Month: February 2020

Moving Bottles

Moving weekend. Whew. I’ve taken care of all the things I care about: my books, my liquor, and my gardening stuff. But Marie is now demanding that I help with the non-essentials, like food and furniture. It’s going to be a long weekend.

But man, the move helped me appreciate that I’m a wealthy man . . . in liquor. I have all sorts of vodka and gin, plus liqueurs and whiskeys, that I didn’t know I had. I’m going to try to go the rest of the year without buying any alcohol. It shouldn’t be a problem, even though this summer promises to be full with a lot of visitors.

Even though my weekend promises to be a long one, I doubt it’ll be as long as the marketing team for Corona beer: Nearly 40% of beer-drinking Americans won’t buy Corona due to coronavirus, study shows. That’s hilarious, but not for the guys who are going to be ordering delivery pizza all weekend to their offices, trying to figure out how to tackle this one.

While going through my stash, I found a half gallon of Jim Beam. I don’t like whiskey, but my son assures me Beam is a good for mixing drinks. He’d never drink it straight, but to add to a Coke? It’s very good. Apparently, many others agree: Jim Beam has filled its 16 millionth barrel of bourbon since Prohibition. Good for them.

That’s it for this week. I have to get movin’ . . . literally. … Read the rest

Sleep Trick

I rarely fall asleep while listening to anything, but I’ve long used some sort of recorded narrative to get back to sleep after I wake up in the middle of the night. Marie once asked me why, and I said, “I listen to semi-boring stuff. I think it takes my mind off racing thoughts or nagging worries, but I try to make sure the narrative isn’t so interesting that it keeps me awake. It works really well.” My go-to recordings: Benedict Groeschel and programs from Relevant Radio.

Well, it looks like my experience is shared by many others: “Anecdotal evidence from those who’ve tried to figure out why podcasts help induce sleep suggest that they’re ideal for insomniacs who struggle with racing thoughts, anxiety, and over-active brains. . . [P]odcasts provide something to focus on that’s engaging enough to quiet down your brain, but not engaging enough to keep you awake.”

If you have troubles falling asleep, or getting back to sleep, you may want to try it.

You should, however, put it on a timer, so you’re not listening to the podcast the rest of the evening. It will distract your sleep.

TWE, btw, is far too exciting for this use. A little TWE is like a little cocaine. That, at least, is what I hear in my dreams. … Read the rest

Lent and the Babylon Bee

Welcome to Lent 2020. It’s a season of penance, renewal, and grace. It don’t get no better than that.

Of course, it’s also the season of the coronavirus, a collapsing stock market, and a Socialist front-runner, so maybe the “renewal” and “grace” parts of that last sentence are overblown.

But there is one good piece of news out there: a noted lesbian has declared herself a conservative. Welcome, Ms. Scarcella. TWE is more “libertarian” and “Catholic,” as opposed to “conservative,” but hey, we run in the same crowd.

I like to identify myself as “libertarian” and “Catholic.” It drives the Catholic Left nuts. Folks in that camp can’t comprehend how someone can be Catholic and against big government. To them, “Catholic and libertarian” is like “heterosexual and soccer fan.” To utter “Rothbard” and “von Mises” is to utter “Satan” and “Lucifer.”

I’m waiting for Ms. Scarcella to extend an invitation to the South Bend Mayor, once he’s finished with the race. Even the MSM seems to be admitting that blacks simply won’t vote for him. It seems odd that people wouldn’t want a gay president. You’d think that, once you sit down and explain to them how gay sex works, they’d be impressed by such, ahem, rigorous dedication.

In case you missed it, The Babylon Bee (which has been on fire lately), ran this satiric piece that slayed me: Pete Buttigieg Releases Study Bible With Notes That Explain Why Most Of The Verses Are Wrong. The Bee also ran this piece that, I honestly believe, every good faith Sanders voter must contemplate in earnest: Nation’s Bernie Supporters Frantically Cobble Together Makeshift Rafts To Paddle To Utopian Cuba.

