drinking

ASTROLIQUOR for March 30 to April 5—What the stars say you should drink!

My Fellow Inebriates,

Here’s your booze horoscope:

You’re going to hear an awesome piece of news over the telephone, Aries. So turn your cell on, or at least record a VM message that doesn’t make you sound like a douche. For one week you’re going to enjoy the feeling of having a soulmate—even if you don’t believe in soulmates. The result is a dreamy state, complemented nicely by Kahlua and amaretto in equal parts. (When it all goes to hell next week you can hit the rum.)

Taurus, you may be a mess personally but you’ll solve tons of problems at work this week. You’ll become a savior of sorts in the office, but don’t get dragged into being the Office Problem Solver. Keeping a low profile is much more fun. If there’s any danger of too much corporate success, hit the bottle. Here’s a conspicuous mix for your flask: 2 parts bourbon, 1 part triple sec and 1 part creme de menthe. No one’s giving you a corner office with that on your breath.

You’ll reconnect with some lovely friends this week, Gemini, but don’t let them into your personal space. They may be lovely for one drunken lunch, but you’ll find they turn needy if you tolerate them too much. Your best bet is to mingle wildly. Meet some new people. Take them home and make them some wild drinks (I’m thinking Yukon Jack with cherry brandy and Southern Comfort).

Get ready to meet the law this week, Cancer. Don’t worry, nobody’s gonna bust you. Instead you’ll find yourself dealing with boring legal matters…property or estates. And when you’re bored out of your head, the best solution is to blow your bank account on an exotic vacation. Choose one where the drinks are included and the sky’s the limit. When you order citrus vodka mixed with creme de cacao, you want a bartender who’s used to that kind of crazy shit.

Leo, the week looks productive but hectic, not to mention stress-inducing. Whenever somebody agitates you, mix yourself a Sidecar. Ahhh! If the people agitating you happen to be children, your head will be so full of cognac and triple sec by the end of the day that you’ll be off the hook for bedtime duties. Sounds like a parenting plan.

Unforeseen expenses will crop up this week, Virgo, leaving you temporarily high and dry. It’s just the tip of the iceberg—finances are going to shit. This means budgeting: no Midori Melon for you! No creme de cacao either! We’re talking cans of Pilsner. And if you want to continue buying those, you may have to live outside for a while. This is a good way to meet interesting people…maybe a special someone (with lice) on Saturday.

Libra, you’re not your extroverted self this week. Friends don’t know what to make of it; honestly, they think you’re being a tool. Don’t worry, it’s just temporary. This is a good week to hole up by yourself until the mood passes. Here’s a project to keep you busy:

  • 1 oz DeKuyper Buttershots
  • 1 oz Everclear
  • 2 oz whisky
  • 1 oz vodka
  • Splash grenadine
  • Splash orange juice

Shake it with ice and strain into a martini glass. Good luck—you are going to be messed up.

You have the feeling that everyone likes you, Scorpio. It doesn’t matter if it’s true; what matters is the positive vibe you radiate. Your optimism warms people and lures them into your warped world. These people are really nice, so take it easy on them. If they fail to challenge your intelligence, get drunk and they will seem smarter. Here’s your recipe:

  • 3 oz coconut vodka
  • 6 oz banana liqueur
  • 3 oz peach schnapps
  • 3 oz orange juice
  • 1 cup pineapple juice

There. Now your friends will seem smarter and better looking. And so will you until you vomit.

Sagittarius, your circle of acquaintances will widen this week, possibly through business travel. You’ll bond solidly with new people and learn about an unfamiliar culture. Nothing goes as well with this sort of personal enrichment as vodka and white wine. Make sure you buy a lottery ticket so you can win the money to pay for it, otherwise you’ll be mooching off your new pals.

Lay off the work this week, Capricorn, and indulge your imagination. For too long your colleagues have been bugging you to prepare spreadsheets and reports. Tell them what to do with themselves! With creative ideas like the ones bubbling around in your brain, who needs a job? Your head is as full of creative notions as it is vodka. For extra inspiration, mix that vodka with Kahlua, rum, and amaretto.

Aquarius, you’ll feel a strong urge to call in sick this week, and it might be a bad idea. Here’s why. If you stay home, you’ll never get out of your jammies. You won’t even make coffee. Instead, you’ll pour a bottle of vodka into a punchbowl. You’ll add four cans of limeade, followed by a case of beer. You’ll mix everything up until the limeade liquefies. And that will be your day.

