Graped In The Face

Q. What's the difference between pinot noir and merlot?
A. Nothing, suckers.

So yeah, you remember how that movie Sideways did so well? It was a fine film: Paul Giamatti drinks a whole lot of Californian wine, rants about how pinot noir is so great and merlot is so terrible.

Mmm. Grapes.

Most people who saw Sideways immediately decided that, yes, indeed:

1. pinot noir is brilliant

2. all other wines – especially merlot – are really just fermented hackjuice

There was thus an instant craze in the market for pinot wine, and a corresponding crash in demand for the less respectable grapes (like merlot and shiraz). So: a group of French wine merchants decided to scam the American market by repackaging 13.5 MILLION LITRES of their excess merlot and shiraz wine as pinot noir, instead.

A couple of years later, French auditors became suspicious of some unusually cheap "pinot" grape transactions; a few days ago, a French court unravelled the scam and found a cartel of Carcassonne wine merchants guilty of fraud.

Mugshot!

In the meantime, how many American wine drinkers had figured out that they weren't actually drinking pinot noir? Here is a picture of them all:

Aw, it was only 13.5 million litres . . .

2KX

* something missing *

Xmas Xmas Woo Xmas

I hope you're having a fine & pleasant day.

Here's to World Peace!
Nah, I'm kidding. All I really want is turkey.

Merry X &c. !

—the Festive Thoapsl

MICHAEL JACKSON IS UNDEAD

>20

I've talked about this sort of thing before.

It's not too original. Its returns diminish on repeat viewing. It's probably much the kind of manatee humour that many simply people don't like. Nonetheless: great stuff, huh?

There's a whole bunch of these around, actually – they're all fun – but the mysterious introduction makes this first one the best, I think.

PS: I know, I know I shouldn't have. Roman numeral puns are the lowest form of pun.

Briefly

It's been a busy couple of weeks in the house of Thoapsl. Portents and general rumblings indicate further busyness for the next couple of weeks, too. Nonetheless, here I remain: up on yr internets, typing typing typing. Typing with less haste and more pain than usual, in fact. Last night saw Thoapsl involved in a drunken shopping trolley incident, as a result of which I am bleeding in five (5) different places, three (3) of which are on my right hand. (Okay, not bleeding so much as "severely grazed", but there's fresh blood where there should be skin, so it still hurts). Anyhow, despite this I aim to be posting another Rage Roundup later on today, so good for me.

Also: see how I left it syntactically unclear whether it was I or the shopping trolley, or both, who were the "drunken" figures in the aforementioned "incident"? That's the sort of ambiguity which cultivates my air of charismatic mystery.

On a less seguerific note, there's an interesting article by Chris Middendorp in today's Age. It begins as a report on homeless people and their gambling habits, but then it flows on into an intriguing discussion of the concept of "luck" and its place in people's understanding of the universe. I thought it was rather nifty (& rare) to see a newspaper article that broadens its focus like that, an article that's not explicitly a "comment" piece but which is still willing to play with some more profound and abstract ideas than usual. It's not especially deep, but it's still kind of neat.