Not just for breakfast anymore..

Thanks to my good work bud Russ and my U.K. neighbor, Tim, across the street, I got turned on to single-malt whiskey after years of choking down throat-searing blended Scotch whiskey. The dirty little secret is, no matter how cheap a single malt is, it seems to be smoother than whatever any vendor purveys at any bargain rate. Having cultivated a love for Irish and Gaelic music, I had dwelt in the fuzzy halcyon world of Bushmills and Jamesons, but they proved to be too harsh for my taste. I also once almost got into a cock-up in an IRA-sympathetic Irish bar in South San Francisco because I ordered Bushmills when the IRA prefer Jameson's.

Now that's pretty serious: having your throat slit because you chose the wrong whiskey.

It seems the Scots just seem to care about economy and making something smooth when they do it themselves. It's when they get together that they have troubles. Otherwise, how can you explain the liquid sandpaper quality of all but the most expensive blended Scotch whiskey?

Anyway, this is a huge digression -- if not a rambling blather. I guess what I was working up to is my absence from the controls for the next four days; I am headed to the hills to engage in Amateur Radio's annual excursion onto the world of emergency preparedness: Field Day. It's a 24-hour contest devoted to the proposition that we hams can set up and operate in the wilderness or under emergency conditions to support disasters and catastrophes -- pro bono -- with our equipment and expertise. We did this after Katrina, you know? That's right. When all of your grotty civilian cell towers and sat phones took the pipe, amateur radios operators -- stiffs like me on 20 an 40 meters -- were delivering vital traffic to the outside world. Believe it.

Here was my set-up last year; this year figures to be more of same.

So, yours truly and other who suffer from a similar dementia will be out in the wilds of the San Gabriel Mountains in back of Southern California attempting to make CW contacts and otherwise taking what the gods of the ether and the sunspot cycle hand to us.

..we hear six meters is going to be pretty good this year; a lot of double-hop Qs perhaps. Nonetheless, we will be there, pounding brass and howling at the moon.

The connection to Glennfiddich you ask? well, you don't think I am going to do this powered by Sapporo alone do you?

GRATUITOUS DIG: I have mentioned previously that I don't like the terminally self-referential Bill O'Reilly because he is a mealy-mouthed bookie, just getting his numbers by playing both sides against the middle. The guy is a nutless, poseur who could have pulled the trigger on Obama back in 2008 when he interviewed him. But like the Bag Lady, Peggy Noonan, and that senile, zwieback-gumming, baseball-following, old dementoid, George Will, he is another RINO MSM sell-out and Obama bum-osculator. These people will be consigned to the nether regions come the revolution, comrades.

Anyway, here is turd-bag O'Reilly -- in earlier years sporting a rug -- losing big time it because he could not decode the hieroglyphics his staff scribbled on the teleprompter. It's called schadenfreude folks: the delight in seeing your enemies in their agony.



.sure hope none of you out there post any of my meltdowns on You Tube.

73 es 88 es dit dit..