Todays Strip 22/01/2006

Nithos · Post by **Nithos** » Tue Jan 24, 2006 3:54 pm

Heh, I really wouldn't know, I've only had absinthe once (the real thing), and that was a single shot. Never tried the fake stuff; I like my homebrew without antifreeze.

Tellner · Post by **Tellner** » Tue Jan 24, 2006 8:02 pm

squidflakes wrote:Bah.. actual wormwood Absinthe doesn't put holes in your brain, its all the cheap immitation anti-freeze containing crap that does.

Depends on how much. The good absinthes have relatively small amounts of wormwood oil and its bad actors including thujone. They also taste of something besides "Fuck! Oh fuck, that's just too fucking bitter!" Others have unsafe levels, and it will do bad permanent things to the stiff lump of lard at the top of your spine.

Error of Logic · Post by **Error of Logic** » Tue Jan 24, 2006 11:07 pm

Quote: "Would you like a drink of this?"
Reply: "Absinthe? No, thank you. Madness and death aren't my fancy."

Squidflakes · Post by **Squidflakes** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 5:59 am

Absinthe is just as bad for you as any other liquor, and if handled properly will cause no more damage than the equal measure of scotch.

The whole madness and death angle came from one of many temerance movements spawned in France in the 1880s, and was fueled by the Absinthe bootlegging industry of the time. The drink was damn popular with all segments of French society and had an extremely high export rate.

Just like everything else, when there is money to be made, there are going to be shitty products that capitalize on the success of quality. Bootleg absinthe was made in all kinds of horrid ways and would cause madness, blindness, and death, very much akin to the bathtub gin and rotgut moonshine popular in the US during the Prohibition Era.

It was this asswater absinthe that the temperance movements siezed on, and used the deaths associated with it to have the stuff banned.

Chaszmyr Mae'Val · Post by **Chaszmyr Mae'Val** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 12:11 pm

Absinthe is EVIL. No wonder she's messed up - and so small!

Error of Logic · Post by **Error of Logic** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 12:25 pm

I don't think absinthe can account for Chibi Sue's size ... Unless her mother and father were drinking the cheap bootleg absinthe Squids just described like water before her conception and during her pregnancy, anyway.

Jackalope · Post by **Jackalope** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 12:51 pm

Actually, it didn't even need to be rotgut absinthe. Real absinthe made to the commerical recipies was about 150-180 proof. Vaults of Erowid

Note the additives used to get the emerald green color: "However, in the event that the product was not properly colored, absinthe makers were known to add things like copper sulfate, cupric acetate indigo, turmeric, and aniline green. Antimony trichloride was also used to help the drink become cloudy when added to water "

Drink a bottle of high-proof alcohol a day and you'll end up with Korsakoff's syndrome pretty soon, and that's before you factor in the lovely adulterants above or the affects of thujone and the other terpines in wormwood. Excessive thujone ingestion or absorption through the skin can cause convulsions. Put all that together, and even the commerical absinthes could be nasty shit if you drank a bottle or two a day (and some famous folk had documented habits that high).

Full Vaults of Erowid entry on Absinthe

Tellner · Post by **Tellner** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 12:57 pm

And it's easy to drink a lot of it when you get used to the taste. Absinthe has some stimulants that counteract the sleepy-time effect of the alcohol. So you stay awake longer and drink more. That's probably why artists and writers liked it so much. You could get absolutely shtonkered and still keep going.

Moo Cow · Post by **Moo Cow** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 1:28 pm

The word "rotgut" is very appropriate for what it means...

~Sara

Squidflakes · Post by **Squidflakes** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 3:21 pm

But with everything else, drinking too much is bad for you. It doesn't matter if its Everclear or Moonshine, a bottle or two a day would rot anyones brain.

Error of Logic · Post by **Error of Logic** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 10:57 pm

I'll stick to fruit juice and water, then. ^^

Alter alias · Post by **Alter alias** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 11:13 pm

the thing is, you dont even need to drink a lot of absinthe so unless you are one of those people that just dosn't know when to stop drinking it realy becomes something of a non issue, like everything else once you get the moderation right its realy not that much of a concern, this is ofcourse asuming you are drinking the good stuff there are a few stills out there that have fifty fifty chances on producing a drink or a drain cleaner.

