1/2 tumbler red wine
ScotchI have it on the authority of Colm Brogan that the Great Queen was “violently opposed to teetotalism, consenting to have one cleric promoted to a deanery only if he promised to stop advocating the pernicious heresy,” and that the above was her dinner-table drink, “a concoction that startled Gladstone” — as I can well believe.
The original recipe calls for claret, but anything better than the merely tolerable will be wasted. The quantity of Scotch is up to you, but I recommend stopping a good deal short of the top of the tumbler. Worth trying once.
Scholars will visualize, pouring in the whisky, the hand of John Brown, the Queen’s Highland servant, confidant and possibly more besides; and I for one, if I listen carefully can hear him muttering, “Och, Your Majesty, dinna mak’ yoursel’ unweel wi’ a’ yon parleyvoo moothwash — ha’e a wee dram o’ guid malt forbye.” Or words to that effect.
Kingsley Amis, Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis, 2008.
August 20, 2013
QotD: Queen Victoria’s Tipple
August 17, 2013
Molly Crabapple in conversation with Warren Ellis
Any interview introduced with the line “Somewhere, on an NSA server in Utah, there sits an email from Warren Ellis threatening to strangle me to death with my own intestines” has to be worth reading:
You’re semi-crack-addicted to information. Whenever we talk, you have a podcast, the Economist, some ambient drone music, and a reader full of links open. Dead Pig Collector was inspired by an article you read on Chinese garbage disposal. Tell me about your information consumption.
This is going to be just another way for you to insist I listen to the sounds of insects having sex and calling it music while you pollute your apartment with the strains of some idiot with a ukulele wailing about consumption and sodomy.
We call that culture. As an Englishman, you wouldn’t understand.
What would you know about culture? You come from the town that gave the world the cronut.
Cronuts are tasty. As an Englishman, you wouldn’t know what that word means.
We have a joke in this country about American food. It goes like this: “American food.”
I’m sure my information diet isn’t that special. I check the overnight email and RSS feeds in bed, read the Guardian, BBC news, and the Foreign Policy dailies, and scan Twitter over coffee and juice while listening to a couple of podcasts (I subscribe to around fifty podcasts). I have digital subscriptions to the TLS, the LRB, The Economist, National Geographic, and The Wire magazine. I try to read a Kindle Single a week, but I’m getting bad at that. I usually have a few books on the go. I watch Instagram a lot — that service was on the verge of doing some really interesting stuff, and I have a feeling it might die of Facebook disease. You know people are not only running things close to “secret brands” on there, but also selling drugs? I get maybe a dozen email newsletters, maybe less. I live on my phone: I have a bunch of news and informational apps on there.
[…]
What’s the relationship between one’s ethics and their art?
I like to say “none” because you have to be able to wear other people’s ethics in order to write personalities other than your own. But the truth, I suspect, is that your own ethics dictate how that should be done, and for which purpose. It’s probably as indelible as a fingerprint. That actually kind of bothers me. If you can’t subsume yourself into an alien ethos, then you’re being caught writing, as it were, in the same way that actors fear being caught acting. I think it’s probably quite different to painting, in terms of expression of ethics in an artform.
Also, I only threatened to strangle you that one time.
Per hour. As a writer of graphic novels, you’re known for Transmetropolitan, which follows Spider Jerusalem, a gonzo journalist living in the twisted future. At a time when journalism is radically mutating, where do you see as medium going?
Oh, ask the small ones, why don’t you …
I remember Nick Davies saying, after his phone-hacking exposes, that even other investigative journalists at his own newspaper — the independent British newspaper the Guardian — were fighting him on the investigation. Not because they or the Guardian were culpable in any way, but because they were afraid of the boat being rocked. The field’s in a pretty dismal place.
People talk about journalism having been fatally disrupted by the Internet, but, honestly, it was coughing blood long before then. The only potentially good thing about the disruption of journalism is that it’s an ongoing process, and the people who’ve made bank on that disruption today will themselves be disrupted into the ground some time tomorrow.
August 11, 2013
NSA wiretapping PSA
Trevor Moore (Whitest Kids U’ Know) tells us what we can do about the NSA wiretapping our phones.
