honestly , first wine I really haven’t cared for …
Month: February 2013
One Word Movie Review
really ?!?
Thursday Happy Hour
Sazerac Cocktail
It all began for the Sazerac cocktail in the early 1800’s when Antoine Amedee Peychaud mixed Cognac with his Peychaud bitters. In 1859 the drink was the signature drink of the Sazerac Coffee House in New Orleans, where it received its name. The exact reason for the substitution of rye whiskey for the Cognac is unclear, but the whiskey base is used today.
View Video: How to Make a Sazerac
Prep Time: 3 minutes
Total Time: 3 minutes
Yield: 1 Cocktail
Ingredients:
3 oz rye whiskey
3/4 oz simple syrup
Peychaud bitters to taste
absinthe or absinthe substitute
Lemon twist for garnish
Preparation:
Chill an old-fashioned glass by filling it with ice and letting it sit while preparing the rest of the drink.
In a separate mixing glass, muddle the simple syrup and Peychaud bitters together.
Add the rye whiskey and ice to the bitters mixture and stir.
Discard the ice in the chilled glass and rinse it with absinthe by pouring a small amount into the glass, swirling it around and discarding the liquid.
Strain the whiskey mixture from the mixing glass into the old fashioned glass.
Garnish with a lemon twist. Traditionalists will say that the lemon twist should be squeezed over the drink to release its essences but that the twist should not be dropped into the glass itself.
Daily Tao / 059 – Source
Wellspring of energy
Rises in the body’s core
Tap it and be sustained.
Channel it, and it will speak.
The source of all power is within yourself. Although external circumstances may occasionally hamper you, true movement comes solely from within yourself. The source is latent in everyone, but anyone can learn to tap it. When this happens, power rises like a shimmering well through the center of your body.
Physically, it will sustain and nourish you. But it can do many other things as well. It can give you gifts ranging from unusual knowledge to simple tranquility. It all depends on how you choose to direct your energies.
We cannot say that a person will become enlightened solely by virtue of having tapped this source of power; energy is neutral. It requires experience, wisdom, and education to direct it. You may gain power from your meditations, but it is possible for two people with the same valid attainment to use it in two different ways, even to the extremes of good and evil. Finding the source of spiritual power is a great joy; deciding how to direct it is the greatest of responsibilities.
Vacation
It’s that time of the year again –
truth –
Have you ever heard the phrase “you are who your friends are”? My mom used to say that when I was young and it always stuck with me. Once I grew up, I started to realize just how true that statement is. Along those same lines is a quote by Jim Rohn that reads “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”
So you want to live a happy & positive life? Being friends with negative people is certainly not going to assist you in that goal. Try to spend the majority of your time with positive people. Happiness is contagious. High-energy people will lift you up, while people who tend to be negative will bring out your cynical side.
Stay Happy!
Not an official Happster yet? Join us here: http://tinyurl.com/imahappster
Daily Tao / 058 – Opportunity
A green bird darting in the night.
Will you be able to see it?
Will you be able to catch it?
Cling to Tao like a shadow.
Move without a shadow.
Times of oppression and adversity cannot last forever. How is the transition made to new and better situations? In the midst of great difficulty, a tiny opportunity will open, if only by chance. You must be sharp enough to discern it, quick enough to catch it, and determined enough to do something with it. If you let it pass, you will be filled with regrets.
Stick to Tao like a shadow. Wherever it goes, you go. As soon as it throws something your way, catch it by sheer reflex. It is like the bird : If you try to catch it, you will miss. If you are always with it, moving at its speed, as much a part of it as its own shadow, then it is easy to seize it.
When you act, however, you in turn must have no shadow. In other words, what you do must leave no messiness, no leftover consequences, nothing that will haunt you later. That is one of the ways in which you avoid creating more bad situations for yourself : Your every movement is traceless.
Sequester and the GOP brand of Crisis, Part 1
gawd i love the Rude Pundit :
Sequester and the GOP Brand of Crisis, Part 1:
The Rude Pundit hasn’t written much about the sequester-mageddon torching the nation on Friday because there’s a part of his whiskey-addled brain that doesn’t believe it will happen; there’s another part that thinks it won’t be nearly as bad as the Chicken Littles on all sides, defense and non-defense, believe it will be; and there’s yet a third part that thinks, “Are you fucking serious? Are we really fucking doing this catastrophe dance again? Oh, fuck me with a rake.”
Allow for a moment of dime store psychological and historical synthesis here: Republicans crave crisis – it is their water, their air, their food. It used to be that we were in a state of perpetual crisis in our endless (mostly) Cold War with the Soviet Union. Look at who led us during the later years of it: Nixon, Ford, Reagan, with a brief detour with Jimmy Carter, who was attacked for, among other reasons, not honoring the crisis mentality enough (hence his idiotic, politically-driven boycotting of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow because the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, for fuck’s sake).
