a glass

I've been trying, for a while, to come up with a variation on the "last word," which is my favorite cocktail. Attempts have included such disparate - and ultimately discarded - ingredients as rum, brandy, bourbon (this showed promise), and even Malibu's sultry coconut delight. Tonight, however, I feel as though I've finally hit on the winner:

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Synthese:

2 tequila (silver)
1 green chartreuse
1 maraschino (luxardo)
.8 st. germain
~.7 lime juice

Shake until very cold, strain into cocktail glass

Garnish with lime wheel.

Now, I was doing my measuring with a fruit juicer, meaning that only a rough 2 Oz. measurement was available to me. So, this could be slightly off. However, I think it's quite a successful drink, especially considering it all came about as a response to my current lack of gin.

The tequila and lime is a very obvious combination, but both the St. Germain and Maraschino work surprisingly nicely with a base that I really hadn't considered before tonight (I'm not much of a tequila drinker). It's much smoother than the Last Word, which is both a good and bad thing. The tequila gives the drink a sort of velvety smokiness, and although I enjoy the rough edges on the gin, this ends up being a drink that is familiar without tasting like a margarita. There's a definite kick to the combination, and I was pleased to discover that it really wasn't "too summery," which is really all that comes to mind when I think of tequila and lime.

So, I encourage you all to try your own spins on your favorite cocktails, as you never really know when you'll come up with a gem. Do try this one out as well, although you may have to do a bit of experimenting with proportion to nail the taste you're looking for.

City of Mirth

I tried to climb one of the towers, once. One of the big ones, I mean. The little ones are easy to climb, you can just shimmy up those until you get lost in the fog and can’t see the ground and it starts to get dark. Then you go down, if you don’t want to die. But you can’t get your hands around the big ones, and so you can’t climb them. They’re smooth, smooth as polished gold. There are no ledges, no handholds, no nothing. So, when I say that I tried to climb one of the big towers, what I really did was hurl myself into the side of a tower a few times and then give up.

There are no doors in the towers of Mirth – none that I’ve found, at least. There are windows, though, high up; windows behind which lights must be turning on and off, because something is up there, blinking randomly in the fog. I’ve never seen a person behind one of those windows. I’ve never seen anyone walk out of or into a tower either. But there are Mirthians. Oh yes, they’re there in their gilded spires, playing with light-switches while all around them the ones who come to Mirth scream and disappear.

On the subject of pants

I've never really cared for cuffed pants. Granted, I don't wear trousers often, but when I do, I don't really want to look like some asshole who hangs out at Pitti and spends the rest of the year blogging about yachts and tassel loafers.

Thickening

Driving a 996TT around Boulder is a lot like driving a WRX around Boulder:

1) Both have four wheels
2) Both have four wheel drive
3) Both are manual
4) Both have boxer engines

Well, I guess that those are about the only similarities, really - at least on paper. One is a 480 HP pocket supercar, the other is a friendly little four-wheeled ski-lift. But they're both sort of burbly and comfortable, and, well, car-like, and the Porsche isn't nearly as intimidating as you'd think.

It has surprisingly excellent visibility, with the one caveat being that you're pretty much staring at everyone else's bumpers when you drive around, which is actually a bit unnerving when you're surrounding by 3-ton SUVs carrying distracted mothers too busy using their cell phones to pull over for you.

In the shop's lot, I found myself laughing like a maniac as the starter ticked over and the throaty woofle of the flat-six filled the bubble cabin. It sounds like a tyrannosaurus trying to clear its throat, in the absolute best of ways.

The gearshift is very light, as is the clutch. It's certainly not a workout to drive the turbo, and after the initial trepidation that comes with pulling out into traffic, working through the gears really is as easy as in my Subaru. There's no reason to turn on the radio, because once you're moving, the heavy, throbbing bass of the engine is fairly all-encompassing, and does a great - and probably necessary - job of reminding you what your'e driving.

It's lurking malevolently in my garage at the moment, hunched and brooding like some horrific beast-machine from a mechanized, dystopian future. I'm looking forward to the next few weeks.

Complaints

Really, we're all stuck in a rut. How come we're still using cotton to make pants? Still driving internal combustion engines? HOW THE FUCK WILL WE COLONIZE THE COSMOS IF WE CAN'T GET OVER GAY MARRIAGE? I dream of newness, of some monolithic Thing for which we have no adjectives.

