Paint the Roof, Burn the Town, Shut It Down, Or Something

The Daily Beast, in time for New Years', has compiled a ranking of the 40 drunkest cities in America, compiling data based on average drinks per person per month, percentages of heavy or binge drinkers, and the prevalence of deaths from alcoholic liver disease. The winner: Milwaukee. No big shocker there.

By and large, the top 40 list (warning: slideshow) is predominantly northern cities...

1- Milwaukee, WI
2- Fargo, ND
3- San Francisco, CA
4- Austin, TX
5- Reno, NV
6- Burlington, VT
7- Omaha, NE
8- Boston, MA
9- Anchorage, AK
10- San Diego, CA
11- Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN
12- Denver, CO
13- Providence, RI
14- Sioux City, IA
15- Toledo, OH
16- Hartford, CT
17- Tampa, FL
18- Portland, ME
19- San Antonio, TX
20- Philadelphia, PA
21- Spokane, WA
22- Cleveland, OH
23- Sacramento, CA
24- St. Louis, MO
25- New Orleans, LA
26- Tuscon, AZ
27- Buffalo, NY
28- Tallahassee, FL
29- Chicago, IL
30- Seattle-Tacoma, WA
31- Springfield-Holyoke, MA
32- Portland, OR
33- Davenport, IA
34- Phoenix, AZ
35- Cincinnati, OH
36- Las Vegas, NV
37- Baltimore, MD
38- Cedar Rapids, IA
39- Casper, WY
40- Jacksonville, FL

Residents of the list should probably watch themselves. There's an old myth that drinking keeps you warm. All the drinking does is draw heat out from your core. It helps temporarily, but once that heat seeps away, you're just going to freeze that much faster.

The Mythbusters proved this and everything.



In addition, a note to city #1, Milwaukee: today the forecast calls for showers with a high of 48 (living 35 miles west of Milwaukee, I'm currently seeing fog out my window), but tonight it's supposed to drop to 26, with rain still coming down, and not get above freezing again for at least the next few days. So the roads aren't going to be the greatest. Add in a bunch of drunken New Years' revelers, on a Friday night yet, and if you don't get where I'm going with this, just ask Fargo, city #2, what happened last night in their neck of the woods.

Just Because Christmas Is Over Does Not Detract From Tastiness

The thing I was working on today is getting to run up the hours on me, so I need a quickie to keep you occupied in the meantime.

So... we Allermanns, having a Norwegian ancestry, make these every Christmas. Baking class!



I should say, though, this guy's not doing it quite like we do. The finished product shouldn't be quite that... burnt. It does take some doing to get the timing right on them. There's a very small window in which to get the krumkake right: too quick off the griddle and they retain too much pliability; too long on and they burn.

Also, two stylistic notes: you'll note a cone shape in his finished krumkake; ours take a tube form. And some people like to fill the krumkake afterwards; we however do not.

Rapid-Fire Book Club, Christmas Edition

The books under the tree this year, of course:

Bathroom Readers' Institute- Uncle John's Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader
Bathroom Readers' Institute- Uncle John's Bathroom Reader: History's Lists
Holkins, Jerry; Krahulik, Mike- Penny Arcade: Epic Legends of the Magic Sword Kings
Holkins, Jerry; Krahulik, Mike- Penny Arcade: The Halls Below

There was also a National Geographic magazine subscription. Magazines don't generally count as Rapid Fire Book Club inclusions, nor for any other book club, but I felt it should be noted.

I'll Be Far From Home For Christmas

We really do need one post about how Christmas works outside the United States. It's always a bit fun for me to get away from the same 15 ancient Christmas songs and the same TV specials and the soul-grinding retail crush and everything that generally makes the entire month of December this numbing sense of happy-sappy sameness. And one of the best ways to do that is to take a gander at how someone else does it.

So... a glimpse into a couple of overseas Christmas traditions. We'll start with Australia...



Nigerians tend to vacate the major cities in favor of the smaller villages many city residents came from. Santa is actually not a popular figure there; a quote from the linked article states one child as saying "His costume looks phoney and his face is strange... We prefer masquerades." What's a masquerade?

This isn't a Christmas one necessarily , but, this:



Next we have Thailand:



And finally from Italy... you know what, if I had to suffer through this song when they played it ad nauseum at work, so do you: