ASTROLIQUOR for August 10-16—What the stars say you should drink!

My Fellow Inebriates,

Here’s your booze horoscope:

You may think you’ve solved your problems, Aries, but at what cost? You may, for instance, have moved house and promised a certain bear he could ride to the new house in the car. And then he got stuck in the scary, dark moving truck. You still think you were in the right, because it kept the bear from asking you to mix a Cosmo, but seriously parents dear reader, you gotta know it was unfair. You’ll realize it in October when that bear has a birthday.

Taurus, you seem self-assured but it’s all a mask. What are you hiding? Could it be your guilt over making your bear friend ride in a smelly truck with all the other animals when you’d promised him a ride in the car? Go ahead, keep pouring yourself coffee brandy and vodka. Mix it up with cream. Tell yourself it wasn’t a big deal. Now give that drink to the bear.

Not even you, Gemini, can evade responsibility this week. Almost every day you’ll feel pressure—pressure to finish moving house, pressure to get your little bear friend online so he can write a horoscope, pressure to atone for forgetting he wanted to ride to the new house in the car. The best way to atone is with Johnnie Walker Black. Get on it.

No romantic adventures for you this week, Cancer. You don’t really know what you want from a relationship, and let’s face it, you have other things on your mind. What about that bear of yours? The one who wanted to ride in the car, not in the moving trunk? Maybe you should feed him some liqueur- and honey-soaked melon balls. Then he might stop dissing you on the internet.

Leo, you have a strong urge to be carefree. In fact, this impulse has made you negligent and uncaring. Step back and think about your actions. You’re not the only one in the world, you know? Did you forget someone?? Maybe a bear? What did you do, drink a bottle of Yukon Jack just as the movers were pulling up to the house? Were you so tanked that you just let them take your little bear friend and put him in the truck? OMG!

You’re entering into an agreement, Virgo, but beware! The other party is giving off a disingenuous air. You might, for instance, be negotiating to ride in the front seat of the family car to your new house, only to find yourself banging around in the back of a truck, in a laundry basket filled with other animals. Have a clause in your contract requiring compensatory Malibu and Bacardi for said trauma.

Libra, you have a nagging sense of guilt. Perhaps you purchased something you don’t need. Perhaps you forgot to hook up the internet until really late today, and your little bear friend didn’t get to post on his blog? Maybe you even made him ride in a dirty five-ton truck instead of the car. If you really want to make it up to him, you should open some rum. Keep it open through Saturday and he’s sure to forgive you.

Start getting to bed earlier, Scorpio. Evidently your memory is giving you trouble, and sleep is a big factor in good recall. Of course Southern Comfort plays a role, especially if you swish it up with three ounces of vodka in a macro beer. Yeah…that must have been what made you forget your little bear friend. Don’t pretend you don’t know!!! He had to ride in the truck after being promised a car ride! And then he had no internet for two days! Come on, he wants to forgive you. Loosen up the cap on the vodka.

Sagittarius, the stars are telling you to mind your finances, especially regarding real estate. Perhaps you’ve just moved house and are tying up loose ends. Think…was there anything you forgot? What about transportation from house 1 to house 2? Hmmm…did you forget to let someone ride in the car with you? Did you make him ride in the truck?!! OMG! That is as bad as throwing away a bottle of Bacardi Big Apple. How’s your conscience?

The stars feature movement, Capricorn. How nice for you! Look at you with your bags all packed, boxes ready to go! So organized! So efficient! Oh yes, and what about the other household members traveling with you? Got their arrangements handled? No? But you won’t forget, right? Wrong!! A certain bear, bouncing around the back of a five-ton truck? OMG, how much vodka did you consume to let that happen?

Aquarius, this is an excellent week to make changes. Start working on your physical conditioning. Apply yourself at work. You’ll see satisfying results. Your home life is another matter—you’re got anxiety and turmoil there, but mainly guilt about a promise you made to a particular bear about riding in the car to your new house. Sure, you say, but the movers went ahead and grabbed him before I could intervene! All right then, but if you were going to put him on the truck, maybe you should have packed him with the whisky, huh?

