* Pre-1979 drinks
Latest: "Abjo Ghootee" & Aragh Mina
I was at a party -- a surprise wedding party --
in Oakland a couple of weeks ago. As we were drinking wine in
the front porch, the subject of alcoholic drinks in Iran came up.
Alcohol has been banned in Iran since 1979, although by all accounts
there's now a thriving black market.
I was
curious to know the names of various pre-revolution brands?
These were
alcoholic drinks
produced
legally
in Iran and sold
at liquor stores. Here are the names I remember
hearing. If you can add to this list, please email
here. Names in brackets are people who offered a piece
of their sober memory:
Beers
-- Latest: Skool, known affectionately
as "Abjo Ghootee" or beer in an aluminum can, (Parviz
H.)
-- Argo (Ali H. & Jujeh Akhund)
-- Majidieh (Roubik A.)
--
Shams (J. Javid)
-- Tuborg
(J. Javid)
--... ?
Wines
-- Chateau Sardasht & Rezaieh (Roubik A.)
-- Pakdis (J. Javid)
-- Shahani (Soroor)
-- Khollar, from Shiraz,
(Mehdi)
-- ... ?
Vodka/Aragh
(many also produced wines)
-- Latest: Mina, from Isfahan (Javad
K.)
-- Latest: Sheverin, from Hamadan
(Javad K.)
-- Latest: Harir, from Kermanshah
(Javad K.)
-- Latest: Meykadeh, from Qazvin (Javad
K.)
-- Latest: Khollar, from Shiraz (Javad
K.)
-- Latest: Jamshid Jam (Javad
K.)
-- Latest: Balzam (Javad
K.)
-- Latest: Daregaz (Javad
K.)
-- Latest: Estelak? (Javad
K.)
-- 21 Makhsoos Ettehadieh
(Jujeh Akhund)
-- 66 Rezaieh (Jujeh Akhund)
-- Pakdis (Jujeh Akhund)
-- 21 Khollar, from Shiraz,
(Jujeh Akhund)
-- Keshmesh Ettehadieh (Jujeh
Akhund)
-- Qoochan
(Javaneh K.)
-- Soltanieh, tops, by any
standard (Roubik A.)
--
Capital (Roubik A.)
-- Pirouzeh Ettehadieh brand (Joan V.)
-- Makhsoos 55 (Ali. H.)
-- ... ?
If you can add to this list, please email
here
-- Jahanshah Javid, with thanks to these contributers:
Ali H., Mehdi, Soroor, Joan V., Roubik A., Javaneh K., Jujeh
Akhund, Parviz H., Javad
K, ...
* What is this, Ali?
Heard from Ali. H.:
I was in London at a college party. This was the mid-seventies.
In the middle of the party my professor pulled me to the side
and said, "Ali, I want to show you something." He took me down
to his crowded basement,
moved a few boxes
and then pulled out a dusty bottle. He wiped off the label and
said, "What is this, Ali?"
It was a bottle of Iranian vodka, Aragh Makhsoos 55 (55 proof?).
The professor said he had gotten it as a gift from an Iranian student
several years before but never got a chance to open it. I said,
"Well now's the time..." It was pretty damn good!
* The "F" word
I just finished a very interesting course called "Language
Analysis". In
this course we looked at many interesting subjects
such as Lexicon & Morphology;
Semantics; Phonology & Phonetics; Discourse Analysis; Situated
Meaning& Cultural Models, etc. - an indepth linguistic
knowledge to have for us the teachers.
In our Situated
Meaning & Cultural Model class discussions,
I asked one of my American colleagues why Americans
from all classes of society constantly (without
hesitation) use the "F" word.
You see I can not even write the "word" itself. I guess
it has something to do with the culture and the way I was brought
up. So, he was nice enoght to educate me further and sent the
following
site >>> Monty
Python's "Proper Use of English"
-- Farideh
* Limitations of democracy
There is no question that democracy, as compared to autocratic
rule, is vastly more humane and productive. However, it
should be recognized that democracy is government by opinion
and political pressure. As such, its effectiveness is limited
to the level of real knowledge distributed within a population,
and can therefore be only a stepin the right direction. At
the present time, even the democracies all remain based on
instituted delusion, and recognizes neither the factual nature
of Existence
nor that of a human being.
Human sustainability requires the abilty to correct the premises
and paracitces of our institutions. This can be achieved
only through the growth of objective knowledge within populations,
public pressure moving the institutions to make corrections. Human
behavior follows human perception, always. When what
the individual learns fails to reflect factual reality, the
individual,
the society, and ultimately the species, is misdirected and
comensurately dysfunctional.
-- Everett E. Allie
Humanity's Ultimate Challenge
* Call girl
My name is Siamak H. (Sia Abadani). I left Iran in 1974 when
I got out of high school. I was around 17 years old. I traveled
all over United States for work. Now I live in South Florida
since 1993. I know someone for the past 8 years who is a Limousine
driver. He called me last Saturday afternoon:
"Hey Blacky this is Steve, how are you?"
"Fine Steve, what
a pleasant surprise! A call from Steve on a Saturday afternoon?"
"Blacky
I need your help! I am in Miami Airport picking up 2 Japanese
guys who are going to Key West and there is
a girl
who came to
meet them. She says her name is Zahra and she claims
to be an Iranian call girl, very pretty. These Japanese guys are
paying lots of money to sleep with an Iranian Muslim!"
"I want to make sure she is what she claims to be, if
she is I'll become a millionaire in 2 months with all
the clients
who would
pay lots of money for her."
"Son of a bitch! Good for you! Being a pimp is great,
isn't it? What do you want me for?"
"Blacky, all I want you to do is talk to her and confirm that
she is Iranian. I am the pPimp not you. I
told her you are her next client and willing to pay $500 for services
and $200 for me to drive you there."
"OK but you owe me one! Since I left
Abadan the only thing
I still have from Iran is my accent. Give her the phone,
let me talk to her."
"Hi... I'm Zahra... Steve says that you may be interested in getting
together..." (Accent detected. She's definitely Iranian.)
"Lovely accent... Where are you
from?..."
-- Sia
* Woodcraft
When I was a senior at Wurtzburg American High School in Germany
I had to take a woodcraft class to complete my course requirements.
It was winter 1980 and the revolution was a year old.
For my class project, I took a piece of cherry wood, cut it
to about 6 x 20 inches and sanded it. Then I cut out pieces of
wood in the shape of letters in the Persian alphabet and pasted
them on the board:
M -- J -- A -- H -- D.
For the
dot under the J, I cut out a star.
I was really into the Mojahedin Khalgh and leftist
Islamic groups in general. Every day I would check the mail in
our apartment in Kitzengen, hoping,
praying,
that
the
mailman had delivered the latest issue of Mojahed, or Ommat,
which was published by Habibollah Payman's Jonbesh Mosalmanan
Mobarez.
I got an A in woodcraft.
-- Jahanshah Javid
* Friday morning yawn
Simon the lion yawns Friday morning, Nov 21, 2003 in the National
Zoo in Managua, Nicaragua. The Managua Zoo has started it's own
campaign to raise additional funds to feed its animals. The annual
government spending for the zoo is $33 million, and in order
to function properly, the zoo needs $130. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)
