Tag: Regrettable Acts

Missing Comfort

Food & Drink, Guy Stuff, Traditions

As any fule kno, I am partial to the occasional visit to a pub.  [pause to let laughter die down]

But  not just any pub.  I have strict rules for places which charge me far too much for the pleasure of indulging myself, because if I am going to be hit with a $7 (or more) tab for a single beer (!!!), the establishment had better offer me more than just a pint.  Here’s a short list of necessities:

Decent beer.  Any bar in the U.S. which doesn’t give me a choice of at least three British-ale equivalents won’t see me after a single awful American beer, and never again as well.  (Curiously, I find Mexico’s Negra Modelo  to be the closest thing to a decent ale, although I do have to pour it from glass to glass a few times to get rid of the appalling and excessive fizz.)  If they serve Fuller’s London Pride or Boddington’s, then we can be friends and they can be assured of a follow-up visit (or two, or three).  And if the beer isn’t up to snuff, they’d damn well better have a decent selection of single-malts or gins, or else it’s to the door I’ll be heading.

No loud music.  I’ve talked before about my hatred for this piece of modernism, whereby the acceptable noise of drunken people having a good time has to be drowned out by music — any kind of music, really, not just the revolting  thumpa-thumpa  of hip-hop — as though the background noise of simple conversation and occasional laughter are somehow incompatible with drinking pleasure.

Loud TV programs.  I can live with this if a.) it’s a “sports” bar or b.) there’s a big game being played (e.g. Bears vs. Packers or Chelsea vs. Arsenal).  But if I walk into a bar and there’s a large-screen TV showing ESPN’s SportsCenter (i.e. people talking about sport instead of playing it), I turn around and walk out.  Don’t even get me started if it’s CNN, Fox News or (gawd help us) Oprah Winfrey (I had to endure that once — client lunch, so I had no control — and it took me days to recover).

A foot-rail at the bar counter.  This may seem a strange one, but it’s a critical part of drinking that’s too often overlooked.  Note this otherwise-excellent setup (in a private house, withal):

But the Arrow Of Accusation points to the missing piece, and the whole pub is ruined by the glaring omission.

It’s a simple thing, really.  I (and many others) actually prefer to drink standing up, and especially around the bar counter, where space is at a premium.  It’s the one time I don’t mind being in a crowd, because I am in the company of people with a common goal, that of getting a good buzz on and enjoying life, and I far prefer a crowded bar to a nearly-empty one, which is depressing.  If one is enjoying the company of a lady, standing close to her bar stool makes the whole activity more intimate, too.  But if you’re going to stand, you must have a rail to rest a foot on, because otherwise you get tired of standing.  (I don’t know why that it, but it’s a fact nevertheless.)  Look at this place:

That picture simply screams out that I’ll be there till closing time, or later (don’t ask; I’m still banned from The Blue Cow which, needless to say, served about five excellent ales — all of which I sampled extensively —  and had a brass foot-rail).

Decent decor.  I hate modernist interior design, as all my Readers know well, but while I prefer the traditional pub style, it doesn’t have to be that.  Here’s the inside of the fantastic Randolph’s Bar at the Warwick Hotel in Manhattan:

…and yes of course it has a foot-rail at the counter.  And yes, I have been tossed out of that place too, several times, but always gently as I used to be a frequent guest there (hi, Carlo!).  On each of those occasions, the company was excellent and much disposed towards trying to finish all the Scotch in the place, but the atmosphere and decor did no harm to the attempt, either.

Here’s yet another of my favorite haunts, the Coq d’Or at the Drake Hotel in Chicago (where I do not have a tempestuous history, albeit not for lack of trying):

It’s a little hard to see (bottom left), but yes, there is a foot-rail, and it’s brass.

All this bar talk is making me thirsty.  And now, if you’ll excuse me, my post-birthday hangover needs a little TLC and that gin isn’t going to drink itself.

