There are a lot of directions I could go in with this post. But I worry about alienating those of you with kids and/or drinking problems (though they usually go hand-in-hand, don’t they?)

And really, the picture says it all, and by “it all”, I mean “babies love getting loaded on chocolate-covered whiskey.”

Duh.

For more drunken, drooling cuteness, click.

(Via Liqurious, courtesy of Adrienne — I think.)

I actually had a really cramazing Thirsty Thursday post lined up for today, but it’ll have to wait until next week — I have an exciting announcement to make (well, two actually):

First up: my Diver Riding Shark shirt was worn by Jimmy on FOX’s Raising Hope this week!

The full video won’t be up on Hulu until next week, but rest assured, it will be embedded ASAP (provided Congress doesn’t destroy the internet between now and then). There’s something vaguely satisfying about Jimmy passing his GED test while wearing one of my tees…

But even MORE exciting than this teeny-tiny step up the ladder of fame is the addition of ART PRINTS to the Ex-Boyfriend product line! While a limited selection to start, I hope to be able to add to the collection of available art prints in the future. Each 11″ x 17″ print is digitally reproduced on 100 lb. glossy cover stock, ships for FREE in sturdy cardboard shipping tubes, and is guaranteed to get you mad high-fives & fist-bumps at your next dinner party (if your dinner parties are typically held at the Jersey Shore. And if they are, the high-fives might be for your delicious rum-ham.)

I am a man, and thus inherently lazy. So anytime I can kill two pigs with one angry bird, I’m excited.

You see, we threw a NYE party on Saturday, and one of our trays was filled with these delicious little bite-sized Asian summer rolls served with a ginger-sesame-miso dipping sauce that was pretty out of this world. However, ginger (being the kick-ass root that it is) is insanely potent — you don’t need much to give something a ginger-y kick.

Unfortunately, it’s sold in its raw, natural state, and we always end up with way more than we need, and struggle to come up with ways to use what’s left. Man cannot live on stir-fry alone.

Thank goodness for this cocktail recipe, though! Courtesy of Nick at CocktailRemedy.com, it features a lot of stuff I like. However, I’d probably make a couple substitutions:

Pear Ginger Smash
(makes 1 drink) 

Ingredients:

1/2 pear, wedged and cored
.5 oz. lime juice
1.5 oz. whiskey (Ed. note: Because I’m a wuss and can’t man-up enough to enjoy whiskey, I’d probably use a nice mid-priced cognac or brandy instead, or some dark rum in a pinch.)
.5 oz. Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur (Ed. note: See Nick’s comment below re: ginger syrup — I’d use that instead since I’m trying to get rid of this ginger!)
Ginger Ale (Ed. note: I’d have to make two of these: one with ginger ale, and one with ginger beer. I ordered a Dark & Stormy once that was made with ginger ale, and it was abyssmal, so I’m inclined to use ginger beer instead since I can control the sweetness by adding as much or as little ginger syrup as I want, rather than taking what the corn lobby gives me with their dreaded high-fructose corn syrup. Corn; I say thee, nay!)

To make:

Muddle the pear and lime juice until the pear is pulverized. Add the rest of the ingredients, ice and shake vigorously in a cocktail shaker. Strain with a julep strainer over ice. I like the julep strainer because it has larger holes and tiny bits of fruit can escape into the drink. Which I love. If you’d rather a smoother drink, a regular cocktail strainer will do. Then, top with ginger ale.

The Domaine de Canton is a nice way to add ginger flavor to your drink, and an interesting alternative to ginger syrup. Though, they’re probably somewhat interchangeable here.

(Ed. note: I was just thinking that dropping in 2-3 small pieces of candied ginger might also be a nice touch, but between the ginger ale/beer and ginger syrup, be careful not to kill that delicate pear flavor!)

We already know about how Swedish moose like to party. But now we get a little insight into the mysterious lives of Swedish elk!

Snapped by Peter Lundgren of Lindome, Sweden while getting some fresh air on his balcony, these three elk were just hanging out, nomming some (let’s face it, probably fermented) apples before they got down to business.

Apparently elk business is conducted in much the same way dog business is, but with input from the elk in the cubicle nextdoor. Someone needs to proof these contracts before we get them notarized, Larry!

(Via Daily Picks And Flicks)

Serious Eats recently profiled Jim Meehan of NYC speakeasy-era bar PDT for his selection of artisanal apple-themed cocktails, and the one I’m most desperate to try out myself is the Nouveau Sangaree. The combination of red wine, apple brandy, sloe gin and maple syrup really gets my taste buds going! Plus, it just looks awesome with the cinnamon-sprinkled apple slice garnish:)

Ingredients:

Admit it: you’ve always wished there was a slightly more convenient, less-liquid-y way to consume your alcohol. Or maybe it’s just me.

Anyway, thank goodness for Camper English, the L.A. Times’ resident booze guru and acclaimed inventor of the Honey Badger shot. He had the same idea, and has been researching and developing the best methods by which to create solid forms of our favorite adult beverages. However, his (thus far) favorite method was actually passed on to him by Lauren Mote, the mixology half of Kale & Nori Culinary Arts, a Vancouver-based catering service. Click here to get the details at Camper’s Alcademics blog, but it basically centers around boiling down spirits to reduce the amount of water, and then agitating the resulting syrup until it begins to crystallize into a very adult-friendly form of rock candy. Once the syrup has been turned out onto a silicone mat and cools, just break it up into rocks and pulverize it in the spice grinder of your choice for a powdery libation, a la these campari crystals:

I’ve got two words for you: FUN. DIP.

