An ode to Trump

There once was a Donald called Trump,
Who springs high when Bannon says jump,
His empathy’s lacking,
His sanity’s cracking,
A scary yet pitiful chump.

The joys of Japanese Whisky

Each year, one of my colleagues lays on a themed whisky tasting for the University wine club. In recent years, this has been timed at the end of January to coincide (roughly) with Burn's night. This year, it was Japanese whisky.


I can't say that I really knew anything about Japanese whisky prior to the tasting - to be honest, I did not even know that the Japanese made whisky. Any reservations I had, however, we're blown away when we tasted the five offerings selected.

It seems that the Japanese have been making a real effort to learn how to make quality whisky in the Scottish style, and these five could happily sit unnoticed among those north of the border. My favourite was the "Yoichi" single malt from the Nikka distillery. Smooth, warming and packed full of flavour. Unlike with actual Scottish whiskies, my favourites were not at the higher peat end of the spectrum, although that might have been just my mood on the night.

The only real negative of the whiskies was the price - though good, I cannot help but think you could get a better Scottish one for the same price. That said, the opposite might be true in Japan, and I would definitely look out for some of the local stuff if ordering a whisky in Japan.

The final element of the night was a Japanese/Burns fusion of whisky-related haiku. Unfortunately, there is not yet a collection of these but here is my effort for what it's worth:

A wine drinker sips.
Whisky on a Haggis night.
"It's good but... It Burns!"

I'm not sure whether it strictly follows the rules of good Haiku, and it's a bit unfair on the whisky, which did not burn, but hopefully it captures some of essence of the night.

Ode to a Troll (Part 2)

Following up from this morning's (now slightly revised) Ode to a Troll, here is a second ditty about those who love to knock discussions off-topic by repeatedly posting nonsense as "Anonymous".

An interesting group, the Anonymids,
A paraphyletic sub-group of hominids,
Their identities veiled,
Their coherence de-railed,
They still moan, "I didn't say what you think I did".

(This one was in response to one "Anonymous" poster complaining that someone else was posting as "Anonymous" and confusing the issue by misrepresenting their position.)

Ode to a Troll

I'm not sure if a limerick can be an ode but mine is anyway. In case it isn't obvious, this is about a (possible) troll who would post comments only as "Anonymous", repeatedly fail to acknowledge the many (correct) responses to his (or her) challenges and fail to respond to the majority of questions. Eventually, all serious attempts at discourse dried up and all that remained were increasingly fantastical posts. It has nothing to do with the civil disobedience group "Anonymous", as far as I know!

There once was a poster, Anonymous,
Whose refusal to listen was ominous,
With the traffic one way,
Only he can say,
Why he stays here and continues boring us.

(Inspired by real events. I won't mention names, except "Anonymous", which doesn't count.)