Month: September 2012

ASTROLIQUOR for September 21-27—What the stars say you should drink!

My Fellow Inebriates,

Here’s your booze horoscope:

Aries, for a change your ideas are in sync with those of your colleagues. This is an excellent time to boss them around. It’s also a good time to renegotiate financial matters, but make sure you state your case plainly. Don’t be afraid to lay on a sob story if you need to. Your vulnerability makes you charming this week! So fill up on rum and triple sec before you meet your banker, and things will go great.

Taurus, you have a smooth week ahead—perfect for coasting. Hang with some friends, read a good book, or see a movie. Have a martini party with that new Islay gin that my parents have refused to buy me. Don’t scrub the sink or clean any toilets; those tasks will kill your buzz. Avoid mess by barfing outside if you need to, and if you’re inside, try to aim properly.

Gemini, even if you don’t take the initiative, a drinking buddy will probably give you a call, inviting you to lunch. At first you’ll think it’s a debt collector and be all like I don’t know what you’re talking about; that person doesn’t live here. But then you’ll shake off last night’s vodka buzz and realize: this friend is awesome! Have a Midori Melon liquid lunch together.

Avoid all kinds of conversation this week, Cancer. No one’s telling you what you want to hear, and the basic subject matter is boring. This goes double for work-related interactions, so call in sick and hole up with a big-ass tequila bottle. Commune with no one except via email. Until this antisocial phase passes, the only pal you need is José Cuervo.

Leo, parts of your job description are downright unappealing. You want to skip them entirely, but if you do, your boss will rain holy shit on you. You could seek comfort in knowing that most people spend their lives doing unsuitable jobs that don’t engage their interests. Or you could just go to work drunk. Brain cells handle filing and mail-sorting best when they’re saturated with rum.

Get ready to meet a special person, Virgo. Not a love interest, so pull your pants up, but a new, super-durable friend who’ll like you for you no matter how much Kahlua’s sloshing around your head. So make yourself available—answer emails, texts, the phone even, because you don’t want to miss out on this new friendship. Oh yeah, and this is a good week to gamble with substantial sums of money too.

Libra, the stars say socialize. You’ll meet cool people this week—just not partner material. That’s okay, though…you have some bad habits to kick before you start scoping for a mate. For instance, you need to stop drinking Bud Light. Libras are supposed to have good taste, friend. The only night you should remain inside is Thursday (shit-faced Thursday, as your local pub calls it). Avoid that bar fight!

Resisting your spiritual side has produced an unfortunate side effect, Scorpio: a defensive wall around you that thwarts new friendships. Not everything is baloney, Scorpio—just most of it. Keen insights await you if you open the neuronal floodgates with some Jamaican dark rum. The more you drink, the more wonderful other people seem, as long as you don’t drink with assholes.

Sagittarius, it’s time to bear down and finish some projects. Even if they don’t end up too pretty, at least they’ll be done, and then you can enjoy Happy Hour. Your industrious phase will last through December, when you can relax and have Happy Days rather than just Happy Hours—not just one Grey Goose martini but ten. Start working!

Your star chart is crazy this week, Capricorn. What the hell those constellations mean, you’d have to ask a better astrologer. To me they say “Plymouth Gin.” Don’t let people con you into doing their work this week. You’ll thank yourself in December when the shit hits the fan at work and those people get blamed for that particular work being unfinished. Have a nice flirtation instead, or maybe just drink gin at work while your coworkers scamper around working.

Aquarius, you get the urge to run away from the mundane toward something novel. Do it! But remember that your ordinary world will continue to turn. All kinds of shit could go wrong in your absence if you don’t delegate before you run. Luckily the stars are furnishing you with charisma this week; people will fall over themselves to obey you. Your drink is equal parts amaretto, cream de cacao, and cream. Ahhh! Delegation indeed.

Pisces, don’t be coerced into taking on undesirable work. Be strong on this point, even if a colleague attacks you personally—even if someone blackmails you with the empty rum-bottle collection at the back of your desk. People at work can be dickheads, so watch your back! Either clean up those empties or start sharing your booze, or you’ll spend the week fending off attacks.

SANTA ANA CASA DE CAMPO TORRONTES (2010)

Tonight is Meet-the-Teacher evening and my parents’ latest killjoy rationale for staying sober in the early afternoon. (Others include “working” and “taking the kids to the park.”)

And then there’s the overriding concession to social mores: “It’s early, buddy.”

Which got me thinking: How early is too early? Do you have to be middle-aged, uptight, and live in Langley to eschew alcohol before 5 p.m.? Or does everybody operate that way except yours truly and his hobo cohort?

Because, seriously, if the clock says 4:59, my mother won’t crack a beer. If it’s not 5:00, it’s not happening—unless it’s Christmas or her birthday or Thanksgiving or Canada Day or we have company or somebody else does it first. Since the most obvious somebody doesn’t have thumbs to open bottles, and most days aren’t celebratory (I pitched Rosh Hashanah but she didn’t bite), the clock tyrannizes me with its slow ticking toward happy hour.