(Pic & “recipe” via Alcademics)

This isn’t really news, but back in July the Rickey was declared the official cocktail of Washington, DC. Which is funny, because I feel that to live and work in the nation’s capital or root for their sports teams, I’d need way more than one cocktail to keep me sane (I should know; I’m a big ‘Skins fan). The good news is that the Rickey is a pretty basic drink that lends itself to a fair amount of variation. While I doubt I’d be a fan of the original “Joe” Rickey that uses bourbon in lieu of gin, I do like me some gin. So I scoured the webz for something awesome, and there is not much in this world that’s as awesome as booze and fire. Behold, the Rosewater Rickey:

Created (and photographed) by Jamie Boudreau at Vessel in Seattle, this is how it’s gonna go down:

Brulee in the bottom of a mixing glass:
5 pitted, brandied cherries
bar spoon of sugar
Angostura mist* (see below)

Fill with ice and add:
3 oz gin
1 bar spoon of rosewater
½ oz fresh lime juice

shake and strain into an iced Collins glass
top with soda water

*For Angostura mist, place equal portions of Angostura bitters and Lemon Hart 151 rum into an oil mister/sprayer.
To brulee the cherries, place them in your mixing glass, add the sugar, and mist the Angostura mixture through a flame.
Flame until sugar caramelizes.

As per usual, feel free to sub your own favorite spirit—I’d probably go with Hendrick’s for the gin, and since Lemon Hart 151 is extremely hard to come by, you may want a nice El Dorado (maybe the 8 year old?) or, in a pinch, Gosling’s Black Seal. Also, rosewater can usually be found in fancier groceries like Whole Foods or Fresh Market. Also-also, fire is awesome, but also hot. Be careful!

(Via Liqurious, as usual)

Poor Canada. Actually, no; poor Canadian liquor companies.

Like the U.S., Canada is saddled with a pretty sad rep abroad when it comes to its alcoholic exports. Both nations have thriving microbreweries, but by and large the rest of the world only knows us for Budweiser and Molson, respectively. Meanwhile, we’re inundated with awesome gin from Scotland (Hendrick’s), excellent vodka from—seriously—France (Grey Goose), and some seriously amazing rum from Portugal (El Dorado). Not to mention the tidal wave of awesome beers from Belgium and Germany!

Which means that the average Canadian beverage company is reduced to some pretty insane levels of gimmickry to make in-roads internationally. To wit: Frozen Ghost Vodka.

Sure, every product should have a story behind it, but to go to the lengths these guys have to drum up interest in some vodka? If it’s that awesome, shouldn’t its quality do most of the heavy lifting for you, marketing-wise?

(Via The Hairpin, courtesy of Adj!)

Smirnoff? Absolut? Seagram’s?! NO, Michael Bay. No.

I get that you need to offer parents some way to dull the pain of sitting through your lump of childhood-ruining waste, but this is not the way. In fact, I cannot think of a WORSE way to add another $8 on top of a $12 ticket than being forced to drink “Michael Bay’s X-Plode Juice” while losing two hours of my life. $20 to be trapped in a life-sucking machine? Talk about a Pit of Despair.

(If this Youtube analogy causes Michael Bay to re-make Princess Bride, I will jump right out my f@#king window.)

(Via ForkParty.com)

Have you guys heard of Klout? It’s a new social media influence-compiler that takes all of the data produced by you on your various social networking accounts and grades you out based on link-clickage and page views and follows and likes. Like Google Analytics, BUT FOR YOUR VERY DIGITAL ESSENCE. I can’t decide if this is awesome or horrible. Probably both; the social media equivalent of watching some other dude get hit in the balls with some sort of object.

Here’s why it’s awesome:

Klout is new, so it has that “new app smell”, and it satisfies a navel-gazing urge and desire to have my ego stroked.

Here’s why it isn’t:

Klout is also pretty much a robot. And if a robot just rolled into your job or class wearing the coolest new clothes (mine, for instance), you’d probably want to hang out with it. But then it opens its mouth/switches on its speech facilitatrix, and just spews weird, random analysis of you based on what it sees with zero context. All of a sudden the cool new robot with the fly kicks seems a lot more like someone you’d like to shake down for lunch money.

For example:

That’s me. 29. My whole online existence, boiled down to a single (relatively low) number. High compared to my friends, but I rank lower than a lot of back-up outfielders on small-market National League baseball teams (how does Nyjer-f@#king-Morgan score a 57?!)

But check out the five topics I’m supposedly “influential” about:

1. Homelessness
2. Animals
3. Money
4. Billy Joel
5. Mystery

Let’s break it down: “homelessness” and “animals” should be paired together; my love of shelter pets and work with the SPCA is pretty well-known. Money…well, let’s just say that I always thought in order to be influential regarding that, you had to actually HAVE some. Klout thinks I’m Warren Buffet over here.

Billy Joel; OK, fair enough. I love The Piano Man. Apparently so much that he is the thing I care fourth-most about IN ALL THE WORLD. My wife, my cats, art, baseball, comics…don’t even make the list. And “mystery”?! I get that Klout is probably just picking up on the frequency of my Mystery Monday posts, but believing I’m influential about something as abstract as “mystery” is like saying you can actually “win” against terror.

Robots: awesome, but stupid.

FURTHERMORE, Klout believes that I am a.) not really all that influential, and b.) am only really influenced by ALCOHOL:

True though it may be, I don’t really need to be reminded of it by some douchey robot (whose shoes really aren’t all that great anyway). That’s right—my only influencer is Bad Decisions. My favorite bar.

Whatever. At least I’m not alone; Bad Decisions has a Klout score of 51, so clearly there are many other drunken Billy Joel fans with an air of mystery about them. I just need to find them.

In completely unrelated news, I’ve posted two new designs: Pirate Bunnies, and Ghost World. Snap ‘em up!