Volume 3, Number 6
June, 1998
On the Subject of Alcohol
By Fiona Jane
Some very interesting e-mails have come my way recently on the subject of alcohol, a subject at which I have always been a natural. Juraj sent me to this site, Beer Quotes, which contains the following gems:
Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shutSure, it'll teach me to keep my mouth shut but it'll also have me streaking across the bowling green at Jeff Hoare's 21st birthday party, again. It'll have Susan committing statutory rape on a schoolboy who worked with her at K-Mart, and it'll have my mother watching a video called "My Best Friends Willy". That's what being drunk is all about.
-- Ernest Hemmingway
I'm sure all of us can remember saying something remarkably dumb when we were pissed, but due to our intoxication and that of those around us, it probably slid by unnoticed. Say something that stupid when you're sober and you'll be haunted by it for life. An example for you is "The big one's short and the skinny one's long" comment during sexual experience made by a friend and overheard by several other people. Other sober people. Sober people who have never let her live it down.
My brother is renowned for plaintively bleating "Nobody ever lands on me" through countless games of monopoly. I bet if he said it when he was half full at the local bar, he'd have a small posse of desperados nodding woefully in agreement and saying "It all started with feminism..." Even when you say something that is complete nonsense, when you're pissed, it makes sense.
I enjoy talking crap when my friends and I are drunk. What we'd do if we won an obscene amount money (with the usual I'd give my parents quarter-million, friends a car/cash lump sum, give $20,000 to charity, organise a trust fund for my cat, etc), what kind of surname we think suits us, what that guy in high school would be like in bed now, and why cask wine really isn't that bad.
You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.You're also not drunk if you can throw up in the toilet without holding on to the bowl, your hair or your clothes (hold all three and you're just a freak). Dean's right though, when you've got that giddy whirring nausea that says 'Shut your eyes and give into the dark side; Death's got to be better than this' you're not drunk if you can do anything without holding on. Ask anyone who's had one of those 23-beers-later-one-night-stands; those night-time gymnastics aren't done to prove sexual prowess, they're done to counter a total lack of balance and stability.
-- Dean Martin
You're not drunk if you can see glass doors. Just ask my friend Samantha, after a few hours of solid drinking, she decided to get something to eat. In a nearby shop, she spied her favourite packet of chips, and sprinted towards them. As she was two feet away from the object of her desire, a large pane of glass sprung up (in sobriety, we call them windows) and promptly broke her nose she ran into it. The best part about this story was, when her friend found her (talking to a bag lady) and asked her what happened to her nose, Sam replied "If I ever find the b**** that hit me..." That's what being drunk is all about.
If you ever reach total enlightenment while drinking beer, I bet it makes beer shoot out your nose.It's like I've said before, being drunk makes you simple. At the right stage of the night, you think you've reached total enlightenment when you work out to door to the toilet is a push and not a pull.
-- Deep Thought, Jack Handy
A few years ago, a friend thought he'd found the meaning of life, seriously. When I asked him what it was, he sheepishly admitted that he'd forgotten, but hey isn't that what being stoned is all about? I never asked him whether the bong spouted wondrous plumes of water during this moment of revelation, but I'm sure if I asked now, he'd have forgotten a miracle like that too.
Alcohol can be far crueller. Forgetfulness does not last forever, rather the beer goggles only stay on for a night. What else first curses you with a hangover, and then spears a moment of clarity through your clouded brain to remind you that no, it wasn't a dream at all, you really did sleep with your friends' fiancée/sing 'My Way' twice at the Karaoke Bar/tell your boss that he is a stingy old bastard and to shove that job up his ass.
I'm sure everyone has heard the myth of finding themselves post-coitally pinned under someone so ugly that they've had to chew their arm off at the shoulder to get away without waking them. Anyone like to wager that alcohol wasn't involved in getting them into bed in the first place? I thought not.
I drink to make other people interesting.I wonder whether other people drink to make me interesting; no, that just couldn't be the case. I don't necessarily drink to make others more interesting; I get drunk to suffer through a particularly painful social event, I get drunk if I'm really, really upset and in the company of supportive (read ready to put me in a cab before I hurl) friends and I get drunk to convince myself that yes, I can dance on a public dance floor.
--George Jean Nathan
People say that alcohol is a depressant, but I think it all depends on your frame of mind. They don't crack champagne at the end of sporting events to bring people down, and they don't serve wine at wedding in the hope that everyone will be terribly despondent and dejected. No, they serve it because it makes us less inhibited, less introspective and more fun. (I think that's also the theory behind cheerleaders at football games, but give me dancing beer and freebies any day)
Give me a woman who loves beer and I will conquer the world.Don't actually know who Kaiser is, but if you do, let me know. If he's still alive, tell him that I'm packed and ready to join him...I always wanted to conquer the world!
-- Kaiser Wilhelm
