Called Out!

Today in the Tasting Room, a customer asked me to define the wine term "terroir". I explained how the land in which the grapes are grown relates to their qualities. Rocky terroir or beach front terroir, for example. She still looked confused, so I shared the origins of the word, showing how it is related to "terra" meaning earth. Except that what I said was "Terran".

Her partner, a rugby enthusiast looking type, said "Terran? You mean like in...?!?" I said "Yes".

For the less informed, we were alluding to Starcraft, one of the best selling computer games of all time, which pits two races of aliens, the Zerg and the Protoss, against nomadic humans called Terrans in a futurist space war.

I said "Yes" and he and I started laughing really hard. Neither of us had to say anything else. We had both called each other out. The woman was like "what?" and he and I laughed some more.

Unintentional Comedy

Dealing woth Dyslexia si hrad.

Louisiana: Creative Whirlpool of Backwater Literature: "My New Hound Treed a Coon"

Hank Benson here, formerly Hans Sprungfeld. My current job consists of reading and grading 8th grade essays from Louisiana. Part of their LEAP standardized test, these kids have to write about how somethings are not as they seem. I'd say about one out of every fifteen essays actually addresses the topic given to them. The rest of the essays consist of horrifying glimpses into post Katrina life, explaining the art of convincing your step dad to buy you another four wheeler even though you just got your other one stuck in the swamp, or kids' utter disappointment with the film Norbit. I'd like to share a few excerpts that I found to be a cut above the rest. Faulkner, McCarthy, and Civil War history buff Shelby Foote would be proud of the state of ole' southern writing among Bayou youth. Hope you enjoy:

"My dad brought home our new hound the other day. We went coon hunting with him, my dad pushed him through the woods in the wheel barrow, he started barking to our right. Come to find out, he'd just treed his first coon."

"One part of my life that I really hate right now is that my head is shaved, thanks to my brother's stupid, idiot friend Rooster. Rooster is 21, but he acts like he's 2. I really freaking miss my hair so bad, I am like really mad and angry and didn't even want to come to school today and take this dumb test. I hate being bald as heck, I want to just go and shave Rooster's god freaking hair, like he had just done to me while I was sleeping."

"My hamster is really weird. He chews threw wood and escapes all the time. My mom caught him with the plunger. His name is Hamitario."

"The event I made was a shank it look stooped it was stooped, for my safety I made a home made shank."

That's just a taste. The South does not appear to be risin' any time soon. God help public schools.

--Hankers Benson.

The Spread of McCarthyism

My friends, finally the rest of the world is discovering the genius that is Cormac McCarthy. I guess all it takes is the Oprah vote. After a professional writing career spanning over four decades, Cormac has won the Pulitzer prize, along with the saxaphone player from The Mars Volta.

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/story/2007/04/16/2007-pulitzer-prize.html

Typical Liberal Bullshit

It is so typical of Dan to complain about taxation, or about government in general for that matter. Dan likes to complain because Dan takes his freedoms for granted. The silver spoon in Dan's hand at birth was more like a silver spade, with gold leaf, and his name "Dan Scorpio Baxter" engraved right on the handle. That silver spade was undoubtedly placed in his hands for the sole purpose of digging the graves of all the poor working men out there. But I want to ask Dan, and all of you, where would we be without taxes? Have you ever heard of the Wild West? Bandits would go around and shoot anyone they pleased. The old ranchers would come out of their house and shoot at any strangers that came onto the property, so terrified were they of the vicious bandits that murdered without remorse. Well, one day some guy with a handlebar moustache out in Washington D.C. decided that he should start taxing the western territories, to get more money to buy pocketwatches and monocles and other goods to clip to his vest with a fine gold chain. To get these taxes back to Washington, Abraham Lincoln invented stage coaches and treasure chests. He put the taxes in the stage coaches and right away the bandits stopped killing ranchers and started robbing the stagecoaches. If not for taxes, your ancestors would be in a grave right now.