All Hell Diversity

Behind Enemy Lines, Immigration

So much for the Great Diversity Experiment:

As the world watched in awe five years ago, new faces were welcomed into Germany with balloons and banners proclaiming ‘We love refugees’.
More than a million strangers headed there from faraway lands at the height of Europe’s biggest migration crisis since World War II hoping for a new life in the West.
In a rallying cry to her nation, the German chancellor Angela Merkel declared in the autumn of 2015: ‘We can do this. We are strong and can manage it.’
Even as Mrs Merkel’s historic speech was broadcast on German TV, reports flashed up on the screen that trainloads of men, women and children were clamouring to be let in at her borders. And they were.
In astonishing scenes a few days later, thousands of bedraggled, tired migrants turned up at railway stations in German cities to be met by local children blowing soap bubbles and handing over teddy bears as the country threw off its dark, xenophobic past to become the humanitarian face of Europe.
But today the celebrations for migrants are over in this powerhouse of the European Union.
Many of the foreigners who entered Germany in those heady days are being forcibly sent home to Africa, south Asia, the Middle East, Russia and the Balkans on secret flights, marshalled by security officers, after being frogmarched to airports from their beds by armed police.

I wonder why?  Oh yes, because they can’t or won’t assimilate, their crime rates are astronomical, and far from being the fuel that would help Germany’s economy, most are pretty much acting as brakes, being totally dependent on Germany’s generous welfare state.

Who could ever have thought this this would happen?

Well, most of us, as it turns out;  only we were called “racists” and “fascists” or worse, for the sin of being realists and not starry-eyed dreamers in thrall to the “magic dirt” theory of socialization.

As for “being frogmarched to airports from their beds by armed police”, I just wish we could do the same to our ingrate immigrants, but no doubt someone’s going to have a problem with me saying that, too.

Over Till Next Year

Two-Minute Hate

The best thing about November is that it’s no longer October — the latter being the OMG It’s Halloween! season.  Let it be known that I hate Halloween:  stupid horror movies all over TV, fucking pumpkin-flavored everything (coffee? FFS), “scary” decorations on everything, including rotting pumpkins… it’s enough to make one go

The only decent part of Halloween is that totties get dressed up in costumes (“fancy dress” to non-Murkins).  Even that, though, can be a mixed blessing, as the pics below reveal:

 

Pro tip:  dressing up like a hooker is not cute when you actually are one.  Then there’s the mother/daughter idea:

Frances  Furter?

 

And finally:

Oh wait… that last one is neither a totty nor a Halloween costume:  it’s F1 driver Lewis Hamilton, in all his self-conscious totally-gay wokeness.

A Triumph For Feminism

Crime, Feminazis, Law and Order, Men & Women

Let’s see:  because #feminismrules, you assign a female guard to an all-men’s prison.  What could possibly go wrong?

Quite a lot, apparently.

Lauren McIntyre, 32, is accused of having a sexual relationship with convicted double murderer Andrew Roberts over a four-month period at HMP Isle of Wight, Metro reported.
Prison guard McIntyre — believed to be a mother-of-two— is accused of willfully and without reasonable excuse or justification misconducting herself in a way which amounted to an abuse of the public’s trust in the office holder because she had secret sex with murderer Roberts.

And the choirboy?

Roberts was convicted of strangling girlfriend Louise L’Homme, 23, and their eight-month-old daughter at the home they shared in 2003. He is serving a life term in prison.

This is what happens when you mix men and women together in a closed environment.  (And for the benefit of the dense:  whether it’s in a prison, a co-ed campus dormitory or on board a Navy ship, they’re gonna have sex.)  ‘Twas ever thus, and no amount of Feministical Theory or Woeful Handwringing will prevent it.

In the old days, prison guards were called “screws”.  Nowadays, that nickname seems to have a whole different meaning, dunnit?

Under The Knife

Food & Drink

I remember the day I quit exercising.

I was thirty years old, in really good shape, and while visiting my mother I went for my regular morning jog.  At the time, she lived in Umhlanga Rocks, a little seaside resort town just north of Durban, and to say that the Indian Ocean coast has a tropical climate is to understate the thing.  It’s not only hot, it’s humid — so humid that I, a Joburg boy, actually had trouble breathing the thick, moist air (Johannesburg is 6,000ft above sea level).

But I had to stay in shape, and I liked the way I looked, so off I went.  I kept the jog short, maybe two or three miles up the coast road, and then I turned around and went back, taking a little detour along the concrete boardwalk that runs past the luxury hotels and separates them from the beach.

