drinking

ASTROLIQUOR for Feb. 17-23—What the stars say you should drink!

My Fellow Inebriates,

Here’s your booze horoscope:

You’ll meet some very compelling people on your next holiday, Aries—and within a few drinks you’ll feel as though you’ve known them forever. But familiarity breeds contempt, and nothing makes fellow vacationers so mutually contemptuous as cleaning up each other’s barf after an orgy featuring whipped-cream-flavored Smirnoff (yes, it exists; somebody send me some).

Taurus, you are super-pissed this week. Somebody is getting on your nerves, and you’re winding up to let ’em have it. You need to step back and see how inconsequential this person is. Look deeper, and you’ll see that somebody else (perhaps somebody non-irritating) is setting you up for a fall. OMG! How will you see it coming with all that vodka in your system? Dilute it with some lemonade; that should clear things up for you.

You tend to fret about time management, Gemini, but if you fixate on the minutes, the years will actually pass you by. Instead of entering items into your calendar, book yourself a day (or several) that you can devote exclusively to drinking. But you have to shake up your routine! Get three shot glasses and fill them up with whiskey, rum, and vodka. Put them aside while you pour a pint glass two-thirds full. Now, light the shot glasses on fire. YEAH! Dump them, glasses and all, into the pint glass, then pound the whole flaming thing while there’s still head on the beer. YES! When you seek out a recovery beverage at Starbucks the next day, you will meet someone nice.

It’s difficult for you to distinguish between love and sex lately, Cancer, but you’re beginning to wonder if it matters. Your latest pursuit is a fellow Cancer who shares this confusion. This makes for hot-cold relations as you each vacillate between caring and not caring for each other. Sounds like alcohol could help! Break out the Jack and combine it with an equal portion of cognac. Whatever amount that makes, double it again with Captain Morgan. Pound it! Now you know it really doesn’t matter.

Leo, it’s time to think about becoming a regular on the psychiatrist’s couch instead of racking up more phone-sex debt. Those phone-sex workers are not trained analysts, you know. They may service a lot of fetishes but they’ve never heard of Freud. Maybe you need to seek a higher power?… Psych! It’s alcohol you need. Did you know they make vanilla vodka? It’s awesome with blueberry juice.

You’re due for an enriching experience, Virgo, but where it will come from is a mystery. It could be a chance meeting, or it could be something you orchestrate. Whichever way, you will learn something from it. Even if it’s just how to make a Hot Damn:

  • 0.5 oz rum
  • 0.5 oz vodka
  • 0.25 oz Canadian whiskey
  • 1 oz orange juice

Shake it up with ice. If you have a few of these it will relax you, and you will have a paranormal experience.

Libra, someone is trying to persuade you to do something, but you’re not ready. The power struggle will continue until late April, when everything will become clear (or your friend will become tired). Until then, you will have to rely on brandy to give you insight. Mix it with everything! Pour it on your cereal.

The stars are very specific for you, Scorpio. March will feature new opportunities, but you should pursue them on the 10th or the 25th if you want them to work out. These would be good days for job interviews or even a health check-up. This leaves all the other days in March free for drinking vodka and Mountain Dew. Isn’t it great when the stars line up?

Sagittarius, sometimes you are oversensitive, and this week you feel like a target for criticism. But is it all in your head? It’s difficult to know when your head is full of vodka and blueberry schnapps (which might actually be the source of criticism, from coworkers for instance). Still, you might just be paranoid, which is inevitable after many years of constant inebriation.

Your feelings are a little unsteady this week, Capricorn. Just like Sagittarius, you’re starting to think everything is a personal attack, when it’s really just all the rum and vodka swishing around your brain cells. Someone will tell you a juicy secret this week. It’ll be very hard to keep it, but luckily you’ll be slurring your words too badly to let it out of the bag.

Aquarius, your best day is Saturday, mainly because you’ve been fighting with a colleague at work and you could use a weekend without some douchebag in your face. Spend the weekend in bed with a bottle of wine, or get adventurous and mix a big punchbowl full of rum, gin, vodka, and Pernod. Obviously, Sunday’s gonna suck.

Pisces, you’re still employed, which is always cause for celebration. Everything is going so well for you that you’re actually getting a little soft. You’re letting down your guard and inviting weird people into your home—fun! Make them some blender drinks; weird people always love those. How about Bailey’s, bananas, ice cream, and coconut milk? Then you won’t need supper.

Image

Bottles so real I could reach out and…damn it!

Can you believe this is a painting, my fellow inebriates?

My thanks to ArtStormer for introducing me to Jason de Graaf‘s work. (If you haven’t visited ArtStormer before, I can’t recommend the site enough.)

If this were in my house I would be constantly trying to reach a paw inside it, seeking the impossible, the hyperrealistic unreality.

OMG, this is the sort of painting that would drive me mad!!!!!!!!

But I love it. Do you?

UNIBROUE BLONDE DE CHAMBLY GOLDEN ALE

My Fellow Inebriates,

A lot of child abuse goes on at my house, by which I mean I suffer a lot of abuse at the hands of children. I feel compelled to clarify this just in case some well-meaning Canadian Conservative (is there such a thing?) googles the term and arrives here—which is plausible, given that someone googled “omg is a shit” this morning and ended up here of all places.

I bet a lot of people are googling terms like “child abuse” and “child pornography” today because of the online surveillance bill Conservative Vic Toews is getting ready to shove down Canadians’ throats (or up their asses, if you prefer it more pornographically). Toews believes that failing to adopt legislation that provides police and intelligence agencies with access to citizens’ telecommunications and subscriber data, “will in fact allow child pornographers and organized crime to flourish.”

The legislation doesn’t personally freak me out. Everything at LBHQ is pretty much PG-rated, my parents lack the energy to do anything dangerous let alone criminal, and we are solidly opposed to child abuse (although curiously silent on bear abuse). But I hate to think that you or I, innocently googling for legislative news this morning and entering the term “child pornography,” could end up on somebody’s watch list.

Says Toews, “the focus here is the protection of children,” yet the bill refers to children in title only; they are not mentioned within the text, suggesting that the topic is a red herring—a hot-button topic that will wedge open the doors to our private lives.

Stephen Harper with a cute red herring

It’s not the first time the Conservative (or the Liberal) government has tried to pass a bill like this. Under the proposed legislation, telecommunications and internet providers could be forced to provide police and intelligence agencies with subscriber data, back-door communications access, and information on private transactions—all without a warrant. Telcom providers would have 18 months to build spy capabilities into telecommunications products enabling authorities to track people any time, without demonstrating the need to. Even more disturbing, Toews defended the bill by saying its critics could “stand with the child pornographers.” Is there no middle ground?

If this were just about me, my family and our boring private lives, I wouldn’t care. But I do care that the government is using an emotional issue in an if-you’re-not-for-us-you’re-against-us bid to gain control of private information that it could not justify otherwise. Similar to the security crackdowns that occurred in the US after 9/11, the bill is an opportunistic and fear-mongering grab for control.