Barrel Strength

Details of the complaint.  “He went to the only people who would accept this hand-scrawled crap from him.”  Guess who.

“And forthwith he turned into an establishment the window of which displayed a spirited lithograph of the Relief of Lucknow, depicting several bottles of MacCrimmon’s Very Old Liqueur Whisky being put to good use by the beleaguered defenders in the foreground. He found MacCrimmon’s Very Old to be distinctly creditable stuff — as good, in some respects, as The Laird’s Selected Relics, Clammarty Royal Tartan Blend and Dunleven Particularly Choice. But none of them, of course, could compare with Duggan’s Dew of Kirkintilloch — most gorgeous of all liquids that ever dripped golden from the nozzle of a still to mingle its perfume with that of the heather in the cold Highland mists.”

That was your selected reading for the day. To the point. Last night several of us heard a version of the Mohammed cartoons story that was flatly wrong. The broad purport of the lie, that Danish or western provocateurs somehow went far out of their way to inflame Islamic opinion, appears to be the exculpation of followers of the prophet from the orgy of death and destruction that followed. This Wikipedia entry better reflects my recollection of events. The truth of the events is so immediately and easily accessible that I was surprised the speaker had not devoted a couple of minutes and a few dozen keystrokes to seeking it out.