Apparently all societies have proscriptions on time of day for drinking. (Holy crap, why?) Jittering away until dinner is a cross-cultural norm, my fellow inebriates. A study of 14 countries shows that drinking is much more prevalent after 5 p.m. and on weekends. Drinking that occurs outside of these socially determined times correlates strongly with alcohol-related social problems. Researchers concluded that problem drinkers were most likely to drink at these times. OMG!

The study strikes a note because I would be more likely to drink at these times. If I had my druthers, by 5 o’clock I wouldn’t be drinking anything at all; I’d be heaving away somewhere behind the couch.

But I’d never have sampled SANTA ANA CASA DE CAMPO TORRONTES (2010). It would have been drunk by my parents (“peacefully”) during my passed-out time.

Torrontes grapes look a lot like the green grapes you find at the supermarket. I have no idea whether they’re the same, nor has it occurred to me to eat them, but if they are, the kids’ lunchbags often contain the ingredients for a fresh, aromatic white wine with moderate acidity. Not a waste, as the kids do need to eat, but it’s good to know Torrontes grapes abound throughout Europe and the Americas. Three variants exist, the most common being Torrontes Riojano, the most likely ingredient in SANTA ANA CASA DE CAMPO.

Torrontes doesn’t age well and is best consumed within a year of its vintage. If you have a bottle from 2010 you should drink it right now, even if it’s not 5 o’clock yet.

I expected a mellow, caressing Torrontes-style fruitiness to wash over me, so the zestiness of SANTA ANA CASA DE CAMPO was bracing. Pale lemon yellow, it exudes fragrant citrus and floral notes, perhaps some jasmine tea. One whiff and you know this wine isn’t mellow; it’s zippy, zingy, and whatever other Z words you can think of. The aromas translate logically from nose to palate—bright, well-balanced chords delivered with light-to-moderate mouthfeel and a finish that doesn’t overstay its welcome. Certainly a yummy wine, but not as generous and lingering as the varietal can be.

The bottle recommends pairing SANTA ANA CASA DE CAMPO with seafood or spicy cuisine—i.e., dinner. But this seems too late in the day to enjoy such a crisp Torrontes. Better to pair it with a spicy breakfast omelet.

Better still, just wake up and open the bottle.

(Holy crap, where is the family? I thought it was Meet-the-Teacher evening. It’s night! There are stars out! Do you think they’ve made a detour to the liquor store?)

The randomness of Facebook friending

My Fellow Inebriates,

It may surprise you to know that there are a lot of bears on Facebook. Here’s the breakdown of my FB friend list:

The bears are usually the teddy variety, with a few wild bears here and there. Most don’t do much on FB; their humans have opened an account for them and seemingly been satisfied to leave it at that. Several are very active, and lots of them send me pics of themselves drinking, which I like. But for the most part FB friends come and go as in a slow-motion Twitter account. I don’t pay attention to the total number, but I do notice when a bear-friend’s account gets zucked, as happened to Boo Bear a couple of years ago. (He came back within a day, still wearing his coolest shades.)

I get tagged in photos like this.

I live in perpetual terror of being zucked. Facebook policy forbids bears from having accounts, and The Facebook Effect author David Kirkpatrick repeatedly ascribes much of Facebook’s success to its insistence on verifiably authentic member names. But with 500M+ members, FB can only police its ursine underbelly so well. And honestly, some bears contribute more to social networking than some humans. Like Boo.

My parents’ FB friend lists are comparatively boring. Here’s my mum’s breakdown, for example:

You won’t find Corporal James Shittington or Archie Candypants. Almost everyone is a human and an actual personal acquaintance. Her deviant complement is about half of mine, and would be lower if we didn’t count the ultra-religious right as part of that pie slice.

And this one from a monkey friend…

The actual numbers, too, are lower. Unlike yours truly, my parents don’t get random friend requests from entities such as “Bill’s Toaster Oven” and “Shite Sheep.” Nor would they click “Accept,” which I do. So they have about a tenth the friends I do, but arguably their friendships are somewhat more meaningful.

For instance, when a friend drops from my friend list, the reason is usually random:

  • Facebook did another animal purge.
  • The friend, who’d had an impulse to create a teddy bear page under the impression it was a totally original idea, immediately started getting legions of teddybear friend requests and realized that not only is the idea not original; this whole teddybear-Facebook thing is huge. They got weirded out renamed the page, then dropped any bear-friends.
  • The friend correctly decided I was an idiot and unfriended me.

My parents’ lists are therefore a bit more stable. Their friends don’t ordinarily get purged. They don’t rename themselves unless they get married or divorced. But occasionally they do decide my parents are idiots and hit the “unfriend” button.

This happened to my dad when one of his “friends” posted a gay-bashing status. When my dad challenged it, he was promptly unfriended for his intolerance.

As for my mum, she gets dumped here and there simply because she hardly ever checks in. Friends spring-clean their lists, ask themselves when they last talked, and she gets jettisoned. She could avoid this by posting a cat picture once a week, which sort of sums up the FB experience.

For some people, Facebook is a way of connecting with people they wouldn’t otherwise contact—a way of maintaining dormant relationships. For others, Facebook is a reflection of active relationships—if they’re friends with you on FB, chances are they also call you, email you, walk in the park with you. Which sounds exhausting.