Drink Drank Drunk

$2 Milk and $750 Wine

2011-03-24T13:28:00.002+11:00

The Wall Street Journal reports that a Barossan shiraz is now Australia’s most expensive wine, at about $750 a bottle, or $1 per millilitre. Torbreck’s The Laird, 2005 vintage. Apparently all 400 cases have sold out. Quite a lot of it went to Hong Kong, where the wine’s importer commented “All the big collectors in Hong Kong, they’re not idiots, they know what they’re drinking, they know what they’re buying, and they love wine.” Or commodities.

Everyone – and maybe even the Wall Street Journal – reports that supermarket-branded milk is now $2 per three litre container, or $0.00067 a millilitre. Using this information one can clearly demonstrate the agricultural and economic differences between a cow in a paddock and a shiraz vine in a vineyard: volumetrically it’s 99.93 cents per millilitre, to the cow’s disadvantage. Thank goodness therefore for the two over-arching truisms of economics: markets correct themselves, and competition is good. But you don’t see a lot of milking cows in economics lectures, do you…

Yet these are piffling matters when one considers the crimes against humanity being committed by other arms of the supermarket gods. A chain of wine stores bought quite a lot of Penfold’s Bin 389 – or ‘Baby Grange’ as it is known, thanks to the fact it is only a tenth as awful as Grange proper. They then proceeded to sell it below the wholesale price they bought it for. This loss-leader mechanism is designed to increase foot traffic in one’s store, thus capitalizing on impulse purchases of products with more positively geared profit margins. Yet the man from Penfold's who runs the Bin 389 spreadsheet was not amused. He thought that this discounting would damage the integrity of Bin 389's brand. (What effect it might have on the integrity of Bin 389's quality as wine is all together another, less important matter.) He immediately instructed his staff to stop updating their facebook pages and go forth charged with company credit cards and buy up all the loss-leader Bin 389. What a decision it must have been for the staff: ‘Do I stop facebooking myself, or do I use the company credit card?’ Well they used the credit cards and bought back about a tenth of their stock at a price lower than they’d sold the stock to the wine store chain in the first place. Admittedly the economics are revolutionary, but this is cleary a win for the wine store chain.

It is not an original idea, however. This outstandingly innovative business concept mirrors that of many of Mr. Penfold’s grape suppliers, who, of course, are only to happy to sell Mr. Penfold and his friend Mr. Foster wine grapes at below-cost-of-production prices. It is the future of business and through it we might all yet be saved. There’s such romance and moral purity found in wine.

Where The Flavour Is

2011-02-26T11:43:00.001+11:00

Volume 49 of the Chamber's Winery newsletter has just landed. It contains sad news for sherry connoisseurs:

Our sincere apologies, particularly for our long time customers, if you missed this in our last edition but our Dry Flor Sherry is now only available in 750ml bottles. We no longer supply either flagons or containers. We fully understand the impact of this decision…

On the other hand the newsletter lifted any true gourmet’s heart with this recipe:

Cross cut a whole Camembert Cheese and soak in our Mt Carmel Port overnight in the fridge. Return to room temperature then add 125g of butter, beat then pat back into the original circle shape and encrust with flaked almonds. Serve with drinks.

Forget the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival Hydra, and forget little half bottles of Manzanilla, and forget Fair-Trade wafers topped with an artisinal anchovy fillet and a dob of tomato concasse, Chambers is where the flavour is.

Making Proper Use Of Sommeliers

2011-01-10T09:41:00.000+11:00

The new year started extremely well, with the following advice about sommelier use coming from the 1st of January's edition of my favourite piece of right-wing fruit-cakery, The Spectator.

My wife would like to get angry and throw a glass of wine over me; what would you recommend?

We can now all return to restaurants with confidence. What fools we have been in 2010 and further back, asking sommeliers moronic questions about food and wine matching.

The Ultimate Flavoured Vodka, and just in time for Xmas...

2010-12-24T10:45:00.005+11:00

SPUTNIK VODKA GLOBAL BRAND AMBASSADOR TO VISIT AUSTRALIA BY SPACE SHUTTLE

Sputnik Vodka's Global Brand Ambassador, Yuri Kalashnikov, will make a flying visit to Australia this Christmas – by Space Shuttle – to personally launch the new and exciting Hi-Carb, Full-Isotope, Onion-Flavored Vodka - Sputnik Cossack Maxi+ ™.

Mr. Kalashnikov will be visiting with his private football team and a collection of Eastern European typists and dictationistas. He will be available for interviews and photo-essays.

Sputnik Cossack Maxi+ ® will be released solely on-premise, at $98.17 RRP, and 110% proof.

Mr. Kalashnikov says he looks forward to "meeting of Australia women, for killing your wild white shark of water, and for to be eating much of your most fearsome bear - the koala monkey. This trip is pleasure, not business."

CEO of London’s International Soft-Drink and Spirits Competition ©, Charles Rupert-Roberts, has described Sputnik Cossack Maxi+ © as “the drink of the 21st Century”. Mr. Rupert-Roberts went on to say that “the Sack” (as Sputnik Cossack Maxi+ ™ has come to be known on the American College Mixology circuit) is “refreshing, demanding, easy, complex, versatile and uncompromisingly spontaneous. It is the essence of global liquor positioning.”

Sputnik Cossack Maxi+ ® and its secret, unique blend of carbohydrates, isotopes, and onion is set to bring the coming summer Down Under to life!!! Great on its own, it is also a perfect mixer, and stunning with food-matching, as an aperitif, or just on its own.

For further information, media packs, or hi-resolution images, please contact:
Fleur Slazenger-Du Pont: ✆ 0404 040404
For interview opportunities with Mr. Kalashnikov, please contact:
Bree Stuyverstánt-Stuyverstánt: ✆ 0414 141414
Read My Lips Media & Communications
2/14a Pashmina Mews, Potts Point, Sydney, NSW

***ENJOY CONSUMING MODERATION RESPONSIBLY***

Five Things To Do With...

2010-11-16T12:22:00.004+11:00

Lifestyle lift-outs love nothing more than a list. And I’ve certainly composed my share of such silly lists over the last decade. “Five Things To Do With a Throw Rug”. “Five Things To Do With a Vegetable Peeler”. “Five Things To Do With Pinot Gris”. Good Lord. There’s only one thing to do with pinot gris, of course, and that’s to purposefully mis-pronounce it at every opportunity: penis grease. One certainly wouldn’t drink it. Some things must separate us from the anmal kingdom, after all.

