Mondegreen of the now

I was born with the wrong sign
In the wrong house
With the wrong ascendancy.
I took the wrong road
That led to
The wrong tendencies.
I was in the wrong place
At the wrong time
For the wrong reason and the wrong rhyme.
On the wrong day
Of the wrong week
I used the wrong method with the wrong technique. (Depeche Mode, "Wrong")

First time I listened to this song I heard that last line as "I use the wrong makeup with the wrong technique." Another listen or two was enough to determine what it should've been, but I can't help singing it my way. It's Depeche fucking Mode, for Maybeline's sake!

The house wins, the house always wins

Those of you who know spookyfruit are well acquainted with his hostility to electronic communication supplanting face-to-face. So it should come as no surprise that when his law partner and I happened to find ourselves seated at his Thanksgiving dinner next to the last twotwo of the last three people in America who had yet to watch the Muppet "Bohemian Rhapsody" and he began to play it on his iPhone that Spooky roared from across the room "You know that's a violation of a house rule!"

"What house rule?" asked an infrequent visitor.

"No electronic devices out in the house."

This set off a brief discussion into which I, arms crossed behind my head, interjected, "I just want you to know, Spooky, that I've been live Twittering the whole time with my genitals."

"There isn't a house rule against that?" someone else asked.

"I didn't think it'd be necessary to make a rule against that," replied our host. "If you can pull that off, more power to you."

After clarifying that there was no house rule against singing at the table (as there was in my household), princeofcairo and I attempted to accompany Spooky's partner in a live rendition. All I can say is that anyone who can continue to make chicken noises for more than two measures of that intro is a stronger man than I.

Conspicuous consumption: Rapshonig and rose hip liqueur

As much as I identify with the visceral rejection of relentless sales promotion that undergirds Buy Nothing Day, I can never bring myself to observe it. For all my miseriness, I just enjoy shopping too much. So it was that monshu and I were out on the street these last two days along with everyone else. In our defence, they were two really beautiful days for this time of year; I didn't even need a coat downtown at the Christkindlmarket today. (Californians, feel free to begin snickering away. Goddess knows I do whenever it's fire season and the talk turns to "air quality".)

Yesterday, we decided to steer well clear of any traditional big box districts (so no SamsBinny's run for us), which is how we found ourselves on Clark Street. Before hitting Gethsemane to get the fixings for my traditional advent wreath, we poked into Andersonville Wines & Spirits on the off chance of finding something from our local boutique distillery. I first found out about Koval through the Reader and was particularly intrigued by the part of the story which described how they made Bierbrand from a failed batch at the neighbouring microbrewery. Given the small size of their batches, I wasn't expecting to see bottles of this appear at AW&S a year later. (Unaccountably, I concluded that I had too many oddities already in the cabinets and failed to buy a bottle.)

But this time it was their ginger liqueur we were on the prowl for. Nuphy had talked it up massively I'd called to wish him a happy holiday. Evidentally he's not the only person taken with it because we were informed by the owner that the last bottle in stock had sold the day before. However, they still had bottles of of their rose hip liqueur, which had intrigued me on previous visits. (Would that I had bought that instead of Zirbenz!) Now I'm a fan of rose hips; I like 'em in tea and I like 'em in jelly. But would I like 'em in liqueur? Well I like this one. It has a strong fruity fragrance, but surprisingly the taste is less one-note than I expected. The rose hips are front and centre, make no mistake, but monshu also picked out vanilla notes and there's a hint of spice that neither of us can quite identify. I'm starting to muse the possibilities for drink mixing.

Today we decided to venture downtown, figuring that perhaps the worst was over--at least where we were concerned, which was the Christkindlmarket. monshu and I made it there ten minutes before they opened and already lines of a dozen people or more weren't uncommon at the more popular booths. The timber hall on the northern edge, however, was mostly empty, so we nailed down a table with two boots of glühwein while we waited for Nuphy to find us. After stuffing ourselves on potato pancakes, currywurst, leberkäse, and hot soup, we felt fortified to swim the madding crowds. Crowds where we lost monshu for nearly half and hour.

We finally found him in front of the stand for Bienes Honighaus Augsburg. In order to further enable my budding honey-snob tendencies, he bought me a six-pack sampler. I only had to make one or two cooing noises about the appearance of the canola honey for him to treat me to a 500 mg jar of that as well. It was creamed and so pale as to give it the appearance of marshmallow fluff. And as you might imagine, it's extremely mild. But not, however, characterless. Again, the precise undertone is devilishly hard to pin down (even for the Old Man, who's far better at this sort of thing than me). Even more than the kamahi honey, it can't be paired with anything too strong; sweetening a cup of linden blossom tea was exactly right for it. And, of course, it was lovely on a piece of whole grain toast.