Atomic Nerds

The Emergency Medical Bock for the Kilted to Kick Cancer prize package went into the secondary fermenter today. Sneaked a little out while it was siphoning over, and by sheer luck discovered that there was one (1) bottle of the original mix left in the very back of the fridge. Well conditioned by now, I’m sure.

I gotta say, even un-carbonated, and before the second ferment and bottling, I think the new stuff is slightly better. Ironically I’m not really so much a fan of my own beers, but I’ll give the new stuff the nod here. LabRat says that if they carried this at the local brewpub, she would punch people if they ran out (I knew I married her for a reason).

So, if you missed that it’s entirely possible I’ll be doing a kilted greased pig chase, on video, along with courting frostbite, you’ve still got time to chip in to Kelly’s team.

And since, as MattG puts it, I have no brakes on my dare-car, y’all know what’s coming.

Get Kelly to an even thou, or KTKC overall to 15 kilobucks, and I’ll do the kilted greased pig chase while channeling one of my spirit animals. I mean, that almost looks like a kilt, right?

Click the link, pick team Ambulance Driver, and donate.
Get kilted. Get checked.

Well, it’s September and the silence here has probably been noticed. I’ll get the bad news out of the way first. I’m sorry, folks, but the situation here right now is such that I don’t have the gas in the tank to do the drive justice this year, so I’m mostly sitting out. Mostly.

Now the good news. KTKC is officially a 501(c)3 charity. Formal. Legit. The whole shebang. Congratulations to Kelly, Happy Medic, Mrs. Happy Medic, and Motorcop, and my personal thanks for all the hard work fighting with the IRS that had to go into this conversion. The momentum this project has gained amazes me and simultaneously pains me since I’m mostly sitting out.

Now for that one little word. Mostly. First off, I’ve got a batch of Emergency Medical Bock about halfway fermented as I type this. Kelly will happily shank people for this stuff, but it could just be he burned out all his tastebuds with spicy gumbo or something. A case is going into the prize pot for the year. And if the IRS or ATF have a beef with giving away booze, I may find myself a new best friend at the end of the month, wink wink nudge nudge, subtle as a brick and all that. You want it? Sign up instructions and complete listings of the prizes are here. Get kilted and get to work.

Now for those of you who don’t like shitty beer, I’ll up things a little more for good measure. Kelly is already making promises for this year for his fund raising efforts. As the song goes, my friend, anything you can do I can do better. #dunkyourjunk? I’ll *salt* my ice water to get it colder than Kelly’s, and I’ll stay in longer. The audio for my waxening from KTKC past is still over in the sidebar, too.

One in seven men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer. My dad was one of those, but thankfully not the one in thirty six who will die from it. I’ve got a personal stake here, so Kelly? Here’s a gauntlet for you to throw where ever you like. I’m already in for the ice water, but on top of that, you cook up the stunt and the fund raising goal, and I’ll make it happen. Just, uh, keep in mind Labrat will be unhappy if anything is rendered permanently unusable. I think you can imagine how that’d go if she gets upset. Personally I’d like to see you stomp a mudhole in JayG and walk it dry just to de-throne the bastard, but do with this questionable gift as you will.

Get kilted. Get checked. Get this thing licked. Wait, phrasing. Beat. Get this thing beat.

Of the 2013 KTKC beer raffle is…. Maureen V! Thank you deeply to all of you who kicked in on the beer production. We didn’t quite hit the discount goal, so LabRat will remain searching for her muse un-hobbled, and last seen with a flashlight, a pick-axe, and a bag of thermite somewhere in Northern Saskatchewan. Maureen, check your inbox this afternoon and we’ll start designing your tipple.

So that didn’t go as swimmingly as planned, and that rests entirely on me. As I said, Nerd Ranch has been undergoing Interesting Times, a condition which did not lessen during this month. Given the importance of what Kilted to Kick Cancer is doing, I apologize to all involved for not getting more lead out.

As of this writing, I’m sitting at $250, which given the amount of posting I actually put in (compared to what I intended to) is frankly borderline miraculous. Thank you, sincerely and from the bottom of my black little heart. This issue is, as has been mentioned, fairly important to me.

$250 is halfway to where I promised I’d drag LabRat back and make her post at least once. For last ditch measures, end of month clearance event, don’t-make-us-haul-this-schwag-home-from-the-convention sale, I’m dropping that price tag to $375. And don’t forget, every $10 gets you a ticket to win a case of my very own home brewed beer, crafted to your specification. Just to add a little flex, while I need the donation receipt forwarded to nerdsatomic at gmail daht com by midnight mountain time to get in on the beer prize, if we cross $375 before Ambo Driver posts the final standings, I’ll still go all Annie Wilkes on LabRat till she starts typing.

So finally, pulling out the very last stop, I’ve got to a) do at least one kilted pic this month fer’ fucks sake, and b) combine ALL THE LOVED THINGS. Behold the following:

Kilt. M1 Garand. Beer. Four out of five puppies, and Tank. Bacon. I mean really the only things missing are a 427 big block and Dita von Teese.
Please top off the coffers, and those of you who already have, thank you.

As a fan of both guns and coffee, I of course have to weigh in on the banality du jour of Starbucks asking Customer McHeatertoter to not give them his/her money.

Oh wait, I already did.

Tam, as ever, makes and covers all the salient points with a finely sharpened tongue cutting no more or less than is appropriate to the targets in need.