Today a colleague at my office pointed out another “Five Things” list. It concerned coffee; yet all the advice was wrong, wrong, wrong. Here’s the correct list:

Five Things To Do With Coffee

1. Put a deposit on it or ask about lay-by options.

2. Be seen with it, perhaps at the races or a charity event.

3. Keep the beans under lock and key, lest they be accidentally run through your $1500 espresso machine, thereby rendering it unphotographable.

4. Use it as a platform for such word usage as ‘barista’, ‘fair-trade’, ‘free-trade’, ‘organic’, ‘biodynamic’, and other such bits of jargon-monoxide.

5. Get it loudly and terribly wrong.

Dutch aboriginality...

2010-10-04T10:42:00.005+11:00

Andrew Bolt - or Andronicus Van Bolt as he is for some strange reason known in my office - is in trouble. Every second person you meet in the street is angry with him over his published opinions about Aboriginality. He wondered aloud if someone who has virtually no Aboriginal blood can claim to be Aboriginal. He wondered why some writers, artists, academics and activists claim Aboriginality when they were more Caucasian, at least in terms of their DNA, hairdos, looks and surnames. He commented ''I'm not saying any of those I've named chose to be Aboriginal for anything but the most heartfelt and honest of reasons. I certainly don't accuse them of opportunism.'' Which is the nicest way I've ever heard anyone ever accuse anyone else of opportunism in my life.

Yet this - I now realize all too clearly - is just a smoke screen. The real topic here is not Aboriginality in its Australian guise, but aboriginality full stop.

Andrew Bolt, born here in Australia, is of Dutch parentage. He once said "Like most of you, I'm indigenous. I was born here and have nowhere else to go." If one is indigenous one is born or produced naturally in a land or region. The term usually applies to aboriginal inhabitants or natural products. Lower case 'a' aboriginals are people who are strictly native, if we are sticking strictly to dictionary definitions. Which makes me realize that none of the writers, artists, academics, activists or Bolts mentioned herein are either indigenous or aboriginal, in the strictest sense. They are all - more or less - recent imports.

That we live in a time when it is trendier to be Aboriginal than it is to be Dutch should not cause us so much fuss. Perhaps if Mr. Bolt only said nice things about people more of us would want to identify as Dutch, regardless of how much or how little Dutch blood we had.

Greed Guides

2010-08-28T10:29:00.002+10:00

It is the time of year for greed guides. Recently Uncle Bulgaria’s Wine Companion hit the shelves, and hit them in a way that the shelves certainly knew they were hit. This annual guide to Australian wine is a wonderful phone book, should anyone wish to contact the wineries listed. It also subtly suggests those wineries which make good wine and those wines which are of high quality. It does this by giving every winery listed a 5 Star rating out of 5 Stars, and giving all the wines listed a score out of 100 points. This score is either 95, or 96, or 97, or 98. Or possibly 99, or 100, or even 101. I know it sounds complex, but with the book in your hands everything makes instant sense. Proper wines for proper postcodes. If only we had such a guide to boat people.

The other guide about to set us all violently right is The Good Food Guide. This is another good phone book, albeit a lot of the numbers listed no longer answer. It is also a very useful dictionary of synonyms. Scan through the book and you will come across more ways to say ‘ambience’ than you thought possible, which is a very handy thing. If ambience were mere ambience then goodness knows what might happen next. Restaurant goers might soon start thinking a potato is just a potato.

If only wine guides could encourage people to not think in terms of scores, and if only restaurant guides could teach people how to actually eat in a restaurant, then they might prove to be useful publications yet.

Black Tot Day

2010-07-31T10:06:00.001+10:00

On this day 40 years ago sailors suddenly had no more reason to go to sea. On the 31st July 1970, at 11am – or 6 bells during the forenoon watch – the Royal Navy ladled out their last tots of rum to each and every seaman afloat. An eighth of a pint – about 70mls – was the measure, although when rum tots first appeared around 1731 each man received a half pint – and that was a pre-Imperial half pint, so roughly 235mls.

Between 1731 and 1970 the tot went through various service manifestations. After a while it was watered down at a ratio of 3 parts rum to 1 part water, then 2:1; the tot was also broken into two serves – morning and evening; and it even had lime juice added to help prevent scurvy. A kind of prescription Mai Tai…

But in the end Britain’s House of Commons decided that modern war ships had too much gadgetry in them to be operated safely by drunken sailors. The tot was abolished, replaced by an extra can of beer per man per day. Which going all the way back to 1731 was what rum had itself replaced – a wine gallon of beer a day was the sailor’s right in the early 18th Century. A wine gallon? Yes, about 3.7 litres. Or 10 stubbies. It was small beer, though, roughly 2.5% alcohol by volume. Which I think makes it sound even worse. Try drinking 10 stubbies of light beer day in day out and see how intellectually uplifted you become…

It would be nice to think there is a navy somewhere still serving the daily tot of rum, but I’m not sure. The Royal Australian Navy abolished the rum tot in 1921 – the first Commonwealth country to do so. We’ve been a bunch of Nannies longer than I thought.

The Shockeroos

2010-06-14T10:47:00.002+10:00

The poor Australian football team. Losing 4 – 0 to Germany in the opening match of their world cup campaign will be a loss too far, it seems. At least if they are dubbed the ‘Shockeroos’, it will grate less in the minds of real football supporters than their current team nickname – the Socceroos. Football is football, not soccer. Even that Americanism, ‘soccer mom’, is more palatable than ‘Socceroos’.

A win was always impossible against Germany; a draw would have been biblical; a 1 – 0 loss would have been thought proud; but 4 – 0… Blame has to be found. And it looks like the team’s Dutch coach, Pim Verbeek, is the one. He made selection errors, it is claimed, and no one is prepared to forgive him. This is a sad state for this rakish and charismatic man to find himself in. How quickly the tide of public sentiment has turned against ‘Aussie Pim’, as he came to be known during his brief but very media-friendly engagement to Lleyton Hewitt.

Western Samoan footballer, Tim Cahill, who was sent off in the game’s 56th minute, will now miss Australia’s next must-win match against Ghana, known colloquially as the ‘Black Stars’. Cahill, or ‘Aussie Tim’ as he became popularly known during his brief but much admired engagement to Australian tennis ace, Lleyton Hewitt, seems the only player in the squad likely to score, and a 0 – 0 result against Ghana will not do.

But how amusing would it be if from Group F, the New Zealanders - I'm sorry, the All Whites - should get through to the next round...

Her Majesty's Birthday. Not.

