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A Long Lost Line of Martini's...

The martini is perhaps the most renowned alcoholic cocktail, which has come to be immortalized through popular culture in establishing itself as a household name. The sweet and sour blend of vermouth and gin began to make its mark on social circles as far back as 1863, where the popular cocktail known as the ‘Martini’, was allegedly discovered by a barkeep in the USA who supposedly blended Martini & Rossi brand vermouth in a chilled glass with some gin.

But the actual origins of this modern alcoholic marvel are still shrouded in mystery – the earliest historical account claims that the martini was actually invented in 1849, under the original name of ‘the Martinez’, after a miner supposedly stumbled upon the recipe in the town of Martinez during the California Gold Rush. Liking the taste of his new alcoholic blunder, he took the recipe with him to San Francisco, renaming the drink the ‘Martinez Special’, though, this account has never been historically proven – the Martinez special is a drink that exists, and has a similar yet distinctly different recipe.

In contemporary society, the Martini has been seen being drunk by highly prolific historical figures – from Winston Churchill to Franklin D. Roosevelt. Perhaps though, the most infamous inclusion in popular culture was the martini being featured in James Bond films – with the famous line “Martini – shaken, not stirred”.  The whole practice of shaking a martini unearths an enormous debate surrounding the correct way to mix the cocktail as argued vehemently by cocktail purists. Many purists believe that martinis should always be “stirred, not shaken, so that the molecules lie sensuously one on top of the other”, as asserted by W. Somerset Maugham, English novelist, playwright and self-professed martini aficionado. Most believe that the effect of stirring a martini ensures that the martini maintains transparency and a crisper taste, whereas shaking supposedly ‘weakens’ the blend by breaking up the ice and adding more water, as well as slightly altering the taste.

But who cares, right? Whatever tastes good for you! The debates that shadow the mixing of the martini cocktail are biased towards the taste preferences of the person arguing their side of the story. The fact remains; it has raised the ranks to become one of the higher class cocktails amongst the drinking elite. So consider this is my informal salute to one of the greatest alcoholic icons of our time!

Now most importantly, here’s how to make the original martini:

Ingredients:

5.5 cl Gin
1.5 cl Dry Vermouth
Lemon Peel or Olive to garnish

Preparation:

Pour all ingredients into a mixing glass with ice cubes. Stir well then strain into a chilled martini cocktail glass. Squeeze oil from lemon peel into the drink, or garnish with olives as desired.

Interested in cocktail making? If you’re considering a bar tending job then how about a bar skills course or a RSA course? Etrainu has a range of bar courses to get you up to speed on your bar tending qualifications for bar jobs in Australia.

http://www.etrainu.com

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something tasmanian this way comes

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dream, Tue 17/11/09

Quite some convoluted dreaming. Let's see how I go with getting them down.

Again, on some sort of school or family-type camp. I think we're in the Philippines. I'm spending a few days some family friends for some sort of special occasion - I can't remember which exactly.

The next part of the special occasion requires myself and my brother to fly to Auckland to take part in some video game-inspired tournament. We can't go, as we can't afford to. Also, I'm looking after my family friends' siblings as they are too lazy to. I have to pack up my room at camp, as well as theirs and we all have to be out by 5pm. I also have to pack up my mother's room. I'm stressed.

They fly off to New Zealand and I feel very lonely. So lonely that I want to spend time with my mother but she has to go to work. I begin to wander around the Philippines and go to some shopping centre. I'm sifting through comics and Peanuts stickers when I stumble across a class for children. They are doing some sort of improv/theatre workshop. I see 'Oulipo' mentioned and jot down the title of the book they are working from which is translated from Italian. The teacher invites me to talk about Oulipo.

They peer at my legs and bind them and ask me to pirouette. I tell them that my legs do not have hair because I felt it kinder to those who might see them, in the heat of the Australian sun.

I suddenly found myself in my old village. There were lots of bars. I went to one and ordered a pint of Carlton Draught and the bartender said it was the last one left. I didn't want to drink the last one, so I told him I'd be back when I had money and would order something else. I thought about calling @casus_belli to see if he fancied an impromptu drunkard session.

* * *

Then all of a sudden, I was dining and drinking with @rperdio and @tristankenney. Ryan took us to some swanky joints and I found myself at a table with my old schoolmates - Evan, Damien, Frank, Steven M. Someone was marrying Jane and they were cutting glass bowls to steal. I disapproved but drank my gorgeous alcoholic drink.

