Choices

Posted on by Dale

It’s all about choices.

Here’s a piece of music. You probably don’t even need to click on the video to hear it in your head, but give it a listen, at least a little bit.

The glorious Finale to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in d minor, “Ode to Joy.” There is very little like it in Western music. Leonard Bernstein played it with the Berlin Philharmonic at the Berlin Wall after it fell. We know what it stands for.[1]

Here’s another one. You are more than likely not familiar with it, so click and listen to maybe a minute or so.

This is the second movement to Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10 in e minor, the Allegro.

A little background: In 1936, Shostakovich wrote his Symphony No. 4 — my favorite of his — and it nearly got him killed. After Stalin attended a performance of Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of Mzensk and hated it, critical and official denunciations of “corrupt” “anti-Soviet” music appeared in the newspapers, and Shostakovich kept a packed bag by the door.

As an extra precaution, he canceled the premiere of No. 4, and we didn’t get to hear it until 1962. He ingratiated himself with his Symphony No. 5 (subtitled “A Soviet Artist’s Reply to Just Criticism,” just in case they didn’t get it), and his wartime symphonies (No. 7 and No. 8) were huge hits.

No. 9, right after the war, was dinged for not being “patriotic” enough, but it was still passable.

So he waited to premiere No. 10 until after Stalin died — and then in 1979, Testimony was published in the West, purporting to be a biography written with Shostakovich’s input and approval. (He died in 1975.) We are still arguing over how much of the book is actually true, including this quote about Symphony No. 10:

“I did depict Stalin in my next symphony, the Tenth. I wrote it right after Stalin’s death and no one has yet guessed what the symphony is about. It’s about Stalin and the Stalin years. The second part, the scherzo, is a musical portrait of Stalin, roughly speaking. Of course, there are many other things in it, but that’s the basis.”

And so I have both of these pieces of music teed up so that I can blast one of them over the quite powerful speakers in my labyrinth, alarming and possibly angering everyone in a three-block radius.

As soon as we know the results of tomorrow’s election. It’s all about choices, innit?

—————

[1] My other choice would be the Finale to Mahler’s Symphony No. 2. This one, if you aren’t familiar with it, you should listen to the end.

New Cocktail: Thyme & the Citadel

Posted on by Dale

For some reason in the last six months, I chose to make/experiment with thyme liqueur, and last summer at To The Moon I offered a Thyme & Tonic as one our cocktails. For this most recent Alchemy, I decided to step it up a bit and came up with…

Thyme & the Citadel

This intriguing name came from the French gin Citadelle, which is a bit more floral than I like gin in general — but what if we added a bit of herbal to it?

It’s quite tasty!

  • 1.5 oz Citadelle gin (or any floral, slightly sweet gin)
  • .5 oz thyme liqueur
  • tonic water
  • lemon twist

Combine in a glass with ice, add tonic water, express the twist over the drink and drop it in.

All very easy, but what about the thyme liqueur?

Infuse 3–4 tablespoons of fresh thyme sprigs in a 750 ml of neutral spirit, like vodka, for three weeks until it’s a rich olive green. Strain and set aside. Make a cup of simple syrup by boiling 1/2 cup of water with 1/2 cup of sugar until the sugar dissolves. (You might try experimenting with brown sugar, etc.) Mix simple syrup into the thyme until it’s just sweet enough. Don’t oversweeten it!

Enjoy!

A Modest Proposal redux

Posted on by Dale

Six years ago I made this modest proposal, and with the most important election of our lives here in less than two weeks, I think most of us would appreciate a repost.

Voter turnout in the world’s greatest democracy[1] is, for some reason, an issue.

I have a solution.

No,  we can’t pass a law making voting mandatory because no one does that.[2]

Instead, let’s work with what we have: overwhelming campaign ads/begs/emails/commercials. Rather than trying to get money out of our elections,[3] let’s leverage the disgust and frustration most of us feel every time a new email pings our box.