2010-05-28T14:36:00.001+10:00

June is nearly upon us, featuring as it does Her Majesty’s Birthday’s public holiday, on the second Monday of the month. Her Majesty’s actual birthday falls – as all Australians know, of course – on the 21st April. Why Australia’s dutiful and respectful observance of its monarch’s birthday occurs on this June date is down to rather odd circumstances. Until very, very recently – 1936 – our monarchs’ birthday public holidays were celebrated on the actual day of birth, a tradition which goes back to one of the earliest tourists to this country, Governor Arthur Philip, who established the day in 1788, to mark the birthday of George III, which is – as of course we all know – the 4th June. Yet 148 years later, following His Majesty George V’s passing (20th January; His birthday was 3rd June, of course), the date was set in administrative stone, and for some strange reason those administrators chose the second Monday in June. Contrary to some popular theories held by silly old people, this second Monday in June is not the day formerly known as Empire or Commonwealth Day, which was Queen Victoria’s birthday, the 24th May. Be all that as it may, the second Monday in June is what we now have. I for one would like to see public holidays (without pay) observed for all our monarchs’ birthdays, going back to, say, 1603. It would amount to 17 public holidays a year, the majority of them falling in late May, early June, and November. Perhaps I am far too forward-thinking when it comes to recognizing these birthdays? Yet that is the bold spirit to embrace – to dare to dream of a better and more enlightened future for us all. An Australia anew.

Raise a Glass, or perhaps a Caffé Latte

2010-04-24T10:22:00.000+10:00

Poor old ANZAC Day. What a transformation it has undergone.

When I was little, in that unfortunate decade, the 1970s, Dawn Service was attended by old returned servicemen – men who had gone to war and many of whom had fought. Following the Service – at places like Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance – the old soldiers would totter off to a few pubs holding early morning liquor licences, where from about 7am beer was served and drunk.

As the decade wore on the number of diggers dwindled. Occasionally the ANZAC Day parade would get into the news, particularly if demonstrators placarded the march, complaining that it glorified the horrors of war.

By the end of the century, however, how things had changed. A new generation of Australians so distantly and remotely linked to war took to ANZAC Day like an RSL regular to his club’s bar. On the 25th of April at Shrines around Australia stood tens of thousands of people; Gallipoli resembled a Bledisloe Cup fixture.
With this popular swing in favour of the Day there have also come some strange attendants.

Near Melbourne’s Shrine sits Café Vue – an offshoot of the internationally acclaimed restaurant in Melbourne’s city centre, Vue du monde. It released this electronic message a few days before ANZAC Day this year:

“With the endorsement of the RSL, Café Vue at 401 St Kilda Road will be open on Anzac Day, Sunday 26th April from 5am for express coffee and pastries and from 7am with a full liquor license and breakfast menu. We are pleased to offer all serving and ex-service Defence Force members a 50% discount on food and beverage from 5am to midday.”

For some strange reason this information unsettled me. I turned off the computer and turned on the television. Very quickly an ad came on featuring General Peter Cosgrove, former Chief of the Australian Defence Force. He was sitting in a pub with a glass of beer. A couple of blokes stood in the background doing ditto. Cosgrove encouraged the viewer to ‘raise a glass’ on ANZAC Day and remember or donate to the "Raise a Glass" cause.

This is not a new campaign; indeed, “Raise a Glass” got into trouble in 2009 when the Queensland RSL refused to take part in it, stating that it thought it linked ANZAC Day to problem binge drinking. Oh, Victoria Bitter is the ‘sponsor’; the beer’s cartons come with commemorative decals for the ANZAC period, and the brewer donates money to the RSL and Legacy. They hope to raise $1.3 million in 2010.

I wonder what Sir John Monash – Australia’s greatest army commander, and the man who did so much to establish ANZAC Day and supervise the planning of Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance – would have to say about these new developments.

Mark Webber for PM

2010-03-29T15:16:00.006+11:00

"It's a great country, but we've got to be responsible for our actions..."

Even without context this comment should be applauded by any right-thinking individual. Yet this has got nice Mark Webber - the racing car driver originally from Queanbeyan in the ACT - into problems with Victoran government ministers and servants - AKA policeman.

Mr. Webber - upon returning to his home country to appear in the Formula 1 race in Melbourne - thought that Australia was now suffering from the affliction known as 'nanny government'. This is a condition in which citizens of their country are excessively governed and monitored and regulated by the very government they freely elect.

Mr. Webber made his nanny state comments in relation to speeding limits, parking regulations, and - one can only imagine - other aspects of local government road rules that so annoy any free spirit in charge of a motor vehicle. He complained about ''dodging the ridiculous speeding and parking [rules] and all the nanny-state [conditions] that we have down here in Australia''.

Yet he was also more broad-ranging in his thoughts:

"''I think we've got to read an instruction book when we get out of bed - what we can do and what we can't do … put a yellow vest on and all that sort of stuff...''

His off the cuff comments didn't suit the new moral crusaders, however. Taking time out from ad nauseum 'when-are-you-people-going-to-learn' remarks, various policemen and government ministers attacked Mr. Webber's free thought.

Deputy Police Commissioner Ken Lay said some of Webber’s fans were alive because of Victoria’s aggressive approach to road safety.

‘‘We’ve got probably one of the best road safety track records in the world, so I make no apology for our aggressive approach,’’ he told a local radio station.

No apology. Aggressive indeed. This is the voice of the self-empowered moral high groundsmen. Mark Webber made a observation, based on his experience as a international journeyman and - no doubt - from a fond remembrance of his younger life here in Australia.

But that has all changed. In the future whether young men from Queanbeyan grow up to become F1 drivers is neither here nor there; but if they grow up and cannot question the laws that govern their existence, then we might all just as well hand our car keys in now.

February: a Dry Area

2010-02-23T11:53:00.002+11:00

We are nearly at the end of February, and therefore at the end of the ridiculous month-long statement of sanctimonious self-importance that is Feb Fast. This cause sees participants abstain from alcohol for the month, and like Movember and other such awareness months, the idea is to raise money for charities which support people suffering from some sort of ailment or social disease, such as drug addiction, mental health problems, and so on. The outcome - that monies go from the private purse into these charitable organisations - is all fine and good, and Feb Fast has already raised a half a mill. But what an annoying month of self-aggrandizing puff the rest of us have to put up with, and not just from common or garden-variety goody-goodies telling us why they are not drinking, but also from would-be celebrities who use the awareness cause as a shameless, self-promotion exercise.

