dear clusterflock
Any suggestions for a drinking game for the Biden / Palin debate?
comic sans: Sarah Palin on Afghanistan
Et boive petit a petit / Combien qu’elle ait grant appetit
She should take only small sips; even if she is thirsty, she should not guzzle in a single gulp from her goblet or cup, but rather in small sips, and often, so that others will not say she is swilling down greedily. She should not swallow the rim of her goblet as many wet-nurses do who are so simple-minded and gluttonous that they pour their wine into their belly as if they were filling an empty boot. She should avoid becoming drunk, because neither a drunk man nor a drunk woman can keep private counsel; besides, when a woman is drunk she can no longer protect herself; she prattles her thoughts and is open to everyone’s advances. She should keep herself from falling asleep at the table; it is really improper, and too many indecent things happen to those who let that happen. It doesn’t make sense to doze when you should be awake; many who do so end up falling to one side or the other, or backwards, and break their arm or ribs or crack their head.
—Roman de la Rose, via 18thC Cuisine
Beer Goggles
Research has found that beer goggles exist — or, to put it another way, people think other people are more attractive after a few drinks.
Scientists in England gave 84 heterosexual college students chilled lime-flavored drinks that were either non-alcoholic or given a dose of vodka equivalent in alcohol to a large glass of wine or a pint-and-a-half of beer.
After 15 minutes, the volunteers were shown photos of 40 other college students from both sexes. Both men and women who drank booze found these faces more attractive, “a roughly 10 percent increase in ratings of attractiveness,” said researcher Marcus Munafo, an experimental psychologist at the University of Bristol in England.
Additionally, the effect is not specific to gender, meaning, men find men more attractive and women find women more attractive after consuming relatively little alcohol.
“The main question is whether these effects are specific to faces, or whether we would rate anything as more attractive after a drink,” Munafo said.
Current Television: Mad Men
I don’t watch a lot of TV; it’s true. But I’ve found love in the new AMC series Mad Men. After hearing enough of the hype surrounding the Emmy-nominated series, I finally grabbed the whole first season on DVD to see if this story of the lives of 1960s ad men was really all the reviewers would have me believe.
All’s I can say is, the show is brilliant. Each character is written somewhere between a hero and a villain; the plots sometimes lead exactly where they’re telegraphed, and other times they turn out to be subterfuge, feints in the direction of catastrophe, which end benignly. For today.
In the style of today’s cable blockbusters, it has a gimmick. Sex in the City had designer name-dropping and orgasm jokes; Deadwood has cursing cowboys. Mad Men worships at the trinity of Marlboros, Manhattans and misogyny, in an effort to remind us that Things Were Different Then. However, after a few episodes, the mind becomes inured to the ever-present swirling smoke, 11am whiskey, and oh-my-god-the-misogyny; and one focuses on the travails of the superbly-rendered cast of characters.
Life is messy, and it rarely plays out the way it is told in a history tome. Mad Men is a blissfully un-preachy look at a sliver of life in a bygone era, where men and women were pretty much like they are today. With better writing.
dear clusterflock
Have you ever drank a beer in the shower?
My neighbor claims that nothing is more refreshing, but I forgot to ask, hot shower or cold?
I’m in love
with a drunken raccoon.
Seriously. Sunday night before last, maybe it was, I was camped out on the tailgate of the Honda Element just, you know, hanging out in the parking lot in the middle of the night, listening to a raccoon banging around in a garbage bin in The Shed, chittering and chirping and snarling and grumbling. (What the raccoons do, you see, come Sunday night, is they dive into dumpsters stuffed with weekend detritus — stale pizza, puddles of flat Bud Light — and let the good times roll. They get drunk in there. I just know they do. And I was . . . well, I was just out there loitering and waiting for the party to commence.)
Dear Jesus
Escalator Mishap Makes a Mess of Makeup
Forgive me for laughing at this.
On singing the national anthem of the United States of America
I have always found that it helps to get drunk when trying to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner”.
Dear Deron
Please stop all of this silly work and come back to clusterflock, where you belong. We miss you.
My New Favorite Tequila
See a review here. One of the things I like best about this tequila is its smoothness–which comes without sacrifice of a distinct range of flavors. And another thing: its price. If I encountered this tequila in a blind tasting, I would expect it to cost twice as much.
What Cindy just Said
Suck my Loch Ness.
church key included
The red part on the back of this rack doesn’t only act as a red flag, it’s also a bottle opener. Because bikes, beers, and cars mix so well…
No beer for us???
This guy could veto our right to eat!!! =(
I guess McCain will lose many followers if he keeps promising these kind of things.
Man Stuck, Naked, Inside Porta-Potty
Rescue crews had to cut apart a portable toilet to rescue a man who got stuck naked inside the potty. Authorities say the 31-year-old man used his cell phone to call 911 on Sunday from inside a portable toilet.
Police say the man had been drinking and had taken off his clothes. Somehow, he immersed himself in the holding tank.
I fully expect this guy to join clusterflock someday.
Man Arrested for Drunk Driving Motorized Cooler
it’s only — a year — a-way!
Y’all. We’re a year away from clusterflockstock.
moonshine is a reflection
A potential hobby for Andrew I hope sticks. Making moonshine is making a come back, practiced by “whiskey geeks with a taste for top-shelf hooch”. Sounds good. Although:
Besides being illicit, white lightning has earned a reputation for blinding and killing people who drink it. Many sources attribute these effects to methanol (the heads), which boils off naturally during an early stage of the distillation process.
After all, he says, “This ain’t stamp collecting.”
music changes wine’s taste
Add this to the growing list of studies on the subjectivity of the human mind and wine. Turns out, not only are people incapable of telling white wine from red, or the quality of wine based on price — even when it’s the same wine — now it has been found that the music you listen to while drinking the wine enhances the flavor.
The red was altered 25% by mellow and fresh music, yet 60% by powerful and heavy music. The results were put down to “cognitive priming theory”, where the music sets up the brain to respond to the wine in a certain way.
I Love Texas
A man used a loaded gun to scratch his back and shot himself.
‘We were drinking’
Vodka can cause terribly hilarious things:
Yuri Lyalin, 53, took a bus home, ate breakfast and apparently slept like a baby before his spouse noticed a handle sticking out of his back.
Cindy–Willing to Consult for a Fee
Last night I was the designated driver, so Cindy was in good form with the spontaneous renaming of cars–as with her previous comments on cluster that mentioned the Chrysler Hubris and the Buick Downpour. Here are some she reeled off at a speed that made it dangerous for me to drive:
Cadillac Expletive
Toyota Pious
Jeep Charon
Audi Titty
Honda elimae
Chevy Taco
Ford Fairway
Dodge Velcro
the mystery of absinthe solved
This just in. In-depth scientific analysis has revealed the mysterious creativity-enhancing ingredient in absinthe.
The culprit seems plain and simple: The century-old absinthe contained about 70 percent alcohol, giving it a 140-proof kick. In comparison, most gins, vodkas and whiskeys are just 80- to 100-proof.
New Category Suggestions
I plan to spend a bit of time each day categorizing our very large assortment of uncategorized posts.
I wish to suggest two new categories for consideration:
Alcohol
Poop