Pisces, it’s not a strong week for discipline and responsibility. If you can confine your immaturity to your own inner thoughts, you shouldn’t do too much damage. If, however, you act upon your urges, you’ll spend much of the week with a head full of Jagermeister and peach schnapps. Needless to say, you won’t get that promotion.

How the lottery can help build a kickass bar…or not

Okay, it seemed like a reasonable gambit. Ordinarily I’d suggest my parents blow the entire paycheque on booze. I thought the idea of leveraging the money via the lottery was really quite clever.

But my parents ignored me!

I thought they were being dickheads again, campaigning against my happiness.

Like most people, they buy the occasional lottery ticket. Why shouldn’t they buy more lottery tickets, then? Imagine: we could multiply our Lotto 6/49 chances by 10 or even a hundred, and then we’d be awash in booze. The booze of winners!

The Lotto Max jackpot is currently at $20 million—enough for the kickass bar of our dreams…the sort of bar the kids could brag about to their friends at elementary.

When I asked my mum about it, she said she feels like an idiot when she buys a lottery ticket. The only thing that allows her to do it is the knowledge that millions of other Canadians are doing the exact same thing without feeling like idiots. Just for a moment that $5 or even $10 seems like small change beside the chance at new cars, new clothes, new furniture, massive televisions, killer sound systems, whiter teeth, Botox, vacations, cruises—you name it.

Oh yeah, and all the philanthropy they could engage in! We mustn’t forget that, because wasting your money on a lottery ticket involves digging for justifications, the biggest of which is that you deserve to win.

But can you win? I decided to school myself a bit.

Winners who beat 14,000,000:1 odds!

The average North American spends $1000 per year on lottery tickets and recoups a thirtieth, at best, of that with minor wins. Wow! That’s over $900 in spilt money. That’s ten very nice whiskies, 50 decent bottles of wine, or 40 cases of beer. OMG!

So maybe lottery tickets aren’t such a hot idea. Why do people buy them?

If you went to an investment advisor with $1000, you wouldn’t sink that money in a fund that promised to swallow your capital and give you $30-$40 back. Duh. But despite the statistical fact of abysmal returns, we continue to do this very thing at the lottery stand.

Canada’s most popular lottery, the 6/49, carries odds of almost 14 million to one. A toonie doesn’t seem like a big risk. One toonie twice a week=$208 per year, which is fine for anyone who doesn’t mind sacrificing five bottles of Belvedere and getting a mickey of Alberta Pure in return.

If only we were that restrained, though. And actually Canadians are a little more restrained than US citizens—we spend about $600 a year. Which still isn’t restrained—we’re not just spending a toonie on the 6/49; we’re also getting sucked in by scratch’n’wins and the astronomically long odds (28 million to one) of the Lotto Max.

Who’s doing all this buying? It isn’t everyone. Plenty of people walk past the stand without being tempted. Their $0 purchases contribute to the national average—which puts in perspective the lottery addict who spends ten minutes a time at the stand hand-selecting scratch tickets and boring the shit out of the clerk. The Lottery People are closely related to the People of Walmart; they have specific characteristics, not necessarily including visible ass crack but often involving body odor and decrepitude. They like to have rambling one-way conversations with captive listeners such as lottery stand attendants, and they are singularly oblivious of people in line behind them.

The Lottery People actually save us money sometimes. My mother, who already feels like an idiot whenever she buys a ticket, is too embarrassed to stand for more than a minute in the line-up and will bolt rather than be exposed for longer in the queue. While there, she looks furtively around. If someone chit-chats with her, she makes a point of snickering about her own silly purchase and calling it the Idiot Tax. If the kids are with her, she tells them lotteries are stupid and that we don’t do this very often. Yes, my mother has some inner conflict to work out, but she won’t be able to afford a psychologist if she continues buying lottery tickets.

Considerably better odds than government lotteries 😉

Sadly, having less money often translates into buying more tickets. Statistically, lower-income earners hand over more cash for tickets, perhaps because lotteries seem like their only chance to attain wealth.

This represents a striking dichotomy between realism (slim chances of mobility) and utter unrealism (the odds of winning are substantially smaller than the odds of dying from necrotizing fasciitis).

Plenty of things are more likely than winning the lottery:

  • Dying in a plane crash: one in 400,000
  • Drowning: one in 88,000
  • Being struck by lightning: one in 500,000
  • Contracting herpes: one in 950
  • Getting attacked by a bear in Yellowstone Park: one in 2 million

Wow, all those things suck!

So what should my parents buy instead of lottery tickets? Ahhh!

