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Drunk Norks Wake Up Fine
The trick to being a successful capitalist, as everyone knows, is to identify a problem and solve it. “Where’s the pain?” venture capitalists will ask ambitious entrepreneurs during their pitches. “Where’s the pain and what does your product or service do to eliminate it?”
Brilliant businesses come from unlikely sources, even, as it happens, North Korea. The North Koreans — is it racist to call them “Norks,” as they do in the intelligence community? Not yet? Okay, then — the Norks have invented a fantastic new liquor that causes no hangover!
And here we’ve been vilifying them and treating them as outcasts from the international community! And they repay our aggression with a wonderdrink!
The romantically-named “Koryo Liquor” eliminates the pain of the hangover forever. At least according to the Norks. From SkyNews:
According to the state-owned Pyongyang Times, experts toiled for years before making their breakthrough when they replaced the sugar in Koryo Liquor with “boiled and scorched glutinous rice.”
The resulting spirit, made with ginseng and organic rice, has an alcohol content of 30%-40% and “is highly appreciated by experts and lovers as it is suave and causes no hangover.”
The paper says the drink’s “subtle blend… of the scorched starch with the sweetness of glucose can not be produced with any spices.”
Mmmmmm. Scorched starch.
So, okay, it is suave and it causes no hangover. That’s two plusses in my book. But that’s not all!
The “scorched glutinous rice” is also said to contain essential amino acids, inorganic substances and vitamins and help the body break down fats — making it a likely favorite of dictator Kim Jong-Un.
It makes you thinner!
Of course, it’s probably all nonsense. The state-controlled media never report anything about their leader that’s even mildly critical, and it works the same way in North Korea. But still, as we’ve learned from the current Republican front-runner, you’ve got to hand it to Kim Jung Un:
Speaking at a rally in Iowa, [Donald] Trump said: “If you look at North Korea, this guy, he’s like a maniac. OK?”
But he added: “You’ve got to give him credit. How many young guys — he was like 26 or 25 when his father died — take over these tough generals, and all of a sudden — you know, it’s pretty amazing when you think of it.
“How does he do that?”
He went on: “Even though it is a culture, and it’s a cultural thing, he goes in, he takes over, he’s the boss. It’s incredible.
“He wiped out the uncle, he wiped out this one, that one.
“This guy doesn’t play games and we can’t play games with him.
I agree 100 percent. Or, as Trump might put it, “one thousand percent.”
Still, if the guy’s invented a hangover-proof hooch, he can’t be all bad, right?
Published in General
Yeah, Baby Kim is yu-u-u-ge.
So huge that I have to question the fat-burning claims for this cheap Saki that he likes so much.
And what’s he doing spicing up a fine Japanese beverage, anyway? He’s checked out on soju, and that’s a drink that, mo debny, would benefit from some ginseng flavoring.
Eric Hines
You’ll have to see if you can get some and try it out, maybe at a certain live GLoP session?
You’ve hit the jackpot Rob, hangover-proof hooch and microdosing: should make the choice between Trump or Sanders that much easier.
Granted, you wake up the next morning in a North Korean prison, but no headache.
Alice Kramden invented the emancipation celebration drink years ago…
We can see from the fearless leader’s svelte form.
Does this guy get the babes or what?
No hangover disrupts the harmony of the universe, action and reaction. This could be at the core of universal truth. I want some of that nirvana sans karma.
I bet it’s every bit as good as that North Korean ‘pork soup’ that contains no pork. The locals, I’m told, swear by it and eat it often.
Good one, Rob.
No hangovers is great, but the unintentional blindness is murder.
I am dating myself, but isn’t it George McGovern who coined “one thousand percent?” As in being behind Thomas Eagleton “one thousand percent.”
(And to really date myself, does anyone remember the name of the Jonathan Livingston Seagull parody done using Eagleton, and the whole Eagleton fiasco as its basis?)
Seawriter
If I drink enough of this Koryo, will Trump start to make sense?
Rice is nice but hops are tops.
Soju is expensive paint thinner. A flight engineer of my acquaintance over indulged in that stuff in Korea and he turned white for two days. And he was already pretty white, being a descendant of Rommel.
The resulting spirit, made with ginseng and organic rice, has an alcohol content of 30%-40% and “is highly appreciated by experts and lovers as it is suave and causes no hangover.”
I couldn’t help noticing that the label on the bottle says, “ALC 28%”.
Northern Korea’s percents are special.
Eric Hines
Is scorched rice really that different than say burnt barley?
“In other news, Moët Hennessey announced it is decreasing its quarterly guidance in the wake of a sudden and unexpected drop in cognac sales in the company’s East Asia division.”
Koryo is the Korean word for “Korea”, so you’d be drinking the countryside. Which I assume will not go down smoothly, nor help lessen the tightness of standard-issue Nork pantsuits.
Don’t recall the parody, but liked the book (liked Illusions better) … but do remind me of the details of the parody.