So, I'm having a VOSS . Right now, see? There it is on my desk. I put my Neil Rat there so you'd recognize my desk. You do recognize my desk, right? So, I'm thirsty, it's water, that works out. Voss comes in a heavy glass jar with a screw -on plastic top. It looks like cheap perfume but, no, it's water.
It's water. Yum.
You can order 24 bottles of Voss delivered to your home for about $47.00. ..Voss: Bottled Water Delivery Service
It's from Norway.
That's nice.
It's just water, people. W A T E R
It tastes like, well, water. I might mention that, if you look through the Voss website, they even have a little fear campaign about tap water. Might I suggest that there are other choices? It's not either : that funny-tasting water from grandma's well (whatever happened to that rabbit, anyway?) o r VOSS. Probably we should shop around.
The bottles are heavy heavy and the tops are heavy. They can be recycled but you can't recover the cost of making the bottles and tops or the added freight/fuel costs of such heavy packaging.
Now, here's what's bugging me.
I just now decided to have a Sapporo. This is my favorite beer. Why? I like the way it tastes and the can is just the right size to last through an enjoyable conversation or the Daily Show and a slice of pizza.
Now---it is a Japanese beer, brewed and canned in Canada. I pay about $3.00 for a can, which is about $.75 more than I'd pay for a domestic beer.
What I'm asking you is, is there a difference between my paying $.75 more for a particular brand of beer and someone paying $40.00 more for a case of Voss?
Other than the obvious $39.25, thank you... Tell me what you think about this.
Other than that, it's late Sunday night and I got nothin'. Except that I finished a rather large sculpture today and several rats and danced in the studio to Flogging Molly *The Official Flogging Molly Website with Orion. We polka, until he gets bored, then we polka like T-Rexes.
*if you like Flogging Molly you most likely will also adore Folk UndergroundFolk UnderGround (yes, I know you already know you Neil-y bastards---but NEWS! other people exist)
Then, it IS late Sunday night and I've had most of my Sapporo and that reminds me of the Back Room, which I mentioned about a week ago.
The Back Room is a work in progress and we, my webmaster and I, refer to it as the Speakeasy. I'm looking forward to opening the Speakeasy. I like the idea of a place where we can talk freely about less popular subjects. When I speak at conventions and exhibits, once in a while someone asks me what happened to the edgy sculpture I showed years ago. Some people have accused me of 'losing my nerve'. It's true, back when, I was showing some pieces at certain east coast exhibits that would have set the San Diego Convention Center ablaze. I still go there, sometimes. I don't take these works to conventions because they're not appropriate for conventions. Just as saying 'fuck' is fine, but not in public. ---Think of me as "Dear Abby" with a touch of Bill Hicks.billhicks.com - 'People Who Hate People' Party HQ (I am so not worthy even to speak his name) Ok then, Timothy Leary?
So---once we get the logistics worked out for an appropriate , secure 'space' for the Speakeasy, we'll light up the neon. Leave the little ones at home.
One day soon, in February, probably, we shall talk more about Bill Hicks.
4 comments:
For me, the difference is that I believe there's a substantive differentiation between Sapporo and Bud, but I tend to think Voss is basically the same stuff that comes out of my faucet. The implication in my mind is that people who use the Voss delivery service probably just want to imagine themselves connoisseurs, or feel smug that they can afford to spend $47 on water.
That may not be fair - maybe there really is a forty dollar difference between Voss and filtered tap water, and my taste buds are just to dull to detect it. I have a hard time taking that idea seriously, though.
Being someone who drinks both water and beer I think I'm at least marginally qualified to comment on this. Beer, even in its foulest forms, is a recipe or creation of a certain flavour. Water however is just water. The ingredients and ways of making beer vary greatly. At its finest beer is an artform, and master craft brewers are artists, just as great cooks and chefs are. Water will always be just H2O no matter how many filters it goes through. That's not to say there aren't good and bad waters but in the end they are the same thing, some just purer than others. My mom seems to think that all bottled water is just packaged tap water. I can definitely taste the difference in regular tap water (and we gratefully have wonderful tap) and a very well filtered, pure bottled water. However I have had many a bottle of supposedly filtered and processed water that I would swear came straight from the garden hose. Le Bleu is the finest tasting water I've personally had although I still don't think any water is worth a dollar or more a bottle. As for beers, your taste is good. I enjoy Sapporo but for Japanese beer I prefer Kirin which I only seem to drink when eating Japanese. I've always figured "when in Rome" so I always drink Japanese beer with Japanese food, eat with chopsticks, and have Sake if possible.
Ivory
John and Ivory, well spoken. Thanks, I didn't think of it that way. You're right, a beer can be compared to a bottle of wine---which cannot compare to water.
I discovered VOSS at a nightclub in Chicago last year, where they charged me $4 for a 375 ml plastic bottle. But it made such an impression on me and my friends that a couple of us decided to order a case of 12 tall glass bottles from Norway. We loved the taste, true, but mainly it was about the image. We have fun pretending we are "water connoisseurs"; we refill the bottles when we are finished with the original water and take them everywhere; people stare and ask about the water… I enjoy the attention. Admittedly, the water was a one-time expense; it would be prohibitively expensive always to order cases, but we had a lot of fun with it. Now, however, one of my local supermarkets carries VOSS for a very reasonable price - very little more than other waters, so I indulge in a bottle every few weeks and pretend that I'm getting more out of the drinking experience than I really am.
So, whether anyone condones my choices or not, I am very happy to spend the occasional few dollars on some ritzy water. It's a fun and very innocent experience, and while it's just water, it truly is the purest I've ever tasted, which has got to count for something!
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