August 5, 2013
Political symbology
L. Neil Smith in the latest Libertarian Enterprise:
Author Robert A. Heinlein once observed: “The American eagle eats carrion, never picks on anything its own size, and will soon be extinct.”
Benjamin Franklin wanted our national symbol to be the turkey. He regarded it as a noble creature and didn’t mean it as a joke. It was one of the few times the good Doctor Franklin was wrong. I knew a farm family once, who tried raising turkeys. If it rained they had to get them under cover, fast. Otherwise, they’d look up, gaping, to see where all that water falling on their heads was coming from, and drown.
By the thousands.
On second thought, maybe Ben was onto something, symbolically. That turkey behavior sounds very much like the American electorate today.
The libertarian movement seems to have chosen the porcupine as a symbol. It never starts a fight but always finishes it. Problem is, the porcupine has a brain about the size of a pinto bean, and can be accurately compared to a slow-moving pointy rock. At that, I suppose it’s a lot better than the Hollow French Woman in New York Harbor that the porcupine-bright National Libertarian Party has adopted as its logo.
Personally, I’ve always rather liked the skunk as a national or party symbol. They have a negative reputation they don’t deserve at all. Skunks are highly resourceful organisms, and very, very smart. And they carry the ultimate means of self-defense, something that even wolves and mountain lions respect and give the widest possible berth to. My favorite mental picture is the little guy standing on his front paws, his back legs and tail high in the air, letting the enemy have it.
August 2, 2013
How soon we forget…
Mancow Muller shows us how quickly we forget the classics:
867 people in England dressed as Superman to set a world record. The record…World's Largest Gathering of Sad.
— MancowMuller (@MancowMuller) August 2, 2013
July 29, 2013
It’s the same joke over and over again … but it’s funny because it’s true
H/T to Nick Gillespie for the link.
July 20, 2013
The Angry Nerd comes down on Comic Con weapon checks
July 18, 2013
QotD: It does, however, answer the question “can an orgy be tedious?”
We open to an orgy in a god’s sex cave.
No. Really.
Tannhauser, a bard in the Germanic middle ages, is the boy-toy of Venus, eternal goddess of hot sex that you thought would be totally worth all her baggage but in the long run isn’t. Remember the wisdom of the bros: even if he or she is literally an unearthly gorgeous sex god, somewhere there is someone who is sick of putting up with his or her bullshit.
Tannhauser and Venus are shacked up at Venus’ place, which with typical German lyricism is called “Venusburg.” Tannhauser and Venus are lounging in bed. They’re watching a dance/orgy/cage match among Naiads, Sirens, the Three Graces, fauns, satyrs, nymphs, Baccchantes, and cupids. No, really. I could quote the libretto I just linked, but even the description of this is abusively long. Wagner could have just said “enter the entire Monster Manual, which humps.”
That’s the ballet. There’s no dialogue, and it’s not Wagner’s best music, though it’s not terrible. It does, however, answer the question “can an orgy be tedious?”
Ken White, “Popehat Goes To The Opera: Tannhauser”, Popehat, 2013-07-17
July 13, 2013
TV station pranked
TV station KTVU actually reported that the flight crew on board crash-landed Asiana flight 214 were:
Deadspin has more, including the video clip:
Bay Area Fox affiliate KTVU purportedly learned the names of the flight crew of Asiana flight 214, which crashed last Saturday at San Francisco International Airport, killing two. These — “Sum Ting Wong,” “Wi Tu Lo,” “Ho Lee Fuk,” and “Bang Ding Ow” — are not their names. The newscaster’s credulous reading puts it over the top.
H/T to Doug Mataconis for the link.
Update: Dave Owens offered the following explanation on one of my mailing lists:
What’s even more awful is that an intern at the NTSB gave them the names.
I imagine he’s a former intern now.
NTSB has apologized.
Update, 15 July: Asiana Airlines has lawyered up over the incident.
Asiana is suing KTVU-TV to ‘strongly respond to its racially discriminatory report’, Asiana spokeswoman Lee Hyomin said.
She said the airline will likely file suit in U.S. courts. KTVU-TV did not immediately reply to emails sent by The Associated Press seeking comment.
The station was quick to correct the gaffe after an ad break following the humiliating broadcast, clarifying the names were clearly wrong and blaming the NTSB for the incorrect information.
