"Never visit a new state without stopping by a liquor store to see what's in stock." Yes.

August 31, 2014 [A Thumbnail Guide to Rum] My rule of thumb: Never visit a new state without stopping by a liquor store to see what's in stock. All Excerpts From Curtis, Wayne. “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2007. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Villainizing column stills no longer valid? Would like more detail…

August 31, 2014 [A Thumbnail Guide to Rum] For the most part, though, improvements in distillation technology and barrel-aging techniques have evened out many of the differences between the two distilling methods, so which still is used today is typically of small consequence. For instance, Ron Zacapa from Guatemala—among the most heavily-bodied of rums—is made in a column still. However, a boutique pot-stilled rum has a distinct if subtle flavor profile prized by many rum connoisseurs. All Excerpts From Curtis, Wayne. “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2007. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

"Sucking the monkey"

August 30, 2014 Chapter 9 - [Mai Tai] Early sailors enjoying shore leave would smuggle rum back aboard by drilling a hole in a coconut, draining the milk, then filling it with rum and sealing it back up. Surreptitiously sipping from the shell was called “sucking the monkey.” All Excerpts From Curtis, Wayne. “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2007. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

"Moxie was the nation's top-selling beverage until the 1920s, when it was overtaken by…Coca-Cola"

August 29, 2014 Chapter 8 - [Rum and Coca-Cola] Moxie was the nation's top-selling beverage until the 1920s, when it was overtaken by a soft drink of even more exotic ingredients. Its inventor was a pharmaceutical chemist from Atlanta named John Pemberton. He concocted it with infusions of the coca plant from the Peruvian Andes and the high-caffeine kola nut from Africa, then tempered it with seven secret flavoring agents. Pemberton named the drink after its principal ingredients: Coca-Cola. All Excerpts From Curtis, Wayne. “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2007. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

“A well-made daiquiri does not produce an ice-cream headache.”

August 29, 2014 Chapter 7 - [Daiquiri] A well-made daiquiri does not produce an ice-cream headache. All Excerpts From Curtis, Wayne. “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2007. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

"The ungainly word mixologist was coined in 1856."

August 26, 2014 Chapter 6 - [Demon Rum] The ungainly word mixologist was coined in 1856. By 1870, W. F. Rae noted, “The most delicate fancy drinks are compounded by skillful mixologists in a style that captivates the public.” All Excerpts From Curtis, Wayne. “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2007. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

“What key will unlock the door to hell? Whis-key.”

August 26, 2014 Chapter 6 - [Demon Rum] (To be fair, some tracts did go after whiskey, like the 1878 National Temperance Almanac, which asked, “What key will unlock the door to hell? Whis-key.”) All Excerpts From Curtis, Wayne. “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2007. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Name's Bigger. Peacock Bigger:

August 23, 2014 Chapter 4 - [Medford Rum] (A merchant with the splendid name of Peacock Bigger built successful distilleries in both Philadelphia and Charlestown, Maryland.) All Excerpts From Curtis, Wayne. “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2007. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Drowning cure?… “blowing tobacco smoke up the victim's rectum”

August 21, 2014 Chapter 3 - [Flip] Rum was always on hand for emergencies. Published instructions for reviving victims of drowning in Massachusetts called for blowing tobacco smoke up the victim's rectum (machines were built specifically for this purpose) while bathing the victim's breast with hot rum. If rum failed to restore you to life, it would be served to those who attended your funeral, even if you were poorly off, since the purchase of spirits for a final send-off had priority over paying off your creditors. All Excerpts From Curtis, Wayne. “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2007. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Fire up the lembic, wife. I have thirst.

August 21, 2014 Chapter 3 - [Flip] And primitive backyard stills, called “lembics,” were not uncommon in the colonies; they were useful for making spirits out of fermented honey and pears and, in the southern colonies, from peaches. All Excerpts From Curtis, Wayne. “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2007. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Five a day keeps something away…

August 20, 2014 Chapter 2 - [Grog] Even diluted, the grog ration was still equivalent to about five cocktails per day, assuming an ounce and a half of rum per cocktail. All Excerpts From Curtis, Wayne. “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2007. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Let them eat cake. Let me drink punch!

August 19, 2014 Chapter 2 - [Grog] Vernon's 1740 order to distribute grog rather than “neat” rum included a provision that allowed crewmen to exchange their salt and bread allotment for “sugar and limes to make [grog] more palatable to them.” All Excerpts From Curtis, Wayne. “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2007. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

“Before that, alcohol content was determined by mixing the spirit with a few grains of gunpowder and then subjecting the concoction to the focused rays of the sun under a magnifier.”

