drinking

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.

SINGHA Lager

My Fellow Inebriates,

After spending the afternoon wondering if a can of light beer was going to drop out of the sky and clock me in the head, I decided to stop wishing and buy some beer myself.

My pal Stevie O had recently enthused:

SINGHA from Thailand. Epic refreshing quality; the head is thick and sticks to the glass. Really mature; crisp taste with a herb-like dance on the tongue to finish. Hats off to SINGHA. GOOD STUFF.

So SINGHA was top of my procurement list today. But I had some distractions. Red Bear, one of the other bear denizens in the house, had a sudden realization, upon being dressed in a ravishing green frock by the little people here, that perhaps she had been a girl bear all along. What a mind-bending discovery after three years of hanging around the house commando like us boy bears.

You just can’t tell with bears.


I’ve been hunting for my junk for a long time, people, and I’d be lying if I said I knew for sure it was under my southern fur. I figure it’s there, otherwise I wouldn’t get so excited watching Megan Fox. That and the fact that I like hockey, even when the Canucks are getting reamed.


Today’s toast is to Red Bear’s sexual self-actualization and fashion metamorphosis, as well as my own offensive oversimplification of gender stereotypes. You’re welcome. Red Bear rocked that dress and made me start thinking about arranging a hook-up with Blackie Bear, if I can get him off the couch. And for our toast, here’s SINGHA from Thailand.

At 5% alcohol it’s a little stronger than some lagers, and very refreshing. Pale and ephemerally fizzy, SINGHA is best drunk icy cold and in large quantity.

Photo gallery: Thailand crowns its newest transgender beauty queen

Crown Royal

My Fellow Inebriates,

Cyborg bear!

I had no idea what Cyber Monday was until I googled it today. When you spend as much time messed up and glazed over as I do, a term like that could mean anything. Doesn’t it evoke Terminator-like images of cyborgs yanking us out of bed Monday morning, hungover, to make us work? Holy shit, Cyber Monday sounds like the freaking end of the world.

Well, it really is. Cyber Monday is the biggest online shopping day of the year. It’s the day for all those folks who would normally put on their favorite shopping outfits and go to Walmart…to instead stay home in their jammies, skivvies or birthday suits racking up their credit cards in cyberspace.

So I guess in a way Cyber Monday is a blessing for those of us with eyeballs already sore from a hard night of carousing.

So how do I get in on Cyber Monday? As you can imagine, I’ve been denied all credit card privileges by my purportedly responsible parents. My PayPal account has $0.02 in it. It hasn’t occurred to anyone to email me money lately either. So it looks like I’m shut out of this marvelous occasion (with its impressive six-year history). Holy crap, what do I do?

First of all, what was I thinking of buying? My friend Blackie Bear got me thinking of some Crown Royal when he sent me some tasting notes:

Yeah, I like a bit of Crown, Crown Royal you know, sometimes when I’m sitting on the couch watching a show or whatever. I like to mix it with like gingerale or something like that. And you know, just sip it slowly. It kind of takes the edge off, cuz I have some worries, dude, you know, like the way there are no girl bears around and stuff. I’d kind of like to meet a girl bear and we could watch TV together and cuddle. We could share snacks.

Awesome! I love Blackie Bear; he’s totally one of my posse, and I find his tasting notes incredibly descriptive and informative. You all know I don’t have any Crown Royal of course, but I do remember what it tastes like.

Crown Royal was introduced by Seagram in 1939 to honor stuttering King George, who was visiting with his woman Queen Elizabeth.

It’s a great thing being a royal, or any type of celebrity for that matter. You get all kinds of swag and rarely have to pay for anything. A little royal blood would help my friend Blackie, for instance, since he doesn’t have a job and is enamored mostly with his couch lately. Cyber Monday is really designed for us shut-ins who don’t have much going on but feel an itch to charge something on our credit cards. Those of us who have credit cards, that is.

I told Blackie he could stretch his dollar by having Canadian Club for a while but he disagreed without articulating any reasons why. So I’ll try to help:

Crown Royal is a deep golden color, with a nose of caramel, oaky rye and ever-so-slight apricot. A smooth sipper, it nevertheless has a playful bite. It’s a lovely team player with mixers and with other alcohols. Fit for a king indeed.

Canadian Club hits the tastebuds with astringency and bitterness, clouting you with mineral spice and overwhelming rye. I love it with gingerale but I wouldn’t drink it straight unless I didn’t have any gingerale.

So what kind of deals can I get on rye today?

Googling “Cyber Monday deals on rye” got me some wicked deals on breathalyzers such as the AlcoHawk, for people who always want some alcohol in their systems but are concerned enough to keep a measure on it. Kudos for caring. You really don’t want to get into your car after sitting on Blackie’s couch drinking Crown Royal. But then again, you don’t really want to stay the night with him either.