Tuesday, May 26, 2015

American Boozehounds

In a comment on my last post, Vixen Strangely notes:


One of the weirdest things I've ever noticed, and I am probably at least somewhat a drunkard, is that our US holidays often end up skewing towards drinking occasions. I'm amazed we haven't finagled Groundhog Day into a reason to have "the usual" over and over again. But New Years', St Valentines (for the vino), St Pat's (for the Guiness and Bailey's cocktails), Cinco de Mayo (for everything that Coronas and Tequila can make), Memorial Day (to drink at BBQ's), Father's Day (buy Pops a case or a bottle), 4th of July (drunken fireworks), Labor Day--hoist a few beerskis for the working man), Oktoberfest, Halloween--dress as a sexy rocket scientist and get polluted, Thanksgiving: totally cider up or at least have a spumonte with your Turkey Day--which is what my parents' do, and Christmas means wassail your face off.

I submit that all US holidays are mostly get drunk off your face and buy stuff days.

We are not the greatest at remembering stuff. See: our getting totally 'faced on the regular.


I would guess that this is because booze is relatively cheap, and drinking an affordable form of recreation that people who can't afford jaunts to the Caribbean (where the rum is really good, BTW), yachting excursions, or, hell, even tickets to a professional sportball spectacular. Yep, tying one on is Joe and Jane Schmo's one affordable form of entertainment these days.





By historical standards, though, we're a bunch of temperance advocates- historically, an overabundance of corn and a paucity of preservation techniques led to the widespread production of whisky, and the ancestor of the morning coffee break was the elevenses, which in the 'States was a whisky break.

If this post seems pretty perfunctory, I'm in a bit of a rush- I'm going to meet my friends to chug a few beers at a local bar's "Trivia Night".

6 comments:

mikey said...

The story of human development is utterly sodden. As cities developed in Europe, the lack of sanitation reached crisis proportions, and even if they didn't understand how, they KNEW without question that the water would kill you. So people drank ale all day, or wine in Rome a few hundred years earlier. This was an agrarian society, with a LOT of work in the spring and at harvest, but not a lot else, so people basically got drunk and hung out. The church and the puritans developed the whole idea of the 'work ethic' that we're still stuck with today because life didn't require much work in those days. And that lead to drinking, dancing, screwing and a lot of laughter...

mikey said...

And intelligent machines are going to return us to that condition, where resources do not require human inputs, and it's going to make the puritans among us crazy and they are going to make sure that many of us die hard in poverty amidst the greatest plenty in history...

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

I have heard it called "self-medicating".

Vixen Strangely said...

I can mostly speak to my own drinking (which requires no holiday) to admit that it's part security blanket, entertainment system, and social lubricant. There is a theory that "uppers" (coke, and the methamphetamines we had before, y'know, meth) stimulate the brain, but drink stimulates the emotional animal senses. Most of the time, I'm a thinking engine. For poetry-I drink. Drink is my savage breast soothing balm. When I've gone on the wagon--I go off the blogging because articulating all the things becomes microscopically diffuse. With a touch of the creature, I have my whale in my sights.

Hitchens wrote about drinking and writing. I generally approve. I drink therefore Vixen am. Otherwise, I have a tetchy political gripe but no way to make it a "thing."

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

Sláinte!
~

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

The story of human development is utterly sodden. As cities developed in Europe, the lack of sanitation reached crisis proportions, and even if they didn't understand how, they KNEW without question that the water would kill you.

In Amsterdam, tap water is known as "municipal pils".

And intelligent machines are going to return us to that condition, where resources do not require human inputs, and it's going to make the puritans among us crazy and they are going to make sure that many of us die hard in poverty amidst the greatest plenty in history...

Yeah, they're sociopathic enough to do that.

I have heard it called "self-medicating".

Dr Zombie prescribes tequila!

Most of the time, I'm a thinking engine. For poetry-I drink. Drink is my savage breast soothing balm. When I've gone on the wagon--I go off the blogging because articulating all the things becomes microscopically diffuse. With a touch of the creature, I have my whale in my sights.

That's true of a lot of poets.

Sláinte!

Centi anni!