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Wodka!

This article first appeared, in slightly altered form, in the Coloradoan newspaper.

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The Polish call it wodka.

The Russians call it vodka.

The word itself comes from the slavic voda — meaning “little water” — and, like water, vodka is colorless, odorless, and often enjoyed ice-cold.

Distilled from fermented potatoes, or fermented grains (like rye or wheat), or sometimes even grapes, vodka is a deceptively simple spirit that consists primarily of ethanol and water.

Here’s a little known fact about vodka:

Grain vodka because it’s distilled from grain is actually whiskey.

It is, to be sure, underaged and heavily filtered whiskey, but it’s whiskey, nevertheless. One of the chief differences is that vodka is usually filtered through charcoal, whereas whiskey is usually filtered through wood.

Both the Polish and the Russians lay claim to the invention of vodka.

To the Polish people in particular, this subject is significant and contentious — a question of national pride — and on this subject, the historical record is unclear. Certain sources do say the first distillation of vodka took place in what is now a part of Russia, in the 9th century, but there are other historians, just as venerable, who date it in 8th century Poland.

Neither of these prototypical vodkas, however, were anything like the vodka we know and love today — nor, incidentally, were they particularly strong, weighing in at a preposterous 30 proof. Like gin, most of these early vodkas were medicinal rather than recreational. Today, we know better.

Prior to the 1940’s, vodka was virtually unknown in the United States.

The vodka martini — also known as the Kangaroo Cocktail or the Vodkatini — isn’t generally accepted by so-called purists (i.e. snobs and classicists with whom I stridently disagree) as a true martini, but in fact the vodka martini has a more legitimate claim to this title than most people realize. That, though, is another story for another time.

One thing is certain:

In Casino Royale, when James Bond ordered his now famous Vesper cocktail, he did much to popularize the vodka martini.

Here’s how the passage appears in Ian Fleming’s famous novel, published in 1953:

“A dry martini,” Bond said. “One. In a deep champagne goblet.”

“Oui, Monsieur.”

“Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon’s, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it’s ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?”

Got it.





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Putting the Cock Back in Cocktail: Mojitos, Daiquiris, Rum Sours, and More!

This video was made for a recent article, which was rather deplorably edited, and which I therefore reprint below as it was originally written.



Getting Numb With Rum


Rum, like the hangovers it can create, is a side-effect, a by-product: a by-product of the juice that comes from sugarcane. And that, really, is one of the few definitive things you can say about the origins of rum.

For instance: rum may or may not have been invented in the early seventeenth century, on the pear-shaped island of Barbados, or Rum may or may not have been invented by Portuguese colonists operating along the coast of Brazil, when they created a harsh sugarcane concoction later called cachaça, or, after all, rum may or may not have been invented by the early Spanish colonists who populated the islands of Hispaniola and Cuba.

The word “rum,” likewise, may or may not come from the Latin saccharum, which is the Latin word for sugar, or, alternatively, the word “rum” may or may not have come from the British term for “the greatest” (“We had a rum of a time at Ace Gillett’s!”), or, finally, the word rum may or may not have come from the Gypsy word rum, which means “potent and strong.”

We do know that by 1654 both the name and the product were in common usage — the General Court of Connecticut having officially ordered “confiscations of whatsoever Barbados liquors, commonly called rum, kill devil and the like.”

It was in the early 1600’s that sugar-planters crushed up sugarcane and boiled the juice that was then cured in clay pots from which oozed a black and viscous liquid we now call molasses. This was in the 17th Century, mind you, and at that time molasses was actually regarded as what we now call “industrial waste.” But because the ingenuity of the human mind is limitless, an admixture was soon created whereby the liquid skimmed off the boiled cane juice was fermented and then added to this molasses by-product.

This process is the provenance of rum.

I’m not saying I’m going to, but I could persuasively argue that rum is the most quintessentially American spirit there is.

Look at America through the lens of rum and what do you see?

This:

A great gurgling vat of sugar-cane liquor — a melting pot, the only spirit you can get in white, brown, or black.

You see a four-century survivor, who rose up through the classes, who belongs to them all, who went from the streets to the state-room, from sweaty to sophisticated, from poverty and prison to preeminence and patrician, self-made, not rare but beautiful — street-handsome — swashbuckling, never (unlike bourbon) over-regulated, or snooty, like gin.

“Of all the spirits in your home,” wrote James Beard, in 1956, “rum is the most romantic.”

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Barack Obama: Inside the Mind of a Genius

Admit it: you find it curiously comforting to see that neither time nor age nor experience has taught Obama anything: he remains as politically-economically brilliant as he always was.

But perhaps over the last seven or so years you’ve not been able to hear him over the noise of his propaganda machine.

Well, just yesterday, he had a great many people shaking their heads when he told an audience of Argentinian youths that there’s no real difference between communism and capitalism and that they should just “choose from what works.”




“So often in the past there has been a division between left and right, between capitalists and communists or socialists, and especially in the Americas, that’s been a big debate,” Obama said.

“Those are interesting intellectual arguments, but I think for your generation, you should be practical and just choose from what works. You don’t have to worry about whether it really fits into socialist theory or capitalist theory. You should just decide what works.”

He went on to laud Communist Cuba and their dictatorial regime, which is such a socialist paradise that each year a great many Cuban people are willing to risk 100 miles of shark-infested waters just to get the hell out of there.

(Note to dems: please tell me again how no serious democratic today still actually admires the Castros. Tell me again how “backward” the Republicans are.)

Obama concluded his lecture by arguing that a market-based system “has to have a social and moral and ethical and community basis.”

Barack Obama, ladies and gentleman: one little glimpse inside the mind of a genius.





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What Is Government? (Political Cow: Episode 1)

From the College of Subversive Knowledge (SUBSCRIBE):



Using two cows as a metaphor for illustrating how various political systems function is a practice that’s been around since at least the 1930’s.

Here are a few of the better examples:

SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.

COMMUNISM: You have two cows. You give them to the government, and the government then gives you some milk.

FASCISM: You have two cows. You give them to the government, and the government then sells you some milk.

CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.

NAZISM: You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you.

And that, in essence, is what Political Cow is all about:







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Melissa Harris-Perry Believes “Hard-Worker” Is Racist Terminology

Melissa Harris-Perry, an MSNBC talk-show host who also teaches politics at Wake Forest University, is, among other things, enamored of the asinine.

She’s also a racist who doesn’t know it. As such she often lectures others about racism, and so-called social justice, and her latest dithyrambic is one you have to see to believe:




This leads me to ask a very serious question:

Is “dumbfuck” racist as well?