Here’s how: We establish — by law — a national database. When you vote, you’re given a unique code. Using the code, you log into the database and confirm your info: any and all email accounts,  phone numbers, cable tv service, anything we can think of where we don’t want to hear from politicians. You click the box, and presto! the politicians are instructed to block their campaigns from contacting you or face a substantial penalty for each offense. (I’ll start the bidding at $1 million per offense, and I wouldn’t object if that sum were payable to the voter.)

Think about it. If you vote early, then you get to opt out for the rest of the campaign.

Turn, turn, kick, turn — yes, IT WILL WORK!

edited to add: I’m thinking the politicians will actually be in favor of this; once we’re off the table they can focus their limited resources on the people who haven’t voted yet.  It’s a perfect feedback loop: we get left alone, while the politicians will ratchet up their pressure on the nonvoters to go vote. The more people who vote, the more pressure on the remaining nonvoters. TTKT—YIWW!

edited to add also too: The law should also state that voting begins as soon as the campaign does.

—  —  —  —  —

[1] The United States, in case you were wondering.

[2] Lots of people do that.

[3]  Lots of people do that, too.

Oklahoma, are you OK?

Posted on by Dale

The outrage du jour is of course the conservative Xtianists making their brains itch by deciding the Paris Olympics have besmirched their own personal religiousy beliefs by pArOdYiNg ThE lAsT sUpPeR KENNETH, but I’m not going to address that. “BUT THEY APOLOGIZED AND EVERYTHING KENNETH” no they didn’t apologize for parodying The Last Supper, because they didn’t parody The Last Supper, and I’m not going to address that. Their concerns are not legitimate.

Instead, let’s jump back a couple of weeks and consider that Oklahoma’s State School Superintendent, one Ryan Walters, issued a mandate that Oklahoma teachers would all be given a Bible and that every teacher “will be teaching from the Bible in the classroom.”

The state’s Attorney General raised an eyebrow and pursed his lips on that one, and more than one school system has politely but firmly told the Superintendent to shove it, but Walters is adamant that Oklahoma’s madrassas will do his bidding.

It is in that spirit that I offer the following lesson plan to Oklahoma’s teachers.

One of the weirdest shibboleths of the Xtianist world is that the Ten Commandments were an integral part of the founding of this nation, and that we are therefore a Xtian nation even though Moses and Mt. Sinai can in no way thought of as “Christian.” To be clear, they push the idea that requiring the Decalogue to be posted in every classroom is not religious in the least because the Commandments are part of the founding documents of the United States of America. They want students to be taught that without the Ten Commandments we wouldn’t have the Constitution.

—————

So, class, today we are going to look at how the Ten Commandments informed our nation’s governing document. Bobby, can you pass out the Commandments, and Alice, give everyone a copy of the Constitution…

Does everyone have their packet of ten different highlighters? You’ll need a different color for each Commandment, of course. And you all have a black marker, right? Good, let’s get started.

Let’s start with your pink highlighter. Highlight the first commandment: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

Okay, good. Now work with your partner to look through the Constitution and find where James Madison and those other guys used the first commandment as a source for their ideas, and highlight that passage with the pink highlighter.  I’ll set a timer for five minutes. Don’t worry, the Constitution is short, not quite four pages, so you’ve got plenty of time.

::five minutes pass — ding!::

Okay, what did you find?

…

Well, okay, maybe that commandment wasn’t a primary source for the founding fathers. Just strike through that one with your black marker and we’ll just keep using the pink highlighter. Go ahead and highlight the second commandment: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” Let’s look for where Madison & co. used that commandment in the Constitution.

Let’s put five minutes back on the timer, and… go!

::five minutes — ding!::

[Since we can all guess how this is going to go, we will now cut to the end of the exercise]

So class, what did you discover?

