Our Lady of Perpetual Inebriation

in nomine lagoena et crapula et ebrietas sancta

Saturday, March 25, 2006

Simple, But Effective


Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Yo Quiero Jose Cuervo

Mother of the Year.
A woman is facing drunk driving and child endangerment charges after police said both she and her pet Chihuahua arrived intoxicated at the woman's son's elementary school on Monday.

Hear, hear!

Minnesota legislative audit estimates consumers would save up to $100 million a year if laws allowed liquor sales in grocery stores.
Minnesotans who drink beer, wine or hard liquor would save $100 million a year if Minnesota allowed supermarkets and drug and convenience stores to sell alcohol as Wisconsin does, a new legislative audit report estimates.

Wisconsin, which has only a slightly larger population than Minnesota, currently has more than twice the stores permitted to sell liquor, wine and so-called "strong" beer that has more than 3.2 percent alcohol.

The report, released Wednesday, makes no recommendations for law changes, but it is likely to encourage a renewed push by the grocery industry for legislation allowing supermarkets to sell wine.

My favorite part:
In 2004, the average adult in the United States drank 7 liters of hard liquor, 12 liters of wine and 115 liters — about 324 bottles ‚— of beer, according to various sources cited by the report.


Well, I'm at zero for wine and beer, but I'm already far ahead of the curve on hard liquor. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've already passed the 7 liter mark this year.

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Drunk for a penny, dead drunk for twopence

I'm bored and up late, so here's a little history lesson.

Monday, March 13, 2006

Anything can happen. It's a long way to Delhi.

Whiskey showdown in India.
Major drinks companies including the Edrington Group, Moet Hennessy and Diageo are jockeying for position for the tiny segment of top-end spenders in hotels and restaurants, where a shot of 30-year-old Glenfiddich can cost 1,600 rupees ($36).

But producers of Scotch also want some of the action among India's growing middle classes, particularly the affluent over-35s.

However, they are currently being priced out of the market because of tariffs of up to 525 percent, according to the Scotch Whiskey Association, leaving Indian producers with a tight grip on the mass market.

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

A Friendly Reminder

Drinking before noon is entirely acceptable if you never went to sleep the night before.

Doubly so if you never went to sleep because you never stopped drinking.

Cheers!

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Aw, crap.

Dammit.

So. Should I come up with a new name? I'm kinda fond of this one, as I like the way it sounds. However, I don't want to be accused of copying somebody else's idea. Not that I suspect I'll ever have to actually worry about trademark infringement or anything. But then, you never know; and I would like it to be %100 my idea. Well, it is %100 my idea, it's just that others have thought of it as well, and before I did.

I've also found references to a t-shirt for "Our Lady of Perpetual Inebriation Catholic School," though I can't find any information on who makes it.

Monday, March 06, 2006

Caol Ila

I was at my second favorite liquor store on Saturday, Chalet Liquor. When I first started shopping there, it was mostly out of convenience, as it was the closest large store that wasn't MGM. They had little in the way of top shelf labels, but unless I was already in the old neighborhood, Top Valu (crappy name, but they have an amazing selection of single malts for being a no-name strip mall liquor store) was a little far to drive if I was just looking to get a fifth of cheap gin or vodka. However, in the last few years since I moved to Crystal from Nordeast, Chalet has been carrying a much wider selection of imports of all spirits, and specifically whiskies.

As I walked down the whiskey aisle, I spotted Caol Ila, a label I hadn't seen before. I'm sure a true connoisseur (read: whisky snob) would claim to be well aware of said label, and would have a Charming Anecdote concerning said label as well. Anyway, being a sucker for particularly Gaelic whisky names (Caol Ila means "the Sound of Islay"- it seems poetic, but actually refers to the distillery overlooking Islay Sound) and an even bigger sucker for an Islay, I picked up the 12-year-old bottling. It was the only one available, though my little whisky book claims it has also been bottled at various times in 13, 14, 15, 17, 19, 20, and 21-year-old bottlings, with proofs ranging from 80 to 120, depending on the age.