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Calvin Beer in Geneva

via nytimes.com

Thanks to Mark Russell for pointing me to this link. I'd seen "Calvinus" beer around on the internet previously but had thought it was courtesy of Photoshop. I was wrong. I wonder if it would taste better than "Arminius"?

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Just Because Australians Are Drunk a Lot Doesn't Mean They Can't Drill Offshore for Oil

Oil Rig Fire, Timor Sea

In case you haven't heard, there's an oil rig on fire in the Timor Sea:

An oil spill disaster that could rival the impact of the Exxon Valdez is playing out tonight off the coast of Australia. For 10 weeks, a crippled deep-water oil rig has been leaking millions of gallons into the ocean between Australia's northwest coast and the islands of Indonesia.

It is bringing to light the possible environmental impact when offshore drilling goes wrong, as CBS News correspondent John Blackstone reports.

With explosive gas spewing into the air and thousands of gallons of oil pouring into the water each day the spill began claiming sea snakes, birds and dolphins.

The blowout is thought to have been caused by a fracture in a pipe 8,000 feet beneath the sea floor. Again and again over two months the Thailand-based company that owns the rig tried and failed to plug the well.

"We remain committed and resolved to achieve our goal," said Jose Martins, chief financial officer of the company, Pttep Oil. "That may require a few more attempts."

Just how much has spilled is uncertain. Environmental groups say satellite photos show its spread across more than 9,000 square miles and estimate some 9 million gallons have poured into the ocean - nearly as much as the 11 million gallons that escaped from the Exxon Valdez in Alaska.

While there may be some use of this symbolic image to try to slow down offshore drilling, you have to remember that the defenders of offshore drilling are going to attack this issue in several different ways. First, they may point out that the state of the art technology used by the oil rig is different from the state of the art technology we might be using off the coast of Florida or Texas. Second, they may point to it as an isolated incident, blown up out of proportion to how safe and reliable offshore drilling really is. Third, there is always the fact that oil and natural gas has always leaked into the ocean naturally, through deep fissures in the ocean floor. Even though I'm not a geologist, and I have never had occasion to pretend to be one to get a government loan, I do know that you can certainly fudge the amount of oil that it is possible to extract from a site. That might be another argument against banning or slowing down the expansion of offshore drilling.

Then there is an entirely different angle that I am afraid they might use, and that's the angle nearly everyone uses to attack anything Australian, and that's the "drunk Aussie" angle. This is so wrong, I hesitate to bring it up. The image of smash-drunk Aussies, dancing around a neglected bonfire, shooting guns and throwing fat girls into the ocean springs to mind.

Let's be brutally honest--the Australians are a bunch of drunken louts. They're not as bad as the Russians, but, bear in mind, a lot of Russians emigrate to Australian because their livers can't take the vodka anymore, and they move on to that weak Australian beer they serve down there. There's a term for this type of individual by the way, and it's "yabbo." When you think of a drunken Australian, dropping his freshly-trimmed short pants and howling into a rolled up sheet of aluminum like it is a ten dollar megaphone, think of the hateful implications of assuming that a rollicking yabbo party on the main deck of the oil rig, complete with Radio Birdman songs and sex dolls cavorting with wallabies, caused this disaster. Don't give in to the hate. Incompetence is a disease, and, brother, that disease has taken hold in Australia.

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Barman kid

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What does your beer say about you?

Cool story from Advertising Age about market research into how your choice of beer correlates to your personality. And don't say, "I don't drink beer." That makes you 50 percent more likely to be a Republican, according to the research. And 100 percent more likely to be the least fun person in the room, according to vast anecdotal evidence.

http://adage.com/article?article_id=140106

The story only presents a few findings from a larger study, but let's look at some generalizations:

My lovely wife, the Michelob Ultra drinker (in fairness, chosen because it's the cheapest light beer at Costco):

Michelob Ultra drinkers rate high in superiority; that is, they think highly of themselves and can be a little bit conceited. They care what other people think about them and want to appear perfect. They also tend to be take-charge types with strong opinions, and can even be confrontational. 

And me, the craft beer drinker:

This group is more likely to spend time thinking about beer rather than work. They are more open-minded than most people, seek out interesting and varied experiences and are intellectually curious. Craft-beer drinkers also skew as having a lower sense of responsibility—they don't stress about missed deadlines and tend to be happy-go-lucky about life.

