Gaga" -thingy. Which I still might for the records but for now you're all safe from that.

So anyway. Here are some pictures of our new home. It's obviously much.. mu'uuch cooler and nicer and all those things in reality, the pictures really don't do it justice. But unless you happen to visit us sometime, you will just have to take my word for it. So there.

...

Oh, right.. one final thing before the pictures. I have now also managed to acquire a digital kitchen scale (no thanks to any of you bastards.. nah, it's cool we're still friends.. let's just say I like you a little less..) and the burr grinder I "talked" about earlier in Nine Days Later. So far I'm very pleased with my coffee results as well, although I'm still trying to figure the exact right settings for French press (Zassenhaus doesn't send with any kind of instructions.. at all). So before the pictures of our new home, here's a picture of my new stuff..

Obviously everything isn't in its place yet but we will get there soon enough. Maybe I can even snap a few more pictures of things, like Boon's room which is currently the most chaotic one.. hence no picture just yet.

Bye for now.

Keys and a Fridge

Awesome. Our landlord just dropped by with the other key. Now we can finally move about independently. He also checked out our less than awesome fridge, door hinge badly broken and leaky. He took one look at it and just went; "Yeah, we're gonna have to get a new one.. I'll see about getting that taken care of by next week."

Excellent.

Now if the intertweb could just arrive and I could have enough money to never have to think about money, everything would be awesome! Screw world peace and feedi smoothly ng starving children, I'm starving right here..

Iron Fist

A new song from Coheed & Cambria.. maybe.. or it might just be a side project from Claudio and Travis, either way. I really like it. So until we get internet at our new home, enjoy!

I was going to do a fisting joke with the title, but I felt it would be disgraceful towards a very nice song.