So? Who Would You Rather Have A Beer With?

Personally, I don't drink beer. And, of course, that's a silly way to choose a candidate for any kind of office. But a piece in The New York Times about U.S. Presidents and their drinking habits got me thinking. About drinking. And Presidents. And stuff.

In the 2004 election, a lot of people thought that they'd rather throw one back with Bush (even though he had given up drinking decades before) rather than with Kerry, who they perceived as a flip-flopping elitist who would probably order Chardonnay, then change his mind and get Chablis. The guy speaks French for Pete's sake! He windsurfs! And he has a super rich wife, who probably wouldn't approve of beer. Or you. Definitely not you.

I don't know what Kerry drinks these days, but he claims he was drinking the night before he took the Military Aptitude Test, and that is why he scored slightly lower than Bush, who apparently could hold his booze in those days. This is known as the Great MAT debate, and the guy with an allegedly slightly higher score — but more important, who is the preferred imaginary drinking companion of many — won the election.

What's a citizen to do? This time, we've got one candidate, Romney, whose lips shall never touch liquor, or mine for that matter, and another, Obama, who doesn't really look all that comfortable with a beer in his hand. Although he has been known to imbibe socially acceptable quantities of wine, champagne, margaritas, even martinis.

Cheers!

News flash: people who don't have one special drink that they always order are usually moderate drinkers; most lushes are very, very specific. Before he joined AA, my ex used to order a Roy Rob, straight up, very dry, made with Cutty Sark. A lot of them.

Hmm. I have been known to order a very dry martini, straight up, stirred not shaken, made with Belvedere, extra olives. So am I in trouble? No, because I don't drink every day, and I also have the occasional wine, Scotch, and celebratory glass of champagne. The real clue is the extra olives: no serious drinker ever wants to displace alcohol by adding anything to a cocktail.

But the very pleasant thought of a martini brings me to the real reason for this post (you knew there was a reason, didn't you?): The article in the Times points out a really interesting face:

Presidents who drink . . .

Tags:

• f d r and martinis
• mitt romney and coffee
• non drinkers in the white house
• obama and champagne

Comments (3)

Did you hear the one about the woman and the 12 double-yolk eggs?

That was me! On my last post, 
It's No Yoke!

This blog is not turning into a health & nutrition site (I Can't Believe It's Not Butter is SO taken), but I see by your comments (and mine) that we're all a bit freaked about food.

John Sposato wants to know if the eggs — and I —glow in the dark. He also suggests that I stop shopping at The Chernobyl Poultry Market. Point taken.

Gary Poole comments that everything that was bad for you is now good for you, and vice versa. Yep. I've noticed that.

So, what's a body to do?

I have no idea. But I was told by a doctor of the medical persuasion to cut back on sugar, and this has totally bummed me out. I have a sweet tooth, and while I hate to call it an addiction (it is), I have given serious thought to joining Snickers Anonymous. What? There is no such thing? Are you sure? I thought I saw it on Facebook.

Anyway, I decided to give up chocolate, or at least limit its usage in my life, and I also started looking at labels for the sugar content of  other less interesting foods. 
WARNING: Do not read labels unless you want to become severely depressed.

Everything has sugar in it!

I exaggerate. A little. Water doesn't, and neither does watercress. But almost everything else does. Have sugar in it.

I really freaked out when I found out that . . . .

Actually, it's "yolk" — too many yolks. And it ain't funny.

In the last carton of jumbo eggs I brought home from the supermarket, all 12 of them had double yokes. The whole dozen!

Does anyone remember when getting even one was a rarity? When we thought it was a sure sign of good luck?

If that's true, a dozen lucky things will happen to me, although so far all I can think of is an unexpected $100 refund I got yesterday. And that could have been a coincidence.

Why So Many Double-Yolked Eggs?

What the hell are they feeding those chickens, I wondered. So I went to the modern equivalent of the Delphic Oracle and my not-so-new BFF, AKA Google, and here's what I found:

"Double-yolk eggs occur when ovulation occurs too rapidly. . . the result of a young hen's reproductive cycle not yet being synchronized."

Unsynchronized ovulation? This cannot be a good thing. Can it? For the chickens. Or us . . .

Who's Asking?

More important, who's answering? Other sites in the vast and wondrous world of the web, like Yahoo Answers, say that finding double yolks is "an abnormality that rarely occurs." Really? Then I just got a hell of a lot of abnormal in one little carton.

The whole event takes a sinister turn when you learn that some people view these freaky little ovoids not as a lucky sign, but an as omen of death. Yikes.

Other superstitions about finding a double yolk include: someone in the family is pregnant. Perhaps with twins. Double yikes.

The Poultry Pages (really) concurs that most double-yolkers are produced by young hens, and that as the chickens "become more mature, their systems settle down and this phenomenon becomes less frequent, or non existent." Oh yeah? I know an omelet that says different.