August 19, 2014 Chapter 2 - [Grog] The alcoholic content of early rum is unknown to us because it was unknown to those who consumed it. Not until 1816 was the Sikes hydrometer invented, which made it possible to measure the percentage of alcohol in liquor. Before that, alcohol content was determined by mixing the spirit with a few grains of gunpowder and then subjecting the concoction to the focused rays of the sun under a magnifier. If the gunpowder managed to ignite but the liquid didn't flare up, this was said to be “proof” of its proper alcoholic content. All Excerpts From Curtis, Wayne. “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2007. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

The ignominious demise of Captain Morgan. Pirates shouldn't be allowed to grow old:

August 19, 2014 Chapter 2 - [Grog] But soon his health declined, and even visits to the rumshops became too taxing for him. He was confined to his estate, where he spent his days drinking with the few friends who hadn't abandoned him. Each morning began with a bout of vomiting. His legs were so swollen that he couldn't walk. He was unable to urinate and often weak from diarrhea. The naturalist Hans Sloane described him as “lean, sallowcolored, his eyes a little yellowish and Belly jutting out or prominent.” Captain Morgan's later life goes unmentioned in the marketing material for his namesake rum. All Excerpts From Curtis, Wayne. “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2007. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Molasses enema?

August 17, 2014 Chapter 1 - [Kill-devil] …Thomas Cadwalader wrote an essay on the dry gripes and its treatments, and noted among the symptoms “excessive griping pains in the pit of the stomach and bowels, which are much distended with wind … at other times there is a sensation, as if the bowels were drawn together by ropes.” In some cases, “the patient begins to break wind backwards, which is some times exceeding offensive.” (It strains the imagination to think of times this would not be “exceeding offensive.”) Other associated problems included paralysis of the limbs and, in dire cases, death. The supposed remedy was scarcely better than the dry gripes itself: A molasses enema was often prescribed. All Excerpts From Curtis, Wayne. “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2007. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

“but the first thing ye English do, is to set up a tavern or drinking house.”

August 17, 2014 Chapter 1 - [Kill-devil] Captain Thomas Walduck in 1708 neatly summarized the development of the West Indies: “Upon all the new settlements the Spaniards make, the first thing they do is build a church, the first thing ye Dutch do upon a new colony is to build them a fort, but the first thing ye English do, be it in the most remote part of ye world, or amongst the most barbarous Indians, is to set up a tavern or drinking house.” All Excerpts From Curtis, Wayne. “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2007. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

“whiskey” via Gaelic “usquebaugh”? Interesting. I wonder what the OED says on this…

August 17, 2014 Chapter 1 - [Kill-devil] …“whiskey” is a corruption of usquebaugh, the Gaelic term for aqua vitae… All Excerpts From Curtis, Wayne. “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2007. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Ooh, really wish this had a citation…

August 16, 2014 Chapter 1 - [Kill-devil] Distillation had been mentioned in passing by Aristotle and Pliny the Elder,… All Excerpts From Curtis, Wayne. “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2007. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Rum as free market metaphor…Well put:

August 16, 2014 [Molasses] Bourbon fanciers, who often claim for their tipple the title of “America's spirit,” drink one of the most regulated spirits known. To be labeled bourbon, it has to be made with a certain percentage of corn and aged in a certain kind of barrel. But excessive regulation is not the spirit of America. Unrestricted experimentation is. Rum embodies America's laissez-faire attitude: It is whatever it wants to be. There have never been strict guidelines for making it. There's no international oversight board, and its taste and production varies widely, leaving the market to sort out favorites. If sugarcane or its by-products are involved in the distillation process, you can call it rum. All Excerpts From Curtis, Wayne. “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.” THREE RIVERS PRESS, 2007. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Nice onomatopoeia: “grutch, gruntch, grutch, gruntch”

August 14, 2014 Part Five: The Mouse The wheels of a wagon ground and groaned in the icy street, and then came the hard ringing rattle of milk-bottles clinking together in their steel basket and the sound of the milkman going up the walk—grutch, gruntch, grutch, gruntch along the solid snow. All Excerpts From The Lost Weekend Charles Jackson & Blake Bailey Category: Fiction & Literature 5 Ratings