The Feb Fast website even includes a Famous Feb Fasters feature, to assist this strategy. One of the celebs is Angry Anderson…

Celebrity and charity now go hand in hand, particularly as charity is such an effective way to maintain a public profile. And your PR Agent will probably "do the right thing" and not charge you for letting the media know about your passion for high-profile charitable causes. So it’s a win-win for everything and everyone. Except perhaps quiet philanthropy. And publicans

Our Prime Minister's Wine Cellars

2010-01-19T10:05:00.000+11:00

News recently in from The Australian newspaper on the state of the wine cellars of our Prime Minister's two residences: Kirribilli and The Lodge. Apparently the wines are very boring and clapped out. That is debatable. Indeed, there are some more than drinkable Australian reds on the list - and a bit of good local riesling, too. The real question is volume. The Lodge has about 30 cases; Kirribilli a mere 17. Lord knows how they throw parties. Currently the Australian wine industry - which earns more than $2.5 billion in export per annum - is carrying about 100 million cases in surplus, thanks to a grape glut. The PM should show some leadership and start buying up.

Our Prime Minister's Vocabulary

2010-01-19T09:41:00.003+11:00

And the PM should also consider very seriously the concept of "Word of the Day". Unfortunately of late his vocabulary relating to adjectives of the moral high-ground has become rather repetitious, not too mention ill-chosen, and sometimes illogical. This, of course, makes the PM's comments very funny, at least to those people who still finds words amusing - as opposed to those people who prefer to use words for cutting and pasting into their CVs and job descriptions.

Recently the PM referred to the effects of a natural disaster as "unspeakable". He went on about these effects for some time.

In a separate instance, regarding what he and many other people in positions of power consider to be preventable road fatalities, the PM has the other day commented that a particular car accident was a "sobering" reminder of something or other. I forget now exactly what. Perhaps I was too stunned by his choice of adjective. The accident in question involved a now dead driver who had been drinking. Most of his passengers died too.

A Restaurant Guide

2009-12-23T16:13:00.000+11:00

This week two otherwise educated and charming acquaintances demonstrated in all too keen a way a new horror emerging in our tolerant society. They told me they were going out to restaurant X; they asked me what I thought of the place and what they should order. Of course, given my professional reputation for “blistering honesty”, I was not surprised by their request for information. I dealt it out and off they went, I hope enlightened.

The frightening problem here it that it seems people no longer know how to use restaurants. This may be because more and more people are going out to more and more restaurants – there has been a dilution of quality, if you like. Or it could be that what with our sleepless worry over climate semi-change we have lost a sense of proper etiquette and manners. This would be a terrible shame. I’ve always thought that come the end of times such things as manners, the ability to say please and thank you, not too mention correctly adjusted neck-ties, should be of the utmost importance.

Yet back to restaurant use.

Restaurants have front doors and you should enter them that way, and boldly so. Do not linger; if you are not attended to within 30 seconds or so, leave. Go home and cook yourself a proper dinner.

Of course one can make a reservation for a restaurant table. Always book under a leading restaurant critic’s surname, or full name if you like. Yes, this is very undergraduate, but one must remember what one is actually doing – paying good money and wasting valuable time out of the home, eating someone else’s food. Only a half-drunk undergraduate would do that.

Once seated refuse any offer of the menu and ask for the wine list. Order a pre-dinner drink if you like, but please be cognisant of the fact this drink will cost more than the main course. Restaurateurs have to make money somehow.

Once you’ve had a drink, ask for the menu. Do not choose what you rather ridiculously imagine you might like to eat, but instead employ a process of elimination to find what is safe.

Unless you are in Italy, do not order antipasto. Whether in Italy or not, do not order risotto. Risotto can only be cooked at home. (The claim that risotto should not be cooked at all I can understand, but I think that’s taking things one step too far.)

Never order anything deep-fried; that is what fish and chip shops are for. Do not order anything “inspired”: Thai-inspired mussels, Japanese-inspired chicken, Spanish-inspired ox tongue. No. Do not order “signature” dishes. Never ask a waiter or waitress what they think is best. Never order a “tasting plate”, and degustation menus are for self-important and pompous lifestyle warriors – who are the people one most observes in restaurants.

Ignore the main course dishes and if the restaurant offers “shared plates”, get up and walk out. Stick to the entrees. Order a light one for the first course and a richer one for main. Women may order a dessert course, but no matter what your gender, do not order cheese. It is always too cold, unlike the beer a restaurant might sell. Speaking of drink, order a bottle of pinot noir, or burgundy as it was once called. Wines ordered by the glass are an admission of failure and a sign of general moral decrepitude. Pay by cash and always tip ten per cent. Lunch is preferable; dinner brings out the amateurs.

And the most important rule: never go to a restaurant you haven’t been to before.

Bogus December Lists

2009-12-19T09:31:00.000+11:00

What is it about the month of December and the sudden appearance of so many bogus lists? Best Sporting Moments of the Year, Best Free-Range Frozen Turkey Buffet Brands, Top Ten Christmas TV Specials… These lists become a list in themselves.

Besides their obvious vacuity, the problem with these lists is that they rarely offer any educative thought. They conform to what is considered to be informed and intelligent, rather than shooting straight. A classic case in point comes from the perennial list of Best Books. For some strange reason James Joyce’s Ulysses is always near the top, despite the fact it is tiresomely long and rambling, and makes zero sense. People feel the need to demonstrate their literary chic, however, hence this silly book’s powerful list-iosity.

To this end the only list we really need is a list of things one should do their utmost to avoid or ignore, to wit:

Bono
Margarine
Discussion of climate change
James Joyce
The entire newspaper, excepting the Letters to the Editor
Brunch – whatever that is
Going out at night
Lycra cycling costumes
Most wind instruments
Balinese resorts

I could expand on these points, and joyfully so, but the sort of people I’m interested in talking to will require no explanation.

Shooting self-harmers and re-joining the twins

2009-11-22T08:50:00.003+11:00

It doesn't take long to skim through the office newspapers. They offer a pretty dreary account of alleged news. And the radio news bulletin in the work vehicle I cannot bring myself to turn on too often as I'm so thoroughly sick of bushfire-tragedy-catastrophe reportage.

Yet occasionally a news item or a headline can catch the ear or eye; and it can't but help bring a smile to my cranky face.

The big newspaper had this header during the last week:

Police Shoot Man Attempting Self Harm.

They have since changed the headline online to something less hysterically funny, which I think is a great shame.

Headline writers though are not the only ones unintentionally coming up with some good comedy.

After 32 hours of surgery the formerly conjoined twins from Bangladesh - Trishna and Krishna - have come out of their induced comas and have blown raspberries - or whatever the Bangladeshi version of raspberry blowing is - at medical staff. But that's not the funny bit. Now that the two little girls are awake and "neurologically sound", what have their nurses done? Pushed their cots together.

