Quack Open a Cold One.

Spotted this clock over the bar at the hotel Casa Canada on Big Corn Island. In case the lettering is tough to read on that postage stamp I call a photo, it says, "It's 5 o'clock somewhere. Quack open a cold one."

I like a good pun. But I love a bad one.

About the hotel: The Casa Canada has something you would really like, even besides the Corn Islands' only swimming pool. (In fact, the staff told me it was the only pool on Nicaragua's Caribbean side, which strains credulity and yet is somehow possible.) I'm talking about each cabin's mini-bar, which is not so much a mini-bar as a well-stocked fridge.

But listen: This fridge revolutionizes the mini-bar by actually offering reasonable prices. Usually at hotels we ignore the $5 beers and $6 swallows of booze in those cutesy little bottles. In your fridge at the Casa Canada, beers are $1.50 each. A 375 ml bottle of aged Flor de Caña rum, light or dark, for $12. Totally fair, and it turns the whole mini-bar thing from a scam into something actually useful.

Are you listening, hoteliers? Put some realistic prices on your mini-bars, and not only will we use them, but we will want to come back to your hotel again and again to use them some more.

While you're at it, put some decent beer in there.

About the clock: It's from a Canadian conservation group called Ducks Unlimited Canada. The organization still sells that clock, and other odds and ends, via an online auction. Looks like one was up for sale just a couple of weeks ago and went for $50. I'm not sure, but it may have sprouted from a 1997 collaboration between the group and Calgary's Big Rock brewery. Proceeds from the Canvasback Ale went toward conservation efforts. Doesn't look like they make that beer anymore.

I'm surprised the Canvasback was a golden ale. You'd think they'd go for something that makes better use of the Mallard reaction.