$150 a Bottle? That's like whole week's worth of beer!

Those crafty brewers at Samuel Adams have done it again. A couple years ago I told you about their specialty beer that was a whopping 24% alcohol (48 proof). Well now, they've cranked out one that is 27% (54 proof) alcohol.

"Just part of trying to push the envelope," said Jim Koch, founder and owner of the Boston Beer Co. the maker of Sam Adams. "I'm pushing it beyond what the laws of these 13 states ever contemplated when they passed those laws decades ago."

Yes, this beer is so strong, it's illegal in 13 states.

I tried the first "extreme beer" that Samuel Adams made back in the early 1990s, the Triple Bock. It had 17.5% alcohol, and I hated it. So while I'm intrigued by a $150 bottle of 27% beer, I'm pretty cautious about the whole idea.

Hey, you know where it's windy?

Yes, the wind is known to blow in Kodiak, sometimes with expediency and purpose. But you know where it really got windy over the weekend? Attu (Gesundheit!).

ANCHORAGE, Alaska –The crew of Coast Guard’s Long-Range Navigation (LORAN) Station in Attu, is digging out after a weekend storm pounded the island with wind gusts of 178 mph and more than a one and a half feet of snow, Nov. 28-29.

The storm which brought sustained winds of 125 mph or category three hurricane winds and gusts that equal some of the strongest winds of a category five hurricane slammed into the island causing damage to the LORAN station with a communications antenna breaking from three of its securing mounts. The crew of the station has been busy making repairs and has spent more than 100 hours on snow removal.

The winter wind storm arrived Saturday afternoon with the winds gradually growing to such a state that all personnel were restricted to the main building.

Man, they needed to name that blow. Crazy.

By the way, did you know that Coasties are posted to Attu for one-year tours, and only get 30-days off half-way through? I wonder if it's considered a plum assignment? Here's a screenshot from Google Earth of where Attu is.

Guest Post - From Abercrombie's Ghost!

This letter took a bit of a convoluted route to get to me, but here it is, and I thought they could express the situation better than I can. (The piece references a written exchange (from March this year) from the Kodiak State Parks Citizens' Advisory Board and Kodiak Representative Alan Austerman's office, which is not reproduced here. Basically the board describes the problem of getting busses in and out of the area near the Kodiak Military History Museum and describe their "shovel-ready" solution, to which an aide to Austerman responds.)

Dear Ishmael-
Check out this design drawing for the proposed Fort Abercrombie parking lot on Miller Point. The parking lot would be big enough to turn tourist buses around on Miller Point, which is a problem for the park rangers when a cruise ship comes in. The drawing came up after a google search for “fort abercrombie tourist bus parking,” along with other related online documents. Note the 2009 letter from the Citizen’s Advisory Committee asking for funding, and a reply from Representative Austerman’s office asking, “I know that at times this bus parking proposal has been quite controversial. What is the recent evolution?” Good question, and easily answered.

The “recent evolution” is that this parking lot is still controversial because it is still a bad idea. Kodiak State Parks wants to spend $1.3 million in earmarked cruise ship head tax money to pave half an acre of forest to make a parking lot for seventeen cars and two buses, a bus turnaround, and several decorative planters. The planters will not make up for the missing trees, nor make the half acre of asphalt and concrete compatible with either the expectations of most visitors or the Park’s own Management Plan.


Page 27 of the Fort Abercrombie Management Plan states that “To the extent practicable, developments in the cultural resource areas of Ft. Abercrombie (around Miller Point and Piedmont Point) will be historically appropriate such that they have the appearance of facilities that existed during World War II.” Certainly the proposed parking lot is not historically appropriate and will not have the appearance of the World War II facilities. And while the parking lot will be convenient for the small minority of visitors arriving in tour buses, it will degrade the park experience for everyone else.


