Amazon is pretty good with their kindle library, I mean there’s a lot of stuff made into kindle editions. Part of the reason for getting my mom a kindle is the sheer volume of trashy paperbacks that accumulated over the years, that needed disposing everytime they filled an entire room. I don’t mean to suggest my mother, a very well read woman, sophisticated even for such hearty peasent stock, read trashy paperbacks exclusively. Often her choice of book had to do with price, and, of course, mystery novels are her go to trashy. I qualify that because there is something horribly sad about middle aged to elderly women with a hard jones for trashy romance. Not disparaging sad, not Walmart-waste-of-meat sad, just the sort of you want to rent them boy friend kind of sad.
Oh, yeah, this entry isn’t about my mom, like everything else in the world it’s all about me. My mom, however, is the reason somethings go to the cloud and some to the device. T’any rate either by oversight or design (e.g. Unwholesome! Unclean!) none of the definitive books on whisky are in a kindle format. Most notably Jim Murrays Whisky Bible. Dude has drunk a lot of whisky, kept good notes and has less of a stick up his ass than I expected (in pipe related literature, hobbyists act like buying a pipe is a brave act of intense and sublime artistry and like they are writing about it for theior fifth grade teacher whom they have a crush on and mistake for Lady Ophelia).
The whole affair, the blow to blow details of which could make a dead man fall into a deeper sleep and become even deader, did produce two happy results for me. 1) Edgefield, a little distillery/vineyard/brewery in Troutdale oregon and part of the broader Oregon Business Mcminnimons(sp?), is listed as an up and comer in a book of international grand whisky’s and 2) Amazon UK actually sells booze. Not, apparently, to Americans --- ok, not to addresses in the States, no matter your nationality, and, I’m sure, if I had, say, an address in London they wouldn’t be all like “Dude, no. You’re an American. Just no. No.”
I used to go into Canada a lot as a young man mostly to buy alcohol, but, you know, Molson’s and Canadian Club or Canadian Mist or Crown Royal. I don’t really like Crown Royal, Club and Mist are both inexpensive wherever you get them, and Molson’s, in this little mid-westerns college town, was cheaper and easier to get right here. Oh, yeah, my point. I wonder if, say, Ontario has a better import relationship with Scotland and Ireland than, say, Michigan.
I was looking for a modest eight year old Irish called Greenore. My Whisky folks in the UK sent me a tasting Dram (obviously they don’t have the Amazon UK stick up their ass, or, you know, they are gray market pirates). It’s not like it’s rare or imbued with any extra-ordinary properties, but, I suppose, it could be small batch, and if you give the Americans a taste they want to buy it all (I say, an American in America in a paragraph about looking to purchase some). My UK whisky fairies don’t have a catalog, I think their main business is smaplers. When they are selling fifths it’s always the same stuff from their samplers, so, I assume, their dram bottles are their own, they buy wholesale, and whatever is leftover inventory they sell by the bottle. Their bottle prices are usually pretty good. They never had the Greenore for sale by itself. There are famous Irish whiskys here in the states, Bushmills and Jameson to name the two most widely recognized. I like Bushmills. I think of Jameson like I think of Sony; The product is good, the price is all about the name, I mean the product is good, not that good though.
Irish Whiskies like American Whiskies and most Canadian whiskies have been pretty dang modest, it’s only been in the last few decades that find really high end, special casks, single barrel, that sort of thing. The Scot’s have been doing this for a long time and have snobbery rights if they want them, sort of like the French with wine. AS the French have discovered in the last few decades, being old hands and snobby doesn’t keep you in the cat bird seat indefinitely.
The fucking Japanese are making really good whiskies now. As a nation they tend to be exacting and meticulous in their production, it’s not a stereotype of people so much as a stereotype of the work ethic of a governing body. I’m guessing Japanese soil is never going to grow the best grapes or malt or hops or corn or rye, but they sure can buy those things and make great wines and whiskies. The English can’t grow tobacco and yet Dunhill is one of the biggest names in the industry. Meticulous production of a finished product.
I lost my entire train of thought, I mean I started with something in mind, closing two ends of seemingly disparate ropes. I don’t know. The other end had something to do with e-liquid. All sorts of premium e-liquids are on the market now, most of them made in the USA. The FDA is is pushing a heavy slop bucket of poop around right now, regulations for e-cig related and hookah related stuff (it’s like they didn’t know specifically what to fuck with so they made it broad, stuff is damn close to the verbatim language). On the economic ramifications alone someone might want to ask them to sit on their poop and think about it. Yes, there are protests; ranting and raving vaping small government tea party tea bagging survivalist types, but, and to the more salient point, when these mother fuckers cash in their beer can deposits they buy a product made in America out of American components and made by americans --- see that’s the sort of thing that helps an economy.
As long as the crazies are spending money and not in office I don’t see any reason to regulate the flourishing e-liquid business. Nobody is selling to kids (even without a law in place, and nobody is objecting to a law being in place) and no medical report can actually verify that the stuff is dangerous, but, if it could, the real question would be is it more dangerous than smoking a cigarette, and the smart question is; how much of the money exchanging hands goes into the community? Honestly, grown ups are allowed to make decisions about their own bodies, government agencies, like the FDA, are supposed to making Greater Good decisions --- they have no medical reason to regulate and they have a big economic reason to leave the industry alone except for the normal taxation one levys on, say, a snickers bar, which is demonstrably unhealthy but is also approved by the FDA.
And I’m spent.
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