Sonia, I don’t think it’s fair to say that the Commandments played no role in the creation of the U.S. Constitution. No, I know that we couldn’t find a trace of any of them anywhere in it — and good catch, Clarence, that the right to a fair trial actually comes from the Magna Carta and English common law and not the Ninth Commandment — but maybe we just missed the references. Here’s what we’ll do: Work with your partner and write a letter to Superintendent Walters asking if him to come to our class and show us how we missed it. I bet he’d be delighted to do that!

And class, my apologies for asking you to buy ten different highlighters when only one would have been enough.

Here endeth the lesson.

Grand Canyon 2024

Posted on by Dale

Yes, we traveled once again to Grand Canyon. It was our fifth trip to our favorite place, and this time we started out with a two-night stay at the North Rim, a 4.5 hour drive from Las Vegas.

And yes, I usually live-blog our travels. But how many photos of the Canyon do you need to see? You can always use the dropdown menu of categories over there on the left to find our previous Canyon jaunts.

I do have some thoughts, and with that…

PRO TIPS

  • If you’re going to the North Rim, fly to Vegas. If you’re going to the South Rim, fly to Phoenix.
    • If you have the time and money, spend a night in St. George, UT, on the way to the North Rim, and in Flagstaff, AZ, on the way to the South Rim.
  • If you have a SoLight or two, bring them with you to light your way back to your cabin/campsite.
  • Do you have dirty shoes from hiking/tripping over elk? Bring some cheap shower caps to put them in when you pack!
  • North Rim Lodge: Try to get in one of the cabins numbered 300 or 400. They are a little more modern and a little more spacious than the originals.
  • The restaurants claim to expect “business casual” attire. Pfft. I saw no one turned away for shorts and t-shirts.
  • Pack your jigger and your bitters, then buy a small bottle of gin, either on the way out of Vegas or Phoenix or at the General Store in the park. Presto: your first pre-dinner cocktail is now a lot cheaper than the one in the restaurant. (I snagged a 750ml bottle of Bombay Sapphire our second day there, and even though I left half the bottle for the cleaning staff it was still cheaper than my having the same cocktail up at El Tovar or Bright Angel.)
    • Empty your ice bucket somewhere it can pool so the chipmunks and ravens have a little water in that heat.
  • Stick to the speed limit. Wildlife will be right there in the road when you least expect it.
  • Watch for stopped traffic, too: It usually means there are elk or deer or something to look at. Similarly, in the Village, if you see a bunch of tourists facing away from the Canyon, they’re more than likely watching a wild animal or two.
  • “Where are you from?” always works as a conversation starter, followed by “Is this your first time at the Canyon?”

 

RANDOM THOUGHTS

  • The North Rim is very much more wilderness than the South Rim, a lot less accommodating to the casual tourist. The ponderosa forests, flecked here and there with stands of aspen, are gorgeous, and even the fallen giants are beautiful, serving their cyclical purpose in death.
  • Reservations are required at the North Rim Lodge restaurant. It’s the only restaurant there (with a small deli and one coffee shop) and seating is tight.
  • The elk on the South Rim are quite habituated to humans, but are nonetheless wild animals. After all, they’ve had us around for over 100 years now, and the three babies we saw — like their mothers — have never known a landscape without those weird human things in the way.
    • As a comparison, the only elk we saw at the North Rim was on our way out,  a youngish male who was thinking about crossing the road but when he saw our car went sproinging away into the woods. At the South Rim, they just stroll on out across the road.
    • In the same vein, we watched two baby elk play-fight in front of us, then race each other up and down the “revegetation area” there at the rim. No adults in sight. A third baby, smaller, chirped at being left alone.
  • Spanish and Eastern Asian languages were the predominant languages I heard there. English was maybe 30% of what I heard.
  • We went into Tusayan to check out the pizza place (right there at the roundabout), and it was good! As we left the park, we realized there was a very very long line of cars waiting to get through the gate, so I did a little map quest and discovered that there is indeed an “authorized vehicles only” road that zips around the gate and deposits you right there in the Village. So, shouldn’t guests at the Lodges, who hold senior citizen National Parks passes and who are sustaining members of the Grand Canyon Conservancy, be authorized to skip the line??
  • We had literally cloudless skies the entire week we were there. For the past five years we’ve tried to catch a summer lightning storm over the Canyon, and every single trip, the weather has been flawless. I registered a complaint at the front desk and was told with a laugh that I should have been there the week before. Hrmph.
  • We saw our first Tesla Cybertruck in the wild, and yes, it’s as ugly as you think. I now describe them as looking like a police artist sketch of a Rivian.
  • I had a Scathingly Brilliant Idea for a t-shirt, which seemed to tickle the folk at the Grand Canyon Conservancy when I emailed them about it, but I doubt they’ll have the courage to produce it:

What’s not to like? They’d sell a million of them.

American Thoughts from an American

Posted on by Dale

I and my Lovely First Wife are at Grand Canyon for the week. This afternoon we will motor into Tusayan, the little village right outside the south gate to the park, for a quintessentially American 4th of July parade, the kind you can only get in a village of a couple hundred people. There will be a about a dozen kids with their decorated bicycles, couple of floats, and an ambulance, and horseback riders, and of course Smoky the Bear, and it will be glorious.

(They also have a kick-ass party afterwards, culminating this year in a drone show!)

Click to embiggen.

 

As we’ve explored the now-familiar haunts — this is our fifth trip to the Canyon — we have as usual enjoyed all the people watching, and I have some thoughts. We see, in no particular order, …

  • young families corralling their rambunctious offspring, coaxing the toddlers back into their strollers
  • Harley-Davidson types, bushy white beards + branded t-shirts + big bellies
  • tattooed, nose-ringed young persons, smiling as they serve you breakfast
  • a not-small Hispanic family, women with children, illegally “camping” in a rented RV in the parking lot
  • a busload’s worth of teenage girls, all uniformly dressed in their religious sect’s idea of modest clothing, chittering like a flock of magpies like teenage girls do, later praying at the rim, davening over their prayer books
  • completely Caucasian families from the Midwest, slowly turning pink in the southwestern sun
  • the taut, fit hikers, tall and sleek
  • sullen, disaffected teenagers, immune to the awe of their surroundings, glued to their phones
  • Native-American silversmiths and artists selling their crafts
  • a Pakistani businessman conducting his business, loudly, on his phone
  • dyed-in-the-wool southwestern cowboy/farmer types, knives + phones + tools strapped to their belts
  • the older gay couple, pushing their elderly chihuahua in its stroller
  • the young man, Tongan perhaps, with a glorious crown of thick curls, excited to show his African-American girlfriend her first view of the Canyon
  • the middle-European college students, here on J-1 visas, working for the summer at the lodges and restaurants
  • the elderly couples able to travel at leisure, even if they won’t be hiking the Bright Angel rim-to-rim trail (which is closed for repairs on the north end in any case and that’s our excuse)
  • the aging hippie in his Utilikilt and his tolerant Lovely First Wife
  • the developmentally challenged adult who, perhaps astonished at my kilt, impulsively told me “hello” (and whom I greeted in return, but now wish I had stopped in my trek to chat with him)
  • mixed-race families, showing in the best possible way that “race” is a spurious concept
  • pretty young Asians, doggedly fashionable even as the general American public dresses down
  • burly, bald, bearded guys, intently helping their little girls select their Grand Canyon t-shirts in the gift shops
  • bus drivers, from crusty retirees with their dad jokes to young Micah giving off  “Chris in the Morning” (from Northern Exposure) vibes (we half expected him to launch into a trademark “As Kierkegaard mused…” meditation as we approached the next stop)
  • the constant ear-soup of accents and languages from around the world, people who have traveled to our country to see this unique wonder
  • even the middle-aged lady wearing a Trump 2020 t-shirt, to whom I wanted to say, “Isn’t this amazing? I’m so glad we got to see it before the corporations tear it up looking for uranium, aren’t you?” [viz: the recent Supreme Court decision reversing the Chevron ruling]

My point — and I do have one — is that this is what the United States is and should be, and to those who would turn WE THE PEOPLE into a crabbed, restrictive shibboleth embodying violence and exclusion, I’d just like to say: FUPP YOUR FOURTH, you Christofascist, racist, nationalist thugs.