There’s nothing wrong with trying to make it easier to turn buses around at Miller Point, but paving a piece of old growth forest in a historically significant area is the wrong way to do that. According to the Park’s own numbers, 65,000 people a year visit Fort Abercrombie Park. In 2009, about 10,000 cruise ship passengers visited Kodiak. If every one of them visited Abercrombie, an unlikely scenario, the rest- 55,000 people- are Kodiak residents and small groups of regular tourists who value the park’s present state of natural beauty and don’t need another parking lot in their lives.


To accommodate bus tourists, there are several alternatives to clear-cutting and paving which would both adhere to the Park’s management directives and do no harm to the pristine character of the park. The buses could go up the existing park road, circle the ammo bunker, park where they park now, and head back down. Or the overgrown military road between the RV overflow lot and the bunker, a trail right now, could be cleared so buses could loop around the bunker and go back down the main park road. This is what the military did in the first place. Or the RV overflow lot could be enlarged so buses could turn around and people could walk up from there.


Once bureaucracies become invested in capital projects, even projects as foolish as this one, they will fight for them until the effort to carry them out in the face of public displeasure is greater than the effort to modify them. People should start calling Mr. James King, Alaska State Parks Director, at 907-269-8700, or emailing him from the Alaska State Parks website: (www.dnr.alaska.gov/parks/) The louder people protest, the more likely it is that this foolish project will die its deserved death. Otherwise, we get to live with another ugly parking lot and some concrete planters for a long time.


Signed, Abercrombie's Ghost

It's Starting to ... Christmas

So I'm downtown this afternoon and noticed road crews dumping snow off the pier on the spit; saw a bunch of eagles; and heard "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" for the first rme this winter. All signs that the holidays are nigh! Rejoice!

Also, did you know you can buy pig blood at the AC? Yep, containers about the same shape and size as cottage cheese. May seem strange to me, but I imagine it's a tasty ingredient in some tasty dish made by someone from our vibrant immigrant community.

Trooper Wooten Speaks Out

Governess' ex-brother-in-law Mike Wooten speaks out on Palin's lies. From Huffpo:

Wooten now joins an ever-growing array of figures from John McCain on down who have challenged the veracity of Palin's memoirs. The list also includes McCain senior advisers Steve Schmidt and Nicolle Wallace, Palin's former legislative director John Bitney, her former political ally Andree McLeod, and former Alaska gubernatorial candidate Andrew Halcro. All Republicans. Wooten identifies himself as a "conservative" as well.

Mom! Help! Republitards Are Lying Sacks, Willing to Sacrifice Our Country for a Dollar!

Katharine DeBrecht has a new book with a cameo by Failed Governess Sarah Barracuda Palin. In it, she lies about those who she sees as lying about the failed governess. All to make money off the weak-minded.

In a cameo appearance, “Governor Sarah,” a Palin lookalike character, attempts to help two boys with a struggling swingset business hang onto the American Dream despite high taxes, burdensome regulations and 246 czars in the recently released children’s book Help! Mom! Radicals Are Ruining My Country!, by bestselling- author Katharine DeBrecht.

“I am trying to let all Americans know that these radicals are killing the American Dream and I want to stop them from hurting people that produce products and provide jobs,” the Palin character consoles the frustrated boys. The book then describes an all-out media assault on the Palin figure based on false rumors which discourages the boys.

Think she mentions that the ex-governess quit about half-way through the job? There's a lesson for the kids:

"If you go around making outrageous lies, stir up racial hatred, and fail miserably at the job tens-of-thousands of people wanted you to do, it is a-okay to up and quit," Governor Sarah might say.

"But my mommy and daddy told me never to quit if I've committed to do something," little Bobby might say.

"Oh, no, if you have a chance to screw over 300,000 people to make a buck, you better do it! That's the republican way," the Governess might respond. "That, and destroying the environment. Oh, and lying. We must always lie because we have no ideas and the Democrats are actually better at managing money!

"But that's a secret we don't want to say aloud," she quickly might have added, "Because then there'd really be no reason for anyone to vote for us."

And what the hell are those sticking out of her purse???? The mummified fingers of her enemies with the nails painted the ex-governess' signature color, French Whore Red? Seriously, WTF?

