Mmmm-mmm! That sure is a fine-looking big black bag
A Bahraini man has filed a complaint against a Saudi who assaulted him and used abusive language at Seef Mall. The accused started beating the Bahraini after he claimed the man had stared at his wife who for the record was completely covered. The accused apologised during interrogation claiming that
he had got jealous after he thought he saw the man stare at his wife.
The Bahraini dropped the case against him.
July 19, 2007 — 1:33 pm
Comments: 34
Happy anniversary!
Thirty eight years since Ted Kennedy’s Midnight Car Wash. Howie Carr is all over it.
July 18, 2007 — 5:42 pm
Comments: 28
M.K. Brown; like the forties, but all trippy and melty
This is Mary K. Brown, my favorite cartoonist. Actually, I think most people refer to her as a surrealist rather than a cartoonist. I believe a more accurate diagnosis might be “elevator does not go to top floor.”
She did a number of cartoons for National Lampoon (during the funny years), including features like Inroads into Science and Mercury, Messenger of God. Eventually, she got a regular small strip in the cartoon section, Aunt Mary’s Kitchen. I managed to pick up more of her stuff in comic anthologies. I found Self Portrait in one of these.
She did some kids’ books (which really do not properly mine her rich vein of lunacy) and, I believe, some fine art (which I can’t seem to find online any more) but, really, has had a surprisingly small lifetime output. Also, she was born in Connecticut (eventually) and she answered my fan letter (briefly and politely). That’s all I know about her.
I don’t think I can explain what it is about her drawings (and writings) that hits me just right. Somehow she manages to capture a whole scary but somehow oddly familiar world of melted snapshots and corner-of-the-eye hallucinations. Poke around her site and see if you can see it. She had a definite influence on my work as a young artist, which was tragically unfortunate, since I was a technical illustrator.
Why now? I was squinting at giant chalk Homer, trying to work out if the feeling was amusement or embarrassment, and it made me think of Dr. N!Godatu. This was a short cartoon M.K. Brown produced that ran between segments of the Tracy Ullman show in the ’80s. It alternated with a cartoon called the Simpsons.
The Simpsons swiftly elbowed Dr. N!Godatu out of the nest. Can you imagine how hard that must suck? It’s like being the girl standing next to the girl discovered by the bigtime Hollywood movie producer. It’s like picking the winning lottery number the week before it’s the winning lottery number. Honest to god, I think I’d go step in front of a bus.
— 12:54 pm
Comments: 5
It isn’t what you know, it’s who you know
It’s all about the connections, baby.
July 17, 2007 — 4:21 am
Comments: 17
Get it offa me! Get it offa me!
Yipe! I’ve been tagged with a meme. I’ve been dreading this moment. At least this one doesn’t ask any questions about CD’s I’ve bought or books I’m reading. That would be embarrassing. This one is eight habits or facts about my favorite topic: me.
1. Fact: I can wiggle my ears. In fact, I can wiggle each ear individually. In fact, my head muscles are preternaturally mobile, like a tabby. If I spot someone I don’t like, my whole scalp dances involuntarily.
2. Habit: I have a song I sing to my lima beans. The lyrics go, “lima beans, lima beans, limabeanslimabeanslima beeeeeeeeeeeans.” This is so onerous, I usually end up having peas instead, even though I really like lima beans. I don’t have a pea song, thank goodness.
3. Fact: I have ugly, gnarly feet. My mother used to say, “never mind, honey. Peacocks have ugly feet, too.” Yeah, but peacocks have a glorious fan of blue iridescent feathers sticking out of their butts. What do I have?
4. Habit: just inside the door, there’s a bowl that I empty my pockets into the moment I walk into the house. Keys, glasses, watch, small change, post-it notes. Sometimes I poke through the old notes. They are like messages from another planet. I seldom have any idea what they mean or who those people are I was supposed to call. And yet…they all sound so urgent and important.
5. Fact: I used to have double-jointed thumbs. I could grab either thumb and push it all the way forward until it touched my inner forearm, or all the way backward until it touched my outer forearm. I just tried to do it for the first time in years. I can’t. And it hurt like a bastard. Also, I read the article at the link and it scared me.
6. Habit: On weekends, I put chocolate, cinnamon and flaked chili into my coffee (fact: it makes me poop like a goose).
7. Fact: I have one of those preposterous 10-syllable cornpone Southern names. Thanks, Mother. She said she thought I might want to take up acting someday. In Foghorn Leghorn cartoons, apparently.
8. Habit: when I get down on all fours to play with Damien, he periodically turns around and waggles his ass-end at me. I finally figured out he was feigning a scent-mark. I thought maybe a puff of air on his nethers would startle him out of the impertinent habit, but after the first couple of times, he actually developed a taste for it. Now he waggles his ass and backs toward the stream of air. I can’t help myself. It’s howlingly funny.