I have to say, I am impressed. For the record, I don't really do the official tasting notes, consulting my approved list of adjectives, and only drinking from a nosing glass. I would say it was a lot like Laphroaig, but smoother, and... oilier? It's tough to describe, outside of "really freakin' tasty."

In fact, tasty to the point that I drank myself silly, and recall little of Saturday night. Sunday morning, however, I discovered the downside of Caol Ila- nasty, nasty scotchover. Probably one of the worst I've ever experienced. I do seem to get them more from Islays than other scotches (I suspect this is an attribute of all really peaty and smoky scotches) but this one tops 'em all.

That being said, I still bought another bottle.

Photo Courtesy Scotchwhisky.net

More from Africa

It seems our beloved booze is under attack in Botswana.
As expected, there was rare unity in Parliament on Friday when legislators across the political divide backed a motion on the new liquor laws moved by Specially Elected MP Botsalo Ntuane.

The motion calls on the Ministry of Trade and Industry to halt the implementation of the controversial laws pending a comprehensive consultative process with all stakeholders. The laws that drastically reduce entertainment and liquor selling hours come into effect on April 1.

The article seems to indicate that the new laws are likely to be repealed or cut back, but it just goes to show, Temperance is still alive and kicking.

Those Crazy South Africans

Given what Lagavulin and Oban go for these days, this doesn't really surprise me.
Three robbers hijacked a vehicle and rammed it into the entrance of a Boschkop Trade Centre liquor outlet, said Pretoria police on Sunday.

Robbing a liquor store is kind of old hat. But:
[Police Inspector] Mogale said the robbers then used the vehicle to ram through the entrance of the liquor shop before fleeing with an unknown amount of liquor.

While I can't condone theivery, kudos on going for the real loot instead of the cash register. I would be interested to know what exactly they went for- top shelf, or rotgut?

Thursday, March 02, 2006

I would drink anything for fun, but I wouldn't drink that.

I just can't do tequila any longer. My first time was a bad experience, and not a bad experience like a shitty AD&D group. There was no Rush, there were no Doritos, there was no one's hot mom baking us a casserole.

It was a Nat'l Guard drill and we were gearing up to train up at Cp. Ripley. We would get actual barracks, not the usual tin shacks, and that usually meant a large party of some sort. "Gearing up," indeed, meant taking orders for alcohol.

Having gone on these exercises with the Guardsmen before I knew what they drank: "None of that domestic pisswater you guys insist on," I groused. "I want to get drunk. Get me some hard alcohol." Out of equal parts economy and resentment, they turned up a large piss-golden bottle of tequila, instead. I don't remember the name; it's irrelevant, it was just cheap, shitty stuff.

I've since been informed by a friend who spent time drinking in Mexico that most of the stuff we can get up here in the States is half sugar anyway, though you'd never know it to taste it. The ratio tips more heavily toward agave, south of the border, and that's what makes a better tequila. It's possible to find good stuff at better stores, however, even if it's not as quality as what you could bring up through Customs.

So I drank this stuff. It seemed smooth and I built a tolerance for its flavor fairly quickly. With the exception of one pull had by one of my sgts., I drank the whole damn gallon jug. It was empty before I set it down. I tried to push some off on the tall, hot, skinny girl who'd recently joined our unit, but apparently she was a model of some sort and was concerned about what it might do to her figure. You know, her weight might hit triple digits or something. Anyway, no one had thought to bring any kind of snacks; the model had some celery she shared with me, but... really, when I'm drinking that much I don't care for vegetables. They have their place, but not next to a snifter, mug, or highball. Still, I had to have something else to absorb the alcohol, was my thinking...

When I woke up, I was extremely ill. I'd never been this ill before in my life, certainly not when I went drinking in Germany, straight out of high school and surrounded by people curious to see how much I could contain. I called over a medic and croaked that I thought I had the flu; he was preoccupied and told me to wait, and he ran off.

