harikari.com

A few weeks ago, Rose — who is 91 — went with her daughter Elizabeth, 52, to enjoy a Christmas Eve cocktail at Von’s Grand City Cafe, a martini bar on Pine Street in downtown Seattle’s shopping district.

Rose didn’t bring along her purse. She’s been forgetful of late, leaving things behind. Her daughter was buying anyway, so why bother?

Big mistake. The waitress carded Rose. When Rose couldn’t produce proof of her age, she was told she couldn’t order a drink and would have to leave the bar.

“I was kind of in shock,” Rose says. “I didn’t know I looked so young!”

…

“In the good old days,” Rose says, “I don’t remember things being so fussy.”

This story reminds me of an incident at a Belltown bar a few weeks ago when a bouncer would not let a fifty-year-old friend of ours into the bar because he did not have his ID. Granted, it’s kind of dumb to go out without your ID, but it’s also pretty ridiculous to deny someone entry into a bar that is obviously at least twice the legal drinking age.

The bouncer did let our friend in the bar after about twenty minutes. We asked him why, and he told us that he determined our friend wasn’t a cop. He said the undercover cops that try and get in without ID so they can bust bouncers don’t stand around waiting for their friends, they move on to the next bar.

This is what we Seattleites get thanks to a recent police crackdown on underage drinking. I don’t have any problem with police issuing citations to bars that aren’t careful about checking ID’s and end up serving minors. It’s the law, and drinking establishments should comply with it.

I do have a problem with the police bothering bars for serving people that are, without a doubt, well over the legal drinking age. For one, I’m not even sure that drinking without an ID is against the law; and two, sending undercover cops out to see if bars will serve people who are obviously over age 21 that don’t happen to be carrying ID smells like entrapment to me.

The bars don’t want any citations that will put them at risk of losing their licenses, so they end up doing stupid things like not serving a ninety-one-year-old lady a martini and then, as if that’s not bad enough, they make her leave the premises.

I thought it was bad enough around here that we can’t walk around Bumbershoot festival grounds with a beer in our hands, and that we can’t open a beer or a bottle of wine on a public beach. But now, old people get denied a drink and kicked out of bars.

Hey Seattle! Pull that stick out of your ass and loosen up a little.

Drink some today, if you can find some.

Oscar Wilde said:  “After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see them as they are not. Finally you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.”

Albert Maignan painted it.

Find out more in this New York Times article.

This site lists all that is currently available in the U.S. and has some photos of the liquor bottles.

Hey you Washington State residents – I checked the W.S.L.C.B. site for availability and it looks like the only one available is Absente. 

According to the Register, women around the world are mailing their panties to leaders in Myanmar to protest the militant crackdown on citizens…

Ladies’ smalls sap generals’ vital energy
– By Lester Haines
“The Burmese military is facing an unexpected threat from female opponents to its regime – a deluge of panties dispatched to the country’s embassies in a “in a culturally insulting gesture of protest” against its recent crackdown on protestors.”

You can join the movement here!

Edit –
“This, just in: Junta leader Gen Than Shwe has vowed to sniff out the perpetrators and bring them in for a thorough debriefing.”

I drink a lot of coffee, so when I come across an article about it I usually read it.  Last week the Los Angeles Times ran a story about Indonesian coffee made from beans extracted from civet dung.

I’d heard about this supposedly delicious $600/pound kopi luwak coffee before with a flavor that “has a top note of rich, dark chocolate, with secondary notes that are musty and earthy” and a scent that has “the smell of moist earth after a rainfall, with hints of vanilla, that teases the palate for hours after the cup is empty.”

If I ever have the opportunity to try this rare coffee, I will.

I am also fond of imported cheeses, so this section of the same article really caught my attention.

[Canadian food scientist Massimo] Marcone is one of the world’s leading experts on foods that make most people go yuck! He recently wrote a book on the subject. One thing that really gets his glands salivating is casu frazigu cheese, which is packed with so many live maggots that it’s not only disgusting, the Italian government outlawed it.

“The rotten cheese has millions of live maggots in it, and it’s very highly prized all through Italy,” Marcone said. “It sells under the counter for about $100 a pound. As you’re carrying your bag with the cheese in it, you can actually hear the maggots hitting the side of the bag.

“People eat the cheese and maggots altogether. There’s nothing in there that can cause harm.”

From there I went to Wikipedia where I found the cheese is also known as casu marzu.

Derived from Pecorino Sardo, casu marzu goes beyond typical fermentation to a stage most would consider decomposition, brought about by the digestive action of the larvae of the cheese fly Piophila casei. These larvae are deliberately introduced to the cheese, promoting an advanced level of fermentation and breaking down of the cheese’s fats. The texture of the cheese becomes very soft, with some liquid (called lagrima, from the Sardinian for “tears”) seeping out. The larvae themselves appear as translucent white worms, about 8 mm (1/3 inch) long. When disturbed, the larvae can jump for distances up to 15 cm (6 inches), prompting recommendations of eye protection for those eating the cheese. Some people clear the larvae from the cheese before consuming; others do not.

I’ll be in Italy next month but, when I visit the cheese shops, I think I’ll pass if I’m offered some casu marzu.

I came across this photo while looking for images to put on a cover for a 1957 compilation CD I’m making to celebrate the 50th wedding anniversary of the parents of a friend of mine.

What could be more American than the combination of a mushroom cloud with a pinup girl?

For more information about the woman in the photograph, the photographer, and when and where it was taken, go here.

And check out the CONELRAD page about this CD/DVD collection titled Atomic Platters – Cold War Music From The Golden Age Of Homeland Security

Born on this day in 1903.

Quotes:

On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.

War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.

All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.

So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot.

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.

Speaking of cuttlefish, there’s this other George…

“The march to war affected the people’s confidence. It’s hard to make investment. See, if you’re a small business owner or a large business owner and you’re thinking about investing, you’ve got to be optimistic when you invest. Except when you’re marching to war, it’s not a very optimistic thought, is it? In other words, it’s the opposite of optimistic when you’re thinking you’re going to war.”  – George W. Bush, February 2004

According to researchers at the University of Hong Kong, there is a species of barnacle (Rhizocephalan Sacculina) of which the female will invade the body of male and female crustaceans (crabs in particular) in order to distribute their nutrient absorbing, branching root structure, mature and protrude a reproductive organ, mate with a passing male barnacle, and lay their eggs inside the host.

What’s special about this parasite is that they will first make the crab infertile, make them lose interest in mating, and, most interestingly, change the physiology and psychology of the male crabs in order to make them better mothers to the parasite’s egg sacks.

“The life cycle begins with the female cyprid invading the crabs and then developing into a parasite with an internal root system (interna). Once the interna matures, it will develop a reproductive body outside the crabs through the abdominal part called the virgin externa. Male cyprids will then enter the virgin externa, which give rise to a fertilized externa with the eggs brooding inside it. Larvae will then be released via the externa once the eggs became mature.”

Once the eggs emerge from the crab’s abdomen, it will nurture them to maturity the same way it would it’s own brood.

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My disgust with this war grows daily, but I’ve been feeling like a lot of people are feeling the same way lately. The anger isn’t just quiet indignation anymore. It’s more palpable and a lot less shunned by the media.

I don’t know about you, but I practice a disorganized religion.  I belong to an unholy disorder.  We call ourselves “Our Lady of Perpetual Astonishment.”

Kurt Vonnegut, from A Man Without a Country.

sign me up.

It’s always a sad day for me when I drink my last

Didn’t see any in the grocery store today either…

I’ll have to endure the next nine months without my favorite beer.