Sometimes humans have an unhealthy infatuation with things that are simply not normal. This has been going on since we realized that people with odd deformities are not the result of demons residing in their bodies. Nope, these people were just freaks.
This is my review of Green Flash Le Freak Belgian Style IPA
This was the first beer I picked up following my annual medieval self-punishment. It’s fairly inexpensive, available in my area, and a hoppy Saison sounds compelling in a, “that simply isn’t natural” sort of way. Why did I get it?
As I said, freaks have been a draw for a long time. The earliest of nature’s curiosities are believed to gain popularity during the 1600s. Later on, travelling shows featuring such people began. One example were the conjoined twins Lazarus Colleredo and John Baptista, who travelled Europe with, “female about four feet high in every part like a woman excepting her head which nearly resembles the ape.” 
One person many associate with freak shows is PT Barnum. Who is credited with the infamous quote, “There is a sucker is born every minute.”
Turns out this is misattributed to him. Barnum however, was the type of person that would embellish the truth and even engage in activities of questionable ethics in order to turn a profit:
The nature of this exhibition showcases Barnum’s willingness to skirt controversy and behave in potentially unethical or immoral ways. What he purchased was a nearly paralyzed woman named Joice Heth. This woman, who was nearly 80 years old, was displayed as a 161-year-old ex-nurse of George Washington.
Barnum was well aware that buying slavers was illegal in New York at the time. However, he used a slavery loophole that allowed him to lease her for a year. During this time, he would display this frail woman for up to 12 hours a day. As a result, Heth passed away a year later and left Barnum with no source of income. Thinking on his feet, he scheduled a live autopsy of her body and charged 50 cents (a hefty sum at the time) for people to watch.
He was even credited with creating hoaxes.
The Cardiff Giant – This infamous case was a hoax based on a hoax. In 1869, a large statue was dug up in New York, which the discoverer claimed to be the body of a 10-foot ancient man. It was claimed that this was one of the giants mentioned in the Bible. The creator of this hoax charged people 25 cents to view it, and people showed up in droves. After it was sold for $23,000 to another showman, Barnum built a giant and claimed that his giant was the real one. When the owner of the original statue tried to sue Barnum, the case was thrown out of court. This event was the origination of the “There’s a sucker born every minute” line, a quip that was spoken by the plaintiff in this case, not by Barnum.
More info on PT Barnum and his antics during the age of toxic capitalism gone wild, can be found here.
Is this beer worthy of it’s moniker? It has good body like nearly every Saison out there with a strong citrus flavor. It uses copious amounts of Amarillo hops which aren’t as bitter, which seem to compliment rather than balance. It’s definitely different, but freak might be going too far. Green Flash Le freak Belgian IPA: 3.5/5
Comments
128 responses to “The Holy Thursday Special!”
I have been getting a kick out of some of the excellent archives/reference pics from Old Pics Archive in twitter – they’ve had some similar themed sequences lately: http://kengarex.com/the-dark-side-of-the-circus-35-photos-of-freak-show-performers/
Know some folks aren’t into tats, but I’d be really interested to see what this gal looked like in color – the “stained glass windows” designs look like they would have been pretty unique: http://kengarex.com/the-dark-side-of-the-circus-35-photos-of-freak-show-performers/29/
I’m heading to the Freak show in about 90 minutes, Got my Irony Beer (Busch) got my Vienna Sausage and Bananas, and Blackie, My Ferrington Acoustic,
SLLLLAAAAABBBBB People
So this was an appropriate subject?
Excellent.
Freaks are freaks, this is known
Nice job as always MS
Vienna Sausage and Bananas?
This is the strangest hobo orgy I’ve ever heard of.
Canned Black olives, Chips, Oranges, Pepperoni and Cheddar cheese cubes,Ginger Ale,
Dove Dark Chocolate and Bluberries
I seriously just got heartburn before I even finished the sentence. You must have a GI of cast iron.
You preggy, Yusef?
Caption: Double IPA
Once again, I have failed us all.
