violence

TRIVENTO AMADO SUR WHITE WINE (2012)—Good, but not quite good enough for V’s teacher

My Fellow Inebriates,

Once a month each kid in V’s kindergarten class gets to be the Special Helper. What the Special Helper’s tasks are we’re not sure; all we know is that Special Helper Day is not to be missed. It’s the one day of the month on which V will spring from bed, choose her very best outfit, cooperate all morning, and voluntarily leave the house at 8:15 without thinking of some dramatic objection at 8:14.

Special Helper Day requires some prep, which V does without urging. The Special Helper carries a Mystery Bag, preferably decorative or fancy. Into this bag goes a Mystery Object of the Special Helper’s choosing, along with a sheet of paper.

mystery bag blank

V didn’t decide until the morning of her Special Helper Day what she would put in the bag. Or at least she didn’t mention what she had in mind. But she had the bag chosen and the sheet filled out within five minutes of waking. In the past she’s brought her bead collection, her Chihuahua, various rocks, bugs—that kind of thing. For V, a found object is the best kind of Mystery Bag item, so we should have known she’d select the special piece of tree branch she’d found a couple of weekends before in Campbell Valley Regional Park. That’s what went in the bag this time.

It was 8:14, a time V has the uncanny ability to intuit each morning despite a nebulous understanding of clocks—a time Mum fears because it so often occasions some kind of hissyfit about hair-brushing or boots or which jacket fits which weather, and so on. So when Mum saw the Mystery Bag item she just sighed and went with it. Anything to get out the door.

mystery bag filled in

That’s a “g.”

So… the reason V likes the tree branch she put in the bag so much is that it’s shaped like a gun. When V first found the branch she went nuts for it and thereafter fought with P and two friends for possession of it throughout the day. P and V don’t have any toy guns, so the tree-branch gun was a huge find for them.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

If Mum had any qualms about delivering V to school with a gun, she did her best to be preemptive. “Hope this isn’t controversial,” she said to V’s teacher as V handed the bag over.

“Now I’m intrigued,” said Mrs. R.

And Mum beat it out of there. We forgot about the gun until 2:30, when V emerged from class (Special Helper always leaves first.) She was beaming. Whatever the hell they do on Special Helper Day, it must be freaking amazing.

“How was your Special Helper Day?”

“It was awesome!”

“Did the kids like the Mystery Bag item?”

“Yes,” V said. “Except I wasn’t allowed to play with it.”

Fair enough. Mum’s not a total twit. Taking a gun to school—even a tree-branch gun—is pretty tasteless, and if the only downside was that V couldn’t play with it, and the rest of her Special Helper Day was still awesome, then Mrs. R is pretty awesome too. A more officious teacher might have sent V to the office, arranged a parent-teacher meeting to discuss the gun, or even confiscated it. But if what V describes is accurate, at the moment V pulled the gun out of the Mystery Bag, Mrs. R had to stifle a laugh.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA“We should buy Mrs. R a bottle of TRIVENTO AMADO SUR TORRONTES/VIOGNIER/CHARDONNAY (2012),” I said. “It has the rich lushness of Argentina’s signature white wine grape with playful Viognier tartness and disciplined Chardonnay structure.”

Trivento amado sur torrontes“Nope, not good enough,” Mum said. “Mrs. R’s getting CUMA.”

Well, kick me in the nads, I thought the CUMA was for us. But Mum’s right—the TRIVENTO AMADO SUR isn’t good enough for Mrs. R. Sure, it’s a tasty wine but it’s not quite as luscious and enveloping as CUMA. Its small percentages of Viognier and Chardonnay, while strategic, nonetheless operate against the hedonistic fruitiness of the Torrontes, reining it in if you will. If you’re not a complete hedonist, you might appreciate this. This wine has excellent structure and acidity, notes of mango, melon, and jasmine, and a lingering finish. It leaves you, somehow, wanting more—a little more lushness and depth, and more follow-through on the fragrance. Not a disappointment, but not quite in the same league as CUMA.

Incidentally, by the time I finished writing this, my mum and her friend L had polished off the whole bottle of TRIVENTO AMADO SUR. Holy crap, my fellow inebriates, they really sneaked it past me. L is the friend whose kids accompanied P and V when they found the tree-branch gun in the park. L finds me creepy but says: “At least you don’t have button eyes.” To which I respond: “At least I didn’t let my kid take a gun to school.”

A dry day at LBHQ—by choice

Every week your ASTROLIQUOR profile (What the stars say you should drink!) provides facetious, trying-to-be-funny recommendations on saucing up your social life with that magical elixir, alcohol.

A while ago I added the tags “poor judgment,” “specious advice,” “irresponsible behavior,” and “tasteless” to the weekly horoscope. Not that this was necessary—I know my readers are smart. They wouldn’t really take advice from a bear whose furry head contains only two brain cells, both of which are semi-permanently fried.

But every once in a while I get a reminder that there are people out there who do behave irresponsibly around alcohol. They surround themselves with like-minded friends who drink to oblivion with the express purpose of surrendering any responsibility or intentional behavior. These people sometimes do bad shit, and sometimes bad shit happens to them.

I was very upset and disturbed to hear that a fellow blogger’s daughter, upon attending her first Burning Man event, was dosed with hallucinogens, raped, and dumped on a side street.

She’d accepted a glass of “water” at a camp called “Want It,” only to wake up later in the med tent with an IV in her arm and a patchy recollection of the attack.

Although she can identify her attacker, he can’t be charged. There are no rape kits and no forensic nurses out on the Playa.

My heart goes out Miss R and her daughter. Her daughter did nothing wrong. And even if her daughter had overindulged, as the Burning Man rangers initially suspected, she still should have remained safe from sexual predators. That was her right.

I could post dozens of messages warning women (and men for that matter) not to drink excessively, not to leave a drink unattended at the bar, and not to leave a bar with someone under the influence. Messages like this:

 

No one should have to be told this stuff.

At best such messages recognize the pragmatic reality that, despite the best ideals upheld by majority non-predators, women (and men) still cannot allow themselves the vulnerability attendant with inebriation. Not if they wish to feel safe.

At worst, these messages reinforce the notion that if you compromise your judgment with a few drinks, whatever happens is your fault. And as a society we haven’t done a good enough job getting across that it’s not.

Whoever these fucked-up rapists (plural, because at least three women were raped at Burning Man that night)…whoever these fucked-up bastards are, they know how wrong their actions were, and I hope their communities will identify them and report them.

More snowpeople! Horny, angry, crazy!

Two more days of white and the rain is coming to wash it all away. So here’s one more bunch of crazy, horny, angry, drunken snowpeople.

OMG, how did they flip him upside down? 😉

!!!

Arrghhh!

Now, what are they up to?

Call the lab!