Month: January 2012

Kreativ? Don’t you mean strung-out? (Or maybe you mean “creative”)

My Fellow Inebriates,

Malibu can mess you up. It’s totally unpalatable—not only is it an alcoholic last resort; it damages your self-esteem. Go on a Malibu bender and you find yourself asking hard questions:

  • Is this all there is?
  • Am I a loser?
  • Am I going to end up on the street?
  • Where are my genitals?

If you’ve been following, you know how badly the liquor cabinet needs a fresh infusion here at LBHQ. It’s down to the most rejected alcoholic products and mescale-type hallucinogens. The next step is Windex.

And, whilst I wallow in the literal and figurative dregs, along comes a nomination.

It happened a week ago. My first habitual waking thought is WTF? and that day was no exception. If I’d been properly liquored up I would have simply delivered graceful thanks and passed on the nod (to 6 others), then upchucked 10 heretofore unsolicited factoids about yours truly.

Instead my alcohol-ravaged fur-brain cycled around on several cynical thoughts:

  • Is this a real award? Shouldn’t I have to actually win it, not just be nominated? The nomination, you see, entitles me to display it proudly on my blog (which I shall), but the thought nags me that it is an undeserved gift. Which makes me feel like crap.
  • If I nominate 6 bloggers, and they nominate 6, then we have 36, then 216, then 1296, then 7776, then 46,656, then 279,936. In 7 steps we smother all the WordPress bloggers out there with awards. Which makes me feel like crap.
  • What does “kreativ” mean? I spend a lot of time regurgitating pics that make me laugh and jokes that other people thought of. Which makes me feel like crap.
  • Why did I immediately pilfer an idea from the guy who nominated me for the award? He wrote about Facebook, so I wrote about Facebook. Which makes me feel like crap.
  • How long can an alcoholic animal rhapsodize about alcohol? How many “kreativ” posts remain in this fuzzy brain? An award, whether earned or not, creates a lot of pressure! Which makes me feel like crap.

Funny thing—I’m really tickled to be nominated. Flattered, embarrassed, hopeful about securing more alcohol samples and about writing in general. This week has brought wine, art, and encouragement.

As for feeling like crap? I hope it’s the hangover talking.

So here goes…my 6 nominations:

A Bolg 

The Waiting  

Hyperactive Inefficiency 

YoYo-Dyne Propulsion Systems: RenoDivision  

Oh God, My Wife Is German  

Awkward Eldon 

Okay, now 10 pseudofacts, because I’m not sure if you can all handle the truth.

  1. My typist grew up in a household where there was alcoholism.
  2. Neither of my parents qualifies as an alcoholic. They actually don’t drink excessively, which makes it difficult to score booze around here.
  3. If someone offered me psychedelics, I would take them. But nobody’s offering.
  4. Sometimes I feel…I’m not like other bears. I live in a house, I watch TV, I enjoy martinis. So there’s a disconnect.
  5. I don’t think the government and church have any business in people’s bedrooms.
  6. My biggest fears are the washing machine, earthquakes, fires, cancer, and serial killers.

    Borrowed my friend Scarybear's head

  7. I like Star Trek, especially the original series.
  8. I’m not a real astrologer; I just look like one.
  9. Sometimes I get very sad and find it hard to do anything.
  10. I would do anything—anything—for a laugh. If there weren’t funny things in the world, I wouldn’t want to be here.

Check out the blogs above, as well as The Dissemination of Thought, the source of my nomination. I’m going to shake off my hangover with the rum my mum says is just for cooking.

Owl barf and other tasting notes

Some odds and ends, my fellow inebriates:

Vodka Gummi Bears

Look how happy the one on the right looks, and how jealous its little neighbor seems. That’s because the big one is positively swollen with vodka. Even its eyes are bulging.

Unusual wine tasting notes

It’s true, I don’t know what “chicken coop” tastes like. Do you? I know what it smells like. There are a lot of weird tasting notes out there:

    • Wet slate. I’ve encountered this several times with white wine tasting notes. Unless you’ve been bullied mercilessly, you probably don’t know what the sidewalk exactly tastes like. (Lick the pavement, punk! Lick it! Now lick my boots. You like that?) But we’ve all smelt the aroma of rain hitting the pavement in summer…ahhhh!
    • Horehound. What the hell is horehound? Apparently the name applies to two genera of flower…or…cough drops. You be the judge which is lurking in your vino.
    • Baked beans, beef broth, spearmint, Kool-Aid. If I ever detect these flavors you’ll be the first to know, peeps. Big pass! (unless we don’t have any other wine in the house).