Working Up A Thirst

2009-09-08T15:02:00.001+10:00

At the end of a recent newspaper article came this one final hurdle:

“The Roy Morgan research was based on a telephone survey last month with a random sample of 687 people aged 14 years and over.”

One’s response to this information neatly divides humanity into two groups: those curious about the story behind the research, and those cranky about such drivellingly small research sample numbers.

I’m in the second camp, and I don’t think it really matters what this research was about. Yet to assuage the ever-curious let me tell: the research concerned “Two Million Australians [who] Drink Before Ten.”

Put this way the research seems quite damning. What sort of a country do we live in where only two millions of us are drinking before 10pm each night? What a bunch of lemon-tea drinking pussies we’ve become.

But it’s not that sort of ten. It is not ten o’clock in the post-meridian; but rather ten years old in the scale of life. The research indicated that two million Australians under the age of ten are drinking alcohol in some way, shape or form. And the concern extrapolated is that these children run a very great risk of developing drinking problems later in life.

The Church and the Government and some new regulations and federal health guidelines all had something to do with this story, too; but let’s put that to one side. I want to get back to the real problem. The research.

Firstly, I’m not going to be all hiss and spit about these findings – certainly not. Indeed in one regard I take my hat off to this man Roy Morgan.

Admittedly he had a month, but randomly ringing up 687 people over the age of 14 and asking them if they’d had a drink before they were ten and then asking them – should the response come in the affirmative – if they are now a barrister or are they now unemployed with a drinking problem, well, as I think we can all see, it’s top-rate data-gathering. Based on such data the research findings are as irrefutable as the existence of the newspaper article itself.

Yet on the other hand - what a world. What a statistical and interpretive achievement to bend a logarithm so much that it can turn 687 people over the age of 14 into 20 million Australians. And what a fabulous mathematical formula must it be to account for all of those Australian who don’t have a phone or don’t answer it – or who tell Roy Morgan to stop ringing them at dinner time and to please delist their number form his data base…

This is yet more chicken-before-egg sort of stuff. It’s designed to keep massaging the guilt-trip-come-moral-imperative of alcohol abuse along through the news media. No doubt such research keeps this Roy Morgan chap in gold-plated spats, but I wonder how it serves to save a single person from a career in alcohol.

Debonair - the Airline for Blokes

2009-08-17T14:01:00.003+10:00

News today that the trans-Tasman air-lift is going to drop in price. Australia-New Zealand air passage will soon be recognised as a "domestic" leg, therefore the ticket prices will be much lower. Good news if you're an early-retiree, or a sheep with a love of travel, or both. Also news that Virgin Blue's offshoot, V Australia, will fly to South Africa and Thailand. Ditto, hooray. Yet with all these improvements and lower prices I still can't help but think the airline industry has missed a big opportunity. And that's why I'm launching my own airline. Come Monday fortnight I’ll be breaking a bottle of champagne over the nose-cone of the first Airbus in the new fleet of Debonair.

Debonair will be this country’s first airline devoted entirely to blokes.

Businessblokes, tradesblokes, footballers, self-funded retirees, blue collar, white polyester collar, media professionals, and blokes from the agribusiness sector (formerly farmers). All blokes will be welcome; and I’m confident Debonair will be welcomed by all blokes.

This new airline has a suite of in-flight services that will certainly appeal to the bloke within each and every one of us. To begin with, we’ve revolutionized travel classes. The days of business versus economy are gone. Step into our Airbus and turn left and you will quickly find yourself in the luxuriant surrounds of Classy Class. Here, positioned around a large practice putting green, are 25 seats taken from as-new Holden Statesmans. Hostesses are all dressed in evening gown and are as happy to offer you as much cabana, cheese cubes and Crown Lager as you can swallow. Better still, all of Debonair’s pilots are former Australian test cricketers who, once the flight has evened out, are only too happy to wander about the Classy Class cabin, having a few Crownies with passengers and talking at length about their former sporting careers.

Of course, if this sort sophisticated travel seems a bit too rich for your liking then you can always buy a ticket for the back of the plane, otherwise known as Bloke Class. This is an entirely open-plan class around which runs a large horse-shoe shaped bar. At the very tail of the plane is a marine-grade stainless steel urinal. The bar is entirely complementary, which includes chips and beer-nuts. The only exceptions to this are the cigarette machines. These are bolted to the walls besides the urinal and can be operated with the aid of $2 coins. Should you need change to operate these machines then please ask our helpful barstaff. They are all young women wearing bikini tops and combat shorts. Should your enquiry be more personal ask to speak with one of the bar’s duty managers. These men are all former Australian test cricketers who will be happy to have a few beers with you and talk at length about their playing careers. For safety reasons no carry-on luggage or dogs are allowed in Bloke Class.

We’re confident that Debonair will enjoy clear skies and happy passengers, many of whom might just make our flights their new local. The fleet will expand quickly to a dozen planes by Xmas, after which time we are planning to pop a gaming room and a ladies’ lounge on each wing.

Roger that.

More thoughts on Le Tour

2009-07-25T09:06:00.002+10:00

I’ve got a very strong feeling that my six-month old son will grow up to take second place in Le Tour de France, twice. The basis for this belief lies in the fact that he has been whinging and whining solidly for the last three weeks. Indeed, put him in some lycra and stick him in front of a TV camera and you’d struggle to pick him from our Cadel. At least until the six-month old spoke – his voice is a bit deeper than Cadel’s. Then again, so are most people’s voices. No, that’s not quite right. I’m forgetting Pat Rafter.

Our Cadel has been a high-pitched monotone of late. “I can’t say anything about how awful everyone’s been because that’d be unprofessional…”, he bleats.

It makes for more interesting reality TV than Bert Contador’s lines, however. “Otra pregunta, otra pregunta…” has been all that he’s really said. He seems to be getting sick of sports journalists asking him tricky questions. But if he keeps replying with Otra pregunta (next question) then I can’t see how this pregunta loop is going to be broken.

The find in terms of telly talent, however, is a German bloke called Jens Voigt. He had a bad stack coming down the mountain on Stage 16, and was knocked unconscious; but they seem to have plenty of Jens on his pre-recorded sizzle reel to keep his growing number of fans happy. Jens does German slapstick to camera effortlessly; and his silly German voice is hysterical. He’s popular with Australian audiences, of course, because he is Australian. Yes, he spent about 3 and a ½ hours here back in 1999, visiting the Australian Institute of Sport, so he’s more Australian than Heinrich Haussler.