When the Soviet Union crumbled, the driving force behind American foreign policy, and, to a large degree, the Republican brand crumbled, too. Republicans needed crisis, goddamnit, threats domestic and foreign because without crises that required immediate action, people would realize, “Oh, hey, howzabout we spend some money on education or roads or some shit we need?” And that would be the end of the GOP. So we got Grenada. Central America. The Persian Gulf War. (You could throw crime in cities and welfare recipients onto the the threat pile.)
But it wasn’t enough. When Bill Clinton got elected, he was able to shift, at least a bit, the conscience of the country away from the GOP’s “Holy shit, we gotta do everything to protect you from communists” to “Why not see what we can do to make life a little better?” That doesn’t mean Clinton got it right (he certainly fucked up on a lot of things, like health care, welfare, and GLBT issues), but it was a change in the way that citizens and the government interacted. It wasn’t about constantly bugging out at world-ending nuclear nightmares, but, in a very general sense, it was a move to governing in the sense of running the country at a smooth pace, not acting like the whole thing was on the verge of collapse. So, of course, of course, Republicans had to create crisis after crisis, -gate after -gate, to bring down the President, yes, but also to keep the anxiety level of a large part of the population high.
Does it even need to be said that the Bush years, post-9/11, were one prolonged crisis? That terrorism was manna from heaven for Republicans? That war was the coolest thing the GOP could ask for?
Now, under Obama, with terrorism pretty much under control (even though, yes, yes, we have to remain ever-vigilant against threats, as we always fucking have, as every fucking nation has to), the GOP has needed to have another crisis in order to extend its brand of politics, so we have the debt, and with it the debt ceiling, budget cuts, intransigence against tax hikes, and more.
The point is this: since the Cold War, and for a large part of that even, and except for 9/11, nearly every crisis this country has faced in the last generation, has been manufactured by the Republican Party as a means of promoting its brand of conservatism, whatever that conservatism has been at the time – anti-Communist, family values, fiscal, whatever. And the current sequester and upcoming debt ceiling fight are part and parcel of that. No, Democrats are not immune to such manipulations (Gulf of Tonkin, anyone?), but since Nixon, that has been the way Republicans govern. If Democrats could make infrastructure repair into a threat to the lives of Americans (which they easily could), you would see the nation demanding something be done to fix roads and bridges. The GOP knows how to hold a knife to the throat of the country.
Which is what they are doing now, again, again, again.
The worst punditry going on right now ascribes blame to both parties. That is a lie. That is believing in the GOP’s version of crisis. If someone sets a fire, are you going to complain if the firefighters are yelling too loudly while they try to put it out?
The country needs to chill the fuck out. Republicans won’t allow that.
Daily Tao / 057 – Predilection
Those who follow Tao do so
From their own predilection.
There are no promises,
Yet the rewards are immeasurable.
Of all the spiritual traditions, following Tao is among the least popular. Its adherents are poor and veiled with humility. In comparison, many traditions offer heaven, forgiveness, comfort, ecstasy, belonging, power, and wealth. Tao offers only three things : sound health, a way through the bewilderment of life, and liberation from the fear of death.
That is why there are so few followers of Tao. There is no glamor, there is no congregation, there is no ranking. You are either in the state of Tao, or you are temporarily out of it. When you die, you die.
You have to be tough to follow Tao. If you can avoid being discouraged by poverty, isolation, and obscurity, you will find an unshakable devotion that will last your entire life, and rewards will come in slow and subtle ways. You may not be suddenly rich and influential, but you will discover, to your great delight, that there is a secret source of sustenance. Once you taste that, all your doubts will fade, and both poverty and loneliness will be easier to bear.
Daily Tao / 056 – Muteness
The more you dwell in the spirit,
The farther you are from common ways.
If you want to speak of Tao’s wonders,
Few will listen.
If you spend a long period of time in study and self-cultivation, you will enter Tao. By doing so, you also enter a world of extraordinary perceptions. You experience unimaginable things, receive thoughts and learning as if from nowhere, perceive things that could be classified as prescient. Yet if you try to communicate what you experience, there is no one to understand you, no one who will believe you. The more you walk this road, the farther you are from the ordinary ways of society. You may see the truth, but you will find that people would rather listen to politicians, performers, and charlatans.
If you are known as a follower of Tao, people may seek you out, but they are seldom the ones who will truly understand Tao. They are people who would exploit Tao as a crutch. To speak to them of the wonders you have seen is often to engage in a futile bout of miscommunication. That is why it is said that those who know do not speak.
Why not simply stay quiet? Enjoy Tao as you will. Let others think you are dumb. Inside yourself, you will know the joy of Tao’s mysteries. If you met someone who can profit by your experience, you should share. But if you are merely a wanderer in a crowd of strangers, it is wisdom to be silent.
my mostly unfabulous life 