ASTROLIQUOR for Dec. 2-8

My Fellow Inebriates,

Here’s your booze horoscope:

It’s time for holiday parties, Aries, and your key word is networking this week. Unfortunately you’ll need to keep your wits about you, because you’re a real bad-ass about bar fights when you’re loaded. Choose high-fat festive drinks to soak up some alcohol. I’m thinking eggnog with rum and Kahlua for you.

Taurus, this week features long-distance relationships. This can get really maudlin. Be careful when you’re skyping not to spill your holiday apple cider all over the keyboard, or get naked, because it can all be recorded 😉

There’s money in your future this week, Gemini. The best place to invest it is your liquor cabinet. You can afford a classy gin. Try mixing it with dry sherry in a rocks glass, garnished with lemon.

Although you’re a romantic at heart, Cancer, it’s not often that you let people enter your precious inner rectum sanctum. With horny love planet Venus in your relationship house it’s a good time to drop your pants guard. Sexy times call for sexy drinks, so how about combining triple sec, Malibu and peach schnapps in equal amounts? That should facilitate good times.

You have an urge to beautify yourself this week, Leo, as Venus tours your house of healthy living. Just remember: if you add pineapple juice to anything, it becomes healthy. Go with white tequila.

You’ve been doing a lot of stalking lately, Virgo, but it’s finally time to make your move. Don’t worry, you’re on a hot streak. There’s gotta be someone special out there who doesn’t mind the smell of cheap whiskey and maple syrup in the morning.

It’s home improvement time, Libra, but as usual you have to be careful not to overcommit. It would be just like you to go all-in on some DIY idea and then bail, leaving all the shit lying around your kitchen for the next year. That’s because you’re always drunk. If you insist on being industrious, try mixing up this awesome drink:

  • 1.5 oz rum
  • 0.5 oz bourbon
  • 0.5 oz creme de cacao
  • 0.5 oz blackberry brandy

That should keep you busy, and it doesn’t matter if it’s splattered around your kitchen for a few days.

Think locally, act drunkenly, Scorpio. There’s a lot of great stuff going on in your neighborhood, obviating the need to drive. It’s more fun reeling around on foot anyway. I can see you hammered on the street corner, reeking of whiskey and orange-flavored vodka.

Sagittarius, you’re flush again and ready to throw all that cash into liquor. Have you ever tried vanilla vodka? Go get some! Throw it together 2:1 with Southern Comfort. If you get the urge to go outside and find new friends, pour your mixture into a bottle of Green Gatorade and take it outside! What flavor is Green Gatorade anyway? I have no idea.

You’re unaccountably popular this week, Capricorn. You’re a magnet, and people are on you like flies. Buy them drinks. Malibu drinks! They will love that. Take them to your house, get out the blender and blend more Malibu drinks. Try frozen pink lemonade, Malibu and whipped cream. Mmmm. When everybody gets too drunk, kick them out.

You’re still stressed out, Aquarius, so your job is to create a dreamy mindscape for yourself. Relax… What? Yeah, I know, it’s hard to let go. I know how that is. If you can’t ease your tension, you need a shit-kicking mixture to assist. Here’s the ultimate combo: 2 oz each Cuervo, Jack Daniels, Johnnie Walker and Jim Beam. That’s all! Mix them all up, equal parts, and sip till you don’t care.

Pisces, there’s a party going on near you, and the networking possibilities are huge. That means tequila. Tequila with Corona—yeah!! Who knows, maybe you’ll wake up with your boss.

Toasting World AIDS Day

My Fellow Inebriates,

It’s World Aids Day today, and doctors say we are winning the battle against AIDS. That’s a great reason to celebrate. My first impulse was to make it a shot (equal parts of vodka and peach schnapps with ice and a splash of cranberry juice, strained into shot glasses) and slam away. But my mum said maybe I should do a little reading about HIV/AIDS before hijacking the occasion to get pissed.

My girlfriend Dolly was less diplomatic—she said I was an effing retard and that she was never going to help me find my junk ever again. She said it was better for the world that my orifices are all sewn up. I thought this was pretty abusive, not to mention politically incorrect, and it sure didn’t get me any closer to becoming knowledgeable about AIDS. Particularly I wanted to know if carousing is in order on World Aids Day, if only to celebrate the triumphs of medicine.

My confusion came partly from some 1980s advertisements and mostly from a peculiar crystal skull full of vodka that I drank for breakfast. Then I got distracted by the People of Walmart, because I’m basically an idiot.

Bears like me don’t have livers or immune systems, but most people do, so my mum asked me to remind my readers not to actually take my advice. I said my readers are smart—much smarter than I—so they already take things with a grain of salt. She said fine but that if I made fun of people with compromised immune systems just to get a cheap laugh then she would shitcan my whole website. OMG! My mum is humor-compromised.

There are a lot of reasons to be happy today. Thanks to medical advances many people are living with HIV, enjoying their lives on a one- or two-tablet regimen without developing AIDS. HIV-positive parents who conceive a child have a 99% chance that their child will be HIV-free. For those who do test positive, life expectancy is now 72. Awareness is increasing, so there’s more openness, less stigma, and fewer dumbasses who think they can “catch AIDS” in the air from a gay coworker.

There’s still work to do. Wear a red ribbon, make a donation, click the Like button, get involved. And drink a (moderate) toast to the cause.

DUCHY ORIGINALS ORGANIC OLD RUBY ALE

My Fellow Inebriates,

Others have reviewed this nice organic ale much more thoughtfully than I, and even taken their own pictures. My mum bought it because it was $3.50 and she didn’t feel like using her debit card “to bootleg for animals.”

The label and marketing remind me a bit of Marks & Spencer; the bottle has that generic big-corporate-entity feel to it, like the beer you can buy at Trader Joe’s or Costco in the States. It’s not totally evil though—the beer is organically produced on land administered by Prince Charles as part of a charity project now 20 years strong.

I was a charity bear once, so I’m gladdened to know some of the profits get skimmed off to help people in need. And just as cool, OLD RUBY ALE is produced sustainably. Even a hedonistic bear with an apocalyptic bent can appreciate that no one’s raping the land to create beer.

It’s also nice to know that if I get a head-splitting hangover from OLD RUBY ALE it’s because I drank enough to get thoroughly shitfaced—not because of chemical additives.

But how does it taste?

My tastebuds are Canadian, so essentially they’re ADHD tastebuds—they need beer to crackle and fizz and spark in the mouth like so much microscopic bubble wrap. I can’t crack a beer without automatically anticipating fizz. So when our bottle of OLD RUBY ALE opened not with a burst but a sigh, I sighed also. But I still wanted to drink it very badly. I had some bad-ass DTs to manage or at least get down to a dull roar.

The low carbonation was less disappointing than you’d think. After all, a lot of Canadian swill needs to be hyper-carbonated to mask its offensive flavor, so you have to hand it to a less fizzy beer like OLD RUBY ALE for strutting its stuff without that effervescent crutch.

It had a lovely auburn color in the glass. It wafted malt and slight breadiness in nice harmony. First sips hinted initially at bitterness but morphed into sweetness—a bit simple on the palate. It felt thin in the mouth and, while never offensive, failed somehow to deliver much beyond those first impressions. And, of course, it was flat.