One disappointment has been the performance of the non-identical Von Schleck sisters, Venus and Serena. A lot of cycling fans were hoping to see these Luxembourgers power through the two halves of the draw before meeting in the Women’s Final, but as it’s panned out, all they’ll probably take away from Le Tour is the Double’s title. One other annoying outcome has been Mark Cavendish. That SBS should overlook the need to have subtitles accompanying everything the man from the Isle of Man says is somewhat ironic.

Le Tour

2009-07-13T11:03:00.002+10:00

Being a calendric sort of person occasions such as the solstices and the equinoxes always add a frisson of excitement to my year. But the annual event that frissons me the most is Le Tour. France’s national bike race. The Tour de France. And it seems I’m not alone in my enjoyment of watching slightly underweight men race bikes around Western Europe. Cycling is big. It is the new golf, as I heard someone say the other day. Indeed, cycling’s so big there are Australians now complaining about free-to-air Ashes coverage, as it is interrupting their TDFing. And the reason for this?

Unlike golf or cricket the Tour is hypnotic. One could assume it is all those wheels and pedals going around and around, but there’s more to it than that. The Tour seems to encapsulate a broader, more complete Frenchness – and SBS should be congratulated for this.

Firstly, whilst France is all about smoking, camping, and bicycles, it is also about food and wine. And Gabriel Gate’s Le Taste Le Tour is a TDF highlight. In the same way Marlon Brando became more like (and more of) Marlon Brando as each year rolled past, so too does Gabriel’s accent. At the current rate he will soon be speaking a mangled kind of Franglais neither a Frenchman nor an Englishman (or Tony Blair or Inspector Clouseau’s manservant Kato) can understand.

There’s also a strong travelogue component to Le Tour, and I love that angle most when it is practised by the warm-up commentator, Matthew Keenan. He is an encyclopedia when it comes to the race and the riders, but for reasons unclear he every now and then breaks his race line to inform the viewer about a chateau. “And the race is now going past Le Chateau Blancnoir, which was… built… by the… patron of Tarbes… Phillipe… Le Coeur… Rouge… in… 1382 when the chateau was… built.”

Keenan brings none of the tension and excitement of Le Tour to viewers like the two-headed commentating monster does, however: Phil Leggett and Paul Sherwen. They make the difficult look easy. It is probably impossible, in lay terms, to describe how these two blokes so effortlessly add such informed voices to the racing. Nevertheless, I’ll have a stab at it.

Leggett: “And here comes the Belgian champion Von Shlunk! He’s burst out of the peleton and he’s really putting the hammer down!”
Sherwen: Yes he’s put the hammer down, bursting out of the peleton, and it’s the man, Phil, I thought would do extremely well on this stage – the Belgain champion – Von Shlunk.”

This sort of language makes the rhetoric and oratory of Winston Churchill sound like an unsupervised kindergarten playground.

As much as we can bank on these re-occurring themes within the Tour every year, there are also moments peculiar to each Tour which seem to burst like fireworks and dominate Tour thinking for a few days. This year that’s what’s happened with echeloning.

I think the Sherwen half of the monster got the word out first, but then the Leggett half started applying it to anything that looked semi-vaguely-diagonal. The team cars were pretty soon echeloning along, as were spectators, helicopters, and the odd chateau. Interviewers started using the word in every question. Even the riders themselves began breathlessly spitting it out. At the coffee shop the next morning I’m pretty sure I heard a fellow customer slip “echelon” into his order for 250 grams of Free-Trade Guatemala Espresso Blend… The coffee roaster didn’t even blink an eyelid.

Vive le Tour.

Curried Egg Sandwiches and Psychotropic Dreams

2009-06-05T13:35:00.004+10:00

A 'friend of mine' often enjoys a curried egg sandwich or two at the end of what has otherwise been a long day of luncheoning. "A frugal, light repaste", he calls the sandwich; but it has an overnight after-shock. NO, not from his bottom, but inside his resting brain. Herein the curried egg sandwich plays merry havoc with the dreamscape, causing 'my friend' to experience dreams that even a poet might find a bit off-putting. Forget about the alliterative charm of "as green as a dream and as deep as death"; curried egg sandwiches make your dreams go all psychotropic.

Amongst my friend's medical advisers tumeric was labelled the culprit, and now we have quasi-scientific proof.

Murali Doraiswamy, MD, a renowned expert on brain longevity and mental health, is head of Duke University's Biological Psychiatry division. He has just released some research findings concerning Alzheimer's. Eating a curry every now and then can prevent this form of dementia's onset. The key compound in the curry is curcumin, which is an active component in tumeric.

Curcumin is said to prevent 'plaquing' in the brain, whereby amyloids can shut down gateways to memory function. In other words, tumeric is a solvent that unclogs the brain's memory paths.

No wonder we have sex dreams after a curried egg sandwich.

(Mustard powders - containing tumeric - can be found in most supermarkets, over the counter, and at very reasonable prices.)

D and Non-D

2009-06-01T11:05:00.001+10:00

I’ve become very indignant about the way everyone knows everything about wine nowadays. Rather than saying ‘yes’ to a glass of red or a glass of white, people now agonise over whether they should order the pinot grigio or the pinot gris.

In much the same way that the English novelist Nancy Mitford used ‘U’ and ‘Non-U’ language to help recognize the different elements in English society during the 1950s (that is, if you were upper class you were ‘U’, and you called the toilet the lavatory; but if you were lower class you were Non-U and said serviette instead of napkin…) I want to re-introduce some wine terms that might help fellow wine indignants recognize one another. Wine indignants? Yes. Wine indignants are people who are thoroughly sick of the phoney professionalism that’s crept into wine, stealing from it its dignity. Wine is increasingly not enjoyed, but moralized over.

‘D’ and ‘Non-D’ – that’s how we should divide the world of wine snobbery. Drinkers of wine – the people who enjoy it, and lots of it; and Non-Drinkers of wine – the people who agonise over it, in constant pursuit of getting the wine right.

So out with the nomenclature of the contemporary world of wine and in with some new blanket terms. These terms will help ‘D’ drinkers find one another across a crowded room. Convivial fellowship might then proceed.

Hock, sack, white burgundy, burgundy, claret, hermitage, tent, port – and champagne as a blanket term for all sparkling wine, of course... ‘D’ people will be from now on use these terms whenever they order or offer wine. On the other hand, ‘Non-D’ people will be easily identified (and ignored) by the use of their infuriatingly precise and geographically brutal jargon – champagne has to be from Champagne, and that sort of thing. The ‘D’ terms are a form of jargon in themselves, of course; but they are also determinedly vague, facetious and never – ever – serious. This is how I plan to use them.

