(Rare Sighting of) "1984: Blood of the VAN-quished"

Gives you chills, right?

Your Skin Regime MUST BE OVERTHROWN

Um, hello? Da-da's existing skin regime has repulsed face invaders
for well over 2000 years, bandages notwithstanding.

Da-da's pretty sure that corporations will eventually stop sending him product emails like this:

"Hope this message finds you well. As we gear up for fall and the weather transitions from hot & humid to crisp & cool, your male readers will need to transition their skin regimes as well – ensuring that they use the right products to keep their skin feeling and looking good."

Skin regimes? You mean like slathering your face with sloth grease and yak intestines every morning, noon and night? Da-da's already got that covered, Mbasa. C'mon, did Conan the Barbarian stop battling Bellil the Demon Ruler to exfoliate? (Conan meant that to be rhetorical; he's just that way.) When you're pulled half-asleep out of a parental foxhole every morning for years and years and forced to make chow and clean blast zones and clothe and feed zombies while under fire, then launch said 4 and 6YO zombie payloads on target on time every time, the last thing you're worrying about is overthrowing your goddamn skin regime. (Your skin has already worked all kinds of angles with the old regime, why rock the boat?)

Don't think Da-da merely mocks, here; he's actually quite serious about his personal grooming, as evidenced by his Googletrac Razor and the bandages and goggles he constantly wears. (Try shaving under bandages, Dracula. Now, THAT'S commitment.) However, if Corporate Skin Regime Scientists somehow develop an on-contact minty cream that increases memory and vigor and tolerance for people who ignore their children while staring at small screens all day, or a combo stun-tag-and-release neuro-tangler and grilling tool, wing 'em over to Da-da.

Btw... that "feeling and looking good" part? Please. Unless you're a celebrity or making six figures, wake up and smell the parental oxymoron. For most of us, this is Combat Parenting we're talking about. Note that, contrary to popular belief, Da-da does strive to be occasionally conscious (and failing that, at least vertical), if not overly driven by an unyielding and intractable sense of personal external hydration.

Like the Bat-ster, Da-da is a fanatic about personal external hydration.

Strange Things Taken at Face Value

Da-da's not sure why -- or IF -- having children causes a large percentage of people to become... well, NUMB to just about everything that happens in the world. Speaking as one who discovered latent superhero BARF-CATCHING and ERRANT CAPITALIZING talent quite by accident (can you plan for such a thing?), Da-da must say that nothing fazes him after six years of being A Man Called Dada. So, when Da-da recently cut into a red pepper while making... something, he can't remember... he uncovered: pepper testicles.

It could be a rare two-chambered red-pepper heart lying next to Da-da's santoku, he's not sure: Da-da's only performed about 100,000 pepper-ectomies. But he can safely say that he's never seen such a pair on a vegetable this side of a Monsanto frankenfield. He did find quite a large... uh, protuberance... on a strawberry the other day, but Da-da doesn't think the two are related. The Monsanto Range Safety Recombination Facility, where Da-da gets his vegetables and fruit, was flabbergasted. "This is the first genetic anomaly we've ever heard of!" a clerk ululated, scratching his three small heads.

Oddly enough, Da-da has an applicable tangent to accompany the rampant Peter Piperage. If he may...

This same meal spawned a new drink -- which Da-da badly needed on a Friday after a rafter of Child Meal Insertion Debacles (CMIDs). He'd been working on a cobalt-free, "Dirty Gibson," for some time (with Hendrick's Gin, which has a certain taste that works with onions and veggies), when he added a robust jigger or three of Mr.and Mrs. T's Bold and Spicy Bloody Mary Mix, creating what he calls either, "That Time of the Month," or "Blood of the Vanquished." After Da-da's week, both were apt.

Sorry, no cutesy "Twilight" names come to mind. Anyway, here's the recipe. Into a chilled pint glass, add:

- 2 oz. Hendrick's Gin
- Capful of Dry Vermouth
- Sizeable PLOMP of Mr.and Mrs. T's Bold and Spicy Bloody Mary Mix, which is fabulous
- A Dick Cheney splash of cocktail onion juice
- Squeeze of half-a lime
- 4-200 cocktail onions (Da-da LIKES cocktail onions).

Add half a glass of ice to chilled pint glass. Drop vermouth and gin and lime and onion juice over ice. Top with bloody mary mix and taste. Cowboy up and sip some booze off the top if you need more bloody mary mix.  Drop the onions into a large, pre-chilled martini glass and whomp in the mixture. Don't be gentle. Yield: about two martini-glasses' worth. Garnish with the largest Monsanto red pepper testicles you can find and DRINK, DRINK LIKE THE WIND. Do this and you may actually survive a night of feeding two fickle 40-pound anthropomorphic pirahna. Oh, c'mon, where else can you get a drink recipe AND a genetic aberration?