Yes. That’s right. I go home at night, get down on all fours, pucker up and blow on my cat’s rectum. And it’s really nobody’s business.
Errr…thanks Geoff. Hm. I’m going to tag-back BONGO MIRROR and whitishrabbit out of pure vindictiveness.
July 16, 2007 — 11:29 am
Comments: 25
Let’s talk whiskey!
I love whiskey, which makes me feel pretty stupid. All that money and snootiness and bullshit and, really, whiskey is only old stank barrel-flavored vodka. Word.
There are four factors that affect the old stank barrel flavor of whiskey:
What the alcohol is made from
How thoroughly the alcohol is distilled
The container it is aged in
How long it is aged
I suppose you could add “what sort of water it is diluted with afterwards,” but the sort of airy-fairy people who style themselves connoiseurs of the taste of water, for chrissakes, really get on my nerves. So…no. Shan’t.
What the alcohol is made from
Yeasts eat sugar and pee ethanol. Deal with it. So, you can feed yeasts on sugar or molasses (rum), or fruit (wine, brandy) or honey (mead).
Starch can be converted to sugar by enzymes released when grains are sprouted. A malt is a grain that has been sprouted to release enzymes and then heated to arrest further growth. (This is where peat comes in; the malt for some Scotch whiskies is heated over peat fires).
So that adds corn (bourbon, Tennessee whiskey, moonshine), rye (rye whiskey, rye beer), barley (beer, Scotch whiskey), rice (sake)…wheat, sorghum, millet, potatoes. Koolaid. Table sugar. Doritos. Whatever. Any old carb. Most alcoholic beverages are made from more than one of these things, mashed together into a mash.
How thoroughly the alcohol is distilled
If I were to seal you in a box, you’d soon breathe up all the air, replace it with carbon dioxide, and die in a puddle of your own filth, gasping for release. Well, that’s what happens to yeast when it reaches a certain concentration; it eats all its food and drowns in its own pee. That’s why unfortified wine has a maximum alcohol content of around 14%. In technical terms, 14% is the yeast-to-pee death ratio.
To get alcohol purer than that, you need to distill it. Turns out, that’s really very easy (and fairly illegal. Just saying). See, water boils at 212° F and alcohol boils at around 170° F. So, you heat the mash in some kind of alchemical doohickey just until the alcohol turns into vapor but the water doesn’t, then collect, cool and thereby condense the vapor until it turns back into a liquid. Voilà! The miracle of booze!
Commercially distilled ethyl alcohol is getting on for chemically pure. I know you think you can taste the difference between cheap vodka and the expensive stuff, but you can’t. And, frankly, I’m getting pretty tired of telling you so.
For the purposes of whiskey, however, too much distillation would make all that pretentious peaty, single-malty shit look pretty silly. So spirits for whiskey are distilled until they are about 95% pure.
The container it is aged in
Oak barrels, generally. Bourbon, to call itself bourbon, must be aged in new, charred white oak barrels (so does Tennessee whiskey, but its unique attribute is an initial slow filtering through a big stack of charcoal). Scotch whisky (and rum) are often aged in old bourbon barrels. Scotch is also sometimes aged in old port wine or sherry casks. One year, Sandy Claws brung me a sampler of little Glenmorangies aged in different sorts of casks; you really can taste the difference. It was de-lightful and in-toxicating.
How long it is aged
Rum can be aged for as little as a year, though it is usually longer. Whiskies can be aged for as little as three years, but again…usually more. Higher heat and humidity make spirits ‘age’ faster. As whiskey ages, alcohol is constantly escaping from the barrels, enveloping the distillery in a sweet, boozy vapor traditionally known as the “angel’s share.” By the time the barrels are opened, the volume of liquid has been reduced by as much as half. Whiskey at “cask strength” is generally 50-60% alcohol and is then diluted for bottling to 40-46% alcohol, and sometimes (controversially) filtered as well.
So, that’s it. Whiskey is vodka that has been soaking up burnt wood for a decade. Doesn’t that sound lovely?
Here’s a nice glossary. And here’s a good whisky blog. Here’s another. And here’s information on the American Whiskey Trail, as fine a way to spend a Summer vacation as a weasel ever did hear.
— 6:01 am
Comments: 22
Friday the 13th! of July
July 13, 2007 — 11:09 pm
Comments: 13
Jack Daniel’s really needs a good stiff one (and probably a drink, too)
Okay, I was wrong. I told Enas Yorl that the difference between Jack Daniel’s green label and black label is age. It’s not. Green label is just the stuff the official Jack Daniel’s tasters consider not quite good enough for the Brand.
