Scarlet Fair

An improvisational tune in the form of a lion,
A mountain of gold and a deep side of silk
Tell me who found me when rolling down hills
Tears and salt and horoscopes dripping of fluorescence
Spices and herbs with the sun and the shade
The friends of friends who know the Earth
It's been a long time since the road found me
The road found a hand and came to life with me in its grasp
Flutes with swirls of vision, confusion and wisdom
The blandness forever accepted in the state of the spirit
The bliss of eternity and the fetus of today
A star winked with a hush of wind
The love and the stellar, the food and the wine
Smoking and sucking the black fog of vine
Answering to one, and all, the truth that isn't
A treasure of hope and a sight of the blind
Twisted seeds of dreams in the day, awake
Flashed to split me all to pieces
Naked in the abyss and yet
Cloaked in the transcendent.

A Quick Note on Absinthe

First off, I'll try my best to improvise historical accuracy. Afterall, the point of this article is that, for a drink of such history and mystery, few attempt to sort out fact from fiction.

The origins of absinthe ("the green fairy") are strongly associated with its chief ingredient -- the thujone-containing wormwood. (Wormwood's supposed "medicinal use" can be traced back to ancient times, but I won't elaborate 'cause I don't actually know the history.) Thujone is the chemical of controversy for absinthe; specifically thujone's psycho-active properties. No doubt various teas, serums, and other concoctions had been been made over the years, but it was in Switzerland in the late 1700's when a doctor -- Pierre Ordinaire -- first patented the recipe. What began as medecine soon exploded into a mysterious European spirit, especially hip with those who fancied themselves artists. The unmistakably green beverage reached popular status in the mid-1800's, and was a source of inspiration and debauchery throughout France, Spain, and select locations in the United States and the now Czech Republic region. The long and short of it is that absinthe's notoriously high alcohol content combined with the insidious myths about wormwood, created an image of green devilry -- a product sure to make a man into a beast, to render one's brain poisoned, to make a helpless addict out of all who dared to partake! Countless stories of artists turned insane, and madmen who mass-murdered post-green-fairy did nothing to help the case. Thus, by 1915 it was banned in America, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands and a handful of other countries, now under the influence of the temperance zeitgeist.

It is interesting to note that although absinthe was banned primarily because of the wormwood factor, another very popular drink, also containing wormwood, has been around throughout the ages without controversy -- vermouth. (German: Vermut, meaning "worm-wood")... Hahaha!

And of course most people now know that some form absinthe can be found in almost every country that alcohol is sold. A few years ago everyone was excited about fancy little absinthe kits being sold at Christmas time. "Absente" was the brand, I think, and along with a nice box, it came with a novelty "absinthe spoon"(traditional preparation up next). But very shortly afterwards, everyone found out this wasn't "real" absinthe. Sure it had the flavour and consistency -- milky, oily, anise-tinged -- but word got around that this one bitched-out on the wormwood factor. Can you believe that they chose southern wormwood (an obsolete relative) in the recipe to get around the legal issues (still in place)? Bastards! Thus began the new trend -- finding "real" absinthe! And soon enough, the big wig arrived -- more or less.

Traditional absinthe is transparent in the bottle, usually with a subtle to strong green hue. The "traditional" method of serving absinthe is by pouring a portion into a glass (preferably an absinthe glass), resting the slotted-spoon on top of the glass, placing one or two sugar cubes on the spoon, and slowly trickling cold water over the spoon. Here the connoisseur will examine the louche (fogging and clouding) as the water and absinthe mix. The louche-effect comes from the natural herbal oils contained in the spirit, which are not soluble in the water. (A similar effect can be observed with ouzo and water.) In my own experience -- consisting of copious drinking and lazy internet researching -- the taste is heavily influenced by the anise (reminiscent of black liquorice), the wormwood (bitterness), and bunch of other more complex sweet and herbal flavors. As well, every good absinthe I've ever tried managed to hide the alcohol flavour altogether. The sensation is smooth, thick, and the drink penetrates your taste buds long after swallowing. The effects are delayed -- so drink cautiously. Even at 136 proof, you'll be well into your second drink before the first begins to hits you. I can't say for certain if there's any distinct psycho-active effects -- the wise truth is that the alcohol will get to you far before any effects linked to the herbs. The point being, and the motivation for this article -- pop-culture in the last few years remarketed absinthe and helped spread lame misconceptions of la fée verte.