Cocktails on The Moon

Posted on by Dale
3 Old Men’s labyrinth with full moon

Last week I headed up to Tennessee to To The Moon, the regional burn there. It’s a long drive, longer if the driver’s side window of your 15′ rental truck explodes for no reason, necessitating a five-hour delay while the repair guy shows up to replace it.

Anyway, I promised a few hippies that I would post the recipes of the cocktails my camp (3 Old Men) served, so here we go. (I don’t have time to make each of these and take a photo, but I promise I’ll get around to each of them after I get back from Grand Canyon next week.)

Blandings In Cold Blood

First, an explanation/apology. I felt last week that I was a bit discombobulated in getting my act together to make it to the burn, and if we needed any proof, here it is. The cocktail I served at the burn was not the Blandings, but one called In Cold Blood. I have no idea why I thought it was a Blandings.

  • 1 oz rye
  • 1 oz sweet vermouth, Carpano Antica preferred
  • 1 oz Cynar (bitter artichoke amaro)
  • lemon peel
  • pinch of salt

It’s rich and bitter, one of my favorites — which makes not getting the name right even weirder.

Rose-Colored G

One  of mine. Takes a little prep, but worth it.

  • 1 1/2 oz gin, preferably an old tom
  • tonic water
  • hibiscus-infused dry gin
  • allspice/tiki bitters
  • lime slice

Soak a couple of tablespoons of dried hibiscus flowers in a pint or more of dry gin. It should be a rich ruby color and should take about 45 minutes – an hour. Strain and store.

Make a gin & tonic, leaving room at the top of the glass. Drop in the lime slice. Carefully pour a little hibiscus infusion on top of the ice, forming a pretty layer of red floating on top of the G&T. Dribble 4–5 drops of the tiki bitters on top of that.

This is a spectacular cocktail, especially effective at Christmas. Tart and spicy.

Smoking Hot Molly

I invented this one at the behest of one Molly Honea for her 25th birthday.

  • 2 oz bourbon, preferably rooibos-infused
  • 3/4 oz Ancho Reyes liqueur
  • 1/2 oz creme de cacao
  • cherry wood smoke

Infuse 750ml of bourbon with 3 tablespoons of loose rooibos tea for about an hour. Strain and store. (While not strictly necessary, the rooibos will add a smoky note to the drink.) Likewise, smoking the cocktail with cherry wood is not required but boy will it bump the cocktail up several notches!

The chocolate of the creme de cacao comes through first, and then the ancho chile pepper takes over on the finish. A very fine cocktail, if I do say so myself.

Semele’s Flame

Yes, I just invented this one last month.

  • 2 oz (60ml) Metaxa (I used the 12-star)
  • ¾ oz (25ml) lemon juice
  • ½ oz (15ml) honey
  • ⅛ oz (5ml) mezcal
  • honey/sea salt rim (mixture of granulated honey and sea salt)

Smear honey around 1/4 of the rim of a martini glass. Dip it in the honey/sea salt mixture.

Add the 1/2 oz of honey to a shaker. (Instead of trying to scoop the honey out of your jigger, use a tablespoon and scrape it from there. 1 tbsp = 1/2 oz)

Add the other ingredients and then stir to dissolve the honey. Add ice, shake, and strain into the martini glass.

Besides being a showstopper in its preparation, this drink is one of the best I’ve ever invented. Without the honey/sea salt rim, it’s a little too sweet, but that rim really makes it work.

New-Fashioned

My fellow Lichtenbergian (and Old Man) Turff sent me this recipe several years ago, and I thought what you’re thinking now: banana liqueur? What the fupp? Trust me.

