Author: Kim du Toit

Growing Market

Food & Drink

I have spoken before of my irritation with unnecessary tinkering, specifically with gin.   Now I read that gin sales have gone through the roof:

Gin has moved from suburban cocktail parties to the height of fashion with a 276 per cent increase in sales in less than ten years, according to official figures.  A report from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) shows the value leapt from £130million to £461million since 2009, and Britain produces some three-quarters of all the gin made in Europe.

And why this growth?

On its own, gin is an unremarkable, albeit powerful, spirit, distilled from barley, maize or wheat.  However, the secret of its success and new found popularity comes from the many exotic flavourings that are added.

Chocolate gin?  Great Caesar’s aching liver.  And just to put the icing on my cake:

Today, gin has been reinvented for young adults with more than half of gin drinkers under 35.

[groan]

That’s just what I needed:  one of my all-time favorite drinks has become popular with snowflake millennials and hipsters, albeit after having had its taste changed into kiddie-type flavors.

Is it too early to have a Tanqueray?  If so, I think I’ll go out and kick a random hipster in the ass.  God, I hate “progress”.

Quote Of The Day

QOTD, Weather

Talking about this utter and complete bullshit, J.D. Rucker saith:

“Whenever I see a story that invokes Ivy League scientists finding a solution to anything, I brace myself for the worst idea ever. Once again, they didn’t disappoint.”

Keep reminding yourself of the observation: “Your suggestion is so stupid, so devoid of commonsense and logic that it could only have been made by an academic or intellectual.”

Most of the time, you will not be misled.

Standards, Double, Women For The Use Of

Men & Women

There’s this rather foul old aristocratic trot in Britishland who, at age 69, has declared that she has no interest in making whoopee with a man her own age, but would be quite willing to do the nasty with someone close to half that.

Granted, she was quite a looker in her heyday (around the time of the Normandy landings, that is):

…but alas, she is no fine French wine and has not aged well at all.  Like most once-beautiful women, she’s carried the arrogance of beauty way past its sell-by date and now she’s just pathetic.

I have to ask myself a few things:  firstly, what kind of 35-year-old man would even consider paging through the wrinkles to find her rather cobwebby Garden Of Delight;  secondly, what narcissism allows her to think that she could set that demand and have it fulfilled, and thirdly, why doesn’t she get called a “dirty old devil” as an old man most certainly would if he announced that he was only only interested in jumping a college coed?

Ah fuck it, I know the answers to all three questions, and they’re profoundly depressing.

Most depressing of all, though, is that the old harridan has no shame in announcing all this to the entire nation on TV.  One would hope that someone of her generation would have more manners, modesty or class, but I suppose that as the titled old bat has probably had more pricks than a pin cushion, she probably doesn’t care.

Fach.

Actually, the reason she wouldn’t bonk a man of her age is that most of us would see through her bullshit and decline the offer, whereas some younger fool would be taken in by her title, celebrity and whatever other reasons why young fools bonk someone of their Nana’s age.

Dumbass

Bad News

Yeah, well…

Would-Be Missionary Gets The Full San Sebastian Treatment

Read the whole thing to get the full flavor of this man’s stupidity, naïveté and (dare I say) arrogance.  Darwin shakes his head, and says “I told you so.”

I guess they have a kind of Castle Doctrine on North Sentinel Island, too.  Good for them.

Update:  I just got an email from Reader Bart J. suggesting that we should implement the Sentinelese immigration control at our own southern border.  It’s moments like this that make me appreciate my Readers.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and clean the gin from my screen.

In Other News, Dogs Chase Cats

Entertainment, Men & Women

I’ve never been involved in the movie business at all, so I’m not really qualified to comment on this story (not that this has ever stopped me before):

Alexa Chung has revealed how she was once ordered to strip by a movie producer while being auditioned for a role. In a worrying #MeToo moment, the model was told to remove her clothes so that the exec could see what she looked like naked.
Addressing the Oxford Union, Alexa said: ‘He told me to strip because he needed to see what I looked like naked for a scene that required it.’

Okay, let’s all accept the fact that the whole casting thing could just turn into an opportunity for men to catch a free look at naked women.  (In other news, Gen. Custer seems to be having some difficulties with the Sioux.)  And yeah yeah, that’s just awful and terrible etc. etc.

I have some parallel thoughts, however:  if you are auditioning for a part where you’re going to be filmed in the nude, don’t be shocked when you’re asked to show what you look like naked.  If you’re Julia Roberts, for example, you can turn down such demands because you’re going to get a body double anyway — they’re casting the face, not your ironing-board body.  But if you’re a nobody, you can’t really turn it down because appearing or performing in the nude is one of the reasons you’re being cast at all and if we’re going to be blunt about it, if you have some blemish (e.g. saggy boobs or a large birthmark), the producer is not going to hire a body double for a nobody.  

The other thought is that the director has to be sure that when he films a scene — any scene, let alone a nude one — he has to be sure that viewers concentrate on what he’s trying to show, not on the fact that Second Actress From The Left has one breast considerably larger than the other.

So while I can sympathize with this Alexa Chung (whoever she is) because of the voyeur thing, I can also see things from the other side of the desk, so to speak.  I should also point out that this woman is an ex-model, and didn’t seem to have too many qualms about being naked anyway:

And here’s another thought:  a producer asking to see what you look like on the nude is not a Harvey Weinstein/#MeToo moment;  a producer wanting you to fuck him to get the part, is.

We can also talk about why nude modelling or nude scenes in movies are necessary at all, but that’s a topic for another post.

Cheap Handguns

The Gun Thing

…if by “cheap” you mean something that doesn’t cost more than $500, that is.  CheaperThanDirt’s Shooter’s Blog features one such article examining the choices, and it’s quite informative so go ahead and read it.

Myself, I was struck by something else.  Here are the guns they talk about, stripped of the verbiage:

      

Is it just me, or do all these little carry guns look depressingly similar?  (We all know that they’re similar mechanically, i.e. striker-fired double-action mostly 9mm pistols.)

And I suppose that given the demands of ergonomics and what have you, these guns are inevitably going to turn out like the depressingly-similar wind-tunnel shaped modern cars — i.e. you need a microscope and micrometer to distinguish one from another — and you all know what I think of them.  (Cliff Notes:  ugh.)

No.  Frankly, my independent spirit rebels against this me-too nonsense, and especially so in the above case.  I don’t care that these guns may be a good bargain and work well, just as I don’t care that a Kia Rio / Hyundai Accent are a good automotive bargain and drive well.  I just don’t want to play simply because it’s cheaper, and I’m probably never going to own any of them, gun or car.

No.  If anything, it makes me want to go to the other extreme and carry something — ha! — iconic instead, even if I have to pay more and if necessary wait a while longer so I can save up for the thing.  To put it another way, I’d rather carry a Walther PPK than a Walther Creed because while both pistols are essentially identical in terms of their output (sends a 9mmx boolet into a Bad Guy efficiently), the PPK looks miles nicer and is worth the premium.  (And no, I don’t need an accessory rail on my carry gun.)

    

Your mileage may well differ, and as always, I welcome comments / insults on my old-fashioned attitude.