A Tale Of Cocktails #17

Jelly Baby

Ingredients

1 oz Peach Schnapps
1  oz vodka
1 oz Malibu
1 oz Blue Curacao
1/2 oz grenadine
4 oz pineapple
4 oz lemonade

Taste: 8
Look: 5
Cost: 8
Name: 6
Prep: 8
Alcohol: 2
Overall: 6.6

Preparation: Half-fill a Collins glass with ice. Pour in ingredients, stir and serve.

General Comments: I'm claiming a small amount of credit for this recipe, for no better reason than I took two clearly sub-standard recipes and combined them to create something much better.  If you're particularly interested in the kinds of mixtures that I leave by the roadside, you can remove either the lemonade (which has the advantage of making it stronger) or the grenadine (which makes it look a bit nicer, but removes the taste of jelly babies, which I would suggest was pretty clearly crucial to the whole damn operation).

In any event, in its current incarnation, it's very tasty indeed.  It's not massively reminiscent of jelly babies, but I can see how the link was made, and jelly babies aren't exactly high on my list of awesome sweets in any case (blackcurrant and liquorice on the other hand...)  It's a bit murky looking, though, which has cost it vital points.

Travel Games

Opinion seems divided on the second episode of Game of Thrones, in a way that I find interesting. Based purely on my own observations, rather than anything approaching data, it would seem that there’s a very high correlation between having read the books, and preferring the season opener to “The Kingsroad”.

(Spoilers follow).

To Think I Lived To See The Day

Holy cockballs!  Martin's only gone and finished A Dance With Dragons!

This means two very important things.  Firstly, we're only a year or two away at most from hearing that Martin's realised he'll need eight books to finish the series (the last one presumably being called A Paradox of Zeno's), and now fans the world over can start preparing the dream casting choices for the fifth season that Game Of Thrones will never, ever get!

Deviations From The Mean

Urrgh.  People just keep getting stupider:

A group opposed to gay marriage says Judge Vaughn R. Walker should have disclosed that he was in a long-term same-sex relationship and recused himself from presiding over the Proposition 8 case.

Welcome to the mind of the homophobe, in which being gay makes you biased, but being opposed to gay marriage is apparently the very definition of impartiality.

I think my favourite quote is this:

A spokeswoman for ProtectMarriage said Walker's conflict was not his sexual orientation, but the fact that he was in a serious same-sex relationship that could conceivably lead to marriage.

Erwin Chemerinsky, UC Irvine law school dean, does his best to highlight the bullshit-

[Chemerinsky] likened the legal maneuver to an argument that black judges cannot decide race discrimination cases or female judges preside over cases involving sex bias.

- but actually this doesn't go far enough. The better analogy is telling female judges they can preside over cases involving sex bias, but not if it's over an employment issue. After all, those grasping bitches are bound to want more money, huh, lads? Can't trust those addle-minded harpies to decide whether a woman deserves equal pay!



Naturally, the "ProtectMarriage" argument (bet the KKK wishes it had had the forethought to call itself "ProtectFreedom") leads to the immediate corollary that if a legislature ever became insane enough to outlaw marriage, only single judges could be allowed to judge its constitutional validity.  Well, them and gays, obviously.

Random Thoughts

Because I can't think of anything coherent enough to sustain a full post:

1. I finally watched Carry On Camping this week, one of the only classic Carry On films I'd never seen before (due it being to risque for me to be allowed to see when I was a child). I realise the series as a whole (along with the society it reflected in its heyday) is hardly a bastion of feminism, but carrying the message "Attempt to screw enough schoolgirls and your frigid girlfriend will put out" has to rank as rather creep even by their own low standards;
2. I realised today that Kate Middleton is actually very pretty (previous observations have been taken up with fervently wishing my television would show me something else).  Certainly pretty enough that it seems very likely that she's broken her share of hearts.  I wonder if there's anyone out there still carrying a torch for her.  How much must it absolutely fucking suck to be them right now?  Good luck, my hypothetical comrades.  I hope you don't really exist!
3. If there's one thing I hate about living in Kenilworth - aside from the fact that I had to drive through an actual goddamn fire to get home this afternoon - it's that they're all either a) technologically backwards or b) liars.  Four attempts it took me to find a pub with wi-fi tonight.  The first one turns out to switch off their internet on a Monday (despite it being fine last week, and being told this was standard).  The next two both have wi-fi, but it's broken, leaving them to stare forlornly at the (occasionally) flashing lights and grunt impotently.  By the time I found somewhere that actually knew it was doing, I was in time to watch all of six minutes of Game of Thrones.  Combine this with the fact that this entire fiasco only took place because Sky likes to hire congenital incompetents, and I have been left exceptionally cranky.