Hock. Hock is named after the German town of Hochheim, in the wine region of Rheingau. Hock was once known as rhenish, but only very silly old men use that term today. Hock is German white wine, so use it as an easy term for all the riesling or semillon/sauvignon blanc blends you drink.

Sack. This was of course Falstaff’s preferred drink. As Shakespeare has him say in Henry IV Part II: “If I had a thousand sons the first humane principal I would teach them would be to forswear thin potations and addict themselves to sack.” Sack back in the 16th century was a pretty heady Spanish white wine, an immediate ancestor to sherry. Which is why I’ll be now calling the greater volume of Australian chardonnay sack. It’s heady enough, and with any sort of bottle age it looks worryingly like sherry. Sack is also quite a useful term for viognier, whether it is old or young, it matters not.

White burgundy. If you actually find a semillon/sauvignon blanc blend you like drinking, call it white burgundy; otherwise this is a handy term to apply to any dry white wine. If the grapes used to make the wine are semillon, then call it ‘chablis’.

Burgundy. This is red wine that you can see through. We drink a lot of pink wine, or rose, in this country nowadays. Call all of that burgundy. Most merlot is burgundy – albeit from a ‘good year’. Grenache is also burgundy, but from an ‘exceptional year’. Anything reddish in hue and from Tasmania is burgundy. I think you get the picture.

Claret. This is red wine that is quite dry and quite tannic. Anything that has cabernet things in it is claret. There is one sub-category: luncheon claret. This is old cabernet wine from what is imagined to be a poor year. Claret comes from the old French, meaning ‘clear’, or ‘light’, which tells us something. Keep all your claret in a cellar and only drink it when it is ten years old. Then it is light luncheon wine.

Hermitage. This is shiraz. Very simple. Why we ever let this term slide I have no idea. Forget shiraz; forget syrah; stick with hermitage, or even ‘ermitage.

Tent. This is a 17th century term for deeply hued red wine, from southern Spain. Tent comes from the Spanish ‘tinto’. It more or less means a red grape. But it is hot in Spain, and the grapes get very ripe. Hugh Johnson has recently suggested that the English re-embrace ‘tent’, using it to describe all the shiraz from South Australia, and all the zinfandel from California. True story. So the next time you order some Barossan red, ask for ‘tent’.

Port. We are now set to rename this wine style ‘Dry Red Australian Fortified Wine’. This has happened under a recent Australian/EU trade agreement. Forget about it. I drink port. I use a biro. And I hoover the carpets. Language is more powerful than bureaucrats and administrators. And drinking wine can make language sing. But now it is time for my breakfast glass of hock.

An AD-free ABC

2009-05-01T20:03:00.000+10:00

There are no ads on everyone’s ABC TV, thank goodness. That would be dreadful, and, well, too commercial. But how delightful to see, in between each and every show, those wonderful thirty second insights into ABC TV’s world-class, on-screen talent. They’re so good that, quite frankly, they should loop them together and run them as a show all in their own right, say at about 8pm Tuesday nights.

Drawing on their pool of ever-popular presenters, ABC 1, in an informal and yet imaginative, multi-media sort of way, lets viewers get a glimpse of the celebrity behind the celebrity.

So good are these mini, Dentonesque, none-on-ones, that I find it hard to pick between them.

Long-time ABC radio and TV semi-women’s-religion correspondent, Geraldine Doooogue, sets the general tone. Sitting at a table on her patio, staring blankly into the middle distance, she holds a pen over a notepad, waiting for the Muse, or maybe even Mr. Muse, to visit her. An audio thought-bubble then opens and she tells us something about being so something or other. Her message wistfully moves us thanks mostly to its diamond-etched clarity.

Then there’s Ms. Doooogie’s longtime colleague, Kerry O’Brien. He is a red head but he is not a woman. He asks the questions on The 7.30 Report. He’s been doing that job for yonks. Which might explain why he is not much good at giving answers. His thirty seconds feature him sitting at the 7.30 Report desk whilst the camera tries to find him through some TV studio equipment. He talks humbly of being so lucky to be so humble and that’s why he’s so humbled by his lucky job.

Another stand-out comes from the Australian cricket team’s vice-captain, Michael Clarke, who also has a job hosting ABC TV’s The Collectors. He is a TV natural as he has a fixed smile, which’s probably got something to do with being photographed alongside Lara Bingle all the time. In his ad – sorry, I mean personal insight – he tells us the secret behind being a good collector of things: “When I walk passed something I often pick it up. That’s when you know you’ve got a problem!”

A woman who is not linked to Michael Clarke, Myf Warhurst, energetically gives us thirty seconds of her time. Wrestling a couch and a coffee cup, Warhurst manages to think aloud about her unique qualifications to be on a TV music quiz show – “As a kid I didn’t listen or buy or have anything to do with popular music.” She does all of this with her mouth tightly closed, as if she’s just been caught by the camera after taking a long drag on a cigarette.

The only one in this Insight Series that I’ve got a small problem with is Peter Cundall’s – the former Director of Gardening. He tells us in a very Confucian manner that “everyday is a celebration of life”. Mmmm… Touching. But why did they have to put him into slo-mo in post-production? Old people move slowly enough, don’t they? Or are the test-driving some footage for their Vale Cundall special? I hope they broadcast the service.

The TLA/GFC/RTD Nexus

2009-03-11T11:27:00.000+11:00

Maybe it is the pre-mixed can of Bogun and Coke talking, but I reckon that RTDs are still on a roll. Despite our Federal government's tax attack on these evil, binge-drunk, violently-behaved beverages, they are still being created, as if from some kind of unstoppable torrent. Indeed, in so many different colours, flavours and silly names do they come that even a company like Hyundai would be shocked.

And the reason RTDs are still selling comes down to an odd nexus: TLA/GFC/RTD.

A Three Letter Anagram / Global Financial Crisis / Ready To Drink nexus.

Taken singly none of these TLAs really matter that much; but combined they bring to bear the power of everyone's inner bogun. That redneck snapping at each and everyone's heels. The linguistic shortcut that an anagram provides leads us straight to the antidote to fiscal uncertainty. Drink. Drink mixed with other drink. Drink and other drink mixed together in a can. An RTD. All you have to do is buy it and open it and drink it. Six of them. Then you swear at the government, fight with your mates, get thrown out of the pub, and - how should it be put? - become belligerent in your domestic environment.

This news is in no way new, however.