Pisces, get ready for a birthday in your family. Use whatever devices you have to remember it. You wouldn’t want to disappoint anyone, and it would be embarrassing to have to apologize for forgetting. You’d feel horrible if your little bear friend your family members thought your memory was going to shit. What could you possibly say? Excess Jagermeister only constitutes an excuse if you shared it with the bear who ended up riding in a moving truck instead of the family car.

Catch you on the other side, MFI

Arrrghhhh!! My family is mentally ill. They suck at moving. The bears are terrified.

Herded into containers, ass to face, face to ass, upside down and every which way, without dignity.

If we survive, there will be more booze reviews. If we don’t, well, there’s this great Bowmore box I have my eye on for a coffin.

BESO DE VINO (2009)—Worth drinking but not saving

Get this, my fellow inebriates: My parents are so disorganized that they actually had to call the movers and ask them to come a day later. Luckily they picked an odd time of month to move, or we’d have been S.O.L.

Why could they not get their shit together in time? What is wrong with them?

In addition to being video-game addicts and procrastinators, over the last six years I’ve come to suspect they possess a gene or gene combination responsible for hoarding behaviour. Tell me, who has 14 non-working stereos? Who hangs on to books that are embarrassing (The Yeast Syndrome, How to Write Erotica)? Who has just been forced to work backwards through four years of unopened mail?

There is indeed a genetic marker associated with hoarding, located on chromosome 14. Hoarding is a subtype of OCD that tends to run in families. But my parents can’t blame any familial line for their propensities, although you don’t have to delve too far into the family tree to find moderate insanity (and—as summer’s open windows bear our conversations aloft—our neighbours probably suspect my mother of another chromosome-14 disorder, Tourette’s).

In all likelihood my parents are just disorganized, which might explain why, without managing to pack all the stuff we’re not using, they’ve packed our few meager alcoholic items along with all the wine glasses. They won’t find that stuff for days, even weeks, which leaves us without glassware to christen the new LBHQ. Hell, it leaves us without glassware when we feel overwhelmed and desperate later today. And it means no one will be buying new wine until we find the glasses—OMG!

In fact, we’re all caught up on wine reviews, except for one bottle.

Wine Advocate gave BESO DE VINO (2009) 90 points, a too-good-to-be-true score for a $13 wine. Not that we haven’t had awesome $13 wines, and for all we know, reviewer Jay Miller was taking into consideration the low price. But this ain’t no 90-point wine.

Antonio the Bull, amorous animal with low-swinging balls, is the frontman for this Spanish Syrah/Garnacha blend. Usually my mum knows better than to purchase wines whose labels feature livestock, but  the pricetag talked her into it—especially since it had a blue-and-black label rather than a yellow-and-red one (avoid!). BESO DE VINO seemed safe, and we’ve been having good luck with Spanish wines lately, so she plunked down the $13.

It’s hard not to like this goofy little bull and his mondo testicles, but you can’t rely on his tasting notes. Sure, the wine is a lush and opaque purple, but it doesn’t serve up the promised aromas of “roasted coffee, baked berry, chocolate covered espresso bean…” It serves up a grape-juice fragrance—pleasant, fruity, and full, but juvenile somehow, even though I couldn’t detect any nuts. Now, maybe we were primed for an impression of immaturity by the bull’s jouncing teabags, but honestly, there isn’t much on the nose.

Does Antonio realize bulls don’t often live past 15 years old?

On the palate BESO DE VINO comes through with full-bodied dark fruit and a generous mouthfeel along with some modest tannins, but it still suggests a kid’s juice box rather than the Reidel glasses we’ve prematurely stowed. Although I could pick out some of the suggested coffee notes, some earthiness, and some spice, BESO DE VINO isn’t much more than a half-decent table wine. It would taste just fine, for instance, with some cheese strings or Lunchables.

Still, you can’t argue with $13, and there’s nothing offensive about BESO DE VINO, except maybe Antonio the Bull’s dangling yarbles. It’s worth drinking once, but not worth hoarding a supply (really, parents).