I was going to call “official taster” my dream job, but apparently I have a positive preference for inadequate whiskey. I love the green label. I suppose they could go with the “Weasel likes it, it’s crap!” gambit.
What is Jack Daniel’s Green Label Tennessee Whiskey?
Jack Daniel’s Green Label is a lighter, less mature whiskey with a lighter color and character. The barrels selected for Green Label tend to be on the lower floors and more toward the center of the warehouse where the whiskey matures more slowly.
Lighter. ‘Bout right. As in “lighter fluid.”
I’d give a link for that quotation, but I can’t. By law. I went poking around the Jack Daniel’s web site (which is right where you think it is) and I spotted this:
IF YOU HAVE, OR PLAN TO HAVE, A WEB SITE AND WISH TO LINK TO OUR WEB SITE, PLEASE ENTER INTO THIS LINKING AGREEMENT AND PROVIDE YOUR INFORMATION BELOW.
“Fascinating,” I thought. “Tell me more.”
Each site shall only market products to adults and shall have an independently audited demographic indicating at least 70% of its site visitors are of legal drinking age.
Uh oh. I don’t know how to “independently audit” you guys, but if 30% of you aren’t under the age of 21, then you’re clearly in the developmentally delayed demographic. Is it legal to market likker to retards?
No site will use religious or other cultural symbols in a way that is likely to offend a particular religious or ethnic group.
Oh.
No site will use sexual slang, situations or depictions, or exploit the human form in any manner that offends local standards of decency.
Ummmmm…
You agree not to use the link on any web site that disparages the Brand, the Site, or the Brand’s products or services, or which infringes on the Brand’s or Brown-Forman Corporation’s or its affiliates’ intellectual property or other rights.
Ah. Well, see…
You agree not to use the link on any web site that contains, or links to any other web sites that contain obscene, discriminatory, offensive, political or pornographic material of any kind.
Okay. Thanks.
There’s a lot more to it, which you can read for yourself by going to the obvious URL and adding /linkingpolicy.aspx (I couldn’t link to directly in any case because “You may link only to the opening page for each of the Brand’s Sites and you may not skip the web pages requiring the viewers of our Sites to verify their age.”).
Who knew distillers were such tight-asses?
I’ve cracked open my brand new 1.75 liter bottle, and it’s delish. Happy Friday the 13th! My uvula just went numb.
— 4:48 pm
Comments: 16
The Steamboat McGoo thread
The once was a steam-boatin’ man
Who sported a show-boatin’ tan.
The ladies said, “my!
He’s as brown and as spry
As that dream-boatin’ Ed McMahon!”
Steamboat McGoo is in the hospital being fitted with a shiny knew titanium knob. Here’s a helpful rhyming dictionary. Do it. Do it for McGoo.
July 12, 2007 — 6:32 pm
Comments: 27
What I Did on My Summer Vacation, by S. Weasel
I’m back. And I don’t have anything in particular to say for myself, so let’s get right to it.
The journey happened more or less as predicted, with the interesting bits under the heading “or less.” Like the prop plane that flew the last leg across Tennessee. We were directed out on the tarmac, where half a dozen small twin engine planes were buzzing lazily in the sun. Ours was gray and grubby, without livery. I’m sure it carried ordinance in Dubya Dubya Eye Eye.
We had to walk up to it and climb steps, just like the old days. Huh. I just thought. The last time I flew into Tri Cities airport it was in a plane exactly like this one. I had an explosive nosebleed, which I usually did at altitude. It produced gratifying response in stewardesses, as they were called in another era. I was going to see my grandmother. I was seven.
Anyhow, after that — hey, did anybody spot the flaw in my master plan? We showed up boozeless and planned to buy liquor on the way up. On a Sunday. In rural Tennessee. The horrible realization that this was EXTREMELY unlikely didn’t dissuade us from driving to several liquor stores in panic and leaving greasy noseprints on the front door. The rest of the party weren’t expected up until the next morning, so there was nothing for it but…beer. You can buy beer in the grocery stores any time.
Now, I like the occasional beer, but as an inebriation vehicle, it sucks. The ratio of booze molecules to pee molecules is severely whack. I bought two six packs and only managed to down four beers. I was horribly sober after, but Jesus — that’s more liquid than it generally takes to bathe my person. I fell asleep at last and all night long I dreamed of urination. Everywhere I went in the dreamscape, I had a delightful, satisfying whizz. I didn’t pee the bed, but I gave the idea serious consideration.
So anyway, there wasn’t really time to go stand on my own grave. My cousin was like, “do you want to drive over and…you know. The usual?” And I’m like, “nah. We can just wave as we go by.”
The rest was fine. I guess. The liquor stores opened next morning and I don’t remember much after that.
— 5:56 pm
Comments: 10