It's okay to feel good about yourself once in awhile

This post, surprisingly, will not be about masturbation. What I'm talking about is described in this article from the BBC about how some anti-Americanism is misguided. Now I immediately have to backtrack quite a bit and say that first of all, the article is well-written only in the sense that the dude who wrote it is most likely British and therefore automatically gets a leg up on making the English language his bitch, but does not fully give examples of or flesh out his point. Also, I tend to be of the opinion that some anti-Americanism, ironically (for me at least) the snooty french stuff in particular, does make some very valid points. That being said, this is a worthy topic because as recent students of a liberal liberal arts college and human beings alive in a time of great international, worldwide geopolitical divides and instability, we are bombarded with this kind of stuff 'round the clock. Men who are not robots will eventually cave into this thinking and mindset and forget that for the most part, in the long and storied history of world powers, America is actually one of the most benign and peaceful and does a lot of good in the world. During my recently concluded travels through Southeast Asia I remember a brief conversation I had in Vietnam with a man. It started like most do, with the Asian person using their painfully limited amount of English to ask a basic question: "where you from?" "America," I replied. "Ohhhhhh America," he and most others would say, then think, using the limited amount of history and education they had would say something else like "very cool" or "oh". Anyways, this guy pondered my place of origin for awhile and like any Vietnamese would have the right to say, started with, "America love war very much," to which I had to slightly lower my head and solemly agree, but then he followed that up with, "but America mostly good."

The Ultimate Busker

This story befuddles me.

What happens when you put one of the world's best violin virtuosos in a busy metro? Will his impeccable skill, or 3.5 million dollar violin, attract the attention of the rush hour crowd?

This is a very long read. If you're short on time, there are 4 embedded videos. Just watch those--and cry for humanity.

Children=hard drugs, news fun and Darkness of the Week!

Kids are truly ridiculous.

This past week I was working at a field-trip based spring break camp mainly with kindergarten and first graders which led me to the conclusion that being a child at that age is, for the most part, totally akin to being on really powerful mind-altering drugs. Young kids who have learned to talk but not to reason say things that are so mind-blowingly insane that there would be no reason to believe them if not for the conviction in their eyes. I mean there is something alternately beautiful and terrifying about a screaming 6 year old running up to you yelling, "save me from the dragons" and meaning all of it. Reality and the encroachment of years on our lives and minds seem to chip away at the all powerful imagination of the early years. Nowadays, if we wanna really be superheros and save the world we need LSD or other things like that but when we were 6 we just need a small towel and a space under a table.

News is truly ridiculous.

I think this almost ended in an actual fight.

and I'll withhold any opining and leave the fun to our discerning readers.

and now...The Monstroblog's newest feature: Darkness of the Week

This week's DOW centers again on my work with children. "Billy" and "Jimmy" (names have been changed because I can't fucking remember them) were changing back into their clothes after swimming in the afternoon. Billy was a bully and Jimmy was a smallish kid who got bullied a lot. Billy pulled out his underwear to reveal that he had large poop stains in them. Jimmy's underwear only had a few drops of urine. Billy said to Jimmy, "These are yours, put them on" and gave him the poopy underwear. "No they're not," said Jimmy. "Put them on anyway and give me yours," Billy demanded. At this point I stepped in as Jimmy was about to put on Billy's underwear and asked what was going on and informed Billy he couldn't give Jimmy his soiled tighty whiteys. "Oh he'll put them on though, trust me, I told him to," Billy said. Jimmy nodded.

Taxation without Conflagration

Yesterday I wanted to throw my laptop out the window.

Taxes are bullshit.

Not the concept of government taxation, but the way in which it is carried out.

I believe that the government is purposefully trying to take more of your money than they should legally be allowed to. Here's how it works:

Your money is taken from you by the government every time you get a paycheck. At the end of the year, if you are a poor college graduate with loans up the WSU, the government is supposed to give some of that money back. In order to get the money back, however, you must complete a gauntlet of bullshit. The government knows that most people do not have degrees in accounting and the time and know-how to learn complex tax codes. They therefore reinforce the complexity of the system so that people, instead of being able to clearly state their income level, are driven mad.

Do you get that? Paying taxes is confusing on purpose because the government wants to rip us off! That's like when your dad promised to pay you for mowing the lawn, but they he gave you the money in Thai baht and made you go convert it to cash yourself.

AHHHRG!