Update, 29 July: Korean newscasters get a bit of revenge:
It looks like a Korean news agency is having some fun at KTVU’s expense. After the landing gear failure of the Southwest flight at LGA they showed this graphic with American pilot names “Captain Kent Parker Wright”, “Co-Captain Wyatt Wooden Workman”.
They even went as far as making up fake names for people to interview. Flight instructor “Heywood U. Flye-Moore” and skeptical passenger “Macy Lawyers”.
H/T to Tabatha Southey for the link.
July 12, 2013
QotD: Canada as mirror-America
Have you heard about this place called Canada? It’s like some weird parallel America where they never had a revolution. There’s some other differences too: It’s colder, for instance, and they call their Seattle “Vancouver.” Also, they keep their Louisiana in the north instead of the south, and every now and then it threatens to leave. Apparently, if you change just a few little variables like that, history comes out differently: You get socialized medicine, and a lot of signs and stuff are in French, and instead of Saturday Night Live there was a show called SCTV which was funnier but didn’t last as long.
Legend has it that if you journey to the far, far north, you can pass through a portal to this alternate America. Unless you live in Alaska, in which case I gather you have to drive west. (*)
(* Or maybe east. The legends are cloudy.)
Jesse Walker, “Canada Repeals Restriction on Online ‘Hate Speech'”, Hit and Run, 2013-07-11
July 10, 2013
“Neocon” as an all-purpose term of abuse
Only problem w/this fact check is that "neocon" now means "people I disagree with" so all usages tend to be correct. http://t.co/OPaESKx5S3
— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahNRO) July 10, 2013
Neocon stole my parking space at the supermarket yesterday.
— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahNRO) July 10, 2013
Neocons at the Chinese place put mushrooms in my Lo Mein when I specifically told them "no mushrooms."
— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahNRO) July 10, 2013
@JonahNRO Saw a neocon at Trader Vic's. His hair was perfect.
— Dave next door (@Nashcat66) July 10, 2013
July 4, 2013
In honour of our American cousins’ Fourth of July…
… here’s Tim Hicks singing “Stronger Beer”:
H/T to Dave Slater for the link.
July 2, 2013
Reason.tv – Up in My Grill: 4th of July Rap (featuring Remy)
Ain’t no party like a nanny state party.
Song written and performed by Remy. Video produced by Meredith Bragg. About 1:20 minutes.
June 29, 2013
Chris Kluwe on how to be a manly nerd
Former Vikings punter Chris Kluwe has a must-read piece in Esquire about how to be both nerdy and manly:
For example, every morning, I wake up from my nesting pile of bearskin pelts and immediately plunge into an ice-cold spring-water bath in order to facilitate maximal hair follicle growth on my face, chest, back, and pendulous member. After the brisk cleanse, I dry off by shaking my rippling muscles in a vigorous twitching pattern, much like that of a dire wolf shedding rain. I then run down a nearby small game animal, spit and roast it over a hand-built fire, and toss the bones to my pet crocodile, Frederick.
When it comes to playing video games, I’m just as manly. My Xbox 360 controller is hand-carved from a single block of mahogany, and it features an inbuilt testosterone sensor that lets me know if my massive thews involuntarily clench too hard in between rounds of Call of Duty and Battlefield 3. Obviously, the only reason I would start crushing exotic hardwood between my calloused hands is due to sheer excitement at my five-to-one kill/death ratio, and not at all because of an overwhelming abundance of pulsating sexuality coursing through my chiseled body, attracting all the poser girl gamers.
Sometimes, when one of the lesser females manages to somehow defeat me (obviously by cheating), I’ll let loose a primal bellow of animalistic rage in order to send her weak and delicate frame scurrying back into the bedroom where she belongs. Once she’s safely returned to her proper place, I make tender, ravishing love thrusts into her always-willing ladyparts, which I know she enjoys immensely. As a manly gamer, it is both my duty and my privilege to remind the fairer sex of the proper hierarchy in the electronic jungle, and I take my duties seriously. We manly gamers need to constantly reassert our alpha-ness upon the inferior girl gamer wannabees so they don’t get any stupid ideas that they’re as good as us.
June 24, 2013
Don’t judge a book – especially a science fiction book – by its cover
H/T to Lois McMaster Bujold, who sent this link to her mailing list.
