Month: April 2012

YALUMBA “THE CIGAR” CABERNET SAUVIGNON (2009)—Probably good with bunny

My Fellow Inebriates,

The greenspace near our townhouse is teeming with baby bunnies. On the way to school the kids look out for these distant relatives of the Easter Bunny, hoping to catch a glimpse through the blackberry bushes.

If you pay attention, you can see the occasional cottontail bouncing along, but almost as often you can see them eviscerated by the path. With apologies to my friend Violet, bunnies are some of the dumbest animals that ever lived—they just don’t know how to avoid cats and coyotes. Nor do they look both ways when they cross the road, which means my parents sometimes have to stage a diversion on the way to school so the kids don’t get an eyeful of leporine gore. “Check out those dandelions!” my mum said, for example, while passing a fur-and-blood pancake on 66 Avenue being sampled by a dog whose oblivious owner apparently didn’t mind her animal venturing into traffic.

Sorry, Violet

If bunnies were a little smarter, the Easter Bunny wouldn’t have to do everything each year. He could delegate, the way Santa does, sitting on his ass all year exploiting the elves until his big night. But bunnies are not so bright.

Which is why I haven’t bothered to bug the Easter Bunny for anything. I mean, does the Easter Bunny even have a postal code? I can hit Santa up at H0H 0H0, but where the hell do I send my Easter list? And does the Easter Bunny even care whether I’ve been good or bad? Does the Easter Bunny keep track? Because I get the sense that bunnies are about as smart as a sack of doorknobs.

For instance, when my mum suggested to the kids that they write the Easter Bunny a letter, Miss P said, “Nah, he doesn’t know how to read; he’s a bunny.” It made perfect sense to her that, despite the daunting logistics of delivering eggs to the world’s children, despite the cleverness and stealth required to get them inside houses protected by Alarm Force, and despite his enormous commitment to inducing a global diabetic coma, the Easter Bunny cannot read.

This is precisely the sort of epistemological compartmentalization at which our Fraser Valley demographic excels, which is to say that if we ever let Miss P get into the wrong hands we may find her embracing Noah’s Ark while remarking that the biomass of all known insects on the planet—two of each—would exceed the capacity of the Titanic, and happily allowing the two ideas to coexist.

But who wants to mess with magic? The Easter Bunny is undoubtedly a magical creature—a creature whose activities cannot be specifically disproven. So I thought I’d make a list for him, just in case he’s literate enough to Google his name and read it:

You have to hedge your bets, right?

Or not.

But were we right to shield the kids from the sight of roadkill? They’ve seen lots of dead birds and insects before. Miss V once used a magnifying glass to bash the shit out of a snail at pre-K while the teacher wasn’t looking. They eat animals from time to time… just not car-flattened ones. But there’s something so cute about bunnies…my mum didn’t want them to see a dead one.

For those who don’t mind the sight of a dead bunny—especially one that’s been dealt a glancing blow off the car hood and isn’t flat—why not scoop that dead little critter up? Take it home and make a stew. Wild animals have a favorable nutritional profile: high protein and low fat. And roadkill is free, which means you don’t have to yank out your debit card at Walmart; you just need a good recipe book and an open mind.

Ahhh, you solid food eaters, you have it made if you live in a neighborhood full of stupid bunnies who can’t get to the other side of the road.

Not being a solids fan myself, I’ll leave that to you all. But I have a wine pairing suggestion: YALUMBA MENZIES “THE CIGAR” CABERNET SAUVIGNON (2009). Coonawarra residents refer to the uniquely shaped  strip of terra rossa soil that is home to some of Australia’s most famous vineyards as “the Cigar.” The Menzies Vineyard, founded in 1987, is part of this region and enjoys rich, red soil, limestone, pure artesian water, and a long, cool ripening season.

You may think I’m going to trash THE CIGAR as an offensive accompaniment to possum stew, but I only mention it in connection with roadkill because of the wild kangaroos that pose a driving hazard in Australia, accounting for 71% of animal-related insurance claims (eight times as many as dogs and 14 times as many as wombats). Kangaroos, who are obviously as cognizant of traffic safety as rabbits, pose a serious nuisance—enough to warrant “roo bars” on vehicles driving in the bush. They are well known for wandering onto the road and into a high-protein, low-fat stew.

The reason for "roo bars" on vehicles

While you may have qualms about scraping a rabbit off 66 Avenue and cooking it up, a kangaroo is a much more worthy feast, although, in the hot Australian climate and with all sorts of competing predators, you probably want to harvest the roo from the road while it’s going toward the light and not too long after.