I really like The Babylon Bee. My only knock is that … Read the rest

GoFundMe

I’m a big fan of GoFundMe. As a rule, I try to donate at least a few dollars to any campaign that helps a person dealing with a mortal situation, as long as I have any corroborating evidence that the cause is legit. There are too many scam artists out there, like the woman who returned to my area a few years ago, claiming to have cancer. The community rallied, held fundraisers for her . . . and then she vanished with the money and no sign of cancer.

I’m pretty sure Dante would’ve come up with a circle of hell just for her.

If you like to donate a few dollars to worthy causes, please consider this one. I don’t even know the woman. My daughter is “friendly acquaintances” with her and told me about it, so I sent some money.

Was my donation just one privileged white helping another privileged white? That’s one criticism that has been leveled at GoFundMe: One study found that “people crowdfunding for health reasons tend to live in high-income, high-education, and high-homeownership zip codes, as opposed to areas with greater need. As a result, the authors wrote, medical crowdfunding can entrench or exacerbate socioeconomic inequality.”

So, if you like to read between the lines, it means that people who don’t get taxpayer money are helping other people who don’t get taxpayer money. It sounds like a pretty good arrangement to me. … Read the rest

Outlaw Drinking

This is probably the most interesting alcohol news of the year: El Chapo is launching a beer . . . from prison. Technically, that’s not accurate. His daughter is launching the beer, but she’s capitalizing off his name and likeness.

I know nothing about marketing, but is a drug lord’s name/likeness a good draw? How about a gangster’s? I searched for liquors named after Al Capone or Lucky Luciano, but nothing came up. Same for Frank Lucas and Bumpy Johnson (I like to be multi-racial in my choice of miscreants). The search, however, yielded this nifty piece: How to Drink Like a Gangster. It contains four drinks named after gangsters, and this interesting nugget:

Mobsters always order drinks by a brand. Never just a scotch and water, it would be a Cutty and water. And no one ever drank out of a straw. That was a big no-no. Mobsters would always get free drinks, but loved to tip extravagantly, so the drinks would end up costing more just because of their big tips. But for a wiseguy it didn’t matter. To them the best drink is the one you get for free.

I’ll admit it: I love bars. When I wore a younger man’s clothes, I used to go into bars, order a beer, and just sit there by myself, taking it all in. “It” in this usage, of course, refers to “the joy of existence,” as fueled by the beer in front of me. I would normally sit there for an hour or so, drink two or three beers, imagine a friend walking in out of nowhere and greeting me with “Hey, fag! What are you doing here!?” then having a few more with him. When that didn’t happen, I would leave the bar, take … Read the rest

Forms of Captivity

Are those folks still quarantined on the cruise ship? No fear: Porn is here. Porn Company Offers Free Webcam Sessions To Quarantined Cruise Passengers. It’s not often you see such magnamity and twistedness in one gesture, kind of like when a guy holds a door open for a girl so he can look at her posterior.

There is, however, one glitch: Carnival Cruises doesn’t allow porn on its cruises.

Hooray for Carnival Cruises. I wonder what prompted them to impose that restriction? I did a quick Google search and, well, I can’t recount what I saw, but I’m guessing anything relevant was buried behind pages and pages of porn links.

Speaking of captive audiences: An Iowa man held a female acquaintance captive and forced her to watch “Roots” so that she “could better understand her racism,” according to a criminal complaint. Roots? I thought that had been, at least partially, debunked as a work of fiction, not even qualifying as “historical fiction” (which, I’ve been led to believe by thinkers I trust, has merit as an historical genre, even if it’s not “true history”). But, I’m the first to admit: I don’t know much about Roots. I watched it when I was a kid (everyone back then pretty much watched the same things), and I always wondered why slave owners would whip their property like that and make them less profitable, but I’m no expert.

And I seriously doubt the alleged false imprisoner is an expert either. He doesn’t have the reputation of a nuanced kind of guy: “Noye’s rap sheet includes convictions for felony narcotics possession; assault; criminal mischief; probation violation; and marijuana possession.”

The Catholic Church, incidentally, recently freed one of its churches from captivity: First Mass Since Reformation to be … Read the rest