By now, I was deeply uncomfortable and miserable:  the sweat was pouring off me, I was tired and more than a little sunburned because while I usually jogged without a shirt up in Johannesburg, it was not an issue there — but down here, in the blazing tropical sun, my fair skin was going extra-crispy, and fast.

I was coming up to the last leg of the trip, where I could make the turn and head back to my mother’s house.  At that point, one of the hotels had a patio cafe right on the boardwalk, and sitting at a table under a large Cinzano umbrella were two rather pretty younger women.  As I ran past, one whistled and called out in Afrikaans, “Nice bod!”

I waved over my back at her, ran about a dozen more yards, and stopped dead in my tracks, chest heaving and my breath wheezing like a beached whale as the epiphany struck me.  I was doing all this — the tiredness, the sweatiness, the sunburn, the aching muscles — just so a stranger could compliment me on my “mooi lyfie” ?

I walked back to my Mom’s house, and never jogged again.

All this came back to me when I read the story of how Ozzy Osbourne’s daughter Kelly has had gastric sleeve surgery and thus lost over 80lbs.

Now I’m not going to go into some stupid amateur psycho-analysis as to why she would want to do this.  She was always a plump little thing, and clearly she didn’t like the way she looked (hence all the tattoos she had inflicted on herself, tattoos which she is now having removed — draw your own conclusions).  And she looks quite fetching now (see the link above)… but that just leads me to my earlier conclusion:  why would she undergo so radical a surgery, just so a stranger like me could think she was “quite fetching”?

I know several women who have had gastric sleeve surgery, and every single one has told me that had they known what the consequences were going to be (other than the massive weight loss), they would never have done it.  You see, the weight loss may be all very well, but what the gastric sleeve does is make eating food a profoundly uncomfortable experience:  nausea, pain, discomfort and a general malaise all follow if you eat so much as a single forkful of food too many, and after a while you begin to hate the sight of food.  Any food.

And what happens next is that some of the joy goes out of your life.  Eating is such a wonderful and enjoyable experience, really:  nothing quite compares to the feeling of satisfaction, of well-being and happiness that a good meal gives you.  It’s one of life’s simple, and paradoxically one of life’s greatest pleasures.  And with gastric sleeve surgery (which is irreversible), it’s gone forever.

So while everyone — and every one a stranger — is complimenting Kelly Osbourne on how great she looks, know too that her previous unhappiness at being overweight has been replaced with a much greater one.

And frankly, I never thought she was that fat to begin with.

Straws

Gummint

You know, whenever we see reports of people going nuts and gunning down government officials (not cops or state troopers, just ordinary workers), we are justifiably appalled.

Should we be?  Try looking at these two little examples of governmental overreach.  In Connecticut:

A Connecticut selectwoman alleged on Facebook that she and her husband are facing a fine of $1,000 for violating the state’s coronavirus travel restrictions. Amy St. Onge (R), first selectwoman of Thompson, posted to Facebook that, on Labor Day, she and her husband Jason left home to visit their son Caleb, who is training at the Air Force base in Altus, Oklahoma, and preparing for his first deployment.
Upon the parents’ return, St. Onge said she received an email from the State of Connecticut informing her that she and her husband had violated Gov. Ned Lamont’s executive orders regarding travel during the coronavirus pandemic.

Here’s the thing:  somebody in government was either monitoring their Faecesbook account, or else responded to a fink’s complaint.  Either way, the response was uncalled-for and excessive.  (Connecticut is facing a massive budget surplus.  Just sayin’.)

Now Maryland:

Shawn Marshall Myers from Maryland threw two parties at his own home that violated the governor’s social distancing executive order and now he’s going to spend a full year behind bars.
They were at his own home and they were outdoor bonfire parties.
He threw one and the cops showed up and convinced him to break it up. He threw another less than a week later and he refused to tell his guests to leave when the cops arrived and told him to do so. He said he had the right to have a party at his house and told his guests not to leave.
And now he’s going to prison for a year.

Note, in the latter case, the following:

“He was given a warning,” Charles County State’s Attorney Tony Covington said. “It’s not like the police just swooped in there and said you’re going to jail. They gave him a warning.”

Yeah, that makes it all hunky-dory, of course.  You fucking little totalitarian cocksucker.