Keeping your poppy on

My Fellow Inebriates,

We’ve bought, like, ten poppies this week. The kids keep losing them. We discover them only late at night when the lights are out and someone lets out the scream of the toe-pierced.

Okay, so the pins are simple. These poppies have to be inexpensively made or they wouldn’t accomplish much fundraising—fair enough. But we can’t recall ever keeping one on a jacket for more than half a day. For kids it’s more like half a minute.

Unlike adults, the kids don’t give a damn where these stabby little poppies fall. They do care that their precious flowers have fallen, however, which is why we keep buying new ones, effectively turning our house into a pinfield (if you saw my parents’ housekeeping this would make sense).

My dad doesn’t like bleeding, so he did this:

Remove and discard the pin that comes with the poppy. Put the black middle piece aside.

Prick a small hole 3 mm from the original hole in the poppy.

 

Shove a small safety pin through one of the holes so the bendy part goes through the hole. Be sober for this or you’ll rip the poppy.

 

You want the “spine” of the safety pin to end up as the part showing through the front of the poppy, so the closure will face out from the back.

 

Glue the black middle piece on top of the poppy front where the pin shows through. Now it looks even better than it did before and you won’t get stabbed.

 

“That was ingenious,” I told my dad after he’d come up with this amazing solution. “You deserve a drink. Although, if we’d bought any more poppies, I’d be offering you heroin instead, LOL.”

Remembering the Bacardi Big Apple my parents poured down the sink. (And OMFG! that’s not a shirt, people, ow!)

ASTROLIQUOR for November 9-15—What the stars say you should drink!

My Fellow Inebriates,

Here’s your booze horoscope:

Aries, this week looks good for small-time betting. No big gambles, mind you! You wouldn’t want to blow your Christmas alcohol fund. By “small bets” the stars are referring to iffy drink concoctions such as the following:

  • 6 beers
  • 6 shots Irish cream
  • 5 shots amaretto
  • 5 shots Kahlua
  • 1 tbsp vanilla extract (the real stuff, with alcohol)
  • 1 shot Bacardi 151

You need a big jug for this. And a stat holiday the following day.

Taurus, you must resist spending money this week. Your tendency to buy things for the sake of ownership is resulting in hoarder-style furnishings and a pitiful liquor collection. Keep the purse strings tight until February (when you’ll win money). Until then, satisfy your urge to spend by purchasing the following items and sloshing them up together in your favorite vase. Yum!

  • 3 oz tequila
  • 6 oz orange vodka
  • Juice of half a lemon
  • 1/2 cup lemonade
  • 2 cups Sunny D (a weird cocktail in and of itself)

Finance is golden this month, Gemini, with successes in real estate, investment planning, anything legal, and even home redecoration (what about a painting?) on a budget.  Sounds like you’ll need a lot of energy! Luckily the stars are protecting you from the flu—but they’re still recommending that old-fashioned winter-ailment beverage: gingerale. Naturally you’ll need some rye with that.

Cancer, you’ll have trouble doing anything unsupervised this week. Find someone on your wavelength to help you with the basics—someone caring and nonjudgmental who’ll still love you when you’re hugging the toilet. If you can’t find someone like this, well…enjoy your Southern Comfort–cherry brandy bender. (Oh yeah, and the stars say there’s romance in your chart this week, but they have no idea how or when.)

Leo, you’ll suffer a bout of insecurity about your body, but this will pass quickly. Instead of dwelling on negatives, seek out luxuries such as massage/sauna treatments. Hang out with people who have weird physiques. Have a tropical-themed thong party. It’ll give you an excuse to make pina coladas.

If you’ve had a quarrel lately, Virgo, this is a perfect week to resolve it. Be true to yourself, though, or you’ll end up in an unsatisfactory compromise that’ll blow up later. You long to make new friends, especially ones with moustaches. Seek them out in bars and buy them rounds—they like to mix gin with gingerale and bitters.

Libra, a good friend with a get-rich-quick scheme is trying to rope you in. Your pal figures there’s a million bucks out there for the two of you, but so far he/she hasn’t even ponied up for drinks at the pub. Turn your attention to love instead of money; a Pisces, Taurus, or Leo will divert you thrillingly from ill-fated investments. And if they fail to focus you away from the dollar signs, remember—if you invest your money, you’ll never be able to afford these ingredients right now:

  • 4 oz Jack Daniel’s
  • 4 oz Jim Beam
  • 4 oz Southern Comfort
  • Coke to taste (I’m having “none”)

Another crazy weekend lies ahead, Scorpio, and as usual it won’t be over till Tuesday. You’ll return to reality with a hard thump—and a shitload of new work that won’t let up until the next wild weekend. Work hard so you can free yourself up! A lot of money is at stake, which means your liquor supply is under threat. Under siege during your weekends; under threat during the week! Just make sure you at least have some good gin and a reasonable vermouth.