I was never good ay alt-text. I am highly dependent upon the Glib editing staff for quality alt-text.
Caption: C’est chic.
Another good Barnum-ism, tricking the crowds to leave early with “This way to the great Egress!” signs.
Your pic of the conjined twins is of the original Siamese twins, Chang and Eng.
Interesting dudes.
Given that they’re angled towards each other, you couldn’t fit both wives in there at the same time. Yeah, you’re tied to your brother 24/7 but all sex is a three way and your junk will never have to touch.
Speaking of freaks, if I walk around Seattle for half an hour, I see every sort of freak that used to cost me a quarter to gawk at in the sideshow tent of the county fairs of my youth. All that’s missing is the two-headed lamb in the jar of formaldahyde.
Well, formaldehyde.
Close enough. It’s no worse than beer. 😉
Beer brewed with formaldehyde is the secret to my youthful good looks.
Ouch.
Ok guys. I need a Glibstarter.
I need to raise capital to open a club like this, but with women.
Top tier backing is limited to 5, who get lifetime memberships.
Count me out.
So much for tolerant libertarianism!
They already have Maid Cafes.
“They”…I’m talking about “We”.
I have $1
You’re a Rich Man Messy Sharpie
I’ll chip in for the octopus tank.
What is the bitcoin adress?
Why. Just why so you post these things.
I…I can only assume it is some sort of winnowing out process.
I’m in. I have no idea what’s going on in that video but I assume it’s freaky. There’s riches in niches.
I’m heading to the Freak show in about 90 minutes
Have fun.
*To Whom It May Concern:
If you think I’m being a sarcastic dick, that says more about you than it does about me.
Well I’m going to have fun, I choose to, I know it’s not for everyone, neither is Libertarianism,
Cheers 🙂
My Buddy actually attempted to argue Chem trails with one of the Locals, I just smiled, and turned away,
is the argument aliens versus Illuminati?
Nice. Cheers.
My Buddy actually attempted to argue Chem trails with one of the Locals, I just smiled, and turned away,
As someone who operates at a near-pathological level of introversion in real life, that probably wouldn’t pan out, for me.
I’m quite the Misanthrope, I choose not to debate Strangers or Zombies,
Out!
Sage travels Yusef. Don’t drop the blue acid.
Yusef only travels in the sagest way.
Cruel timing as Green Flash was just sold in bankruptcy earlier this week.
they should have marketed to kids more
The kids would need to have enough money to pay for the beer. In related news, this was the first time a self checkout in Ohio didn’t signal for an employee when I purchased beer.
I get carded shopping, but I don’t think I’ve been carded more than once or twice dining out in Charlottesville. Not sure if they’re just lazy or I look that old.
Usually, the self checkouts flag age-restricted items, and require a store employee to come over and look at the person making the purchase. Today it didn’t even do that. It was kind of nice. Only place I was carded recently was Memphis, which a local told me was due to a law that they had to card everyone.
Is that why its suddenly affordable?
Well, just a couple of weeks ago, they announced they were pulling back distribution to just 12 states. So that may have something to do with it too. From what I’ve heard, the new owners will just stick with those 12 states as they attempt to rebuild the brand.
Are the Belgians known for overhopping their beers for the long voyage to India? I didn’t even know they made a pale ale.
Also, GLORY GLORY MAN UNITED!
I had a dream about Pie last night. This is not comforting.
Romanian wine before bed again?
For him or you?
¿Por qué no lo dos?
I had a dream about Pie last night. This is not comforting.
Nothing wrong with that
Pie!
OT. This is good and timely. It also shows the more things change the more they stay the same.
You know who else liked G.K. Chesterton?
And yes, this has all happened before and it will happen again.
I was expecting a link to Battlestar Galactica.
“All police are racist murderers so only they should own guns. Trump is Hitler so we should give him power to define and ban “offensive” speech. America savagely abuses immigrants from Latin America and the Middle East so we need to bring in as many as possible.”