Jackalope · Post by **Jackalope** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 8:29 am

That was kinda my point. "Absinthism" was really just alcoholism with an added kick. Like the idiots who drink Red Bull cocktails now. Apparently, an Absinthe frappe was considered the ideal hangover cure at one point (there's even a song about it).

It's not really that absinthe is horribly toxic, it's that victorian manufacturers were pretty unscrupulous about what they put in things (patent medicines were even scarier), combined with lack of moderation. As long as you stay away from the eastern european absinthes that are made from industrial-grade alcohol, you should be fine. The stuff from Spain and Holland is lovely. The cheap brand that's readily available everywhere in England (I think it's Hills) looks and smells like window cleaner. Avoid it.

Something that Erowid doesn't mention and I'm suprised they missed it is that anise has psychotropic effects. That's why ouzo has such a kick to it. It's also why it clouds up when added to ice or water. Pernoud and ouzo are cousins to absinthe, they just don't have any wormwood in them.

Squidflakes · Post by **Squidflakes** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 9:17 am

The Pernod Fils company used to produce the finest Absinthe in the world. My great-grandfather had an absinthe collection in his estate that was unfortunately sold, however, my father and I got a bottle of Pernod Fils 1868 a magnum of A. Junod 1890 and a bottle of Oxygenee 1888 as part of the deal.

The crown jewel of his collection, and something I would have liked to have kept was a magnum of Pernod Fils 1890 that had been painted upon, but unopened by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. A fantastic little object d'art, and probably the only one of its kind in the world.

Ghastly · Post by **Ghastly** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 9:38 am

Man, one of my gun mates when I was in the armed forces was an ouzo nut. I couldn't stand the stuff, but then again I hate black licorice.

Tellner · Post by **Tellner** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 12:58 pm

First mind you steer clear o' the grog-sellers' huts,
For they sell you Fixed Bay'nets that rots out your guts --
Ay, drink that 'ud eat the live steel from your butts --
An' it's bad for the young British soldier.
Bad, bad, bad for the soldier

--Rudyard Kipling, The Young British Soldier

Of course, why follow good advice when the poem ends:

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.

As far as it goes, the Nouvelle-Orleans brand is quite good and has an interesting history. The maker was a chemistry student with a good booze fetish. He found an old, old bottle at an estate sale and (without letting air in) got out enough with a micro-pipette to do gas chromatography and a bunch of other quantitative analysis. Enough to let him reverse engineer the recipe. Of course, he has to do production in Europe.

Indigo Violent · Post by **Indigo Violent** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 1:17 pm

I think I read about him - he was featured in Wired or something.

Nithos · Post by **Nithos** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 1:50 pm

I did some research via google and found a comment in an article that absinthe is legal to posses, illegal to sell, and no comment on brewing (in the US); I'm just curious about the various legal issues involved. Is wormwood itself controlled at all? I find patchwork laws like these entertaining

Tellner · Post by **Tellner** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 1:55 pm

Indigo Violent wrote:I think I read about him - he was featured in Wired or something.

Found it - http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.1 ... he_pr.html

And Breaux's website - http://www.vintageabsinthe.com/

Nithos, if you make absinthe you'll be distilling alcohol. You can't do that legally in the US without having a long talk with the BATF about taxes, inspections and regulations.

Catherine_Puce · Post by **Catherine_Puce** » Sat Jan 28, 2006 12:19 pm

myself wrote:Todays strip made me chuckle since i was expecting some kind of relationship to start between Hammer and Chibi Sue. But the last panel make me cry out laughing since it threw me totally off with the one before.

Chibi Sue can't have a relationship with hammer. He's babysitting Gimp girl right now. I doubt that she's ready for a threesome. This leave an another option: Gimp girl and Chibi Sue had a relationship together and Hammer watch. Gimp girl is helpless and blindfolded so she can't see that Chibi sue look like a kid and as a horny sub she'll do anything sexual thing if someone orders it.

La relation parfaite.

S.P.P.

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Todays Strip 22/01/2006

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