Endurance: “they stand all afternoon in a 2nd Avenue bar”

August 13, 2014 Part Five: The Mouse Brains indeed and indeed what good does it do them? Dreamy tosspots, they stand all afternoon in a 2nd Avenue bar looking at the sun-patterns under the L or their own faces in the[…] All Excerpts From The Lost Weekend Charles Jackson & Blake Bailey Category: Fiction & Literature 5 Ratings

I love when the narrator jumps contexts for humor:

August 10, 2014 Part Three: The Joke Working against time and exhaustion—beating breakdown, as it were, to the punch—he had fled down 1st Avenue in headlong blind staggering flight (not as fast as he believed it to be, but fast) and so got home.… All Excerpts From The Lost Weekend Charles Jackson & Blake Bailey Category: Fiction & Literature 5 Ratings

Out of the trunk, the branches grow

August 10, 2014 CHAPTER 63 The Crotch Out of the trunk, the branches grow; out of them, the twigs. So, in productive subjects, grow the chapters. All Excerpts From Moby-Dick Herman Melville & Mary Bercaw Edwards Category: Classics 37 Ratings

Trucks with coughing klaxons speeded up, here, to make the grade to the bridge…

August 10, 2014 Part Three: The Joke He started out, and at once ran into the inferno that was 59th. Trucks with coughing klaxons speeded up, here, to make the grade to the bridge, the vast resounding grinding structure of the Queensboro bridge. The traffic was incoherent bedlam. Trolleys danged and clanged up the slope. Overhead the L exploded periodically with the supernatural rush and roar of a rocket-train out of the comics. His eyes fixed on his goal, he passed through it all like a sleepwalker in a nightmare, shaken by every insane noise but with one increasing purpose in his reeling mind: to reach the end of the dream and wake up. He staggered up the slight rise of ground to 60th Street and into a sidewalk world again of vegetable and fruit markets like pushcarts; bakeries, florists, funeral parlors, stores for rent, tinsmiths and paint shops and thrift shops. The smells. The sights. The dyed-hair and wigs; the poor; the nigger-pink-and-green playsuits; the hatless bald men carrying groceries home; the blind musicians; the broad broad women, the million bandanaed women, the million pregnant women. The noise. And in the intervals between trains passing overhead, the sound of the[…] All Excerpts From The Lost Weekend Charles Jackson & Blake Bailey Category: Fiction & Literature 5 Ratings

Trouble…

August 9, 2014 Part Two: The Wife …The bartender slid the bottle across the counter and this time he poured the drink himself. All Excerpts From The Lost Weekend Charles Jackson & Blake Bailey Category: Fiction & Literature 5 Ratings

picked up the ’phone and dialed ME-7-1212

August 9, 2014 Part Two: The Wife He went into the bedroom and sat down at the desk and picked up the ’phone and dialed ME-7-1212. He listened breathless to the breathless voice, with the oddly questioning lift at the end: “When yew hear the sig-nal, the tie-yum will be seven-fifty-fie-yuv and thrrree-quar-ters.” He did not wait for the signal, he said “Thank you” automatically and hung up. All Excerpts From The Lost Weekend Charles Jackson & Blake Bailey Category: Fiction & Literature 5 Ratings

with the fascinating picture of a woman and child holding a Post Toastie box with a picture of a woman and child holding a Post Toastie box with a picture of a woman and child holding—

August 9, 2014 Part Two: The Wife …so narcissistic that its final effect would be that of the mirrored room which gives back the same image times without count, or the old Post Toastie box of his boyhood with the fascinating picture of a woman and child holding a Post Toastie box with a picture of a woman and child holding a Post Toastie box with a picture of a woman and child holding—… All Excerpts From The Lost Weekend Charles Jackson & Blake Bailey Category: Fiction & Literature 5 Ratings

“while he sipped gin-vermouth which, for all they knew, might have been a Dubonnet or a sherry”

August 8, 2014 Part One: The Start …he had plenty of chance to play the solitary observant gentleman-drinker having a quiet time amusing himself watching other folk carouse, the while he sipped gin-vermouth which, for all they knew, might have been a Dubonnet or a sherry. All Excerpts From The Lost Weekend Charles Jackson & Blake Bailey Category: Fiction & Literature 5 Ratings

Standing at a bar? Was that more common in the 20th C?

