Hard on Terrorists

photo credit: dan paluska

It had been two weeks since the Prosthetic Penis Bomber had struck, and the United States was again winning the War on Terror.  All males were now padded down at airport security and those with a hard, potential stick of dynamite in their pants had some explaining to do.  The soft, good Americans were allowed right through.

Of course the Defeaticrats said this was un-American and grotesque.  They didn’t understand that “we have to fight them down here (the President said pointing to his crotch with both arms), so we don’t have to fight them here (now pointing at his head and heart).”  It was very simple, the President explained after raising the threat level to orange in front of what could have been the flaming wreckage of flight 333, Southwest’s flight servicing Chicago Midway and Oakland, California.  “We cannot afford to be soft on terrorists.  We have to be hard on terrorists.  Good Americans with soft penises will not have any trouble at airport security.  You are all good Americans, aren’t you?”  The Press Secretary would have more explaining to do later.

“You don’t understand,” he told a reporter.  “The new rule is exactly like the rule requiring all laptop computers to be turned on before passing through airport security.  It’s just the opposite.  We can’t treat this like the shoe-bomb situation of a few years ago.  Not only can we not send a male’s member through the scanner, but the explosive potential of a prosthetic of this nature is significantly greater than that of a Dr. Scholl’s gel shoe insert, and we haven’t even allowed those on planes in over a year.  We can’t just ban men from flying, if that’s what you’re suggesting,” he said with a laugh.   It was the reporter now that looked ridiculous.  How could she even suggest banning all men from flying?  That would be ridiculous!  The president’s solution was the same type of knee jerk protection that didn’t do anything but needed to be done so that it looked like he was doing something so it had to be done.  And something had to be done; the threat level had already been raised to orange.

No, men could not be banned from flying like dangerous Dr. Scholl’s gel shoe inserts and Revlon Extreme Hold hair styling gel.  And men couldn’t be scanned with the airport scanner like a dangerous pair of Allen Edmonds, and they wouldn’t fit into a bomb-proof, pint-sized zip-top bag like a deadly tube of Colgate Total Whitening either.  America had no choice but to pat down each male as he passed through airport security and to single out those potential offenders and make them turn their penises off.  It was just like the laptop computer rule that stated all computers had to be turned on.

“The computer rule states that all laptop computers need to be turned on,” the airport guard told a person that can only be described as a white potential terrorist.

“I’ve told you already, this isn’t a laptop computer,” the white potential terrorist said.

“Then where is its screen?” the guard asked.

“It doesn’t have a screen.  It’s a server.  I’ve already told you that.”

“Well, we can’t let it on the plane unless your laptop turns on.  I’m sorry, but you’ll have to board without it.”

“I can’t board without it.  My only reason for flying is to take this server from Chicago to LA.”  The white potential terrorist was supposedly an IT Administrator from the law firm Womanizer, Idiot and Jackass LLP, or something.  He showed his business card to the airport security guard, but the guard’s job was to follow the rules, not to read.

“Well, you have to turn all laptops on at airport security.”

“I can turn it on, but I don’t have a screen, so you won’t be able to see anything.”

“Then turn it on.”  The guard crossed his arms.  He was hard on terrorists.

“I need to plug it in,” the white potential terrorist IT Administrator from Womanizer, Idiot and Jackass LLP, or something pulled a cord from his carry-on bag and carried what was either a bomb or a server over to the wall outlet.

“See, it’s on.”

“What’s it do when it’s on?” the airport security guard asked.

“This green light blinks.”  The white potential terrorist IT Administrator pointed at the green blinking LED on the server.

“What about those red ones?”

“They only blink if there are problems.”

“Well, it is on.  I guess you can fly with it,” the guard said because nobody had ever been able to build a bomb that you could plug into a wall with a blinking green light not to mention a bogus bare-bones computer that could boot, but was really a bomb.  And this guy was white and a nerd and had a business card and his penis hadn’t been hard when the airport security guard had checked.

“I feel some hardness here,” the security guard said to an elderly gentleman that had just walked through the scanner.  The guard working the scanner heard his cue and scanned the elderly gentleman’s carry-on bag and walker twice to make sure he caught everything.  He saw what looked like Dr. Scholl’s gel shoe inserts in the man’s Velcro shoes and what looked like Colgate Total Whitening toothpaste and Burt’s Bees Lifeguard’s Friend lip balm in what had better be a zip-top bag.  He called over another guard to investigate.

“You’ll have to turn that off,” the guard said pointing to the elderly gentleman’s groin.  You can do so in cubicle six.

“It’s the Viagra,” the man explained.  “I’ve been hard since last night.”

“Well, cubicle six is all ready for you.”  The guard felt sorry for the man even though he could easily be a terrorist, so he pulled the man’s walker from the scanner and let the man use it to get to cubicle six.

“Do you have any lotion?” the elderly gentleman asked.

“If you needed lotion, you should have brought it in your zip-top bag.”

