I would like to take this opportunity to call everyone’s attention to a growing problem that’s facing our society. There is a disease that is beginning to afflict more and more of the people who are near and dear to us. This disease hit young and old, male and female alike. I am certain that right now, off the top of your head, you could name three or four people who are suffering from this disease. I am speaking, of course, about Celebrity Alcoholic Syndrome.

You can identify people who have Celebrity Alcoholic Syndrome by watching for the symptoms: they eat cheeseburgers off of the floor, forget to put on underwear then expose themselves when they get out of a car, use racial slurs when arrested for drinking and driving, their shows/personal appearances get canceled by their publicist due to “exhaustion”. Also, anyone who makes out with Madonna has a very serious problem that needs professional help.

As you know; Dr. Drew, working alongside reality t.v., has been doing everything he can to try to cure the “Z-list” celebrities. However, he is only one man with one reality show. We need more celebrity “doctors” and far more shows.

To help with this important cause, The Redneck Bar and Grill will be distributing ribbons that can be worn on you lapel or put on the back of your car in order to show your support for finding a cure for Celebrity Alcoholic Syndrome. We want to get as many of our patrons as possible wearing these puke-green ribbons to help raise awareness. As well, The Blue Beaver Brewing Company will be launching a new advertising campaign; “When you’re feeling blue, grab a Beaver. But if you’re a celebrity, please grab your Beaver responsibly.”

Well, what’s in the news these days.  Oh; there’s one rather obscure item that I ran across recently.  Probably not very many of you out there have heard about this, though, it hasn’t gotten a lot of coverage by mainstream press.  There’s this thing called H1N1 going around (it’s the Flu-Formerly-Known-As-Swine).  Basically it’s a regular flu that’s been turned up to 11.  From what I understand listening to the fear-mongering public service announcements if you don’t get an inoculation against this thing, IT WILL KILL YOU DEAD INSTANTLY.  At least that’s how they make it sound.

Now, I thought I ought to do a little research and delve into the origins of this flu; however I couldn’t be bothered find adequate time in my busy schedule to do a whole lot of delving.  So instead I’ll just tell you my assumptions based on rumours that I have heard (just as if I was writing something for Wikipedia).  I heard that this flu actually passed from humans to swine instead of vice versa , so I guess some pig farmer was sick while he was making out with one of his sows and he infected her.  All last year when we first heard of this thing they kept calling it the swine flu.  Then a large group of hogs got together and protested this besmirching of their characters.  As a result some scientist pressed a few random buttons on his keyboard and came up with “H1N1″ instead.  It’s supposed to be “politically correct” so that the pigs can’t sue anyone over it.  Unfortunately now people are calling it the “hienie” flu.  So I guess that’s the one negative aspect of the whole thing.

Now; the fear-mongerers experts are saying we all need to get immunized, but there are a couple of catches to that.  First of all, there seems to a little less vaccine than what they initially anticipated.  Then there was a far larger demand than they predicted (I guess their “public service announcements” scared the bejesus out of more people than they predicted).  So now they have to go in order of who is highest risk and immunize these groups first.  People with weakened immune systems, young children, pregnant women, CEO’s of major financial institutions who can buy as much vaccine as they want, hockey players who are in peak physical condition.  You know, people who are in real danger.

Personally, I think I’m going to be safe.  I’ll call in to The Redneck Bar & Grill and say I’m sick, then I’ll wrap my whole house in plastic and duct tape, put on a body condom and never leave the house or have any direct contact with another living creature again.  That should do the trick.

A little while back, I read the book “Hannibal Rising”; which is all about the formative years of Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lector.  At one point a teenage Hannibal is getting some culinary lessons from a French Chef.  The Chef says that the cheeks of an animal are a delicacy.  When you are carving one is supposed to be presented to the lady of the house and the other to the guest of honour.

Now for a while I wondered if this idea was, perhaps, made up by Thomas Harris.  After all we butchered our own animals when I was growing up on the farm and I had never heard of such a thing.  However, just the other day I attended a wine and food festival.  At one of the booths they had beef cheeks.  I tried one and found it to be very tasty and surprisingly tender.

Thus, I have been inspired to create a new dish for The Redneck Bar & Grill.  A 48-hr. sous-vide beaver cheek with garlic infused puree of root vegetables and a pink-peppercorn demi-glace.  Watch for it on the new menu.

A stereo sound system can really make or break a business like this one.  After my run in with the guys selling bar sound system components on the Whitemud, I put a little thought into our stereo setup at the Redneck Bar and Grill. We pretty much went with the old stereo system that came with the joint when we took it over, with a few minor tweaks. The hard wooden floor and walls tended to give our bar an echo problem, which we managed to mitigate with genuine tribal hangings I bought off the Slouching Tiger Tribe in the Forest of Ubangme. Ernie got crafty and whipped out some sound absorbing ceiling tiles made out of Blue Beaver Beer boxes . Now all we needed was better sound equipment, but Ernie and I got busy and tied up with other things. We just never got around to it.
Those 2 guys in Edmonton were trying to sell me a fairly cheap set. It had this low end stuff in it:
Yamahog sound table with 27 input
53 foot long, 19 input snake cord
Double Demon 9000 cd player
Deringher compressor
Deringher cross-over
Deringher EQ
2 Deringher amp 2500 Flowerpower
2 Deringher 18″ bass bins
4 top speakers

I figure I can do a lot better than this, off of eBay. I’m going to shop around and see what I can get. I might look for a NAD C272 Power Stereo amplifier, or some such. In any case, soon we’ll be blowing the socks off of customers with our new bar sound system. We’ve been pulling a lot of cash with our Blue Beaver Beer Gift Baskets, so we can afford to pick up a kicka$$ set of speakers and amps.