August 8, 2014 Part One: The Start …shifted from one foot to the other: glanced at a couple of strangers standing farther down the bar… All Excerpts From The Lost Weekend Charles Jackson & Blake Bailey Category: Fiction & Literature 5 Ratings

Coffee bean penis implants!?

August 7, 2014 3. Harbor In a paper entitled “The Filipino Seafarer: A Life between Sacrifice and Shopping,” the Norwegian academic Gunnar Lamvik revealed the alarming practice among Filipino seafarers of slicing open their penis with a razor and implanting ball bearings or coffee beans. The implants are called bolitas, and the logic behind them is flexible. They keep wives from straying by enhancing their sexual pleasure, and they are useful to attract Brazilian prostitutes. This “secret weapon of the Filipinos,” wrote Lamvik, has something to do with the fact that “the Filipinos are so small, and the Brazilian women are so big.” Lamvik is told that nearly every Filipino seaman is equipped with bolitas. All Excerpts From George, Rose. “Ninety Percent of Everything.” Henry Holt and Company. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

This book reads like the blog of an earnest, but artless, teen writer…

August 7, 2014 3. Harbor It’s sad that crews bond over a pigeon or a monkey. But what else do they have to bond over? All Excerpts From George, Rose. “Ninety Percent of Everything.” Henry Holt and Company. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Hello, sailor:

August 6, 2014 3. Harbor The first-ever advice columnist, an eighteenth-century bookseller named John Dunton, recommended that a woman fearing lonely spinsterhood get down to the docks and find a sex-starved sailor. All Excerpts From George, Rose. “Ninety Percent of Everything.” Henry Holt and Company. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Alchemy: squid into ambergris:

August 6, 2014 XIV - The Ends of the Earth The exact origins of ambergris remain obscure; but it is certainly the result of a remarkable process. The sperm whale swallows squid alive, taking its food into the first of four stomachs. It then passes into a second stomach to be broken down by strong acids, assisted by a writhing mass of nematode worms, ‘a disgusting sight’ according to Malcolm, who has seen it many times. When the waste moves through the lower intestine the brittle, shiny black squid beaks–along with other indigestible material such as nematode cuticles–prompt the whale’s digestive system to secrete bile and thereby ease their passage. Occasionally–in as few as one in a hundred whales–this chemical reaction produces ambergris. All Excerpts From Hoare, Philip. “The Whale.” HarperCollins. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Thank you lord for this holy harpoon grenade.

Which explodeth on the count of three… August 3, 2014 XI - The Melancholy Whale On Christmas Eve 1868, Sven Foyn wrote in his diary: ‘I thank Thee, O Lord. Thou alone hast done all.’ The Norwegian was giving praise for the grenade harpoon he had just patented; a bomb that would explode in a whale’s head. All Excerpts From Hoare, Philip. “The Whale.” HarperCollins. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

"yron"—interesting dpelling of "iron"

August 3, 2014 XI - The Melancholy Whale …‘after a long Conflict, it was killed with the harping yrons, & struck in the head, out of which spouted blood & water, by two tunnells like Smoake from a chimney; & after an horrid grone it ran quite on shore & died.’ All Excerpts From Hoare, Philip. “The Whale.” HarperCollins. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Huggins to Turner to Melville's "boggy, soggy, squitchy" painting

August 2, 2014 IX - The Correct Use of Whales The influence of Turner’s sublime vistas, numinous with storms and shadows, emerges in Moby-Dick from the first. When Ishmael arrives at the Spouter Inn, he sees ‘a long, limber, portentous, black mass of something…floating in a nameless yeast’. Through the gloom, he makes out a whale launching itself over a storm-tossed ship, seemingly about to impale itself on its masts. ‘A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted,’ Ishmael allowed, with ‘a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting meant’. It was a dream version of Huggins’s graphic scenes; a fantastical Turner, seen through Ishmael’s ostensibly amateur eyes. All Excerpts From Hoare, Philip. “The Whale.” HarperCollins. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

The love lives of right whales:

August 2, 2014 VIII - Very Like a Whale Weighing nearly a ton, the male’s testes are the largest of any animal. These, along with its eight-foot penis, allow it to take part in sperm competition in which males assert their supremacy by multiple matings rather than fighting for favours (although they may use their callosities as a kind of weapon). Females will even permit more than one partner to enter them at the same time, after sessions of delicate foreplay in which the courting animals use their flippers to stroke each other with inordinate gentleness… All Excerpts From Hoare, Philip. “The Whale.” HarperCollins. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.