Anyway. That was my Easter Monday.  How was yours?

A Tale Of Cocktails #16

Blue Lagoon

Ingredients

1 1/2 oz vodka
1 1/2 oz Blue Cuaracao
6 oz lemonade

Taste: 7
Look: 6
Cost: 8
Name: 6
Prep: 9
Alcohol: 3
Overall: 6.6

Preparation: Half fill a highball glass with ice.  Pour in first the vodka, then the Blue Curacao, and finally the lemonade. Stir briefly and serve.

General Comments: One of the risks you run putting together a series like this is that you may become jaded.  I'm pretty sure I like this cocktail, but... it's a bit dull, isn't it?  Lemonade and vodka is one of mankind's least inspiring drinks, not so much a beverage as an attempt to make vodka drinkable.

Adding Curacao to it is a good idea - it improves the taste and makes it look pretty - but it still strikes me as more workmanlike than anything else.  When Archemides figured out how to use water to measure volume, he legendarily ran naked through the streets of Syracuse shouting "Eureka!" with joy: he knew he had conceived of something truly revolutionary.  It's hard to imagine the creator of the Blue Lagoon so much as taking off their sweater as they mumbled "M'eh, fuck it; whatever".

Worst Terrorist Plot Ever

Barbara over at Mahablog is appropriately disgusted by the Republican's latest "fuck you" to the emergency service and construction workers who are suffering after their exertions on and following 9/11:

[B]efore [those eligible] can receive health care benefits Congress (begrudgingly) voted to give them last year, their personal data must go to the FBI to be sure they aren’t terrorists...

You’ll remember that House Republicans didn’t want to pass the James Zadroga 9/11 Health And Compensation Law at all, and only did so after Jon Stewart made fun of them about it. But apparently they were so resentful about having to appropriate health care money to the one-time heroes of 9/11 that they had to toss in this petty insult.

I agree that this is clearly petty and ludicrous, but to be honest I think this is just a particularly egregious and unfeeling example of standard Conservative mentality: making sure that people who deserve help get it comes a (very, very) distant second to making sure those that don’t deserve help don’t get it.

I've said this before, but once you use that as the central principle of organised Conservative thought, you very rarely go wrong. And in this case, once the Republicans found themselves forced to do their very least favourite thing – giving money away to those sorts of people that can’t afford an appropriate thank you cocktail party on a luxury yacht – they had to console themselves by throwing in an arbitrary sifting process to ensure “the wrong types” don’t get hold of the goodies.

I’m not sure why they picked “terrorist” as the search option here, though at a guess it’s because everyone who stands to benefit is already proven ill and a US citizen, so the usual tricks won’t work. “Terrorist” sounds scary, though, so they probably figure they can get away with it. It’s not like their similar trick with the no-fly lists did them much damage.

And like the no-fly lists, the true scandal here isn’t the sifting itself, it’s that one needs only to be unlucky enough to share a name with a known (suspected?) terrorist to be shit out of luck. Which, as I’ve said, is just the way these people do business. Remember all the hyperventilating about how “Obamacare” might make it easier for illegal immigrants to get healthcare? I mean, who cares about the millions of US citizens at risk, we can’t risk helping our own people if it means some foreigners get in on the action!

It’s all just another manifestation of the Republican worldview: “Better a hundred innocent men starve than one guilty man gets the crumbs from the table”.