Random Questions Thread

Some children who are adopted, especially later in life, never really get a feel for referring to their surrogate parents as Mom and Dad, no matter how close they become.

This character was adopted as a baby.

Even still, though it's uncommon, it doesn't come off to me as something that requires a particular reasoning behind it. Harper Lee used it in To Kill A Mockingbird to show that Atticus views his kids as equals to himself, but there are real-life kids who do the same without any special reasoning behind it.

It would boil down to type of parenting and the nature of the relationship between the adoptive parents and child. If the parents never hid the fact that the child was adopted and/or the parents present themselves as a "friend", it would only seem more natural for the child to call his/her adoptive parents by name. On the flip side, if the child didn't know that s/he was adopted and the parents are strict, traditional disciplinarians, calling them by their first names wouldn't fit.

Now a quick question:

A character of mine has a Trademark Favorite Drink, which I've decided to call "Bean Me Up Scotchy". What kind of cocktail comes to mind? I'd imagined it as something like a coffee version of a Long Island Iced Tea. However, I'm not muck of an alcohol connoisseur and need some help coming up with a logical recipe for it. Anyone can conceive of a cocktail recipe that would fit the name?

Coffee and scotch probably with milk and sugar.

No idea if that would be any good I don't even drink.

edited 18th Mar '13 6:34:37 PM by HistoryMaker

I think that sounds disgusting, and I'm not even old enough to drink.

But if you really wanted to, it's legal for you to do so, and you have the means, you could give it a shot.

Or just leave the recipe a secret for readers to try and cook up themselves.

That sounds an awful lot like a lot of coffee liqueurs, particularly the mix of cream, coffee, and alcohol. It's definitely not unknown, though, so it should work.

EDIT: Here we go. Crank up the Irish music and get to drinking.

edited 18th Mar '13 9:17:19 PM by SabresEdge

I had considered that. However, I wanted something a little more potent that you might order in a night club. Besides, scotch is specifically a type of Scottish whisky. Meaning, you shouldn't besmirch it by putting it into an Irish coffee.

You could forget the coffee and go with dark chocolate. Cocoa beans rather than coffee beans.

Whiskey and coffee do not go together. The coffee would ruin the taste of the scotch. Truth is, nothing much goes with Scotch, beyond club soda. That doesn't mean that no one has ever tried mixxing it with something, or that there aren't recipes for it out there. For example, Here are some ideas for you to ponder.

Vodka. Coffee and vodka go very well together and there are several drinks that contain both.

You couldn't call that a "Beam Me Up Scotchy".

That is true. Sorry, misread the last word.

"Knock Me Down Ivan" works, though..

Also depends on the scotch in question.

I keep 2 kinds of whisky

Malt- currently have 4 bottles (3 of them now less than 1/4 full...). Malts should be served neat with a jug of water on the side. You put a drop of the water in the scotch to break down the more harsh elements. Don't drown it. Ice cubes are a possibility, but not recommended, due to the fact they lower the temperature which has an effect on the chemistry.

I also keep a blended scotch. This is for mixing, either cocktails, or when I want a Scotch and American (ginger ale), which is nice when you don't want the strength and complexity of a malt.

Blends don't have the same range of flavours as malts, due to the fact they do take parts from different places, diluting the original flavour. They are also distilled slightly differently. A malt will pick up the flavours of the local water and the ground it comes from, and these will be far more noticeable.

A 'Irish' coffee should have the cream float on the top- it isn't white coffee. Maybe your character just prefers his blends Scottish rather than Irish, a different taste in whisky.

Co-incidentally one of my lead characters is particular about his scotch, and the way it is served (I've given him my liking for a plain, round, heavy-based glass).

edited 19th Mar '13 12:52:26 PM by LastHussar

Thanks for the quick education. That's definitely a good piece of trivia that I could use. However, the problem with Irish coffee is that it isn't really something that you would order at a night club.

At the moment, I'm thinking something along the lines of equal parts (blended) scotch, spiced whisky liqueur, gin, amaretto, grenadine and a double shot espresso; topped up with either cola or club soda. Does that sound like something plausible or would it just be a mess?

edited 19th Mar '13 1:06:06 PM by peasant

Sounds awful! It could be because I'm not a gin drinker, but I don't think it would mix well with whisky anyway.

Wait one

Hmmmm..

anything to help a fellow scribbler...

Amaretto/scotch mix is ... odd. Its like a sweet whisky, unusual, not sure if unpleasant; a little like a Southern comfort without the orange.. I'm not really willing to experiment too much as the Amaretto is getting low, but I think it would work over ice with ginger ale.

Maybe as shots in a espresso, no milk, no sugar.

Gin and whisky don't mix well. They both have pronounced flavors of their own: gin tastes like juniper, which, if you don't know, is a taste that is very much like the way pine trees smell.

A blended scotch is your best bet for a mixed drink.

Now, my question: why do you want coffee in it, particularly? Just for the "bean" pun? Because vanilla might offer more options... If it's a Trademark Favorite Drink, the bar could stock vanilla beans just for that drink, particularly if the character is a regular. Or it could be a specialty drink of the bar. Or he could be the sort who carries around a bottle of vanilla beans so that he can have the drink wherever he wants. Bars will do weirder things if you're polite about asking.

edited 19th Mar '13 4:01:24 PM by Madrugada

Can anybody explain Chinese nationalism to me. It's obviously very powerful (look at the anti-Japanese and anti-Tibet protests), but what insecurities does it feed off of? I need this for a book I'm working on.

Primarily it's the sense that China has all that's needed to be a world power, as indeed it was back in the Han Dynasty and in the Middle Ages; China could honestly claim that it's the one civilization in the world that's maintained continual existence since antiquity. The big moments of humiliation, therefore, were in the 1800s, with China being too weak to resist European and Japanese imperialism, and then in the 1930s, when the Japanese invaded (for which they still harbor a grudge—Japan has never really apologized for it). In China's eyes, growing back into a world superpower would be a sort of redemption for the humiliation suffered.

That's the simple version. There's probably a lot more to it, but ask your average Chinese person, and those are what he'd cite.

It's a bit of a case of her being someone who Must Have Caffeine. What about replacing the gin with vodka? That, to the best of my recollection doesn't really have a strong taste.

What might work is a scotch and water in one glass, and a shot of espresso on the side. It would be more of a "dare" drink- "lets see how many of these you can get down".

So, this guy works as a bodyguard for a controversial politician and carries a metal staff conducive to his lightning magic. One time, he put too much electricity into it, it got really hot, and the skin on his dominant hand burned onto the staff, forcing it to be peeled off. I'm going to assume he's looking at skin grafts. Given that his position entails a moderate to high degree of danger and that he has access to a level of medical technology comparable to that of the modern developed world, how much time off work could he be looking at?