  • 2 oz bourbon
  • 3/4 oz banana liqueur
  • 1 dash Jack Rudy bitters
  • orange peel

This drink goes down easy, and the banana flavor is actually tasty and not gimmicky. Try it — you’ll like it.

Thyme & Tonic

Another one with an involved prep, but worth it.

  • 1 1/2 oz thyme liqueur
  • tonic water
  • sprig of fresh thyme

Infuse 3–4 tablespoons of fresh thyme sprigs in a 750 ml of neutral spirit, like vodka, for three weeks until it’s a rich olive green. Strain and set aside. Make a cup of simple syrup by boiling 1 cup of water with 1 cup of sugar until the sugar dissolves. (You might try experimenting with brown sugar, etc.) Mix simple syrup into the thyme until it’s just sweet enough. Don’t oversweeten it!

If you’re going to be making a lot of infusions, you will appreciate the simplicity of an infuser like the Alkemista Alcohol Infuser: It’s expensive, but there’s no easier way to infuse and then strain your stuff. No more cheesecloth or coffee filters! Also, it holds 950ml, which, if you’re batching a lot of cocktails, is a good size. Other available infusers with the same design are smaller and less expensive, so if you don’t need 750ml of an infusion, one of those will work just fine.

Otherwise, the cocktail is simply a gin & tonic with thyme instead of gin. I took this to the burn thinking I’d get some reactions and suggestions on how to improve it, but everyone who had it remarked on how refreshing it was, so I suppose its very simplicity is a bonus.

Have fun!

All the angry little nutjobs…

Posted on by Dale

This popped up on an associate’s feed[1] on the FaceTubes today:

I don’t have many rightwing nutjobs on my feed these days; I suspect they’ve weeded themselves out because of my relentlessly liberal posting of facts (which have a liberal bias, alas). It’s always a bit of a shock, therefore, when I see stuff like this.

This particular blob is of the sneering-at-POLITICALLY CORRECT/WOKE variety, and it’s a particularly stupid one. Let’s see if we can follow its logic.

  • Bald people don’t need to use shampoo.
  • People with hair do need to use shampoo.
  • Bald people are offended if people who do need to use shampoo, use shampoo.
  • THEREFORE, KENNETH, THE WOKE CROWD WILL cAnCeL SHAMPOO, KENNETH!

::sigh::

This is what passes for snark on the other side of the aisle.

(I am also perturbed by “At the rate we’re going” and “they’re,” implying that the whole PC/woke thing is an organized conspiracy against the Righteous, but we’ll let that pass for now.)

The problem with this blob is not its logical shambles. The problem is that the speaker/poster chooses to embrace the fact that it is not kind, it is not generous, it is not — dare I say — Christian to use terminology that demeans a marginalized person. It’s essentially a really dumb way to say, “We can’t even say n****r or f****t any more!” They’re mean, and they mean it, and they’re genuinely angry that the rest of us think they’re shitheads just because they’re mean to people.

I felt like replying with something like:

At least my snark punches up, even if it’s no more true than my “associate’s” snark.

—————

[1] I can’t bring myself to refer to these people as “friends.”

New Cocktail: Semele’s Flame

Posted on by Dale

Youssef, if you’re reading this, this one’s for you, kiddo. (Youssef is the charming young waiter/bartender we met at the Semeli Hotel on Mykonos last month. He and I had a great chat one afternoon about cocktails; he, like me, is self-taught, and like me he has invented cocktails. To my shame I have forgotten the name of the cocktail he made for me, but it made me forget I don’t like ouzo or grapefruit juice. Well done, Youssef!)

My traveling party thought it was a no-brainer for the hotel to have a cocktail on its menu that referenced the myth of Semele and Zeus: Zeus got her pregnant, and when Hera found out she disguised herself as a crone and visited Semele. She expressed doubt that the girl’s lover was actually the king of the gods, prompting Semele to beg Zeus to reveal himself in his full glory to her. He refused at first, but eventually he decided to show her just a small portion of his divinity. Unfortunately, even that was too much for the mortal Semele, and she perished in a burst of flame.