Sometime in the 1990's, the Czech Rebuplic began manufacturing and marketing "bohemian-style" absinth (the -e is usually dropped of the spelling on Czech and German brands). The bohemian style is the stuff most marketed as "REAL!" The bottle stands out, as the green is so green that it simply cannot be natural (most aren't) -- it glows, and is almost metallic in its alienness. Bohemian absinthes typically contain little to no anise. In fact, the only real similarities between these varieties and those mentioned earlier are the colour, the wormwood, and the alcohol content. (Mind you, this could very well be an authentic variety of the drink. I am no snob; in fact, I'm quite easy to please. But...) Often times these absinthes are produced simply by infusing high-proof alcohol with wormwood and tweaking the flavour and colour artificially. Oh, and because they aren't full of herby goodness, they don't louche when mixed with water. To compensate for the lack of fun obtained by louching -- (that sounds weird) -- they implemented the oldest marketing trick in the book: FIRE. The "flaming sugar" absinthe ritual -- which, check any sources, is anything but traditional (actually most sources link it to an advertising campaign in the mid-1990's) -- is the one guaranteed to be in the movies. Fire is this poseur-absinthe's equivalent to Corona's lime slice (but at least the lime slice tastes good, and compliments the drink). I cringe when I see the ritual done... They dip the the spoon and sugar cube in the absinthe then light it up, supposedly letting the sugar "caramelize" and drip into the beverage. And that's not enough for some. Some insist on letting the beverage itself burn with that chic blue flame. I cringe because you've payed so much for this beverage -- believe me, you have -- and you're willing sit and watch its precious ethanol content go up in... Invisible vapour!

(Some even ruin the spirit further by "shooting" it, straight up, cringing, suppressing nausea, and exclaiming: "This better make me see shit!" But now I'm just attacking a social group.) D'accord--

Try it straight if you must. Some people prefer it this way, I guess. Try the flame as well, I guarentee you'll be disappointed -- I was. But do yourself, and the drink, the favour of attempting to recreate the tradition. Get yerself a bottle that at least claims to be distilled (the compliment to the dreaded ethanol infused variety) and avoid anything that looks like this:

Instead, try finding one that looks more like this:


In a positive note, it seems that the trendiness is having some sway in the law books. Absinthe is pretty much legal anywhere in Canada now, although it is hard to find a precise and credible breakdown of the details. America supposedly still prohibits it, but it seems readily enough available down there as well. One can find it nearly anywhere in Europe, but here is another case of caveat emptor: The fake absinthe's are more easily sold, for the obvious reasons of looking so strikingly extreme and unique, and thus the shops oriented towards tourists will sell these lower quality brands. (In France, the law appears to be such that one can produce absinthe for export, but that selling the drink within the country is illegal. This made me think twice about what was in those bottles labelled as absinthe in a shop window in Cannes.) If you want to find a good absinthe, I'd recommend going to the liquor store in the supermarket.

Has anyone ever died from drinking absinthe? Considering the alcohol content, I'm gonna guess it has probably played some part. I know with certainty that guinea pigs (or some other poor creature) have been poisened to death from thujone, by scientists demonstrating their point in a very Thomas Edison-like manner, but so long as you don't try to make your own absinthe -- there are myriad internet links showing you how, and sadly only a few warning of the danger of attempting to do so -- you'll probably be safe.

I can tell you though, in all sincerely, that sitting down before an artistic endeavor with the green fairy nearby will take you take you back in time. It may not be the chemicals or the ethanol or the herbs, but somehow you'll become part of a post-impressionist painting, if only for a short time.

"The Awful German Language"

Lately, I've returned to my attempt at obtaining a small grasp of the German language. Things are going relatively well, and I'm having a little fun. (Who knows if I'll keep it up long enough to be of any use...)