And America is now 1933 Germany so we want the government to take away all our guns.
Beer.
https://cdn.acidcow.com/pics/20110826/babes_and_beer_32.jpg
Drink up.
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/f5/d6/f0/f5d6f05e28a77cfa78a4769971b83d05.jpg
PBR.
https://78.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m833dcdYIp1qm9g3do1_1280.jpg
Decisions.
http://www.beerhelps.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/beer-vs-girl-girl-bra-cleavage-beer-get-its-top-off-demotivational-poster.jpg
The shifter is well placed.
Ein pils bitte.
http://wallpapercraze.com/images/wallpapers/beergirl-542902.jpeg
Another double fisted fraulein.
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/a4/56/af/a456afe480599c86b08ff3b3e4a22509–twin-peaks-girls-denim-shorts.jpg
Looks like she’s drinking a Hefeweizen, so the wheat field background is appropriate.
Blonde girl. Oh yeah.
I’ve mentioned this before but I grew up with a high percentage of German ex-pats. Guttdamm those girls look familiar!
What I’m drinking- Ribe mead from Denmark
What I’m drinking-
black coffee because I’m still at work and have another 4 hours to go.
You work hard for the money.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bXjWRXDFV8
neither here nor there
***
For example, larger organisms find it easier to avoid or fight off predators and capture prey, to reproduce, to kill competitors, to survive temporary lean times, and to resist rapid climatic changes.[3] They may also potentially benefit from better thermal efficiency, increased intelligence, and a longer lifespan.[3]
Offsetting these advantages, larger organisms require more food and water, and shift from r to K-selection.
…
Cope’s rule states that lineages increase in size over evolutionary time. Cope’s rule, named after American paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope,[1][2] postulates that population lineages tend to increase in body size over evolutionary time.[3] It was never actually stated by Cope, although he favoured the occurrence of linear evolutionary trends.[4] It is sometimes also known as the Cope-Depéret rule,[5] because Charles Depéret explicitly advocated the idea.
***
This is part of the reason why marine mammals are bigger than land mammals. The main reason is a bigger mammal conserves heat better in water. The only small marine mammal, the sea otter, has very thick fur.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cope%27s_rule
Looking back at the history of mammals it seems that Cope’s rule doesnt hold up very well. Most of the critters around today are not even close to the biggest of their kind. Whales excepted.
I picked up a Cock And Bull Cherry Ginger Beer and will see how it mixes with black cherry juice and Bourbon.
Any of out computer people online? My main HDD has been acting up, so I’m cloning it onto a new drive. I’m just trying to figure out how to switch over to the new drive once I’m done. Will it be recognized as my C drive by Windows?
It should be recognized by Windows but there may be some BIOS settings to configure.
My bios has a nice GUI, it’s easy to change the boot drive from there. I’m just worried that windows might assign it a different drive letter, messing up everything. That, and what Windows will do when I plug the old drive back in to reformat it.
Although, I think I can reformat disks from my bios as well.
You may have to rebuild the boot partition, but if you’re cloning the drive, that should be taken care of for you. Just swap out the drives when you’re done, and it should boot up fine.
Yeah, the boot partition was cloned. Do you think I need to switch the ATA cable so it reads from the same port?
Considering the old drive has a fault, I’d pull it out for the time being regardless. After the new drive is working, I’d think about dropping the old drive in as a backup drive. It would also help confirm that the drive was the problem. As for the (assuming) SATA cable, you should be good leaving it alone, computers have moved on since the old master/slave days.
New cloned disk in and went down without a hitch. Thanks guys.
Bad news, Shirley.
By the tens of thousands each year, Illinoisans are fleeing this state’s rising taxes and mediocre jobs climate. Many no longer see Illinois as their fount of opportunity, the place worth investing their lives. They know the math of Illinois’ enormous public debts and the decadeslong soaking its taxpayers face. The next governor, whether incumbent Bruce Rauner or challenger J.B. Pritzker, will lead a shrinking constituency.
