Month: January 2020

Another Dream Punctured

Drive Time

I have long lusted after owning a Maserati Quattroporte, which to me seemed to be the last (non-Bentley) word in luxury touring cars:

It combines everything I like about cars:  exquisite styling, a sumptuous interior and, lest we forget, a Ferrari-derived 3.8-liter V8 engine.

This morning, however, I took an Uber passenger to the airport, and in chatting about cars, I mentioned my yearning for the above Mazza.

“Nah,” was his comment.
“Why not?”
“Quality isn’t that good.”
“It’ll break down every week?” I said in jest.
“Not every  week…”

I should point out that said passenger was once a senior exec at Maserati USA.

So much for that dream.

Extra-Curricular Activities

Men & Women, Modernism

Okay, that does it:  I am officially jealous of the younger generation, if this kind of thing is going to become commonplace:

An Oklahoma high school teacher was arrested for allegedly having a threesome with a student and another woman inside her home.
Joyce Churchwell, who worked as a volleyball coach at Berryhill High School in Tulsa, first connected with the student over Snapchat and began seeing him at her home last year, News on 6 reported.
The student “admitted that this encounter had taken place at the teacher’s home along with another adult female — a former teacher at the district.”

I mean, a high school kid bonking a nubile young teacher is one thing — but a threesome with another older woman?

Just… damn.

Fish Footprints

Eco-Crap, Food & Drink

Is there any possible part of our daily life that isn’t going to be measured by this bullshit metric?

Fish sticks may seem harmless, but the tiny food is creating a huge carbon footprint.
A new study has found that transforming Alaskan Pollock into fish sticks, imitation crab and fish fillets generates nearly twice the greenhouse gas emissions produced by fishing itself.

I’m getting to the point where the more I’m scolded for behavior which (allegedly) harms the planet or in some way offends people of a certain type, the more I’m likely to increase said behavior.

I’ve never been that keen on fish sticks — I think I grew out of the taste at age 8 — but I think I’ll pick up a pack or two of Gorton’s the next time I’m at the supermarket, just for spite.

And then there’s this, from the same article:

Families that often dine out and consume large quantities of sweets and alcohol are likely to have a higher carbon footprint than meat eaters, a study claims.
Researchers came to this conclusion after studying the food habits and carbon footprints of around 60,000 households across Japan.
They found that meat consumption typically only accounts for only 10 per cent of the different in environmental impact between low and high carbon households.
In contrast, households with high carbon footprints typically consumed around two to three times more sweets and alcohol than those with low footprints
Eating out, for example, was found to contribute 175 per cent more carbon emissions for the average household than eating meats.
In fact, dining in restaurants was seen to contribute an annual average of 770 kilograms (121 stone) of greenhouse gases towards the environmental impact of those households with a high carbon footprint.

That does it.  Tonight is Pizza Night chez  Du Toit (which is an immutable institution), but tomorrow night I think I’ll take New Wife to Hard Eight BBQ, which boasts a meat smoker that puts out more smoke than a fucking 19th-century steamship.

Chide me, I dare ya.

There Goes The Neighborhood

Food & Drink, Modernism

And another treasured institution falls over:

The Full English breakfast could die out within a generation because almost one in five young people living in the UK have never eaten a fry-up.
Despite being a mainstay of British society since the Victorian era, a nationwide study has revealed 17 per cent of British people under 30 have never tucked into the greasy breakfast food.
Millennials are avoiding the traditional meal due to health concerns, with a fifth of 18 to 30-year-olds saying they associate the dish with heart attacks and obesity.
The majority would prefer to have smoked salmon and scrambled eggs, smashed avocado on toast or oatmeal pancakes for breakfast over the Full English.

Here’s what they’re missing, the little shits:

Great Caesar’s bleeding hemorrhoids… how could this sublime creation be replaced by something that looks like calcified sputum on toast?

My own kids (Millennials all) would smother me in my sleep if I were to offer them this slop instead of a Full English on Christmas Day — or any day, come to think of it — but then they’re not Brits, are they?

I don’t want anyone to think that I’m unalterably set in my ways (“No, Kim!  Say it ain’t so!”) — I mean, the last time I had breakfast at Fortnum & Mason, I even had a delicious Duck Rarebit (fried duck egg on hot beer cheese over a piece of toast, as below):

…so I am open to a bit of change — I just don’t want the thing I temporarily changed from  to disappear because some pasty-faced weenies think it’s unheaaaaalthyyyy!

Let me promise you all one thing:  if the time comes when I go over to Blighty, go out for brekkie and find the Full English has disappeared from the menu, there will be murders.  Just the prospect  of “avo toast” on a breakfast table makes me feel weak.

Is it too early for a pint of gin?  I think not.