In my pursuit of self-teaching, I came across an hysterical essay written by Mark Twain -- it is very amusing for someone learning German, or really, any English-speaking person learning a second language from scratch. The whole thing has the feel of having been written all in one sitting, in that its honesty and flying emotions seem unedited. It is educational and hilarious. Here's the gist of it:

I went often to look at the collection of curiosities in Heidelberg Castle, and one day I surprised the keeper of it with my German. I spoke entirely in that language. He was greatly interested; and after I had talked a while he said my German was very rare, possibly a "unique"; and wanted to add it to his museum.

If he had known what it had cost me to acquire my art, he would also have known that it would break any collector to buy it. Harris and I had been hard at work on our German during several weeks at that time, and although we had made good progress, it had been accomplished under great difficulty and annoyance, for three of our teachers had died in the mean time. A person who has not studied German can form no idea of what a perplexing language it is.

Surely there is not another language that is so slipshod and systemless, and so slippery and elusive to the grasp. One is washed about in it, hither and thither, in the most helpless way; and when at last he thinks he has captured a rule which offers firm ground to take a rest on amid the general rage and turmoil of the ten parts of speech, he turns over the page and reads, "Let the pupil make careful note of the following exceptions." He runs his eye down and finds that there are more exceptions to the rule than instances of it. So overboard he goes again, to hunt for another Ararat and find another quicksand. Such has been, and continues to be, my experience. Every time I think I have got one of these four confusing "cases" where I am master of it, a seemingly insignificant preposition intrudes itself into my sentence, clothed with an awful and unsuspected power, and crumbles the ground from under me. For instance, my book inquires after a certain bird -- (it is always inquiring after things which are of no sort of consequence to anybody): "Where is the bird?" Now the answer to this question -- according to the book -- is that the bird is waiting in the blacksmith shop on account of the rain. Of course no bird would do that, but then you must stick to the book. Very well, I begin to cipher out the German for that answer. I begin at the wrong end, necessarily, for that is the German idea. I say to myself, "Regen (rain) is masculine -- or maybe it is feminine -- or possibly neuter -- it is too much trouble to look now. Therefore, it is either der (the) Regen, or die (the) Regen, or das (the) Regen, according to which gender it may turn out to be when I look. In the interest of science, I will cipher it out on the hypothesis that it is masculine. Very well -- then the rain is der Regen, if it is simply in the quiescent state of being mentioned, without enlargement or discussion -- Nominative case; but if this rain is lying around, in a kind of a general way on the ground, it is then definitely located, it is doing something -- that is, resting (which is one of the German grammar's ideas of doing something), and this throws the rain into the Dative case, and makes it dem Regen. However, this rain is not resting, but is doing something actively, -- it is falling -- to interfere with the bird, likely -- and this indicates movement, which has the effect of sliding it into the Accusative case and changing dem Regen into den Regen." Having completed the grammatical horoscope of this matter, I answer up confidently and state in German that the bird is staying in the blacksmith shop "wegen (on account of) den Regen." Then the teacher lets me softly down with the remark that whenever the word "wegen" drops into a sentence, it always throws that subject into the Genitive case, regardless of consequences -- and that therefore this bird stayed in the blacksmith shop "wegen des Regens."

N. B. -- I was informed, later, by a higher authority, that there was an "exception" which permits one to say "wegen den Regen" in certain peculiar and complex circumstances, but that this exception is not extended to anything but rain.

There are ten parts of speech, and they are all troublesome. An average sentence, in a German newspaper, is a sublime and impressive curiosity; it occupies a quarter of a column; it contains all the ten parts of speech -- not in regular order, but mixed; it is built mainly of compound words constructed by the writer on the spot, and not to be found in any dictionary -- six or seven words compacted into one, without joint or seam -- that is, without hyphens; it treats of fourteen or fifteen different subjects, each inclosed in a parenthesis of its own, with here and there extra parentheses which reinclose three or four of the minor parentheses, making pens within pens: finally, all the parentheses and reparentheses are massed together between a couple of king-parentheses, one of which is placed in the first line of the majestic sentence and the other in the middle of the last line of it -- after which comes the VERB, and you find out for the first time what the man has been talking about; and after the verb -- merely by way of ornament, as far as I can make out -- the writer shovels in "haben sind gewesen gehabt haben geworden sein," or words to that effect, and the monument is finished. I suppose that this closing hurrah is in the nature of the flourish to a man's signature -- not necessary, but pretty. German books are easy enough to read when you hold them before the looking-glass or stand on your head -- so as to reverse the construction -- but I think that to learn to read and understand a German newspaper is a thing which must always remain an impossibility to a foreigner.

