But why does flavorless=good?

I dunno. Bad vodka taste bad, but once it's premium, they're all good, IMO.

But why does flavorless=good?

It's good like water tastes good - clean and crispand unfussy.

Vodka does mean little water, right?

So, er...what's your niece been up to, Narrator?

It wasn't my niece I was worried about, although she's put a pea in her ear. Then there was my youngest sister who as a toddler used to shove a penny up her nose; another sister shot a needle through her thumb, and another whose accepted a fellow 7 year-old's dare to lick a fence pole in the middle of winter and got her tongue stuck, another who .... well, you get the idea. Licking tape just didn't sound that un-childlike to me.

That sounds familiar, Jesse. And I agree, once you get into the premiums, none of them are stinkers.

The ones that come in plastic bottles and foam up when you shake them? Literally stink. Nastiness.

Voda means water in czech (popular bottled water is dobra [dobre?] voda=good water) , so it is certainly a slavic derivative. God, now I'm flashing back to dinner in the USSR the first night and filling my water glass from the carafe (every one else, including the natives, did as well) and practically spewing all over the entire 10 ft table after a gulp of what I quickly discovered was vodka. I was barely 16 and didn't drink.

I like my water with flavor, too. Actually, being back in LC made me realize that maybe I had been long accustomed to water having flavor. The water definitely had a flavor- much as if someone had mixed baking soda in it. Lime. Lotsa lime (kills water heaters and dishwashers.) I'm now more used to a slight sulfur (only smell it if you boil stagnant water) and iron flavor that is B'more's water. G'boro was heavy on the chlorine, which I hated.

It's a mood thing for me. Sometimes I want flavor, sometimes really really not.

It wasn't my niece I was worried about, although she's put a pea in her ear. Then there was my youngest sister who as a toddler used to shove a penny up her nose; another sister shot a needle through her thumb, and another whose accepted a fellow 7 year-old's dare to lick a fence pole in the middle of winter and got her tongue stuck, another who .... well, you get the idea. Licking tape just didn't sound that un-childlike to me.

My "thing" was eating rocks. Red clay rocks, specifically. I later moved on to paper. When you're growing up in a crowd, you'll do anything to stand out. You also get ignored a lot.

Voda is water in Russian, too, and the suffix -ka is an affectionate diminutive (f'rinstance, Mishka = "sweet little Misha"), so "vodka" is not just little water, but more like who's my darling little water? you are!

Oh, and I'd like to propose that we do a watch-n-post when the New Horizons spacecraft does its flyby of Pluto. Mark your calendars for July 14, 2015.

That's my birthday! Coolest present ever.

Whiskey means water in Irish. Gaelic? Yeah. Uisge.