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The weather is so horrible I’m reduced to talking about the weather. Every time I step out of the house I feel like crying, my flesh is about to melt. When I get home my cats greet me at the door then huddle round the airconditioner indicating I should turn it on. Now. My plan to survive this summer: Go someplace cold, like Siberia. If I can’t do that, hide out in a dark, freezing, near-empty movie theatre. Never mind what’s showing, just soak up the cold; the bigger the flop, the colder the theatre. Maybe get an IV drip of ice-cold Coke. Here’s a recipe for Argentina’s ‘national cocktail’, Fernet and Coke.

Zack was in Buenos Aires recently, he says it looks like Paris full of Italians speaking Spanish. I think we should go. When it’s winter there.

Fernet Branca is a liquor made of plant extracts that tastes like the devil’s cough syrup but more bitter. James Hamilton Paterson has a hilarious novel called Cooking With Fernet Branca which contains recipes for stuff like chocolate-covered oysters (I’m too torpid to look up my copy). The novel has spawned two sequels: Amazing Disgrace, and Rancid Pansies (Anagram for what? Tick tock tick tock…Princess Diana!).

Here’s a religious murder mystery graphic novel involving codes embedded in paintings, Templars, and the Grail: Rex Mundi. Free download. Will be filmed by Johnny Depp.

I like a glass of wine at dinner—or two, or two bottles if the company’s worth it (or if the conversation’s dead and you need it to head off a coma). A glass of red every day is said to be good for the health, so as a bonus one feels virtuous. I’m no connoisseur—usually I’ll order the house red— but you don’t have to be an expert to identify watery vinegar from a bottle that was opened a month ago. Return the bottle—in pieces on someone’s head.

The Paul Giammatti character in Sideways made such an impression on me that I can’t order merlot for fear of triggering a rant. Plus I’m suspicious of bottles with plastic “corks” (I’ll drink them anyway) and I can’t bring myself to buy wine in cartons, even if a chef told me they weren’t bad if consumed immediately. (The same chef starts foaming at the mouth if you mention Gato Negro.) It’s always a hoot when you attend cocktails with people in designer outfits name-dropping like crazy and sipping ‘Novellino’. I saw a snooty flier for ‘your one chance to try vintage wines up to 50 years old!’

Occasionally I try something new (unfamiliar) and luck out. My gauge for whether a wine is good is if I feel it in the back of my nose and throat. I don’t know the technical term for that. Jay’s technical terms for wine are “vino-vino” and “agua de pataranta”. (The latter is one of those archaic expressions our mothers used to employ, along with “hotsie-patotsie” and “syoke”. Don’t you love those old movies on Sine Siete where Rogelio de la Rosa turns to Carmen Rosales and says, “Haney, let’s go klaahbing. Halina sa aking Thanderbird,” then they drive down ‘Highway 54′—oops, ‘Dewey Boulevard’—and the neon signs flash across the windshield of his convertible.)

Here’s a good wine snobbery site. If you’re afraid to order wine for fear of exposing your ignorance, pretend you’re ordering a Coke.

There’s only one way to get through the Xmas party season: Drink. You’ll find your false cheer swiftly turning into real cheer! And if you’re a Trekkie, you can reenact your favorite episodes involving alcohol. My favorite: The Enemy Within, in which a transporter malfunction causes Captain Kirk to split into Good Kirk and Bad Kirk, and Bad Kirk immediately goes for the liquor.

Modern Drunkard Magazine has a handy guide to alien libations consumed in Star Trek.

Saurian Brandy
The intergalactic version of Thunderbird. Enjoyed by Captain Kirk, and sometimes the crew when he wasn’t hogging it all. This liquor seems readily available on even the most backwater of planets and was responsible for Kirk landing in the brig at least once. The prop bottle was actually a George Dickel Tennessee Sour Mash Whiskey carafe.