Yet even the German books are not entirely free from attacks of the Parenthesis distemper -- though they are usually so mild as to cover only a few lines, and therefore when you at last get down to the verb it carries some meaning to your mind because you are able to remember a good deal of what has gone before. Now here is a sentence from a popular and excellent German novel -- which a slight parenthesis in it. I will make a perfectly literal translation, and throw in the parenthesis-marks and some hyphens for the assistance of the reader -- though in the original there are no parenthesis-marks or hyphens, and the reader is left to flounder through to the remote verb the best way he can:

"But when he, upon the street, the (in-satin-and-silk-covered-now-very-unconstrained-after-the-newest-fashioned-dressed) government counselor's wife met," etc., etc. [1]

1. Wenn er aber auf der Strasse der in Sammt und Seide gehüllten jetzt sehr ungenirt nach der neusten Mode gekleideten Regierungsräthin begegnet.

That is from The Old Mamselle's Secret, by Mrs. Marlitt. And that sentence is constructed upon the most approved German model. You observe how far that verb is from the reader's base of operations; well, in a German newspaper they put their verb away over on the next page; and I have heard that sometimes after stringing along the exciting preliminaries and parentheses for a column or two, they get in a hurry and have to go to press without getting to the verb at all. Of course, then, the reader is left in a very exhausted and ignorant state.

We have the Parenthesis disease in our literature, too; and one may see cases of it every day in our books and newspapers: but with us it is the mark and sign of an unpracticed writer or a cloudy intellect, whereas with the Germans it is doubtless the mark and sign of a practiced pen and of the presence of that sort of luminous intellectual fog which stands for clearness among these people. For surely it is not clearness -- it necessarily can't be clearness. Even a jury would have penetration enough to discover that. A writer's ideas must be a good deal confused, a good deal out of line and sequence, when he starts out to say that a man met a counselor's wife in the street, and then right in the midst of this so simple undertaking halts these approaching people and makes them stand still until he jots down an inventory of the woman's dress. That is manifestly absurd. It reminds a person of those dentists who secure your instant and breathless interest in a tooth by taking a grip on it with the forceps, and then stand there and drawl through a tedious anecdote before they give the dreaded jerk. Parentheses in literature and dentistry are in bad taste.

The Germans have another kind of parenthesis, which they make by splitting a verb in two and putting half of it at the beginning of an exciting chapter and the other half at the end of it. Can any one conceive of anything more confusing than that? These things are called "separable verbs." The German grammar is blistered all over with separable verbs; and the wider the two portions of one of them are spread apart, the better the author of the crime is pleased with his performance. A favorite one is reiste ab -- which means departed. Here is an example which I culled from a novel and reduced to English:

"The trunks being now ready, he DE- after kissing his mother and sisters, and once more pressing to his bosom his adored Gretchen, who, dressed in simple white muslin, with a single tuberose in the ample folds of her rich brown hair, had tottered feebly down the stairs, still pale from the terror and excitement of the past evening, but longing to lay her poor aching head yet once again upon the breast of him whom she loved more dearly than life itself, PARTED."

However, it is not well to dwell too much on the separable verbs. One is sure to lose his temper early; and if he sticks to the subject, and will not be warned, it will at last either soften his brain or petrify it. Personal pronouns and adjectives are a fruitful nuisance in this language, and should have been left out. For instance, the same sound, sie, means you, and it means she, and it means her, and it means it, and it means they, and it means them. Think of the ragged poverty of a language which has to make one word do the work of six -- and a poor little weak thing of only three letters at that. But mainly, think of the exasperation of never knowing which of these meanings the speaker is trying to convey. This explains why, whenever a person says sie to me, I generally try to kill him, if a stranger.