Being more of a blunt instrument type myself, let me merely add this: Nice work you jackshit chucklefuck aspires-to-merely-inadequate fuck stained cuntblast cock-sockets. Well fucking done there, turning “Meh” into “Please stop.” Does it suck rancid donkey cocks that “Meh” is a desirable state? Yup! Thanks for noticing. You know what sucks worse? Making such a shit-heel of yourself that the hand is forced to turn “Meh” into an open “No, really, we’re against you. We just like money. Stop being a shitheel, please.”

Frankly I’m tempted to buy a cup just by way of thanks for honesty.

(And if the return to vulgar profanity or the older post tickled your funny bone, please consider kicking a few bucks into the pot for Kilted To Kick Cancer and help fight prostate cancer.)

So, it’s still Monday in Australia, right? This still counts? I ran outta gas. I had a flat tire. I didn’t have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn’t come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from outta town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake! A terrible flood! Locusts! It wasn’t my fault!!

*cough*

So, quick bit of administrivia first, my donation link seems to have a tendancy to go fubar. If you wind up at a generic KTKC page instead of what should be my personal donation page, please just search for first name Sting last name Ray and you should be set. And as a quick aside, thank you immensely for your donation, Patrick.

Next up, as suggested, if you don’t have any good ideas, steal someone else’s. JeffB is putting up a case of home brew beer as an enticement. Sounds like a good plan! Blogorado attendees will likely vouch my creations are at least better than PBR, so this may be worth a couple bucks to someone. Jeff is doing entry tickets at $10 per, so I’ll just keep on “borrowing” his plan. Every ten bucks you kick in, shoot an email to nerdsatomic at gmail dot com, and you get a shot at a case of homebrew. Most of what has been most popular from the nerd brewery has been in the darker range, but winner’s choice. Tell me what you like and I’ll try to build to your spec.

Now, on to the fuzzballs. Four weeks ago tomorrow, Kang went under for a planned c-section, and out popped 7 little bundles of fuzz. Six girls, Major, Minor, Poppet, Widget, Rarity, and Ninja, and one boy, Bosley. Ninja had a cleft palate and went about like Farmgirl’s cleft puppy. It was heartbreaking, but nature is a bitch. We lost Rarity a bit later for absolutely no apparent reason. The remaining five are, in the vet’s words, fat and sassy, although the pocket-pup from the previous post has a heart murmur that doesn’t seem to be clearing.

As with the litter Tank came from, they don’t care for heat much at all. Those thick coats of fuzz necessitate ice packs more or less constantly in the box for them to be happy. Or a high speed wind tunnel, whatever works.

Click to embiggenate the cuteness. The shutter froze the blades, but that fan is pumping some fairly non-trivial air over the little buggers.

They’ve been introduced to solid food…

…which could’ve gone better, but they were all game and eager to start figuring it out. They’ve definitely all got their personality files loading and processing. The whelping box they call home has a company logo of a newborn pup, eyes closed and smiling, printed on the back, which we may have to cover. The pups keep nosing it and will occasionally howl and cry at it when remains just a picture.

Kang is doing much better this litter. She’s getting a little tired of them at this point since their teeth are coming in, but she’s mother of the year compared to how she was with Tank. Kodos, as always, loves tiny things. He’ll come in and nose them or occasionally lick them and smile and wag like a big sappy lunk every chance he thinks he can get away with it. Tank is dealing well, and their presence seems to have triggered a fairly respectable streak of “I’m going to behave like a responsible adult” behavior out of him instead of his usual frat boy routine. Unfortunately for him, nobody trusts him any further than they can throw him just because he’s been in frat boy mode long enough that clumsiness is a concern, so everybody, including Kodos and Kang, watch him like a hawk every time he wanders within ten feet of the box.

Like what you see? Want beer? Want more puppy pictures? Kick a few bucks in to fight cancer and we’ll keep the ball rolling. As soon as we cross the $500 mark, I’ll even drag LabRat back to her keys and lock her there until she posts something, and repeat it every $500 after!

Say hello to Major. Wanted to get this picture before she didn’t fit, as happened last time with Tank. She was surprisingly chill about this and just kinda went with it until I decided the risk of a puppy peeing in my kilt was getting too high and pulled her out. You like? Consider donating to fight prostate cancer.

So obviously content has been pretty thin on the ground here this year. The year to date here at the Nerd Ranch has been interesting, and I mean that in the Chinese context. Given that, I’m a little conflicted about joining the reindeer games this year, hence the late start. On the one hand, I feel like holding the hat out and asking folks, most of whom have probably sensibly given up checking in for updates that just don’t come, to hand over hard earned money when we’re not exactly doing much to attract eyes to page isn’t quite cricket. On the other hand, prostate cancer and research for it is a pretty big issue for me. Given the post title, I suspect you can guess which way I came down on this.

As yet I don’t have any particular ideas for enticements to get you to click my donation link*. I’m open to suggestions in comments. Well, we have a few offhand, but nothing in the zany antics department.

Yup. Puppies. Hey, I slacked off all year, I kinda need to bring the big guns out early, right? Go donate, if you’re so inclined. I’d like to match what I raised last year. As for the puppies, check back Monday for the full spiel, and bring your insulin ’cause the cute factor will be high.

Updated with new donation links.

*I haven’t found the link to reset my donations to date to 0, so it’s starting where we left off last year. Kelly, or any other campaigners, if you know the trick, I’d appreciate a heads up. Also if for some reason that old link is going to somehow send money off into the ether instead of where it needs to go, somebody say something sooner rather than later.