Today's Doonesbury - All about the Tweet

Lots of Tweeting going on in Kodiak.... Do a search at twitter.com. My favorite is The Clarkston, the editor and sports editor of the Kodiak Daily Mirror. More Doonesbury goodness here.

Greenhouse in Quinhagak

This is pretty sweet. Former talk show host Jenny Jones contributed $10,000 to help build a greenhouse in the Southwest Alaska village of Quinhagak (k'win a'hawk). From a story in the Tundra Drums this week.

     The night before the call, the former host of the show said she made a lot of money from the talk show (which ended in 2003 after a 12-year run), far more than she ever expected.
      So she decided to create a foundation and sprinkle that money around the country to support projects that benefit communities.
     Pederson's project beat out about 10,000 applications, Jones said.
     Knowing that poor nutrition contributes to a host of illnesses, including diabetes, Jones said she couldn't deny the request. "It was a no-brainer," she said.

Our Embarrassment

Suck on these delicious gourmet mints to get the bad taste out of your mouth.

Thanks to a KoKon Operative for passing this on.

What's More Surprising?

What's More Surprising?

1. That 40 kilos (88 pounds) of opium was confiscated in Anchorage, or
2. That it was bound for Wisconsin?

Ah, Wisconsin, the Badger State, America's Dairyland, where the opium dens are filled with cheese.

Well this is just awkward....

By some weird twist of logistics, these are the next two films in my Netflix queue:

One is a death race and the other is a race against death.

Best Of: Tea-Bagging Kodiak Style

It's not often I repost a whole piece - in fact, I'm not sure I've ever done it. No matter, I ran across this one, and after seeing the Tea-Bagging flags at a local cinema were for some reason down, I thought I'd repost this, from April this year when they held national tea-bagging day:

I heard there were a small band of ingrates protesting Alaska's oppressive taxes downtown today. They were part of the "Teabagging" movement that sweeping conservatards across the land.

And if Alaska had any taxes on individuals at all, the protesters downtown might have had a point. But not only do we in Kodiak pay a minuscule sales tax and have a small property tax (compared to Los Anchorage and America), our state doesn't tax us one red penny.
In fact, the state gave us over $3,200 to live here last year. And on top of that, once again this fiscal year, Alaska gets back more in federal money than Alaskans pay in taxes.

And these people are whining.

Now if they'd let us tax megacorps the way we should be (I'm thinking 80% on oil and gas) for the pleasure of doing business in our great country, we could do away with what little tax is left from the Federal Government on individuals. But you'll never get a repubitard - even one of these Teabaggers - to go against big business, no! Big Business cares for us, and loves us and lets up pet baby seals and stuff. Exxon has a lower tax rate than you do. Think about that shit for a minute. Maybe there should be a tax revolt, but instead it should be one against giving away our resources in exchange for crappy jobs at Walmart.

Commentary on Thanksgiving and Black Friday

Just ran across this column examining Thanksgiving, Black Friday (there's that phrase again), and the relationship Native Americans have with the holiday, in the Daily Kansan (I read it every day!!!! not really.), written by a young lady formerly of Kodiak:

Growing up on Kodiak Island, an island south of Alaska, my education was heavily influenced by native traditions. We studied totem poles, created traditional beadwork and attended Alutiiq museums and dance ceremonies. In short, the native point of view was never far from my mind. ... There are alternatives. Buy Nothing Day, which is held on Black Friday has opposed Thanksgiving-centered consumerism for 20 years, and is now celebrated in 65 countries. It’s a wonderful way to refocus and simplify the way we celebrate. Instead of camping out overnight to buy sale-priced electronics, we can stay warm with our families.

The author is Melissa Lytton, who the Daily Kansan describes thusly: "— Lytton is a Kodiak, Ala., senior in creative writing." Yes, she's from Alabama, an island south of Alaska (not her fault, but if her editor had consulted The AP Stylebook, s/he would have found out that "Alaska" is never abbreviated in copy or datelines.) Oh, click on her picture in the story to see more of her columns.