Broker’s Gin

The Broker’s Gin gents still have not called me. No tweets, no e-mails. Was the lovely Julia Gale messing with me? OMG!

Obama Unicorn Nude Baby Jesus Manger Christmas Card Art Painting

I’m loving my Dan Lacey print. Little did I know, the two small prints he sent with it are actually fridge magnets. Yes!

Fast and loose with the wine tasting

At Christmas my Nana and Papa brought over a bottle of two red wines mixed together. I’ve been wondering how to review them, but I guess I can’t. So let’s just say the bottle was conducive to getting shitfaced.

What the hell are they doing in elementary school?

Grade One is getting more bizarre. My mum opened the kid’s backpack today to find a photocopied picture of vole bones with actual, genuine vole bones glued on. WTF is a vole? Turns out they’re really cute, but not after they’ve been consumed and barfed up by an owl, which this one was. My mum almost puked at the breakfast table. The whole thing seems a bit abnormal, but apparently all the Grade Ones are gluing regurgitated rodent bones onto things at that school. Maybe the school needs funding?

Let’s just say all of the above points to alcohol, somehow.

BROKER’S GIN—Part 5!

Things are looking up at LBHQ—I think. If I weren’t such a dumbass about checking my Twitter account, I would have realized days ago that the lovely Julia Gale, Business Development Manager at Broker’s Gin, had tweeted me:

“Greetings young Liquorstore Bear! Please may I have your contact details?… We’d love to call you.”

Two days late, I scrambled to reply. (Julia had told me previously that Martin and Andy, the owners at Broker’s, would be visiting my home province to rectify the gin situation—i.e., the absence of this elysian gin from our government liquor store shelves.)

For those of you who haven’t been following our correspondence, here’s a recap from November:

JULIA:

Greetings from Broker’s Gin!! Dreadful to hear that you can’t get any of our fine gin at the moment, especially as you’re obviously a fan. I know that Ontario is awash with the stuff at the moment so maybe you’re from another province. If you drop us a line to broker@brokersgin.com with some more information, we’ll try to help!

LB:     

Julia, delighted to hear from you! You’re right; it is dreadful that I can’t find Broker’s Gin at the moment. Ontario is full of hooligans so I wonder why they have it and we don’t here in beautiful British Columbia, where it is mild all year and perfect for making a gin-and-tonic every single day. Of course I also wanted the little hat from on top of the bottle. I thought that after finishing the contents I could wear the little hat and look like you, Andy, and Martin—all so smart and British-looking.  

These pleasantries carried on for a while, with a few solutions being proposed:

  • Cross the border to buy Broker’s in the US
  • Ask Santa for some
  • Chain myself to government liquor store railing to demand reinstatement of Broker’s Gin

What with potential cross-border cavity searches, a disheartening Santa spoiler, and my failure to find a pair of small handcuffs, these ideas weren’t quite doing it for me. Then Julia emailed about Martin and Andy’s visit to BC.

I really wanted to talk to Julia, to hear her lovely English voice (even with the post-flu pornstar/Barry White gruffness she says it’s acquired over the hols). I can’t fathom why she isn’t joining Martin and Andy on their visit. Anyway, my parents would never let me answer the phone—they say I’m a mouth-breather. So I gave Julia my parents’ numbers, and she said Martin might phone. This makes me a little nervous…

  • What if my parents don’t answer the phone? Take my dad, for example, who just yesterday ignored an unknown 604 number. What if that was Martin from Broker’s Gin? OMG!
  • What if we don’t click? I don’t know Martin quite the way I know Julia. He might not enjoy talking to bears the way Julia does.
  • What if he’s very serious? Broker’s Gin has a web page dedicated to humor (“I’ve gone on a gin and tonic diet. I’ve lost two days already!”) but what if Martin turns out to be very stern in person? (Mind you, it’s okay if Julia’s stern, so long as we establish a “safe” word.)
  • What if Martin and I do click, then spend the day getting drunk, betting at the casino and regaling each other with stories—and he’s too hungover to attend his meeting, and fails to get Broker’s Gin back into liquor stores here? OMG!!

So it’s a very anxious day, my fellow inebriates. If only I had some gin to take the edge off.