(Zeus rescued the unborn child and sewed it up in his thigh; the baby was born from his thigh — Dionysus, who then rescued his mother from Hades and installed her on Olympus. She was in charge of whipping up the Bacchantes into their frenzies.)

So after mulling over the possibilities, here’s what I came up with.

Semele’s Flame

First off, using Metaxa was a no-brainer: It’s a quintessential Greek brandy-based liquor, and it’s quite tasty. I decided to start with a Metaxa version of the Bee’s Knees. (Honey is also a Greek specialty.) It was okay but lacked the punch of the original gin-based cocktail.

Perhaps some herbal notes would help? I experimented with adding a bit of Faccio Bruto Centerbe, a passable substitute for the increasingly rare Green Chartreuse, and it wasn’t bad. I even made a version using actual Green Chartreuse, but thankfully (for my cabinet) the Centerbe was better.

However, it still wasn’t a great cocktail. My next thought was to add some smoke; I settled on mezcal, although I could have gone with a smoky scotch or scotch blend. Much better.

And then, on a whim, I smeared some honey on the rim and rimmed it with a honey/sea salt mixture. (The sea is yet another Greek thing.)

Perfection.

So…

  • 2 oz (60ml) Metaxa (I used the 12-star)
  • ¾ oz (25ml) lemon juice
  • ½ oz (15ml) honey
  • ⅛ oz (5ml) mezcal
  • honey/sea salt* rim

Smear honey around 1/4 of the rim of a martini glass. Dip it in the honey/sea salt mixture.

Add the 1/2 oz of honey to a shaker. (Instead of trying to scoop the honey out of your jigger, use a tablespoon and scrape it from there. 1 tbsp = 1/2 oz)

Add the other ingredients and then stir to dissolve the honey. Add ice, shake, and strain into the martini glass.

*I happened to have a tin of honey/sea salt, but you can make your own by combining granulated honey and fine sea salt, probably in a 1:1 ratio. Experiment.

Pro tip: If you’re going to be making a lot of these, batch the honey and lemon juice mixture (2:3 ratio) so that you don’t have to dissolve the honey each and every time.

Also, it might be interesting to float the mezcal rather than adding it to the shaker. And maybe try barrel-aged honey… More work is required.

update, 5/13/24: Having run out of Metaxa at my birthday gathering last night — Semele’s Flame was very popular — I made one tonight with brandy and am happy to report that it works nearly as well. You could add a dash of rose water for that floral aspect that Metaxa brings. I first tried a peaty scotch, but it vanished in the citrus/honey, so stick to mezcal.

Yes, Republicans, that’s how it works.

Posted on by Dale

Here’s a story I didn’t expect to see:

Biden-Harris Administration Announces $7 Billion Solar for All Grants to Deliver Residential Solar, Saving Low-Income Americans $350 Million Annually and Advancing Environmental Justice Across America

We can now expect to see Republicans melting down over what is clearly an unmitigated good not only for the low-income citizens it affects directly but also for the nation (and the planet) as a whole.

And why would they go all splodey with fake rage over this? For the same reason they always go splodey with rage when a Democratic administration does anything that benefits average Americans: “THEY’RE JUST DOING IT TO BUY VOTES!!!!”

So, Republicans, let me see if I’ve got this straight. If the government does something that benefits the average citizen, and said average citizen thinks, “Hey, you know what, this is a good thing, I think I’ll vote for these guys” — as opposed to the government doing things like banning water or rest breaks in the summer heat for outdoor workers or lowering tax rates on the richest people at the expense of the poorest or driving OB/GYNs from the state because of vague laws criminalizing healthcare, or… — then that’s “buying votes.” Got it.

Have you guys ever thought about doing that, just going with policies and laws that protect and enhance the lives of most of us rather than the corporations and the ultra-rich who are currently — quite frankly — buying your votes?

I guess not. Carry on.

See you at the polls.

update: More of the same at Wonkette.