Now observe the Adjective. Here was a case where simplicity would have been an advantage; therefore, for no other reason, the inventor of this language complicated it all he could. When we wish to speak of our "good friend or friends," in our enlightened tongue, we stick to the one form and have no trouble or hard feeling about it; but with the German tongue it is different. When a German gets his hands on an adjective, he declines it, and keeps on declining it until the common sense is all declined out of it. It is as bad as Latin. He says, for instance:

• SINGULAR
  • Nominative -- Mein guter Freund, my good friend.
  • Genitive -- Meines guten Freundes, of my good friend.
  • Dative -- Meinem guten Freund, to my good friend.
  • Accusative -- Meinen guten Freund, my good friend.
• PLURAL
  • N. -- Meine guten Freunde, my good friends.
  • G. -- Meiner guten Freunde, of my good friends.
  • D. -- Meinen guten Freunden, to my good friends.
  • A. -- Meine guten Freunde, my good friends.

Now let the candidate for the asylum try to memorize those variations, and see how soon he will be elected. One might better go without friends in Germany than take all this trouble about them. I have shown what a bother it is to decline a good (male) friend; well this is only a third of the work, for there is a variety of new distortions of the adjective to be learned when the object is feminine, and still another when the object is neuter. Now there are more adjectives in this language than there are black cats in Switzerland, and they must all be as elaborately declined as the examples above suggested. Difficult? -- troublesome? -- these words cannot describe it. I heard a Californian student in Heidelberg say, in one of his calmest moods, that he would rather decline two drinks than one German adjective.

The inventor of the language seems to have taken pleasure in complicating it in every way he could think of. For instance, if one is casually referring to a house, Haus, or a horse, Pferd, or a dog, Hund, he spells these words as I have indicated; but if he is referring to them in the Dative case, he sticks on a foolish and unnecessary e and spells them Hause, Pferde, Hunde. So, as an added e often signifies the plural, as the s does with us, the new student is likely to go on for a month making twins out of a Dative dog before he discovers his mistake; and on the other hand, many a new student who could ill afford loss, has bought and paid for two dogs and only got one of them, because he ignorantly bought that dog in the Dative singular when he really supposed he was talking plural -- which left the law on the seller's side, of course, by the strict rules of grammar, and therefore a suit for recovery could not lie.

In German, all the Nouns begin with a capital letter. Now that is a good idea; and a good idea, in this language, is necessarily conspicuous from its lonesomeness. I consider this capitalizing of nouns a good idea, because by reason of it you are almost always able to tell a noun the minute you see it. You fall into error occasionally, because you mistake the name of a person for the name of a thing, and waste a good deal of time trying to dig a meaning out of it. German names almost always do mean something, and this helps to deceive the student. I translated a passage one day, which said that "the infuriated tigress broke loose and utterly ate up the unfortunate fir forest" (Tannenwald). When I was girding up my loins to doubt this, I found out that Tannenwald in this instance was a man's name.

Every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system in the distribution; so the gender of each must be learned separately and by heart. There is no other way. To do this one has to have a memory like a memorandum-book. In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl. See how it looks in print -- I translate this from a conversation in one of the best of the German Sunday-school books:

"Gretchen.

Wilhelm, where is the turnip?

Wilhelm.

She has gone to the kitchen.

Gretchen.

Where is the accomplished and beautiful English maiden?

Wilhelm.

It has gone to the opera."

To continue with the German genders: a tree is male, its buds are female, its leaves are neuter; horses are sexless, dogs are male, cats are female -- tomcats included, of course; a person's mouth, neck, bosom, elbows, fingers, nails, feet, and body are of the male sex, and his head is male or neuter according to the word selected to signify it, and not according to the sex of the individual who wears it -- for in Germany all the women either male heads or sexless ones; a person's nose, lips, shoulders, breast, hands, and toes are of the female sex; and his hair, ears, eyes, chin, legs, knees, heart, and conscience haven't any sex at all. The inventor of the language probably got what he knew about a conscience from hearsay.

Now, by the above dissection, the reader will see that in Germany a man may think he is a man, but when he comes to look into the matter closely, he is bound to have his doubts; he finds that in sober truth he is a most ridiculous mixture; and if he ends by trying to comfort himself with the thought that he can at least depend on a third of this mess as being manly and masculine, the humiliating second thought will quickly remind him that in this respect he is no better off than any woman or cow in the land.