The elderly man rose to find cubicle six.  Four other men were utilizing cubicles one through four and an airport guard was cleaning number five.

“When will it end?” he asked, to nobody in particular, though nobody was listening because all the guards were busy terrorizing the passengers by being hard on terrorists and nobody had any time for logic and reason because the threat level was orange and something had to be done.

The man in cubicle two smiled while those in the others gritted their teeth.  “Inspection!” the cubicle monitor guard yelled to the guard cleaning cubicle five.  The man in cubicle two had ejaculated and had cleared his name.  He could now fly.

America was now filled with men that had to fuck themselves to fly.  And when you’re fucked, the only solution is to stay the course and win by adapting.  Men adapted by wearing frozen pouch boxers that were frozen the night before in their freezers until the FAA found out that the frozen insert was a gel and had to be banned from flight.  Men stayed the course by continuing to fly and by not causing a scene when they needed to jack off to do so.  And everybody ignored the Muslim world, which was outraged in their hearts and minds at the hedonistic lack of morals the United States showed by making their citizens masturbate in their airports.  But it had been two weeks since the Prosthetic Penis Bomber had struck, over two years since the Shoe Bomber had struck, and almost a year since the Gel Bombers had almost struck and the United States was again winning the War on Terror and that was all that mattered.

We had a great start — 20 authors signed up within the first month — but interest waned.  Organically, traffic never seemed to find the site.  Turns out, there are not a lot of long tail searches for poetry and fiction (duh!) — but that’s what everybody wanted to write.  Travel and wine writing did a lot better, especially a piece about a fantastic journey through Spain by James Teitelbaum and Ben Madeska’s frequent wine posts — which were always a great read.

I realized there was no writer community building up around the site, so I got us on Ning and Facebook and installed the JS-Kit comment module and the AddThis share button to foster this, but that wasn’t enough.  To generate an influx of writers, I needed to continuously post on craigslist, which became tiring.  I reached out to sites to create partnerships, but nothing significant ever materialized.  The site never reached critical mass.

Could it have worked?  Maybe.  It’s nice to imagine a little more publicity or a little different strategy, but I think there are a few core problems that made things tough:

1. The Yelp model is dead — blogs killed it.  Creating a destination publishing site is a tall order when a person with 10 minutes of free time can create their OWN website from scratch on Blogger or WordPress.  Yelp will continue, don’t get me wrong, but the likelihood of a new Yelp competitor challenging its market is nearly nil.
2. Fiction and poetry aren’t good at generating organic traffic — even my (fantastically written) poem about Ashley Dupree, Eliot Spitzer’s famous prostitute constituent, failed to generate any volume.  News does better, and Associated Content is exploiting that angle with a similar model.
3. Fiction writing may be dead.  I hate to say it, but maybe it’s true.  Playboy is the last hold-out publisher of regular short stories.  That can’t be a good sign.
4. Websites need to focus.  Fiction / Wine / Travel was too much.  Nick Denton at Gawker has shown how to make focused, specific sites work inside an umbrella network.  I think this is a good approach — which is why I started up BARTANNICA.com, a site focused on booze.

Now it’s time to evolve.  Writers, thank you for all the help and support.  Jonathan Soeder, thank you for helping me build my dream.  We’ve been struck down, but we will return more powerful than you can possibly imagine.

A Toast! Or is that Brioche on the Nose?

Wine writers are a filthy bunch.  They all seem to travel the same path.  First they are surprised they even like the stuff and relate stories about their early days with Franzia and Rossi and other sweet swill.  Then they explore all sorts of grapes and values and flavors.  Then pretension creeps in and pretty soon they only sip Yquem and Margaux and discuss the variations between the ’82 and ’86 Bordeaux vintages.  Disgusting.

No, wine is supposed to be fun and finding a good wine value is great fun.  Would you rather have one bottle of Dom or ten bottles of Korbel?  Well, how about three bottles of Bollinger?  Personally, I’d pass on the Korbel, but definitely choose the Bollinger.  I think Bollinger is one of the most fantastic Champagne values.  Bollinger employs its own cooper to keep its barrels in order.  There’s only one other Champagne house that relies on these old techniques: Krug.  And Krug starts at $150 a bottle.  Quite simply, Bollinger Special cuvee is as good as or better than most houses’ premium offerings and it costs between one-half to one-third as much as these.  It’s a great deal.  Put the Grand Annee in the mix and it becomes very difficult to rationalize the need for any other producers of Champagne.

Today a toast is in order.  Prolonged Insult is soon-to-be live and with a little luck, writers that previously had limited venues to sing in will find this new one where serenading and crooning are encouraged, and all writers that want others to hear their voices will have a spot to vocalize and harmonize together.  All readers that are fed up with the filtered filth they are subjected to will have a new place to turn to read something new, something fresh, and something beautiful.