Yeah, I'd say those hit the keg right on the tap, if you know what I'm saying.

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Halloween at the bar/club

Last night I abandoned resistance for a limited tour of hegemony. Surrender is not painless.

If the night were a literary work, the major narrative would have been foreshadowed by the radio preferences on the drive out. We had Green Day (a concession in normal listening patterns I'm happy to make for the group) and Against Me playing over a discussion about each band's work. AM's Joy played and the car sang along.  I thought this was a token of collective enjoyment and (for lack of a better understanding of what motivates people to be around many more) removed from introspection. Steve changed what was playing to pop radio, finding the previous music was responsible for bring down the mood. Max agreed. I was confused. They then sang to music I'd never heard. I was lost.

The story has an interlude. We dropped of Meredith's car and Sarah's costume, and meandered around Syracuse waiting for Jeff and Megan

Eventually, we arrived at the main attraction. It was surreal, first, that such an apparently common activity is for me so overwhelming and, again, that uncomfortable can be infused with so much removed indifference. Despite an inescapable undertone of "I'm not really here,"  an hour into the bar scene, I found the ambition to escape, leaving disappointed and misanthropic. I wanted for and attempted normative behavior. I hoped the box I occupy was less of a prison and more of a choice, that this brand of fun wasn't, to me, inaccessible. Soon after, I lowered my desires. I just hoped no one noticed, at least not enough to spoil their good time.

I saw a ghost in flannel and what resembled a familiar face. The past stirred enough to fortify envy.  There is a whole world I can't enter; there are people lost to me because of this. And yet some can fluidly transition with elegance. (Though it was clear to see many have neither the elegance nor said fluidity.)

Over the unfamiliar music, decibels too high, and through the deluge of strange faces, I tried to scream to Brad the poor excuses that would get me too the doors without alarm. I walked to the car, broke the zip tied emergency key, and found a stashed book. I read, appropriately, about conformity, rationalization, and psychology before my eyelids gained weight. I spent two cold hours sleeping. There was nothing I wanted to do more; I couldn't have been more content. Silence and solitude are my yellow sun. (Where as, bars are a shard of kryptonite.)
I woke to the phone, and picked up enthused party goers.

I've never had the obligation of designated driver bestowed and I've never shared the company of friends chemically uninhibited. I like neither. But all seemed copacetic, or at least I was too much in my own head to care. My body was the phlegmatic driver unmoved by drunk dialog, meanwhile, elsewhere I was increasingly alienated by the chatter. The fun of drinking and dancing are so foreign to my experience. How can these things compensate for the rest of the scene, and do so to the extent that one would want to return often? The best I can offer to explain the estrangement is to juxtapose it to the fictional Jen Crane of Defying Gravity who, unlike the rest of the crew, cannot see Beta. (It's a good show if you watch it all the way through. I swear. That's why it got canned -- just like Surface.) ..Even the shows I pick to follow are losers! :)

I think there is more to say, but I don't yet have words for it. The employees (all girls), wearing what would be appropriate for a beach, dancing on top of the bar was the most obvious aspect of an underlining sex and exploitation motif that might fit more into a theme of desperate-for-companionship better than lust. Though, maybe hedonism fits as the chief archetype better than a model defined by deficits. Sex, drugs, and dancing in a low light package wrapped in music loud enough to block any complex thought.
I worry the negative discourse of my intrapersonal dialog is merely rationalization for an inherent discomfort. Either way, it is frustration and generally upsetting to feel anxieties around an inability to conform here. That this has social significance or is the key for peer based interaction is, for me, harrowing.
However, more concerning is the available tools for reaching fulfilling entertainment. The impression left from Max and Steve's babbling afterward is that their night was greatly rewarding. The women they were excited to have seen and talked to, the drug that inspired and empowered them, nor the dancing that seemed to fulfill them have an entrance for me, have reward for me. This appears to be a large defecate, a disabling impairment.
At least sports do something for me. The euphoria I feel when I'm exhausted from a good game is what I saw in them driving home. The world according to Will would be a much better place if rugby pitches were where bars are now. (...and it wasn't soiled by macho attitudes and malicious intent, and they played 7s instead of 15s)

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Lion ov Sri Lanka

my favorite!!

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Unique. Like New Orleans: 'What Is Southern Comfort?' Campaign Rolls Out | MediaPost Publications | Marketing Daily

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