In the German it is true that by some oversight of the inventor of the language, a Woman is a female; but a Wife (Weib) is not -- which is unfortunate. A Wife, here, has no sex; she is neuter; so, according to the grammar, a fish is he, his scales are she, but a fishwife is neither. To describe a wife as sexless may be called under-description; that is bad enough, but over-description is surely worse. A German speaks of an Englishman as the Engländer; to change the sex, he adds inn, and that stands for Englishwoman -- Engländerinn. That seems descriptive enough, but still it is not exact enough for a German; so he precedes the word with that article which indicates that the creature to follow is feminine, and writes it down thus: "die Engländerinn," -- which means "the she-Englishwoman." I consider that that person is over-described.

Well, after the student has learned the sex of a great number of nouns, he is still in a difficulty, because he finds it impossible to persuade his tongue to refer to things as "he" and "she," and "him" and "her," which it has been always accustomed to refer to it as "it." When he even frames a German sentence in his mind, with the hims and hers in the right places, and then works up his courage to the utterance-point, it is no use -- the moment he begins to speak his tongue flies the track and all those labored males and females come out as "its." And even when he is reading German to himself, he always calls those things "it," where as he ought to read in this way:

TALE OF THE FISHWIFE AND ITS SAD FATE [2]

2. I capitalize the nouns, in the German (and ancient English) fashion.

It is a bleak Day. Hear the Rain, how he pours, and the Hail, how he rattles; and see the Snow, how he drifts along, and of the Mud, how deep he is! Ah the poor Fishwife, it is stuck fast in the Mire; it has dropped its Basket of Fishes; and its Hands have been cut by the Scales as it seized some of the falling Creatures; and one Scale has even got into its Eye, and it cannot get her out. It opens its Mouth to cry for Help; but if any Sound comes out of him, alas he is drowned by the raging of the Storm. And now a Tomcat has got one of the Fishes and she will surely escape with him. No, she bites off a Fin, she holds her in her Mouth -- will she swallow her? No, the Fishwife's brave Mother-dog deserts his Puppies and rescues the Fin -- which he eats, himself, as his Reward. O, horror, the Lightning has struck the Fish-basket; he sets him on Fire; see the Flame, how she licks the doomed Utensil with her red and angry Tongue; now she attacks the helpless Fishwife's Foot -- she burns him up, all but the big Toe, and even she is partly consumed; and still she spreads, still she waves her fiery Tongues; she attacks the Fishwife's Leg and destroys it; she attacks its Hand and destroys her also; she attacks the Fishwife's Leg and destroys her also; she attacks its Body and consumes him; she wreathes herself about its Heart and it is consumed; next about its Breast, and in a Moment she is a Cinder; now she reaches its Neck -- he goes; now its Chin -- it goes; now its Nose -- she goes. In another Moment, except Help come, the Fishwife will be no more. Time presses -- is there none to succor and save? Yes! Joy, joy, with flying Feet the she-Englishwoman comes! But alas, the generous she-Female is too late: where now is the fated Fishwife? It has ceased from its Sufferings, it has gone to a better Land; all that is left of it for its loved Ones to lament over, is this poor smoldering Ash-heap. Ah, woeful, woeful Ash-heap! Let us take him up tenderly, reverently, upon the lowly Shovel, and bear him to his long Rest, with the Prayer that when he rises again it will be a Realm where he will have one good square responsible Sex, and have it all to himself, instead of having a mangy lot of assorted Sexes scattered all over him in Spots.

But there is also this:

Having pointed out, in detail, the several vices of this language, I now come to the brief and pleasant task of pointing out its virtues. The capitalizing of the nouns I have already mentioned. But far before this virtue stands another -- that of spelling a word according to the sound of it. After one short lesson in the alphabet, the student can tell how any German word is pronounced without having to ask; whereas in our language if a student should inquire of us, "What does B, O, W, spell?" we should be obliged to reply, "Nobody can tell what it spells when you set if off by itself; you can only tell by referring to the context and finding out what it signifies -- whether it is a thing to shoot arrows with, or a nod of one's head, or the forward end of a boat."

