titus n. owl

I decided to try a bastardized version of the James Bond martini.

The traditional recipe calls for 3 parts gin, 2 parts vodka, 1 part Kina Lillet, and a twist of lemon.

Problem #1: they don't make Kina Lillet anymore.  You can get Lillet Blanc, but Kina had quinine in it, and Blanc does not.
Problem #2: we don't have any Lillet Blanc, either, and the liquor store was closed.

Solution: Lillet is sort of like a dry vermouth.  We have dry vermouth.  Quinine is bitter (it's what makes tonic water so terrible to drink straight, but also so wonderful to drink with gin in it).  We have bitters.

What I made: 5 parts gin, 1 part vermouth (mixed dry and sweet, because it turns out somebody consolidated both our types of vermouth into one bottle), a splash of Angostura bitters.

It tastes delicious.  It's bittersweet, evocative of suave nightlife and tuxedos and leather upholstery and an inevitable cigarette.

It tastes like knowing the girl you're about to kiss will either be dead, or trying to cause you to be, by the end of the night.

There was this building which was actually like a giant convention center, but the upstairs was a labyrinthine antiques store; the lights were out and it was haunted, but I had to go up there to retrieve my fiddle.  I didn't want to go alone because I knew that it was haunted - I had had bad experiences with its ghosts - so I convinced this like teenage goth boy who was hanging around with some of his goth buddies to come up with me because he was the only person handy.

So we went up and found my fiddle and it was very very small and we brought it downstairs and I opened it up (the case had ribbons tying it shut instead of latches) and it was made of toast, and i said "Oh. It's made of toast."

I went outside to try to practice it a little while everyone waited for a bus and the bus didn't come so the people who were in charge of the convention center decided that Justin and I and my friend Carrie and the goth boy had to all marry each other - big old four-way wedding - and I was not sure I wanted to include the goth boy but they were adamant.  The trouble, you see, was that I knew he was going to grow up to be a white supremacist.  I turned on a TV and it showed footage of the goth boy all grown up to be a white supremacist, with a swastika tattooed on his Adam's apple.  But he said he wouldn't really mean it and he would grow out of it, and we had to include him in the mass marriage anyway.

Afterwards I played my fiddle some more and somebody said "This is just like that episode of Days of our Lives."

the end.


And the other day I dreamed that I went back in time to the 1890s and went shopping at the Macy's in Herald Square, where I purchased a metal Partridge Family lunchbox before going up to the Ladies' Lacey Unmentionables Department (it was called such on the sign), where I met Kiefer Sutherland, who made fun of me for having a Partridge Family lunchbox.

Last night I was so drunk that I actually acted drunk on the internet.  I can usually hold my liquor better than that.  I was also so drunk that a bag of Cheez Doodles seemed like a legitimate thing to eat for dinner.  Luckily I was not so drunk that I woke up with a hangover, so I suppose it's alright in the end.

The past week has been a blur of alcohol, cigarettes, crack-addled fanfiction and sleep deprivation.  I worked 40 hours on 12 hours of sleep, plotted/engineered and participated in a sort of panfandom RPG story about Psmith, Marlowe, a Stargate Atlantis character and an illegal offshore cat-racing casino, killed half a pack of Luckies and most of a fifth of gin, and gone shopping for a dress to wear to a wedding and come home with a sort of flapper-thing that Justin's mother will probably disapprove of. 

How was your week?

Psmith mentions gin and ginger beer in one of the books about him, and I can testify that (assuming ginger beer and ginger ale are the same thing) it is fuckin' delish.

"Let's put trash in the trash can midget!"
"STOP CALLING ME TRASH CAN MIDGET!  I AM A HUMAN BEING! I HAVE A NAME!"
"Shut up, trash can midget! Have an empty coffee cup!"
"MY NAME IS KENNY BAKER, DAMN YOU"
"Trash can midget! Ha ha ha!"
"I AM NOT A TRASH CAN MIDGET I AM A REFUSE COLLECTOR LITTLE PERSON"

also it is fun to translate r2's beeping into language

C3P0: I thought that hairy beast would be the end of me!
R2D2: Beep blip whistle! [That's what your mother said last night]

and there is at least one instance in which it is very obvious that "BLIP BEEP" means "fuck you"