National Beer

Oh, so after my food rant I thought I'd hit up a beer rant. Not really a rant. A, noticement. Yes. Something I've noticed. Every country has a beer. Most have several.

In Canada we have several. There are the big breweries, Labatts, Molson, Moosehead, Keiths, and smaller microbrews putting out gems like Propeller, Thirsty Beaver, Innis & Gun and probably thousands of others. Unfortunately the Americans have started sending their sexing in a canoe northbound. I read recently that Budweiser, the king of awful swamp piss, is now the number one beer in the country. I blame that fully on drunken asshole wannabe cowboys during Stampede who believe that the superbowl Clydesdales really have something to do with beer. In Canada you say cheers by clinking your glasses together and saying "cheers!". Or, if you're French "Sante", or even "Salut", which is what the Italians say. I don't know what their beer is.

In Cape Breton you might say Slainte, due to the desperate clinging to celtic roots they're doing there.

In france we drank this stuff called 1853 or something like that. French beer isn't great.

In thailand they had 3 major beers i noticed. Chang, Shingai and Tiger? maybe. I know there was a third. You say cheers there by saying "Chok-tee" In Cambodia it was Ankor. Truely great beer. I had so much I don't remember how to say cheers there.

I have several Swedish friends here in Aus. They say Skaal, which sort of sounds like Skoal. Here in Aus there are several major beer labels. VB seems to be a working class beer. Its good I think. There's Tooeys, XXXX, and Carleton as well. They have many smaller breweries making some really great beers. They say cheers here.

I met a girl from Austria this summer and we hung out for a few days. They speak german there. She told me that they say Prost, which is specific to cheersing beer. There is another for wine, and yet another for good health. Too much work. Prost it is.

The most common beer in the world is Henekein, which is dutch. They say Proost. Thats easy to remember. They're close to the germans, so is their cheers.

On that note, I'm about to have a corona with my fajita! Salud!! (Spanish for cheers)

The Australian National Food

Australia doesn't have a 'food'. You go anywhere around the world and there tends to be a national dish, or, in larger countries, regional dishes. Now I love food. I love going to places and finding new food. So travelling around recently has been a bit of a treat food wise.

In Thailand we had tons and tons of Pad Thai,  and in the South, Massaman Curry. In Cambodia I discovered Lok Lak, this amazing, sort of Lemon Grass curry. In England I had fish n' chips and scones, in France I had baguettes, wine and cheese, and amazing 4 and 5 course dinners. In Scotland I tried haggis. Never again.

Back in North America there is a huge diversity in regional food ownership. In Canada we've taken maple syrup, donuts and bacon as our own (bacon in the rest of the world is not the same.) America has the hot dog.

In New Brunswick we have poutine and lobster. La Belle Province also lays claim to pouting, and the dubious honour of being the fattest province. The only separation going on there is the mitosis of engorged fat cells. Alberta has steak. Oxford NS has blueberry pie. Newfoundland has boiled dinners, cod cheeks and flipper pie. In the southern US the barbecue is so good it could make a man weep, and different places have a different idea of what BBQ is. Books have been written on the subject. I had bbq in Austin that made me question the existence of time itself. Texas has Tex-Mex. San Francisco has crab places dotting the wharf. Chicago has pizza. New Orleans has Jumablia (I've never been, but apparently the food in NO is amazing and diverse).

Poor ol' Australia doesn't seem to have their own dish. The pubs all serve schnitzel. But thats German. You can get Kangaroo, but its not really popular. It's good, not popular. So I think Australia needs to work on creating a national dish. I don't know what it could be but they need to get on it. There are millions of Kangaroo, so that is a front runner. Most people don't eat it though. I've yet to see it on the menu here. Shark are becoming endangered so thats not a good choice for mass consumption. I think killing Koala's is illegal...Look, I'm not saying I have the answer. I'm just saying they need to have a think about it and come up with an answer. And schnitzel doesn't count. Ok, i'm off to have a fajita.
Ciao.

Petit Miam

If there's two things I hate its child actors and the French butchering the English language. Let's face it. Most child actors are awful. Except for that kid in the 6th Sense maybe. There might be another one who wasn't bad. But for the most part, they're about as good as the artwork they bring home forcing their dutiful parents to litter their refrigerators with so much wax covered refuse.

And the French. For the love of God, it's TH. Not D. How hard is that really? I mean, LITTLE kids can pronounce TH. You're telling me an adult Frenchman can't press his tongue against is front teeth and blow? You're not even trying!

In all honesty, the French accent isn't as hot as it is in the movies. There are a few rare exceptions. I had a 23 year old blonde neighbour who managed to make it sound like a chorus of drunken pillow fighting angels. But thats it.

Well, the two banes of my existence collided recently when a television station here in Aus started showing an ad for some sort of kid-targeted yogurt. The premise is this: They named the yogurt Petit M'iem, which is damn near impossible for a four year old to say. So they hire a four year old to say it. Over and over. He stumbles and stutters through a rambling story about the benefits of this fruit filled vomitous dairy cocktail. Each time he gets to the stupid product name, and stuffs it up, his older, obnoxious, precocious sister corrects him. Smug little brat. If I wanted to hear a stuttering French kid talk about dairy I'd go to france and find some special school for kids with speech impediments, slosh my way through the saliva coated floors and find some poor wretched farm kid and ask him what le Vache does.

Honest to God, if the representive from Yoplait were here right now, I would throw them in a pit in my basement and force them to eat gallons of shitty yogurt that I would serve to them via a basket on a string. If they didn't eat it they would get the hose.

Here is an open letter to Yoplait. Dear Yoplait. Fuck off. The Petit Miam ads; not cute. Annoying. I hope your marketing person gets some sort of lactose intolerance disorder that causes severe bloating and noxious gas when they even think about yogurt.