You need wine with depth and earthiness to stand up to wild game, the euphemism you’d probably use if serving roadkill to dinner guests. THE CIGAR, with its distinctive forest-floor earthiness, bursting blackcurrant and tobacco notes, would pair very well with game. It is delightfully balanced with plenty of complexity, good tannins, and a long finish.

Truthfully, I’d advise drinking THE CIGAR by itself, undistracted by other flavors. But—if the Easter Bunny has a mishap this year and ends up on your neighbor’s barbecue, this would be a good wine to show up with.

Hairier than any of us bears—and REAL!

My Fellow Inebriates,

Unexpectedly the kids were invited out for a playdate yesterday, leaving my parents with an afternoon to themselves. This struck me as a perfect opportunity. I had random thoughts knocking around between my two brain cells that needed typing. So I set out to find my parents and put one of them to work.

But I couldn’t find them in the house. They had vanished. What the hell could they be doing?

I started getting grossed out wondering, then I realized they’d gone to Walmart to do the Easter shopping. This was a great relief, as I wouldn’t have wanted to excavate my own eyes from my head after seeing something Unspeakable. Instead I was amused to think of my parents mingling with the People of Walmart and possibly ending up on the web later, depending on what they’d had the poor judgment to wear out of the house.

I guess I had a seed of paranoia taking root already, because it suddenly occurred to one of my brain cells that I’m a total dupe for visiting the People of Walmart—that it’s just a perversely clever marketing tool developed by Walmart to funnel even more shoppers in: shoppers insufficiently satisfied with Rollback pricing but wishing for spectacle.

For the suburb-bound, Walmart is the next best thing to a safari. (Or so my second brain cell retorted to the first.) Creatures as exotic as the People of Walmart simply couldn’t be faked or staged or set up—they have to be real.

But my first brain cell was suspicious. If Walmart isn’t behind the whole thing, couldn’t Walmart, with all its financial and legal might, shut it down? Or is it actually beneficial to have its brand identified with trailer-trash fashion and aggressively visible ass crack?

I don’t have a third brain cell, so the two had to work hard for a third option: Maybe the People of Walmart is a real phenomenon, the production of which has nothing to do with Walmart, but which Walmart tolerates because there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

Bingo.

I decided to get the lowdown.

People of Walmart was conceived by three guys in South Carolina who decided, just for themselves, to document the exotic apparitions we’ve all come to associate with Walmart—shoppers in low-hanging, crack-revealing sweatpants, bondage-wearing seniors, people with goats… When they invited friends to submit pictures, they had no idea how big the response would be. A deluge of photos crashed the website as it went viral.

Andrew, Luke, and Adam, who keep their last names confidential, are big fans of Walmart. They often visit the store wearing bad clothes, and they try to keep the site light-hearted (they don’t mock the disabled, for example; but if you’re riding a scooter without a shirt on you’re fair game).

Which means that not only is People of Walmart real—it’s a kind of homage.

And what does Walmart the corporate entity think about the site?

I thought about emailing them to ask. But I didn’t. I didn’t want to wreck things for Andrew, Luke, and Adam. Maybe, I thought (with both brain cells at once) Walmart Corporate has no idea about the People of Walmart. Maybe they would mess with it—OMG! I wouldn’t want to be responsible for that, so mum’s the word.

Speaking of which, how did my parents make out?

They came home bitching about the crappy deals on Easter candy, moaning that they’ll have to wait till the last minute for Walmart to start caving on the prices.

But they did get a swell pair of rainboots for Miss P.

And, on the way inside, my mum saw a woman stuffed so tightly into minuscule hot pants that three inches of orifice stuck out. (It’s true! Yes, Virginia, there are People of Walmart!) And, she added, that woman’s ass was “hairier than any of you bears.”

The 7 baby gifts you’ve been “waiting” for

My Fellow Inebriates,

If you follow The Waiting you already know that two are about to be three—i.e., the kid is coming.

I didn’t expect to become so caught up by The Waiting. We have kids at LBHQ, of course, from whom I usually hide. They are the reason my parents no longer party into the wee hours (if they ever did), the reason there are ponies everywhere, and the reason it’s taking us a million years to watch Breaking Bad.

So you wouldn’t think I’d be that excited about another crazy little girl bursting into the world.

But I am.

I even found some baby gifts.

What newborn wouldn't appreciate a killer rabbit?

Something of a departure from A.A. Milne

Unforeseen germs

Too precocious?

Entrails!

!!!

Awwww! A moonshine rattle 😉