RTDs have their roots in cynical marketing and the stupidity of the masses. There is a neat Latin phrase for this, of course: Coca-Cola.

And if we are talking Latin, we might as well be in Atlanta. In Atlanta in the 1870s a druggist called John Pemberton was successfully selling an RTD called French Wine Coca. Successfully at least until the city of Atlanta decided to bring about a prohibition of all alcohol. The ban never went ahead, but in the lead up to its supposed enforcement Pemberton had to find a way to keep his business going. He removed the wine from his wine coca recipe and added distilled fruit essences. The formula already had kola nut extract in it, so Pemberton called the new drink Coca-Cola. Without the wine, the thing was a real winner, not too mention a real upper. Because it was a soft drink full of the coca plant's key attribute: cocaine. With no legislation for control of such drugs until WWI, it took off. Coca-Cola deny that their drink ever contained cocaine. I wonder if one day the RTD manufaturers of our own time will deny that their beverages ever conatined alcohol. Or that kids drank them. Or - worse than anything else - the drinks were really awful. To drink.

But they shoot Vegemite, don't they...

How to Get A Job In Wine

2009-03-02T14:02:00.000+11:00

Someone very kindly sent me a wine industry professional's CV. I don't know why they did; but the following line was in the CV's preamble (yes, CVs nowadays have preambles)

"Her professional mantra is to create innovative, effective and sustainable communications that result in tangible change."

Let us consider what this means, if anything at all:

professional: this means nothing more than someone with a job.

mantra: whether it be in its Buddhist or Hindi origins, or in management speak, mantra is basically about repetition. Original or valuable thought has nothing to do with the word mantra, hence:

The unquestioned and anti-intellectual link to the notion of creation: create

'Create' is a very strong word for someone to so freely use with relation to wine work; but they seem to like that word 'passion' too, don't they? Yet let us get back to the second, key phrase:

innovative, effective and sustainable communications

Talk about a crash-and-grab job-lot of words... Apparently the person behind this CV wants to talk to fellow professionals in a way that is new and in a way that works. Good luck with that. Plain speech might be one way to try it, however. And as for that stupid word "sustainable", I'm not even going to bother explaining the vapidity involved in its use...

All of this hitherto fabulous communication leads us to an important non-point:

tangible change

Leaving tangible change temporarily aside, let me say that I'm a big fan of intangible change, because no one seems to notice anything has happened. Often nothing happens at all, which is fantastic, not too mention sustainable. Tangible change, on the other hand, is always tricky to reverse. Being irreversible it is even worse when that tangible change isn't defined. Goodness knows what might come about when you hit the random "tangible change" button and then pop out of the office for a heads-up-touch-base-double-latte-a-cino.

So the CV's preamble might be better rendered thusly:

"My job is to repetitively talk to customers on the phone: as a result there will be an undefined change. Oh, did I mention the word "sustainable?"

Fuck a duck... Sorry, I mean I urge you to employ this person.

The Sydney International Wine Competition

2009-02-02T14:58:00.000+11:00

The 2009 notification to this spurious event arrived in the post today. Clearly their mail list is defunct, because there is no way I should have received one. It came, however, so in as much as I’ve been a recipient of unsolicited mail, let the following stand as an unsolicited response.

The parchment-style calligraphic invitation listed the Honorary Directors, told me about some sort of degustation menu torture, and added that everything would begin at the Shangri-La Hotel in Sydney. 10am for tastings of all the BLUE GOLD / TOP 100 AWARD WINNING wines followed by a "banquet". The word ‘DRESS’ then appeared.

Leaving aside for one moment that the Sydney International Wine Competition is - like so many wine guessing tournaments - nothing more than a solipsistic revenue raising programme, there is nevertheless the all important dress code, as printed on the invitation:

DINNERS SUIT / TUXEDO / LOUNGE SUIT

I take it that they are not planning to televise this event. It would look like the Logies - only the next morning. Should I wear one ensemble, or all three?

What one wears shouldn't be a concern in Australia; but what one peddles in the name of posh wine analysis is another thing. The invitation's garbled dress code was, it must be said, sign-posted by the invitation's very own fake gold medal sticker. Coming pride of place at the top of the document was the Sydney International Wine Competition's trademark stamp of self-aggrandizement. It is a sticker silhouetting a big-nosed toff glugging wine below an Errol Flynn moustache atop a thin bow-tie. The sticker is trade-marked; but there is no evidence of the responsible service of alcohol. Hence…

…back to spuriousness in it’s most vital wine guise: the Sydney International Wine Competition makes much of its wine-judged-with-food angle. As if judging hundreds of wines in one day is not enough, now one has to do it with a vertical stack of Confit Wagyu Liver just to be sure. I’m hoping that eventually Australia will run out of gullible fuckwits, and there will no longer be an audience, let alone acceptance, of this sort of food and wine insult. Oh, and if you’ve mistakenly not been invited and you’d still like to spend your own money on this epoch-marking event, it’s only $210.00 per person – but they do do corporate table group discount bookings, of course.

Tuxedo events in Sydney during the late summer when the humidity is at 100% and the wagyu cattle are running for their lives… All capped off by degustated wines… I wonder which table Dr. Moreau is on?

The 2009 UN Australia Day BBQ Plan

2009-01-14T16:51:00.000+11:00

I've got Greeks coming. Sarth Afreecans; Clog Wogs - or the Dutch; and there's an old Alsatian - a human one, not the dog kind. There's a Chilean. There's also a Welshman and a bloke from Chadstone, where the shopping mall precinct thing is nowadays. With all of this in mind I've decided to sensitively make the following sensitive sausages, in order to offend as many guests as possible.

Greek Sausages: lamb and ouzo and oregano
Sarth Afreecan Sausages: I'll Google a Boerewors recipe...
Dutch Sausages: I reckon Veal with Gin and Juniper berries; and maybe I should cook them in milk?
Alsatian Sausages: Pork mixed with pork.
Welsh Sausage: Seaweed cannot be encased in sausage skins, at least not out-of-season.
Chilean Sausage: Chorizo. So pork with too much Spanish Paprika and too much salt. And not enough fond remembrance of Pinochet.
Chadstone Sausages: Add the following to a blender - an old AC/DC record, an EH Holden fender, and a pack of cigarettes that has recently enjoyed a spray-tan. Blend. Ensausage. BBQ.

And I also reckon a 'House Sausage' is in order. The only problem with all of this wonderful endeavour is that once the BBQ is at operational temperature and the beer is at operational temperature and the sausages are at operational temperature, well... suddenly the sausages all look THE SAME.

Thank goodness this is not a metaphor for Australian life.