Publishing is a tough business.  Each permutation seems to be a slightly worse version of its predecessor.  Have you ever read an issue of Details or Lucky?  Or should I say looked-at?  There just isn’t enough room for articles anymore.  And what articles they do have are really just dressed up ads anyway – 10 Best Cell Phones / 5 Perfect Vacations – disgusting.  Fiction’s place in publishing shrinks daily.  Wine writers have consolidated power between a few ‘elite’ publications and created a monopolistic state.  Travel writing is increasingly influenced by freebies and promotions.  Of course there are exceptions, but the trend is clear.

Prolonged Insult hopes to be a step in the opposite directions: a place for fiction to be published and actually read instead of just filling pages; a venue for all wine voices, not just those that regularly drink Mouton-Rothschild; a journal for all travelers to share their adventures and experiences.  I am excited about what Prolonged Insult can be.  I am excited to read your stories.

So I propose a toast.  But a toast of what?  Of course I like Bollinger, but I’ve associated it with other memories and would prefer to try something new.  Problem is, I tried a bunch Champagnes and sparkling wines last December at a tasting and none of them really stood out other than the Grand Annee.  Diamante from Heidsick was good, very good, actually.  Then there’s Dom and Cristal, but I’m neither a czar nor a rapper.  Speaking of rappers, there’s the new ‘Ace of Spades’ wine that Jay-Z seems to like, but all the bottles are non-vintage.

I’ve always been attracted to Krug, and there’s no reason that this toast should not be with Krug, except price, of course, but Krug makes a fair amount of wine.  Vintage, Rose, NV, they make it all.

So that leaves Salon.

Moet doesn’t disclose how much Dom Perignon it makes.  I’ve seen estimates as high as 100,000 cases.  That’s a lot of wine.  Moet also makes a Dom Rose, a Dom vintage and the ever-popular White Star and a whole portfolio of other wines.  Salon makes between 6,000 and 10,000 cases when they make it.  Their first vintage was in 1905 and they’ve made 37 vintages in the 100+ years since.  They make one style – vintage brut.  No rose, no NV, nothing at all if the weather doesn’t cooperate and the grapes don’t ripen correctly.  Bad year?  They just sell off the grapes and look forward to next year.  It’s absolutely one of the most insane business plans ever written.

Today, I toast you with Salon.  The bottle of wine in front of me represents the highest ratio of price per unit urine produced that I have ever experienced.  With Salon I begin the opposite path of most writers: I will start from the top and work my way down.

Acting as the control in this experiment is my go-to bottle of sparkling – Gruet.  In many ways, Gruet is the opposite of Salon.  For one, they make a lot of the stuff.  They also make a whole variety of styles (it’s brut v. brut today, though).  And Gruet is made in New Mexico.  Instead of Salon, where the ideal vineyard sites were selected based on past performance, this seems to be a location where the attitude was more: “Well, we can make it work here.”  But it’s delicious and a great deal.  If you got a case-discount, you could buy three for the price of one bottle of Salon.

I’m not drinking alone.  I’m with the love-of-my-life and my buddy, Ben (you’ll see Ben’s writing on the site), and his wife.  We start with a small taste of the Gruet.  It’s good – light in color, very bubbly right from when you pour it.  You’ve got to be careful or it will overflow the glass.  We open the Salon next – none of us has had it before and we’re excited.  It opens with a tiny pop.  The Gruet was almost ready to shoot the cork across the room, but I have to nudge out the Salon’s.  We can smell it almost as soon as it’s open – yeasty, like pound cake and vanilla cookies.  We pour small glasses and sniff.  The smell – the smell is amazing.  I want cologne that smells like this.  If you’re more pretentious, you’d say you smelled notes of brioche.  The taste is full with nearly every flavor possible competing for your attention – citrus, vanilla, cake, yeast, bread, baked apples, butter.  And the finish, it lingers.  The acidity seems to burn the flavor into your mouth.  It’s great.  And it has our attention for a while.

We turn back to the Gruet.  It’s warmer now and seems to have lost its effervescence.  You can swish it around in your mouth and nothing really happens any more.  The warmth has changed the flavor profile and it’s no longer as balanced.  Something’s off, but when we refill with cold wine, it’s good again and the bubbles are still there.

The Salon, when warmed a bit seems to keep its balance.  It’s almost better as we pour another glass.  It seems to have opened up more.  Even when left to sit the bubbles remain.  It almost seems to hold them in until it hits your mouth and then the wine transforms to a wonderfully creamy texture that coats your mouth with flavor.

But it’s still just wine.  The law of diminishing returns comes to mind.  If you spend twice as much, do you double the quality?  Sometimes, yes.  I would argue that Gruet is more than twice as good as Andre or Cook’s, but is Salon 30x as good as Gruet?  Nope.  So, the value.  Is Salon worth it?  “Worth what?” is the only correct response, because it isn’t, but it is.  Yesterday, it was worth everything.  Yesterday marks the start of something special.

Writers (and winos) of the world, unite!  Let’s change the world.