Sagittarius, the stars are hedging their bets again, calling for either a loving relationship or a one-night stand on Saturday. (Stupid stars! How can they expect to maintain their astrological credibility?) You’ll be restless this week, but flexible and alert. Sounds a little too much like sobriety…have you run out of inventory? Even if all you have left is Cointreau or Razzmatazz, do it!

A good friend lets you down this week, Capricorn. Even though this alters your closeness, don’t give up entirely on the relationship. There’s a fair bit of blueberry schnapps and vodka involved in your friend’s lapse—something you can totally relate to. Nevertheless, the whole thing distracts you, leading to work screw-ups and your own vodka bender. If a third party offers to help, accept (especially if they have more vodka).

Aquarius, step up your efforts this week for greater success. Instead of leaning hard on colleagues, negotiate politely; be patient and diplomatic. Yes…this does translate into a dry-out week for you. Only by sobering up will you harness these mature social skills. Side-effect: you’ll notice all kinds of details about your workplace, including that person who has a crush on you. Sometimes plain lemonade’s not so bad.

Pisces, your philosophy that money isn’t important continues to dominate everything you do. This is great, because you still don’t have any money or job prospects. What you do have is a dwindling liquor cabinet…apple liqueur, anyone? Absinthe? But at least you’ll have a happy flirtation on Sunday, which will reaffirm the joys of freedom from a nine-to-five work week.

DEAD FROG NUT BROWN ALE—Froggy style has a lot of variations

My Fellow Inebriates,

Two nights ago my dad returned from a trade show with two bottles of DEAD FROG NUT BROWN ALE.

I’d been wondering where the hell my dad was. Often I can find him spread out (his work gear, not his junk) all over the dining room table, stressing my mum out with his tentaculate electronics, and offending us all by playing Pink Floyd’s The Wall out of sequence. But for the last week he’s been scarce.

I suspect he’s been wined and dined by suppliers this week, plied with swag far beyond the two beers he brought home. But we’ll never know. My dad has this effective trick of entering the house with his headset on, carrying on a conversation until the novelty of his arrival has worn off and everyone’s forgotten to ask him about his day. Repeatedly throughout the week, and well past the bedtime of the kids—who would ignore his phone conversation anyway and attack him—he’s entered mid-conversation, muttering away about terminations and racks and permits, and—seeing he won’t respond anyway—I’ve gone back to looking at the People of Walmart or trying on moustaches or whatever other productive thing I was doing before he came in. Effectively I’ve forgotten to interrogate him about this trade show and whatall’s been going on there. For instance:

Why only two beers?

Why NUT BROWN ALE particularly? Does he know that DEAD FROG markets an array of unusual brews (mandarin orange, pepper lime, toasted coconut)?—not quite targeted at craft beer geeks (too light, too lager-y) yet not targeted at the Molson Canadian crowd either. In fact, DEAD FROG has been a bit hit-or-miss when it comes to aligning with the increasingly divergent craft and mass beer markets, particularly with its 650-mL specialty brews, and would have found itself dead indeed had it not sought $500,000 in investment money earlier this year.

 

If my dad hadn’t been yammering into the headset I would have asked about DEAD FROG’s beer portfolio—did Dad have the option to scoop some other products for yours truly or was he just not interested? Did he have his fill of them at the show? OMG, would my dad do that without me?

Fact is, Dad might have picked the best of the bunch. DEAD FROG NUT BROWN ALE is a nice beer. Dark and almost cola color with a moderate-to-weighty mouthfeel, it carries a hoppy punch yet doesn’t distance itself from the warming, mellowing maltiness of a good ale. Crisp carbonation focuses the hop/malt intersection nicely. You can detect chocolate in the background plus the eponymous nuttiness, making for a solid, interesting brew that doesn’t cloy and isn’t so intriguing that it becomes annoying or precious. Paws up for sure. Or flippers or whatever.

With its recent cash infusion and wealth of marketing ideas, DEAD FROG, just one of three new brewers making a splash in British Columbia, evidently has some (frog) legs. If we all boost our drinking, we should be able to keep the frog alive.