R.I.P. Brunching Shuttlecocks - The

R.I.P. Brunching Shuttlecocks - The Brunching Shuttlecocks - long one of the best humor sites on the net - has apparently quit publishing new material.

Not like you couldn't see it coming - all the signs of comedy burnout were there for at least the past year. There'd be long gaps between regular features, more repeats, fewer of the more ambitious bits that used to make them famous. It was probably time.

But it's sad to see one of the most consistenltly funny sites on the web call it quits.

Ice Age - I minored in German in college. As such one of the little perks of membership was that I got to sneer at all the pansy Yanks who whined and caterwauled about "warm beer" in Germany ("But it's not warm, it's just slightly chilled!"), or having to ask for water, almost never iced, before a meal (Germans 20 years ago were said to assume that water with meals was for taking medication - a hush-hush personal matter).

But one person's pride is another person's business opportunity - a former American soldier is introducing the Germans to...ice. In a bag.

Matthew Meredith certainly isn't the first foreigner in Germany to wonder why his beer was served luke-warm or why his ice-water was missing one of its namesake ingredients. But whereas most visitors simply grin and bear what is admittedly little more than a cultural nuisance, Meredith and his German partner decided to do something to satisfy the needs of cold-beverage lovers.
At a time when small businesses have been closing in droves as Germany suffers through its worst economic decline in its postwar history, the two entrepreneurs founded Ice Age Ice, a packaged ice company that has taken the risk of finding out if nascent demand for ice in Germany can be nurtured into a full-fledged market.

Hm. I guess the natural response is to try to start marketing room-temperature beer to Yanks.

Maybe as a status thing...

Posted by Mitch at June 28, 2003 01:29 PM