This evening at D’s, Jack was talking about China where he’s been spending some time lately. His family is Chinese-American and there are lots of relatives in Taiwan, but there are also family members who have businesses on the mainland. He visited someone’s factory, where they make patio umbrellas.
There was a room of people there, maybe 15-20 of them, around a low table seated on milk cartons. Each of them had a big plastic bucket on their left and right sides. They’d take a bolt out of the left bucket, inspect it, and then file away with a big carpenter’s file for a long time. Periodically the worker would inspect the bolt. At the appropriate length, the bolt was dropped into the bucket on the right.
Why was this happening? Because they needed lots of bolts that were slightly shorter than the ones they had. And in China, it’s much less expensive to have people laboriously shorten bolts by hand than to have a machine do it or order new bolts. So there they sit, filing down bolts all day.
This reminds me of genericus and his fruit rollups job, which I’m not sure he’s LJ’d about but he should if he hasn’t.
So that was depressing, but Jack’s account of his brother’s geeky addiction to high-end flashlights was pretty funny. The guy is obsessed and buys flashlight after flashlight, all from some incredibly expensive company that claims (as all phallic marketers claim) that theirs is the product the SEALs use. There is apparently some “Police” flashlight that has spikes on it to JAM INTO SUSPECTS FACES YARR which no police department would actually permit, and other Sharper Image-style marketing nonsense. It’s as though every kid who couldn’t stop shining a light in other peoples’ faces was 35 years old and had a six figure income. Wait, that’s my country.
Please post: what’s the worst mixed drink you’ve ever had, and why? Mine was a nasty-ass martini that had a deadly bubble of vermouth at the bottom.
Be My Blog 
Once I was so drunk and “thirsssshty” that I poured tequila with canned grape drink.
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My own fault
I mixed a package of fruit punch kool aid mix with orange pineapple soda.
sugar in soda ≠ sugar kool aid needs
vomit
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Worst Drink Evar!
The Pussy Fart
Vodka
Amaretto
Half n Half
Tasted like Pepto!
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Re: Worst Drink Evar!
I thought your worst drink was tequila and tang?
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Re: Worst Drink Evar!
Right, that was the night I had the aforementioned ecch-martini and you had a Rum & Rum with almost no Coke! Go Coach House!
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i was around 15 or 16 and had been playing poker all night at paul kleese’s house with bonnie and trace.
we ran out of orange juice and bonnie and i figured that the vodka would be just as good with apple juice instead!
even drunk ass teenagers couldn’t drink that shit.
worst thing EVAR.
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wow
what in the hell ever happened to paul kleese and mr. Trace K.?
-Jared
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Re: wow
the Sex Dwarf shows up at D’s periodically still
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Ribena milkshake. Groo.
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equal parts Bailey’s and Kahlua
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In my defense….
Wodka, water, lime juice and powdered caffeine. I think it was all the powdered caffeine in the coffee and no food for a few days that killed me. Many ice buckets + one trip from the paramedics full of dead. Yeay, worst mixed drink ever.
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Re: In my defense….
Did you actually have to get the paramedics after the caffeine thing? I just remember you being really ill in Vegas!
“1 mg pure caffeine. Not a controlled substance. DO NOT INHALE.”
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No, wait, you said emo. Sorry.
I believe it was that firecracker wit Max Weber who said “politics is the strong, slow sanding of hard bolts.” I’m almost certain he had cheap Wal-Mart patio furniture made by quasi-slave labor in mind.
Almost anything I ever drank was the worst mixed drink I ever had, from the box-gallo-wine-and-diet-7UP I was weaned on to the Midori daquiris and melonballs that fueled my tacky frou-frou drunken 90s nights. Bacardi and diet RC cola needs a bit of work, as well.
In 72 hours and change I will be 36 years old and I have a six-figure debt. Yet more reasons for the cigar guys to deport me. But I do have lots of swell old flashlights that used to belong to my great-grandmother, most of which probably predate the SEALS.
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I’m guessing that bottle of Bali-Hai I had in, uhm, 1970, was the worst mixed drink I’ve ever had, all by itself.