My sgt. came over to tell me to get the hell out of bed and get dressed, we were going to run around the obstacle course this morning. I told him I had the flu. He laughed and said we all felt like shit, but I had to get my ass out of bed. I told him the medic told me to stay in bed; I looked over at the medic in question and he'd completely forgotten about me, was off doing a dozen other errands. My sgt. really let fly with a string of blue language but, technically, you can't argue with anything a medic says, so he could only storm off with impotent rage and I went back to sleep.

Around noon I slowly drifted to consciousness again, and everything inside me had to come out one way or the other. I poured myself out of bed and trickled across the floor to the bathroom, where I proceeded to vomit roughly a gallon of undiluted tequila into a toilet. Seriously, it retained its color and translucence and everything. My German/Irish drinkin'-stomach preserved it as effectively as the glass jug had 14 hours before. After 10-20 minutes of vomitus and regurgitation I crawled back into the bunk and passed out again.

I have dim memories of everyone coming back from the training exercise, stopping by my bunk to laugh and deride. I woke up very solidly around 8pm and felt completely recovered, which led everyone else to believe I was bullshitting, but I can't help how I felt. All the tequila was out of me and I walked off to the commissary for dinner. Since then, I haven't been able to so much as catch a whiff of tequila without a profound nausea gripping my insides, and I can taste the musk of it in any drink or Chili's dinner.

However, really good tequila doesn't stink like that, nor does it taste like that; consequently, I have enjoyed some really good tequila on a few rare occasions. The exception that proves the rule...

"I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me."

Hm. I'm not really sure how I feel about this one.
Rarely has a happy-hour gimmick generated more legislative angst than Alcohol Without Liquid, or AWOL, a gizmo that looks like a medical device but is used to inhale vaporized liquor.

The contraption - marketed as a way to imbibe without calories, carbs, hangovers or telltale breath - has lawmakers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey scrambling to prohibit it from bars and restaurants.

On the one hand, I'm very strongly against any legislation that limits a person's ability to purchase, own, or consume alcohol. Doubly so when those cackling hens at MADD get involved.

On the other hand, when it comes to alcohol, I'm also pretty big on tradition. Getting drunk without, you know, drinking, strikes me as a crime against both humanity and insobriety.

What strikes me most odd, though, is MADD's concern over alcohol taken that way registering on a breathalyzer. Breathalyzers gauge BAC by measuring the alcohol vapors that escape when blood releases carbon dioxide through the lungs during respiration. While the AWOL device also introduces alcohol into the bloodstream through the lungs, from there, it enters the bloodstream. Once it makes its way into the bloodstream, it will still behave the way it does if it was absorbed through the stomach. Alcohol vapor will still escape during respiration, in quantities proportional to the BAC.

Would I like to try it, though? Oh, hell yes.

"Reasoning with a drunkard is like going under water with a torch to seek for a drowning man."

I wonder how hard it'll be to find it stateside, when it's ready.
A Scottish distillery says it is reviving a centuries-old recipe for whiskey so strong its name, usquebaugh-baul, means "perilous water of life" in the Gaelic language.

Managing director Mark Reynier says the Bruichladdich distillery on the Isle of Islay, off Scotland's west coast, is producing the quadruple-distilled 184-proof - or 92 percent alcohol - spirit "purely for fun."

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

"No other human being, no woman, no poem or music, book or painting can replace alcohol in its power to give man the illusion of real creation."

Well. I have to give the russkies credit- they still have some old world values.
A ban on alcohol aboard the International Space Station (ISS) could be lifted in 2006 to allow crews nips of liquor after grueling work assignments, Russia'’s Interfax news agency reported on Tuesday.

At least some of the rich traditions of the Russian people weren't ruined by the revolution.
However, while Russian space controllers may favor allowing modest rations of cognac, the preferred drink of orbiting cosmonauts, the US space agency Nasa has previously insisted that missions must be teetotal.

Hm. I never thought I'd hope Uncle Sam would follow the lead of Moscow. Well met, comrades.