Why are people ditching Illinois? What might a governor, a legislature, do to keep them? How should voters who remain here factor this intensifying Illinois exodus into their votes on Nov. 6? We’ve been tracking down expatriates and reaching out to Illinoisans who face a wrenching choice: Do we stay or go? From now until the election, we’ll introduce you to some of these people. Today, from the expats, meet the Carpenters, the Heards and the Salvas.
———-
In 2016, the year they left for Texas, Illinois lost a net 37,508 residents, more than any state in the country. The Heards packed up their Dodge Durango with what was left of their belongings and made their way to Fairview, about 30 minutes north of Dallas in a state with no income tax.
James Heard wrote a letter to Gov. Bruce Rauner when they moved, explaining why they had to go. Their property taxes had risen from about $1,600 when they bought their five-bedroom Homer Glen home in 1996 to nearly $10,000 by the time they left. They sold their house for $325,000 and made a little money. But the value of the home did not keep pace with the property taxes owed.
Wreckers. Kulaks. Running dog lackeys of the capitalist crooks and thieves.
I moved from Chicago to TX in 2013. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the “drive friendly- the Texas way!” sign.
Then I began to slowly turn into Hank Hill. One time, I drank Lone Star beer in an alley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iQLNR9btr4
Ah, Wichita Falls. Good beer and BBQ.
Wichita Falls. Good beer and BBQ.
I spent nearly a year a Sheppard. You’re crazy. That towns only redeeming quality is the airport. So you can get the he’ll out of there.
You’re talking to a guy who took a road trip to Alliance, Nebraska and spent 3 years living in Chicago.
You’re taling to a guy that enjoyed living in Sumter, SC for 3 years but couldn’t stand Wichita Falls.
“Military intelligence” rears its ugly head again. :-p
(Point of disclosure: I’ve never actually been to Wichita Falls, Alliance, or Sumter.)
Zero City USA: oil, buzzards, twisters
FWIW: I finished the HH100.org five times in my forties.
other crazy but true story:
The NFL Carr family is from WF;
they left en masse for California in the 1970s (ergo Fresno State)
Wichita falls has another redeeming quality: It’s relief of a sort from Lawton Oklahoma.
All the storms in Oklahoma form over Whichita falls. Stormchasers always rive toward it, but never actually go there.
Breathtaking dishonesty, intertwined with naked self-interest. It’s what’s for dinner.
More than 20 percent of gun owners in the U.S. admit to using drugs while also suffering from a mental health disorder, according to a study.
According to a survey of 1,098 gun owners by rehab center The Florida House Experience, one in three people self-identify as having a mental health disorder, with anxiety, mood disorders and post-traumatic stress among some of the most common conditions.
——
“Less than 9 percent of Americans suggested mental health services might help lower the rates of gun violence, though one in five gun owners we polled experienced both illicit drug use and self-identified mental disorders. In many cases, these issues are co-occurring and proper diagnosis can help identify the appropriate treatment plans to help reduce their impact and help millions of Americans find mental and physical well-being.”
Obviously, we need to round up all the gun owners, disarm them, and force them into “assessment” by our staff of trained professionals.
And now they’re claiming vaping is an epidemic among teens, too.
I’ve yet to see a kid vaping. They must be doing it behind the gym or in the basement like us normals used to do. Maybe check the smoke pit, there’s usually a stoner or two hanging about.
Keep in mind that gun grabbers lie. Every fucking word out of their mouth is a calculated deception of one kind or another.
Utter horseshit.
One time, I drank Lone Star beer in an alley.
Not Shiner Bock? Disappointed.
I drank a lot of that too. But Lone Star has the fun picture riddles under the bottle cap.
Damn, I miss the days when I would stood in my front yard drinking a 40 oz in a paper bag. The good ol days.
Where did you buy it MS? My Total Wine only carries the 22 oz bottle for $8.
Kroger.
Thanks. I’ll check Ralph’s, the California branch of the chain.