My college roommate bought it for his girlfriend and then she either canceled the trip (she was in CT, we were in RI) or they broke up, I don’t remember. He wouldn’t drink it because it was so disgusting, so, me being the adventurous type, decided to give it a try. I almost gagged after the first sip. Five minutes later, I had to take another sip because I couldn’t believe it was actually as bad as I thought it was. Well, I was wrong. It was. However, that didn’t stop me from trying it a third time. And a fourth. After that, I think it started to taste not so bad. (This was the 1970 remake of vita-meata-vege-min). I ultimately finished the whole fucking bottle. Oh, and I lived to talk about it, but damn, look what it DID to me!
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I was at GenCon (yes, yes I know) with my RPG Publishing pals and we made the unhappy discovery that Milwaukee liquor stores close at the same time the bars do – too early for our tasts. So I had the brilliant idea of attempting a NyQuil and Sprite mixer. This was met with amusement and the result was so nasty just one sip put me on the edge of retching. As we were proceeding to the hotel this one guy said, “So you’re not going to drink it? Hell, I’ll try it…” And took the Sprite bottle containing the mixture from my hands. When I remarked on this later someone said, “You WHAT? Omigod, he was such a Quil head in Jr. High. He once tried to bake a cake with the stuff.” Okay Quil head? A cake? Sure enough, the next day he looked like death. I felt bad, but then again, Quil head?
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I believe that I have blogged about that job, but I’m far too lazy to look through and find it.
There were a number of worst drinks from the no money/alcoholic period of my life.
Lots of flavored vodka.
Lots of vodka mixed with gatorade.
The worst was a cheap concoction created by my next door neighbor – sqeeze-bottle lemon or lime juice (like, from the plastic lemon), about 3 tablespoons of sugar, and vodka. It was not good.
But I would sooner drink any of those things again before I ever venture another Red Bull and vodka.
On my 21st I was given a strange brew of Jaegermeister and tabasco sauce, but managed to escape being served a TKO – tequilla, kalua, and ouzo – wich is the grossest drink I’ve ever HEARD of. The tabasco drink weren’t bad.
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Now that’s Caucasian
It was supposed to be a white Russian, but the Kahlua was gone.
Vodka + Half&Half = urk
Unlike many of the people I know, I could not bring myself to continue drinking it.
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Re: Now that’s Caucasian
I had a white russian made with nonfat milk once at the Formosa in L.A. So very wrong.
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A friend of mine habitually brought cheap (like really lame mid-west US) tequila to parties and lamented that we always drank it and he never got it all to himself. So one day he brought his bottle complete with worm — that is, he found, washed, and inserted a common earthworm into his bottle of tequila.
We were wholely undaunted.
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Is there such a thing as “midwest U.S. tequila”? Good Lord. I thought that was illegal by trademark law.
Anyway it’s only mezcal that’s supposed to have the worm, so homeboy was doubly messed up. I bet he was drinking some agave-flavored grain alcohol like Porfidio or something. Splaw.
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Probably the so-called Tom Collins a couple of bartenders in Wisconsin produced after a lengthy conference with my friend K-Star, who had to explain to them what a Tom Collins was. Apparently she didn’t explain it thoroughly enough. I had similar problems with bartenders throughout America’s Dairyland before I discovered the gin and tonic, specifically the Sapphire and tonic, which apart from all its other merits has a huge advantage in that the name is the recipe.
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at the height of the .com daze, we used to hang out a at bar-grill called the Peppermill. imported to silicon valley from far-off, exotic Reno, the bar area featured extremely low lighting, an overabundance of fake trees, and a pit-style seating area where pleather couches for 2 cozily surrounded a fountain which had jets of long, narrow flames spurting out of the center. we used to go here just for the awful drinks. this is where i had the “Pancho Villa”: chartreuse, creme de noyaux, cuervo, and 151, layered. you’re supposed to sip it for true enjoyment of each rarefied boozy stratum.
in close second for worst drink ever is the sherry i once sipped from a ziploc baggie. does it count if the beverage container influences your opinion of the alcohol contained therein?
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