Author Archives: Ray
Putting the Cock Back in Cocktail: Sazeracs & Manhattans
A reader writes: In your last video (which I enjoyed somewhat) you said the Old-Fashioned isn’t the oldest cocktail on written record, and you are correct. The Sazerac is. When will you do a vid featuring that one, bud? Here you go, bud — though, for the record, it’s not actually known if the Sazerac…
Putting the Cock Back in Cocktail: Mixing the Proper Old-Fashioned
Is there any cocktail that gets people as lathered up about technique as the Old-Fashioned? If there is, I don’t know about it. Come and have a drink with the unwashed.
District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg and Her DUI
I made the following video in honor of District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberhg, who’s suing Texas Governor Rick Perry. Perry was recently indicted on two charges both of which are related to District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg and her allegation that Perry attempted to force her resignation after she was arrested for drunk driving. The grand jury…
How to Make the Perfect Gin Martini
The Perfect Gin Martini: This is Part 8 in our Putting-the-Cock-Back-in-Cocktail series: Don’t forget to watch the Carpet-Licker and the Cosmo. And Getting Numb with Rum
The Hardest Working Man in Politics
Barack Obama, who has been criticized by racists for his tendency to vacation during times of crisis, and who during the course of his presidency has hit the golf links 186 times (so far), once, while plugging his book, said the following: “Uh, umm, you give me this office and in turn my, fears, doubts,…
John Kerry’s Hypocrisy at the African Summit
This week, at the African Summit in Washington DC, John (“Jet-Set”) Kerry lectured us and African leaders on CO2 — saying specifically that building new farms to feed African people will cause too much pollution, and that therefore these farms should therefore not be built. You won’t believe it till you see it: John Kerry,…
Best First Sentence Winner
It was another difficult decision over which I heartached for one week. Here, in no particular order, were the finalists: She sat down exhausted. — Shannon Murray After a lifetime of incubation, she now carried the fatal disease. — Scott She stepped into darkness, and the sickening crunch of dried bones made her cringe. —…
4th of July and the True Nature of Independence
Independence is autonomy. It’s the freedom to govern yourself and to rely upon your own independent judgment. Independence is freedom. But what, finally, is freedom? Freedom, in its most fundamental form, really has only one meaning: it is the omission of force. Freedom is the absence of compulsion. It simply means that you are left…
Hobby Lobby Opponents: Intellectually Stunning
For anyone who, like me, believes an employer should not be forced to pay for his or her employee’s abortifacient, see what you’re up against (i.e. not much): But you already knew that.
The Carpet-Licker and the Cosmo
And other fine, fine cocktails from the 1980’s: Possibly Related: Getting Numb with Rum
One Hundred Dollars for the Best First Sentence
Journal Pulp is offering a $100.00 cash prize for the following: Best first sentence for a novel about a monomaniacal archeologist who discovers for certain the actual resting place of the Ark of the Covenant, and who resolves that, despite its being so heavily guarded, she will open the golden lid of the Ark —…
Three Reasons the Organic Foods Industry is a Scam
The organic food industry has, in the last decade, exploded beyond all sensible proportion so that now, worldwide, the industry is worth roughly $65 billion dollars. Astonishing as that figure is, though, it becomes all the more so when you realize that this entire industry is predicated upon one giant myth after another. In March…
Tiananmen Square: Twenty-Five Year Anniversary — But Do You Know About Chengdu?
Do you remember Tiananmen Square? It’s difficult to believe that it was twenty-five years ago, but today, June 4th, indeed marks the twenty-fifth year anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing, China. This was when the communist dictatorship of that country quashed a political reform movement, which was begun by Beijing students who sought…
The Zen of Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was born June 3rd, 1926, and died April 5th, 1997. Today is his 88th birthday. Ginsberg, along with Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs, is a preeminent figure in the 1950’s Beat Generation counterculture — i.e. the Beatniks — and if you’ve ever wondered what, precisely, these women and men stood for, it…