There are some German words which are singularly and powerfully effective. For instance, those which describe lowly, peaceful, and affectionate home life; those which deal with love, in any and all forms, from mere kindly feeling and honest good will toward the passing stranger, clear up to courtship; those which deal with outdoor Nature, in its softest and loveliest aspects -- with meadows and forests, and birds and flowers, the fragrance and sunshine of summer, and the moonlight of peaceful winter nights; in a word, those which deal with any and all forms of rest, repose, and peace; those also which deal with the creatures and marvels of fairyland; and lastly and chiefly, in those words which express pathos, is the language surpassingly rich and affective. There are German songs which can make a stranger to the language cry. That shows that the sound of the words is correct -- it interprets the meanings with truth and with exactness; and so the ear is informed, and through the ear, the heart.

The Germans do not seem to be afraid to repeat a word when it is the right one. They repeat it several times, if they choose. That is wise. But in English, when we have used a word a couple of times in a paragraph, we imagine we are growing tautological, and so we are weak enough to exchange it for some other word which only approximates exactness, to escape what we wrongly fancy is a greater blemish. Repetition may be bad, but surely inexactness is worse.

Learn German -- love life.

Beers of the World--Faxe Extra Strong

Note: Originally posted--as a guest blog entry--on The Dartmouth Soundsystem, a great little blog that is secretly growing, expanding and pulsating through the world and your brain. Just re-posting here out of vanity, or self-motivation. Fine, it's sloppy seconds. Yes...

I was almost tempted to call this an "unsung hero" of foreign beers. Upon further reflection, however, it seemed inappropriate, as Faxe has quite an evident cult following. I recall memories of being down on my luck and low on cash; of seeing others at the NSLC in the same situation, be it university students or senior members of any city's homeless community; a regular of those who simply practice routine efficiency and frugality; that nostalgically bitter gulp here and there while indulging in the very rewarding act of underage drinking.

Faxe comes from Denmark, which is automatically a plus. Not only is this the same country that produces the heavenly Carlsberg Lager, but being that said product is Danish, while pounding back these poignantly decorated tallboys you can pretend you are a viking, like the guy on the label. (Note to mention if you actually are capable of "pounding back" Faxes by the tallboy, you certainly are worthy of being called a viking.)

At 10% alcohol content (for Faxe Extra Strong that is, there are weaker varieties of Faxe out there), I'm going to say this is the most potent beer available in local liquor stores. The price is somewhere around the $2.50/500ml mark, probably making it the best "bang" for the buck. And in terms of "bang", most would shrug this beer off as a cheap-trick kind of beer, I'm sure. But give it a chance, and I'm sure you'll find this beer is more than just an easy route to climaxing--there is a flavour in there, and it has a mark of its own.

Speaking now purely in terms of flavour, I'll say the negative upfront: the high alcohol content is really what drags this one down. The ethanol is apparent immediately--it is that distinct-but-not-pleasant sweetness that rolls down the tongue and stretches the aftertaste to your throat. Now there are plenty of European beers that have the knack of dubiously hiding their high alcohol content--sometimes up to 14%--underneath the taste somewhere (see: ~700 varieties of Belgian beer), but Faxe certainly isn't one of them.

At its heart, the beer has a flavour comparable to any mediocre, trashy Canadian beer... I don't know, say Molson, or Moosehead Dry. Neither of these I find particularly titillating, but they do represent the middle of the line, eh?

Ugh, how can I write more? To be honest, the taste isn't great, and it is a struggle to get the last drop out of the can even after a few... But low price and high consistency? Sounds good to me. Time to crack open my last tallboy...

For my closing statement... Paul Giamatti summarized it best in Sideways: "Quaffable, but uh... far from transcendent."

Bonheur.

I am a rider on the storm
Always will be.
I have indian blood in me --
Spanning a continent, an age
With a spirit true as the spread of its veins.
It is no joke that I've come to
A knowledge and power.
And will be no surprise
When I meet the end, the
Maker, and realize
I am a rider on the storm.

-AA

PS. My plan is completed.