Tag: Foreigners

HERESY!!!

Food & Drink

Does anyone see anything strange about this pic?

Yes, your eyes are not deceiving you.  A Japanese whisky just won the “world’s best” award — a Japanese single malt, withal.

Those of you who consider me to be a diehard traditionalist — and there may be a smidgen of evidence here or there to support your judgment — might expect me to start fulminating about such an occurrence, much as the French freaked out about a Californian wine winning best of show (as seen in the outstanding movie Bottle Rocket).

Well, forget that stuff.  Excellence is excellence, and it’s clear (from this account anyway), that the Japanese have worked out how to make fine whisky:

The essential difference between the classic whiskies of Scotland and those of Suntory is the type of barrels used for the ageing process. Single malts from Scotland are aged in a wide array of barrels, mostly made of French or American oak that were previously used to age sherry or Kentucky bourbon. The single malts picked up the residual essence and flavourings from the barrels, which added character to their respective flavour profiles.
The whiskies of Suntory have a distinctively Japanese touch, as only mizunara oak is used to age them and the resulting Japanese whiskies are a harmonious reflection of the place they’re from, with a purity of the sum of the ingredients and the skill of the artisans at Suntory.

The story behind Nikka whisky is equally fascinating (see the link above), and I have to tell y’all, I’m going to sample some as soon as Ye Olde Booze Allowance permits it.  The Nikka Yoichi single runs over $80 / bottle, from what I can see, and the low-end Suntory Hakushu just over $60.  Both seem worth a shot, so to speak.  (The “world’s best” stuff costs about the same as 25-year-old Macallan — i.e. way too spendy, so forget that.)

      

If they taste like drain cleaner, well, at least I tried.  If I like either of them, however, you may want to short the stock of Glenmorangie…

Japanese whisky:  who’d a thunk it?

Streets Of London

Bad News, Crime

“Let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of London;  I’ll show you something that’ll make you change your mind.”

Thus sang Ralph McTell in his hauntingly-mournful song back in the 1970s.  Modern-day London seems to be equally tragic:

London’s violent crime epidemic appears to show no sign of ending after another spate of brutal violence gripped the capital.

  • Man, 45, arrested on suspicion of murder 2.32am after woman, 28, [stabbed to death] in Brent
  • At 8.34pm, officers were called to Brent where man was shot with ‘machine gun’
  • Police were called to Deptford at 8.10pm where a 23-year-old man was stabbed
  • Just over a mile away another man was stabbed in Brent at around 10.20pm
  • At 3.36am a 27-year-old man was arrested in Old Kent Road after a third stabbing

Of course, the “machine gun” description will turn out to be false;  after all, machine-guns are banned in Britishland so that’s just not possible.

Then again, we have this little incident:

Follow the link for the full story.  Good grief.  I’m all for carrying knives on one’s person — I have two in my pockets as we speak — but sheesh… that’s a little (shall we say) aggressive.

I know that Dallas isn’t London (thank goodness), but I can’t help but think that people like our angry cyclist might be a little more restrained if they suspected that the guy in the car might be packing a .357 revolver… just a thought.

Action – Reaction

Gummint, Legal Stuff

In response to situations such as this:

Two teenagers have been stabbed to death within days of each other as Britain’s knife crime bloodshed continues.

…a judge in Britishland has come up with a solution:

A judge has called for a drastic rethink on the way we use knives in kitchens in a bid to reduce the number of young men dying on our streets because of knife crime.
And he has come up with an idea for a scheme that could be rolled out across the UK where members of the public could take their kitchen knives to be ‘modified’ and the points ground down into rounded ends.

After all, nobody except a professional chef (trained in its use) has any need for a pointed knife, anyway.

I report, you wet your pants laughing.

Not The Best Idea

Travels

So London’s Arsenal F.C. have finally announced a replacement for longtime manager Arsène Wenger.  But I’m not interested in the doings of the North London Scum (as we Chelsea fans call them).  Here’s the interesting thing.  As is customary, the new guy (some Spanish dude, who cares) held up an Arsenal jersey at a photo-op to mark his new allegiance.  Anyone see anything wrong with the pic?

Of all the silly advertising… Visit Rwanda?  Rwanda?

Let’s just say it’s not on my  Travel Bucket List.

Okay, okay… before any pro-Rwandan maniacs get all bent out of shape, let me acknowledge that Kigali was recently voted “Most Beautiful City In Africa”:

…no doubt by the same people who also think that Yemen is a dandy vacation idea.  As with all things African, though, you need to step about a hundred yards outside the publicity photos to find the reality:

But hey… go ahead and fly Emirates to Rwanda, be my guest.

Me, I’m thinking about Prague…

Not So Fast, Fritzie

History

Sayeth Victor Davis Hanson:

Every 20 to 50 years in Germany, things start unraveling.  Germans feel aggrieved.  Ideas and movements gyrate wildly between far left and far right extremes.  And the Germans finally find consensus in a sense of victimhood paradoxically expressed as national chauvinism.  Germany’s neighbors in 1870, 1914, 1939 — and increasingly in the present — usually bear the brunt of this national meltdown.

Well, yeah;  except that in 1870 they had just unified Prussia’s army with those of the other German states, in 1914 they had the Imperial German Army and in 1939 they had Hitler’s Nazi war machine to boss their neighbors around.

Nowadays?  LOL.  The Alabama National Guard could whip the Bundeswehr and still be home in time for dinner.

This time, the Germans should direct all their energies inward, to fix their festering immigration population, the unions’ stranglehold on industry and the country’s  1920s-style social decadence — but they don’t have the balls to do that, even.  And I don’t see anywhere a potential  Bismarck to try it all, let alone a Hitler.

It’s not often I disagree with VDH, but this is one time I do.