Heineken of course. Yesterday I made buffalo chicken blue cheese meatballs. Too easy, just ground chicken and blue cheese crumbles rolled up into meatballs. Marinara sauce and Louisiana hot sauce. There’s still quite a few left, so that’s what we’re having for dinner again this afternoon.
The left is doing a full court press against Pruitt in an attempt to get Trump to dump. Story started with him supposedly retaliating against a member of his security detail (which he has because crazy leftwing fucks keep throwing threats at him) demoted for refusing to turn on sirens to beat traffic. And now it’s about the cost of his security detail.
Trump is very good at not apologizing for himself, but has shown himself quick to turn on his own people once the media turns their ire on them. And it’s really what allowed this whole Russia farce to take hold. He allowed them to get a scalp with Flynn on the flimsiest – frankly, completely retarded – pretexts.
Just reminds me of how lawless and angry the left always are. You ever see a lefty who doesn’t seem angry all of the time? They just arrested former president Lula in Brazil. He was convicted on corruption charges and was told to turn himself in. So what did he do? Holed up in his former shit hole town north of Curitiba and said ‘No, I’m not turning myself in’, and surrounded himself with a few thousand of his commie sheep supporters. I guess they told him, either you surrender yourself or we come in and arrest you and everyone with you. I applaud the real effort of a few good people down there to try to clean up the last 12 years of the labor parties corruption. The road to Venezuela is really not that long.
Contrast this with the recently sentenced Park Geun-hye, who isn’t getting any sympathy because her party isn’t of the left.
amusing
EPA says ‘unprecedented’ number of death threats against Pruitt
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/04/07/epa-says-unprecedented-number-death-threats-against-pruitt.html
It’s only fair, he’s causing unprecedented amounts of Gaia-genocide.
Someone should find out and document all the frivolous bullshit Gina McCarthy and other predecessors spent, including how much Gina spent on her pre-nomination media campaign.
My wife is in full TDS, so I get a daily run-down of what the WaPo and Reddit has to say about the Trump administration. If what they’re saying about Pruitt is true, it’s the kind of stuff that should get someone kicked out of government. Corruption, cronyism, and stupidity to boot. Plenty of people have skated for worse in previous administrations, but that doesn’t mean it should be the new standard. It’s really disappointing, because I was very hopeful that Pruitt would get into the EPA and start cleaning house.
I’ll take the cronyism (that involves staying in a low-rent house) and dickish behavior attributed to Pruitt if it means less government, personally.
And there wouldn’t be any security detail at all if not for the steady stream of death threats directed against the guy. I’m fine removing it, and if he dies he dies. But I’m sure as shit not going to go down the rabbit hole of letting the left play their doublestandard game like a useful idiot.
This morning, Akira said that the Hillary campaign’s goal for suicides was zero. As in, “zero suicides.” Well, I don’t know if they achieved that goal, but I do know that her election may have been the end for me. For that, I say, thank you, Hillary for American campaign. Your ineptitude saved my life.
Can anybody recommend a good hard cider. I’m familiar with the basics reds and angry orchard.
Also woodchuck but I haven’t been able to find hat since I moved.
I hear Strongbow is popular. Never had.
Also if you’re down for some self loathing, get a 12-pack of Stella Artois Cidre.
If it tastes anything like regular Stella I will need to something else to start the night.
itsatrap.gif
https://www.crispincider.com/thesaint
I will have to see if I can find it.
Also thank you
Unfortunately not in my area. I live in Virginia.
WV offers various ciders.
Hawk Knob is good. There are others.
Crispin’s good stuff.
My favorite domestic is Virtue, out of Michigan. Quite dry.
If that’s your style, also check out whatever ciders you can find from Brittany, Normandy, and the Basque regions of Spain.
If you can find a distributor that carries it, Argus is my favorite.
Crispin will be easier to find, and is also good.
Wild Blue blueberry lager – not sure who the actual brewery is. The sweetest fruit beer I’ve tried – great flavor – and also the highest ABV – 8%. Interesting.