bad judgment

ASTROLIQUOR for June 29 to July 5—What the stars say you should drink!

My Fellow Inebriates,

Here’s your booze horoscope:

With this weekend comes an urge to cook for friends, Aries. Do your prep sober so you avoid poisoning them (again). Once the table’s spread, anything goes, and you have the choice of a Leo or a Capricorn, both amorously beer-goggled. Make sure their “go” signals are really “go” signals. If you must use questionable judgment, mix two shots banana liqueur and one shot vodka into a glass of Chardonnay. Repeat until you negate the danger of being an annoyance. Sleep it off where no one will trip over you.

Taurus, thanks to memory dropouts you forgot that your April spending would catch up to you by late June. Now you face Canada and/or Independence Day with an empty bar. OMG, what can you sell? Hurry, you must have some heirlooms or a stamp collection. Get them up on Craig’s List so you can buy some Jagermeister, rum, and bourbon. Then do what any patriot would do: shake ’em up together and pour into an ice-filled cocktail glass.

You’ve blown all your renovation money on Southern Comfort, Gemini, but you can still buy a couple of small items to brighten your space. Even a can of touch-up paint would help dress up those drunken dents in the wall. Never mind how difficult it is to get Blue Curacao out of the rug! Be cheerful about the little fix-it purchases. When you’re done you can invite friends for another house-wrecker.

If you take somebody out for lunch, Cancer, it might turn into a liquid lunch. Self-discipline is curiously elusive—these days you’re waking up to a sherry/pernod/vermouth mouthwash, and food just absorbs it, allowing you to drink more. Still, a social meal might rekindle an important friendship, especially on Saturday. Keep an eye on this person; pernod goggles are even more powerful than beer goggles. My girlfriend Dolly says she needs a lot of pernod to “keep me in focus.”

Leo, you’re watching a lot of porn without considering real-life relationships. Try not to conflate the two—no one’s really going to deliver you a pizza in a thong. (Well, you might be wearing a thong.) Dating possibilities include a Gemini, a Sagittarius, and a fellow Leo, none of whom will approach you wearing a thong. Try getting to know them. Don’t just liquor them up with banana and peach schnapps. Give the schnapps to any bears you encounter, especially if they’re wearing thongs.

This is the best week in ages for friendship, Virgo, offering the chance to mend old misunderstandings and get back an old drinking buddy. Ask yourself what the conflict was originally about. Can you even remember? Chances are it was insignificant, although it may have involved nudity. Fact is, you don’t remember. You were hammered at the time on vodka, Kahlua, and Guinness—pounded from a 2L Coke bottle.

Libra, concentration comes with great difficulty this week. Your many personal troubles include a brewing identity crisis that may prompt a domino-like tumble of your values. If you’re a carnivore, you may renounce meat. If you’re a vegetarian, you may get naked and start chowing down on another homeless person’s face. Try getting out more often, and if you do get a meat craving, here’s your drink:

  • 5 oz vodka
  • 6 oz beef bouillon
  • 2 tsp lemon juice
  • Tabasco to taste
  • Worcestershire to taste
  • Celery salt to taste

The stars are happy for you this week, Scorpio. The revolving door keeps delivering funny, entertaining visitors bearing drinks, music, and tasty gossip. Day and night they will regale you, but mind an enigmatic-looking Pisces, possibly wearing black. This person is deep. You’ll have conversations you remember forever—unless you get out of hand with the brandy and creme de cacao.

Sagittarius, you’re still under pressure this week, negotiating heavily at work and in your private financial world. You’re unusually assertive and decisive; security personnel leave you alone at airports, and for a change no one tries to put you in handcuffs. Could it be liquid confidence? Who knows what your blood alcohol level is, but if you’re ever going to attempt 10 amaretto shooters, this is the week.

Until mid-August you can expect a charmed life, Capricorn. Friends flock to you, instinctively recognizing the merriment that follows a happy person. Shake some gin up with Red Bull and pour everyone a round. You’re giving them energy, which means they have to entertain you. Enjoy it for now, because one of them might sue you in August.

Aquarius, take stock of your life this week. Honestly ask yourself: have you lost interest in your goals? Perhaps you’ve changed; maybe you’ve matured. Should you redefine your priorities and take a different path? Or are you just too drunk to be on a path at all? With all that Jack Daniel’s in your system, that might be it. Ask yourself in the morning.

Pisces, if you have any important decisions looming, you might want to wait a  while. The stars are being dickish again, serving up lashings of pessimism until August. The stars are so negative about finances and negotiations for July that they insist you hole up with the biggest supply of Malibu and Crown Royal you can muster. Wait out this bad patch on the bathroom floor, clinging to the toilet to stop the room spinning. When August comes, consider going into politics.

Wine versus wart remover—a confusing antithesis unless you live at LBHQ

Although I didn’t officially label it, yesterday was Day One of my involuntary dry-out. Today is Day Two of darkness, horror, and hopelessness.

When you’re alcohol-less and forlorn, it’s very hard to look outside yourself and find anything of interest. My on-again-off-again girlfriend Dolly pointed this out.

When my mum read yesterday’s post she agreed. She said it was unimaginably self-centered to make a quiz intended for public health all about oneself without providing any additional value to readers. She said I was bad for blogging and worse for addicts seeking actual information.

If I’d had a buzz this would have killed it. I didn’t have one, so I found some wart remover and started sniffing it.

“Do not recommend that to your followers,” my mum said.

“My followers are intelligent. I don’t have to tell them not to inhale wart remover.”

“So why do I need to tell you?”

“You don’t. It’s obviously only something one does when one doesn’t have a good bottle of wine,” I said. “Here, I’ll look it up. That way you don’t have to feel bad about not teaching me previously of the dangers.”

I like the way, right under the warning about that very wide trajectory from headaches to death, there are friendly wart-remover ads. Nice!

Cha-Cha links to related questions too, mostly for the judgment-challenged.

I like knowing that there are other people out there doing the same stupid shit I do—just usually not on purpose.

Wart removers contain salicylates and other acids that, when inhaled copiously, can:

  • arrest breathing
  • irritate the eyes, ears, and throat
  • cause the kidneys to fail
  • give you a rash
  • make you puke
  • make you dizzy, drowsy, convulsive, hyperactive and feverish; and—for those who succeed in gaining nirvana this way—cause hallucinations.

If you present in ER after huffing your Dr. Scholl’s, expect a battery of detox protocols, including intubation. OMG!

Luckily my mum had already used up most of the (no-name) wart remover on a hideous-looking middle-finger wart that had persisted for three years and is threatening to make a comeback. I didn’t have any sort of party on the fumes. I just felt forlorn afterwards.

And that’s my public service announcement for today: Day Two of the Dry-Out. No huffing wart remover. It won’t solve any problems.