Eggs-actly What Are The Chances Of A  
Double Yolk?

The Daily Mail reports a woman in the UK discovered a box containing six double-yolked eggs, an incident that got the whole nation talking — or clucking, as the case may be.

The odds of such an event happening are one quintillion to one against.  Here's how you figure it: Only one in every 1,000 eggs is double-yolked, so the chances against getting six in a row are 1,000 to the power of six — or one quintillion. (A quintillion is a million million million.)

Holy Hen House! That means that my find should be in the Guinness Book of Records. I got 12, not 6. And damn it, I only documented 7 of them — 4 for the omelet (shown here), and the last 3 that were left in the carton when I decided to write this post. The other five were hard-boiled, but, I assure you, very, very yolky.

On the other hand, another British paper covering the story concluded that double yolks may be more common than we think, so we shouldn't whip ourselves into a frenzy as we whip up our omelets. Who knows.

Which Came First, The Chicken Or The Hormones?

If double yolks has something to do with ovulation, it probably involves hormones. We know that they feed hormones to make cows give more milk and steers grow faster, and we know that this is not a particularly good idea. So could hormones in our eggs be making those young chicks produce all these freaky eggs, and could this be anything but lucky for those of us who eat them?

I already buy grass-fed beef and organic milk whenever possible. Maybe I should start buying organic eggs. Ya think?

Although it's also possible that organic eggs are not all they're cracked up to be.

If I bought them, would I ever see a double-yolked egg again? And if I did, would it foretell death, pregnancy —or a winning lottery ticket? Hey, I just got a dozen eggs that beat the odds by more than a quintillion to one. 1000 to the 12th degree, to be exact, but you do the math.  After that, winning the lottery should be easy. . . over easy.

 

See: Life By Lottery

The least sexy sex I've ever seen – anywhere — appears on Girls, the much-acclaimed new show on HBO. The acclaim is deserved: it's original, funny, sad, witty, on-point, and well written, directed, and acted. The sex, however, is dismal.

Hannah, the lead character, is engaged in a joyless relationship with a guy you'd like to leap through the television and smack. He treats her like dirt and doesn't even satisfy her needs. "That was good. I almost came" is not exactly a glowing endorsement for sexual fulfillment, and that's about as good as it gets for Hannah.

If Christian Grey, the handsome, 26-year-old billionaire sadist in Fifty Shades of Grey (don't ask me how I know about this) calls intercourse without the whips and chains "vanilla sex," then these encounters of Hannah's are "sugar free and tasteless."

Okay, so the sex isn't great. But the least the guy could do is show the woman a little respect. And that of course, is partly her fault. She doesn't demand it because she doesn't expect it. And herein, my lovelies, lays the problem.

Wait a minute.

Am I taking "Girls" too seriously?

Is this supposed to be parody?

The entire economy would collapse tomorrow if women were satisfied with the hair nature gave them.

Satisfied? Don't be ridiculous. We spend gazillions of dollars on products and services to change our manes. We dye our hair, fry our hair, curl it, straighten it, streak it, bleach it, cut it short, grow it long, braid it, dread it (literally and figuratively), gel it, spray it, condition it — and only a serious Act of God will keep us from our appointment with our hair stylist. Sometimes not even that.

True story:

A woman of a certain age was getting her hair done. She started feeling chest pain during the color process, but said nothing. The pain got worse during the haircut, and finally, as her hair was being blown dry and styled, she told the hairdresser to call 911, insisting — no, demanding — that he finish the job. The ambulance arrived quickly. Too quickly. So the stylist accompanied her to the hospital, where she arrived looking pale but well coiffed.

In spite of this, or perhaps because of it (we heal better with a positive attitude and a good cut), the woman recovered and continues with her weekly appointment at the salon to this very day.

Our Crowning Glory. . .

Or a thorn in our sides?

My friend Susan swears that the world looks rosier after you get your hair colored, and who am I to argue. I'm getting mine colored right now, and I'm feeling better already. It wasn't easy to get here, either. I woke up this morning with the worst case of sciatica I've ever had. I considered canceling my dinner date and not going to the exhibit at the National Arts Club I was looking forward to. But cancel my appointment at the hairdressers? When hell freezes over.

Once, when I thought I might be having an intestinal blockage, I jumped into the bathtub — partly because the hot water eases the pain, but mostly to wash my hair. If I was going to the ER, it was going to be with clean hair. This is not quite as insane as it sounds. I have had these episodes fairly regularly ever since I had intestinal surgery, and the pain has always turned out to be a partial blockage or simply a bad case of gas, which doesn't require medical attention and is helped by getting relaxed. Like soaking in a hot tub.

And yet.

All women are obsessed with their hair . . .