  • Instead of playing 6/49 for a year: two bottles of Glenfarclas 17
  • Instead of Lotto Max for a year: one bottle of Ardbeg 18

Between Glenfarclas for sure and wealth maybe, I’ll take the Glenfarclas.

After another nudge, my parents finally responded.

OMG! They really are opposed to my happiness.

ASTROLIQUOR for March 23-29—What the stars say you should drink!

My Fellow Inebriates,

Here’s your booze horoscope:

Your chart is telling you to organize your home, Aries. You need to have your shit together for when the sun enters your sign. So get it done now, because when the sun gives you this powerful surge, you don’t want to be holding a feather duster; you want to be doing something big. This is not the week to go halves on anything—it is not a weak week. Your power drink: two parts Kahlua with one part white tequila. YEAH!

Taurus, you need to pull your own weight but still be a team player. As unreasonable as this sounds through a haze of Grand Marnier, it will help you accomplish extraordinary things. So cut that liquor with some coffee and observe your colleagues carefully. Pay heed to what they do, not what they say. If you like what you see, share your flask.

You have the energy of a crazy artist this week, Gemini, giving you a creative boost, along with some mild psychopathy. Yes, your life is out of balance, but the flow feels so good… Sometimes creativity, zaniness and poor judgment make a perfect mix. It all cries out for a strawberry-banana daiquiri (but keep your hand out of the blender).

You’re very susceptible to magic tricks right now, Cancer. This makes you a potential dupe for scientologists and vacuum-cleaner salespeople. The suspension of disbelief you’re experiencing has a deceptive charm—watch out! You could end up buying a whole case of Girl Guide cookies, and you know your money would be better spent on vodka.

Leo, you have a difficult choice ahead. What you decide depends on the quality of your information. So keep your senses tuned—what you learn could change your whole life (no pressure). Now is not the time to black out. Maintain partial consciousness by diluting vodka with less potent products:

  • 1 oz melon vodka
  • 1 oz peach schnapps
  • 4 oz apple cider

Shake with ice and strain into a collins glass.

Your chart is hot, hot, hot, Virgo. You’ve been working hard, and more importantly, you haven’t become complacent. The universe is rewarding you with opportunity, wealth, and status. You’ll be offered leadership—take it! No, I mean really take it, because later in the week the universe is going to crap out on you and serve up all kinds of insecurities. So get into that cushy job or make your move with that special someone right now before things go sideways. And when they do, console yourself with a big pitcher of Bailey’s, Kahlua, and banana liqueur.

Libra, everything is giving you GO signals, with a focus on personal relationships. The sun enters your House of Marriage (OMG!), which means you need to hide briefly—it’s not a good time for long-term commitment; there are some retrograde planets messing around in your constellation that could spell mating disaster. Stock up on rum and triple sec; combine them 4:1 with some lime juice. Drink inside your house, alone.

If karma exists in the universe, Scorpio, you’re having trouble perceiving it. Luckily your fortunes are shifting, flooding you with new information and understanding. You’ll be able to understand people’s past actions, their true motivations, and their sometimes nefarious goals. These are the sort of realizations that can knock a person out. Keep that third eye open with a little Jagermeister. If it grosses you out, drop it into a beer.

Sagittarius, be patient this week, no matter how difficult it seems. You’re a couple of steps ahead of the rest of the world, but if you don’t let it catch up, you’ll end up in trouble. Divert yourself with some empty sex; you need to vent some of your passion or it will spill over. And of course you could always stay home and get wrecked, especially if you’re worried about chlamydia. Cherry vodka and sprite for you.

An accidental meeting may lead to a serious relationship, Capricorn. You’re surprised by your hunger for human connection—as though you’d forgotten that dimension of yourself. But you know how it is when you look too desperate…you attract predatory types. Ease off, be cool. Differentiate between love and sex; you can have one without the other (which one is up to you). If you’re worried about looking worried, load up on Cosmopolitans before pursuing the relationship in question.

Aquarius, this week brings you good cheer. The universe has a rosy glow and you are in the mood for frivolity. In fact, serious people can kiss your ass this week. You’re looking for animalistic types that you can have an orgy with. Find some and invite them over. Serve up a big punchbowl of rum with elaborate ingredients floating in it.

Pisces, your head and your heart are in one of their famous conflicts. You know what you should do, but you don’t wanna. Whether this is due to immaturity or a headful of Jagermeister and Blue Curacao, it poses danger in situations involving finance. This is not a week to experiment with investing! Use your money to stock up a kick-ass bar.