ASTROLIQUOR for June 1-7—What the stars say you should drink!

My Fellow Inebriates,

Here’s your booze horoscope:

You can’t solve everything by yourself, Aries, especially while on a bender involving rum and apricot brandy. Ask a friend to help, not to mention share the booze, which should keep you alert enough to deal with your mounting email. There’s an important message in it, so clear your head a little if you want to find it. Avoid public transit this week at all costs! (And since you’ll be too drunk to drive, that means stay home.)

Taurus, the urge to see an old Capricorn friend consumes you this week—someone who used to excite you but has degenerated into a tequila-soaked lush. You can still enjoy a satisfying friendship even if the sparks are gone. Don’t fall into this friend’s habits, though, or you’ll be lying outside the liquor store all day keening to yourself.

You’re stuck working on a project with an annoying coworker, Gemini, and the urge to vent your anger could inflame the situation. But don’t vent it at innocent bystanders! Everyone will notice your maturity if you take the high road. What you need is some coconut rum to take the edge off. There’s no problem that can’t be solved with Captain Morgan.

Traffic will challenge you more than usual this week Cancer, especially if you deviate from your normal route or routine. In fact, all change is bad this week; even at work you should stay in a low-profile rut where you can’t be singled out for new responsibilities. If you can manage to stay invisible, all threats will pass. So take the bus, work quietly on the Penske file, and put nice, clear, odorless vodka in your flask. No fruity craziness until next week! Oh yeah, and, get a handle on your electronics so they don’t start beeping at 4:00am.

Leo, think about inviting friends and family over to your home for a nice dinner. They tend to picture you in filthy underwear, swilling rum from a styrofoam cup, so they’ll be surprised and delighted that you’re capable of hosting a civilized social occasion. It’ll be good for you too, if only because it inspires you to wash those skivvies.

Someone from your past gets in touch, Virgo. How exciting! You thought this person was just a one-off, sordid one-night stand in a squalid motel, and here he/she is wanting to hang out. You should definitely find out more about this person. What’s his/her star sign? Do you both love vodka with madeira and cherry brandy? Does your friend have chlamydia? By June you’ll have at least one of the answers.

Libra, usually you’re difficult to prank, but work-related distractions make you an easy mark for mischievous colleagues this week. If you let them frustrate you, tempers will flare up and a fight will ensue, drawing unwanted attention from higher-ups. You have a sweet thing going at work with your vodka flask. Don’t wreck it!

Keep an eye on your health this week, Scorpio. The stars are looking vicious—don’t let them punish you for all those apple martinis. Baby yourself a bit. Dress properly instead of putting yourself at the mercy of the elements. Walk slowly and pay attention to those around you—no one is attractive enough to warrant extra risks right now. This week is all about stasis.

Sagittarius, you’ll pass a test this week, but only with the help of an Aries. Of all the star signs, you’re the best at picking people up, so hit the neighborhood pub and start asking “What’s your sign?” Eventually you’ll find an intelligent Aries, but it might take a while, so pace yourself. No hard stuff (that means no Jell-O shots)… Stick to apple cider.

You have large, global concerns, Capricorn, which make everyone else’s day-to-day worries seem trivial by comparison. So consumed are you by world politics that you can’t stop lecturing, expounding from a bar stool while pickling yourself with pear vodka. You feel like a voice crying out in the wilderness, but make no mistake about it, people think you’re a douche. The best thing you can do is drink yourself past intelligibility so your friends don’t have to listen.

Aquarius, you’re all about superficial relationships lately, but one of your new friends is going to stick around longer than expected. In August you’ll realize you’re smitten—not just romantically but in all respects: hobbies, business, politics, relentless vodka consumption… How the relationship develops is up to you. The stars are very controlling but you can still steer this thing.

Pisces, the urge to socialize is strong with you this week, but so is the urge to lie compulsively! You tell people all kinds of shit, sometimes contradicting yourself and setting yourself up for trouble. It’s very hard to conduct yourself this way when you start tossing Kahlua into your coffee at 6:00am and progress from there. Just wait till a handful of friends get into a room together and compare stories.

The dark side of gummy bear hedonism

I got a shock when I looked at my gummy bears this morning.

They were supposed to look happy and plumply saturated with rum.

But instead, they’d turned into goo.

Neither of my two brain cells had remembered my own posts about flavoring vodka with Skittles and Jolly Ranchers, a process in which those candies dissolve uniformly…

I felt sick.

It reminded me of Breaking Bad—meth-peddling thugs get liquefied in an acid bath after messing with the wrong dudes. Only my little bears weren’t thugs, and I was the wrong dude.

The horror.

My head was spinning. Holy shit, I’d done something ghastly to my little compatriots and there was no way they were coming back from it.

What would you do??

I had to get my head on straight.

I visited my friend Blackie Bear, not generally known for sensible advice, but comforting in a bearish way.

If he was shocked about the fate of the gummy bears he didn’t indicate it; he maintained a neutral expression as I poured out the story of their execution.

Blackie is a good listener.

Finally he said, “Bro, you can’t get upset about it. Gummy bears aren’t like us, buddy. They don’t feel. They’re not smart. They’re just…candy. You don’t think those gummy bears chose to dive into the Bacardi, do you?”

“No,” I said. “I gave them a pep talk first. And now they’re dead.”

Blackie was still for a while. Actually, he’s good at staying still. Sometimes he doesn’t move at all for days. He stared at me very hard for a long time before saying:

Dude. Dude, those bears aren’t bears, they’re just candy. You can’t anthropomorphize them.”

I looked into Blackie’s dark, beady eyes, close-set in his smallish head. He is so cuddly, Blackie Bear. But as I peered at him I was overwhelmed by a troubling thought. Something inescapable rose in me like a scream. Blackie isn’t…he isn’t….Blackie isn’t really…he’s not a real…

He’s not a real psychiatrist. I mean, he doesn’t have any training or anything. I don’t even know where he learned the word “anthropomorphize.”

The secret world of hedonistic gummy bears

My Fellow Inebriates,

One of my Facebook friends posted this on my wall:

The Internet is full of good ideas, as anyone who’s ever researched a possible medical condition will attest. There aren’t too many better ideas than this one.

As it happened, four-year-old Miss V had a whole bunch of gummy bears, and there was a mostly empty bottle of Bacardi Big Apple languishing in the liquor cabinet. Perfect preschool activity, wouldn’t you say?

But first I had to ask the gummy bears what they thought of the idea.

They were totally cool with it, although the white one kept falling down, which made me think it was drunk already.

Even as I warned them about the hazards, the white one wasn’t listening.

V and I helped them line up. Look at that yellow one getting pushy.

At the top, the gummy bear hesitated. So V ate it.

He who hesitates is lost. V nabbed this one as well. She didn’t really think we were going to let them drop.

Nor did my mother. This was totally an accident (the kind that happens when you prop a 2-cm gummy bear across a 3-cm hole).

“Daddy’s not going to like that!” said V.

“Sure he will,” said my mum.

By now the other gummy bears were frantic with excitement.

V got busy. “Mummy, what’s this drink called? Mummy, does LB like it? Does he want to drink it?”

They look so happy in there. That bottle’s been in our cupboard for almost four years, helping no one. Now it’s a party bottle.

Kinda reminds me of this other bottle.