News and Notes: 12-11-05

From the Mail Bag, Part I: Was that Santa?

My mother sent me the following amusing, if not quite child-safe, picture..


But take heart, you can always assure your kids that Santa's okay. That's obviously not the Jolly One, 'cause that stuff about the sleigh is just a legend. Santa really uses a submarine, and there's even photographic evidence to back that claim up!


(HT: Ultraquiet No More)

Saddam Hussein's Understudy?

The Gaijin Biker notes a strong resemblance between George Clooney made up for Syriana and Hamas leader Khaled Mishaal. But howzabout these two pics from the Drudge Report last week? Mel Gibson could stand in for Saddam Hussein (who is boycotting his own trial) with just a little bit of makeup and some brown contacts. ("Ah! But that's been Gibson all along!" I can almost hear some on the left saying. If a Daily Kos-ter stops by, perhaps the Mel-Gibson-as-Saddam in the "show trial" meme will take off.... If so, you heard it fabricated here first.)

Saddam Hussein	Mel Gibson

I agree with Charles Krauthammer that Hussein should be in a glass booth and wearing prisoner's garb. My initial reaction to the Hussein's refusal to show was something like, "How come he can do that at all?"

From the Mail Bag, Part II: Beer Joke

My wife and I attended our home brewing club's annual Christmas party at the Stag's Head last night and had a great time. I tried several seasonal ales I hadn't had before. In particular, I recommend this year's Anchor Christmas Ale, which is a cinnamony brown (and less assertive/better balanced than usual), and Pyramid Snow Cap Ale.

In the lead-in to the festivities, the organizer sent us the following joke.

At a world brewing convention in the States, the CEO's of various brewing organizations retired to the bar at the end of the day's conference.

Bruce, CEO of Fosters, shouted to the barman: "In 'straylya, we make the best bladdy beer in the world, so pour me a bladdy Fosters, mate!"

Bob, CEO of Budweiser, calls out next: "In the States, we brew the finest beers of the world, and I make the king of them all. Gimme a Budweiser!"

Hans steps up next: "In Germany ve invented das beer, verdammt. Give me ein Becks, ja ist der real King of beers, danke."

Paddy, CEO of Guinness, steps forward: "Barman, would ya gie me a doyet coke wid ice and lemon. Tanks."

The others stare at him in stunned silence, amazement written all over their faces.

Eventually Bruce asks: "Are you not going to have a Guinness, Pat?"

Paddy replies: "Well, if ya fookin' pansies aren't drinkin', then neither am I".

Why whine when you can cry in your beer instead?

Wine enthusiast Willy Shake notes that, to top off all the human misery wrought by Hurricane Katrina, the entire stock of one of the great wine cellars of the world was destroyed. He quotes from this news story.

The wine cellar at Brennan's Restaurant, winner since 1983 of Wine Spectator magazine's Grand Award as one of the 85 top cellars in the world, has 35,000 bottles that since Hurricane Katrina have gone from vintage to vinegar.

The collection has been bought and is now being auctioned off online.

I'll stick with beer.

Heck, even a Foster's would be preferable!

Cultural Rot South of the Border

Continuing with the alcohol theme this post seems to have acquired, I'll move on to harder stuff: tequila. Via Chapomatic, I have learned of a very crass marketing ploy taken up by a certain merchant of high-end tequila.

First there was the art, now there is the tequila.

The heirs of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo have launched a line of high-end spirits using the name and likeness of the style icon, hoping to capitalize on the popularity of expensive liquor in fancy packaging.

"Tequila was her favorite drink, and she drank a lot of it," said Mara Romeo Pinedo Kahlo, a grand-niece who was an infant when Kahlo died in 1954.

Barry Campbell reacts appropriately.

Words fail me. "She drank a lot of it" is putting it rather mildly; her surviving family is cashing in on Frida's legacy by naming a superpremium tequila after a lifelong alcoholic (after a terrible accident that basically broke every bone in her body, Kahlo turned to alcohol and drugs for relief from the physical and psychological pain.)

Perhaps one day, when hard drugs are eventually legalized in this country, we can look forward to Richard Pryor-labelled cocaine, Tom Sizemore-endorsed crank, and Charlie Parker brand smack... and when it all becomes unmanageable, you can take yourself out with a Hunter S. Thompson signature 12-gauge double-barrel.

We live in a truly perverse age, where technology and freedom combine to make "all things fine" something that the common man can pursue, but where a certain degree of moral poverty is common enough to make a marketing ploy like the above (or worse) profitable rather than the impetus for a massive boycott.

Another Kind of Spirit

I'll leave today's roundup by departing from alcoholic spirits and returning to those of the holiday variety. Several Objectivists have blogged about Christmas already, and I've barely even started shopping for it. After noting how left-wing secularists played into the hands of the religious right on the subject of holiday greetings last year, I particularly sympathized with the following comment of Jack Wakeland's in Friday's TIA Daily.

... [A]s the solstice holidays approach, the conservative media--Fox, talk radio, and a cadre of newspaper columnists--have launched a preemptive attack on what they imagine will be a concerted ideological attack on Christmas by the left this year. Shortly after Halloween, some began urging a boycott of any stores or businesses that say "Happy Holidays" rather than "Merry Christmas." For the first time in my life, I've begun to wonder if saying "Merry Christmas" to people (something I've always done) will be construed as a political statement, a litmus test of religious correctness.

I, an atheist, will call it "Christmas" 'til the day I die. My views on the meaning of the season are similar to those expressed by Leonard Peikoff and linked to by Myrhaf, who also links to the Pope's most recent statement on the subject.

And I especially liked this post by Andy Clarkson, who links to and quotes extensively from Colonel Ingersoll's Christmas Sermon, which I had never heard of before. From the Sermon:

The good part of Christmas is not always Christian -- it is generally Pagan; that is to say, human, natural.

Christianity did not come with tidings of great joy, but with a message of eternal grief. It came with the threat of everlasting torture on its lips. It meant war on earth and perdition hereafter.

It taught some good things -- the beauty of love and kindness in man. But as a torch-bearer, as a bringer of joy, it has been a failure. It has given infinite consequences to the acts of finite beings, crushing the soul with a responsibility too great for mortals to bear. It has filled the future with fear and flame, and made God the keeper of an eternal penitentiary, destined to be the home of nearly all the sons of men. Not satisfied with that, it has deprived God of the pardoning power.

And yet it may have done some good by borrowing from the Pagan world the old festival called Christmas.

Thanks for the recommendation, Andy!

-- CAV