Aside

Can you even believe how fucking awesome whales are? Incredible.

re: previous

And then I heard it: a queer whistling that echoed through the horrific cubes and towers of those ancient, cyclopean peaks - breathless, tuneless piping; as if some eldritch power lurked there among the endless clouds, and with whispering words beckoned us all onwards, onwards, to those lofty, lonely heights at the mountains of madness.

A video

I took this from someone else's tumblr.

a scallop

"I brought you sea-glass," I said, wiping my nose with the back of my hand, "And a shell. I think it was a clam."

She smiled at me from her chair, and held out her left hand, palm up. I gave it to her, and she felt its wavy ridges and fluted edges. It looked soft, chalky.

"Pretty," she said.

"Have you eaten?" I said.

"A little."

"Are you hungry?"

"No. I'm fine." She put the shell on the table in front of her, and turned to face me. She held her hand out, and I took it in mine.

"I don't think it was a clam," she said, and smiled again, slightly.

The sun was setting as we walked outside together, bleeding crimson across the golden-blue of sea and sky.

"Sky-blue," I said, looking at her. "That's my favorite. Like your eyes. When it gets grey and cloudy from the sand."

"I always liked the bottle-green," she said, staring out towards the water.

We stood and watched as the sun fell slowly into the horizon.

The sand was still warm beneath my feet. I dug my toes in, and wiggled them. My nose was still running.

"My eyes itch," I said.

She said nothing. I shuffled my sandy feet a step or two closer to her, sand up to my ankles.

"I don't think it's too late," I said.

"You know it is," she said, looking towards me.

"Let's talk to the doctor first," I said. "He said that he thought...let's talk to him first, after we get home."

The last rays of light were struggling over the water. I looked down at my sunken feet and wiggled my toes wider apart. Little mountains of sand rose and fell, like waves.

"Would you really want to try again?"

My feet were getting cold in the cool sand. I looked over at her, but she was staring out over the water, eyes grey.

I held her hand as we walked slowly back up the beach, helping her to find her way over the rocks when we turned up the path. The house was dark.

I dipped my sandy feet in the water bucket on the porch and kicked the droplets off as best I could.

"No," I said, "never."

I helped her climb the stairs up to the porch, and steadied her as she put one foot in the bucket, took it out, and put the other one in. She was looking towards the water again.

"I'm sure I wouldn't either," she said, abruptly. " I don't think I ever wanted to." I waited, my hands on her shoulders.

"How would we even raise it?" she said, blue-grey eyes searching for my face in the twilight.

"The usual way, I imagine," I said. The paint on the porch was grey and cracked.

"But I could never - I mean, I would never be able to-" she stopped, spent.

"I'm so tired," she said , after a minute.

"Shall we go in?"

She turned away from me to walk towards the door, and stumbled. I caught her arm. Her hair was pulling out of its loose ponytail, and some fine strands drifted down onto her neck. She looked up at the sky and exhaled a great, even breath. We walked inside.

"It's a scallop," she said. "The ridges."

We were back at the table. I inspected my feet in the lamplight. I could feel grains of sand in between my toes. They would probably end up in my bed.

"Not a clam?"

She smiled and gave me the shell.

"Not a clam."

It was pinkish and transparent in the light, like a watercolor. The inside was smooth and white. One of the small fins at the base of the fan was cracked.

"Here," I said, and she searched for it uncertainly before I placed it back in her hand, and she ran her thumb up and down the ridges.

"I hate that I don't want to try again," she said, venomously. "I should want to."

"Why? It could have been even worse," I said.

"Worse? I can't see."

"It could have been worse than that. You-"

"I what? I could have died? I wish I had."

The shell cracked. I looked at her. She dropped half of it, and clenched the rest in her fist.

"I hate this house."

"I like it here," I said. "I like the sound of the waves."

"I want to leave."

"We'll leave tomorrow, then."

"I don't want to go back home."

"We'll go somewhere else."

"Where?"

"Where would you like to go?"

"I thought I would like the ocean," she said.

"Maybe you would like a different ocean?"

"I don't want to go anywhere. But I don't want to stay here."

An empty wine bottle on a shelf, full of sand, cast a long shadow on the wall

"Are you hungry?" I said.

"No, I'm not fucking hungry," she said, quietly.

I sat there with her, at the table, as she turned the scallop in her palm, over, and over.

The sun rose in the morning, and while it was still cool I walked up and down the beach, collecting sea-glass.

METALEPHANT

Fuck yes.