whiskey

ASTROLIQUOR for September 14-20—What the stars say you should drink!

My Fellow Inebriates,

Here’s your booze horoscope:

Aries, one of your peeps is jealous of you. Whether it’s your liquor cabinet, your life partner, or the way you sleep in all day, that envy will come to a boil this week. When you ease off the Malibu and realize your ex-chum is bad-mouthing you, you’re gonna freak. And Aries…as usual there is a bar fight in the offing. Don’t let it happen! Stay inside! Close the drapes! Drink more Malibu!

Taurus, your house is looking shabby. That couch you thought was so wicked cool way back when…those pastel walls…that shaggy carpet. It’s all been barfed on one too many times, and it’s rum-and-stomach-acid odour is so rank that not even your Jehovah’s Witness visitors care to stay and chat. Find a friend with good judgment, who’s not pissed on rum, to help you redecorate.

Not only are you a little psychologically uneven these days, Gemini, you’re bored. Time to find some excitement, and the stars are pointing either toward the bar scene or…the health club. (Sometimes the stars just like to hedge their bets.) The choice is a no-brainer—get yourself to the nearest pub and order a row of tequila shots. Behave obnoxiously until you’re no longer bored.

The stars call for heavy socializing this week, Cancer. You might even add to your friend list if you open your mind. Hell, why not open your booze shelves to the neighborhood and have a house-wrecker party? Open the door and scream, “Vanilla vodka!” and see if anyone comes running. Whoever does might end up sleeping in your bathtub, especially on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday.

Leo, you’ll meet someone with an unusual accent. Try not to be a douche. You sound pretty funny yourself when you’re burping up blackberry liqueur and rum. This is the opportunity to start a new friendship—possibly featuring a leather thong. Enjoy it until December when planet Mars goes apeshit in your relationship house and one of you takes out a restraining order. The good news is that a friend with flesh-eating disease is going to be okay.

Friendships become increasingly precious as we age, Virgo. Why not get in touch with an old friend or two? Especially if you severed contact suddenly or on bad terms, now’s the time to reconnect. For instance, what about your ex? The best approach is to fill up on a half-decent blended whiskey…say, six ounces with some soda and bitters…then pick up the phone. Yeah, do it!

Libra, if you’re in a helping profession, you can expect a great week. Everyone is so happy to see you; there’s not enough of you to go around. Perhaps you’re doing your job too well. After all, if your job description includes changing adult diapers, you don’t want to be too popular. Try incorporating gin and creme de menthe into your work day; it should help you avoid being specially requested.

Sometimes coworkers can be so critical, Scorpio, especially the ones who are gunning for you right now. Take a deep breath and ignore them. What are they going to do, report you? They don’t even have justification, do they? Doesn’t everyone (besides you) arrive at work with a Thermos of Purple Honker (yes! equal parts strawberry liqueur and Maui Blue Hawaiian schnapps with or without 7-up)? Don’t worry that your nitpicky colleagues might get you fired; you’ll win something next week.

Sagittarius, Irish whisky is the thief of time. You know you have a project begging your attention, and yet it’s so awesome to combine three parts Bushmill’s with two parts Bailey’s over ice in an old-fashioned glass. (Okay, so the stars are saying you need to tackle your project, that it will be rewarding, etc. But the stars are very far away.)

You don’t usually talk about your sexy time, Capricorn. But given enough dark rum, you’ll express all kinds of random preferences…Which will work out for you this week if you cross paths with an adventurous Virgo. Who knows what you’ll get up to…it will be very quick and messy though. Others will frown on it. Give them some dark rum and they will understand.

Aquarius, what is your job? Like, what do you do? Is it what you always thought you’d do? Usually it isn’t. And this week you realize you haven’t been following your heart. You won’t have time over the next three months to really figure this out, but that’s okay because you’ll have too much Goldschlager in your system to act on your conclusions. Yes, you can get drunk on that shit. You just need a strong stomach.

Pisces, change is on the horizon. Usually change (for you) involves a move (from home to jail, for example), the loss of routine (your job), or predation in the wild (other homeless people banging on your cardboard box). But this time it’s different. Your life is on a big uptick, Pisces! You have new maturity and new perspective, and Saturday may even introduce a new romantic interest. Yay! If only you had some booze, but the stars are saying no this week. Stupid stars.

Out of the mouths of booze bottles

 

Who says cotton candy’s just for kids?

My Fellow Inebriates,

You’d think there’d have been something interesting in the backpack my parents used throughout their day at the Pacific National Exhibition, but its contents were in fact so boring that no one bothered to clean it out. Still, it seemed sensible to check for some booze. Could they really have managed eleven hours of kiddy rides, farm animals, dog shows, and carny people without a flask? I didn’t think so.

But apparently they had drained the flask while walking the fairgrounds. Typical. I clambered right into the pack and found nothing but old popcorn and pink cotton candy. This latter item my dad immediately grabbed. He needed, I kid you not, something that wouldn’t require chewing for breakfast before a 10 a.m. root canal, and he thinks oatmeal is really gross. (I do too, but have you ever tried adding a tablespoon of Jack Daniel’s to your bowl? Try it.)

Most people, when they see cotton candy, do one or even several things:

  • They salivate, imagining a much yummier product than it actually turns out to be.
  • They wonder how many insects have gotten swirled up into the floss.
  • Their teeth hurt. They they wonder if they need a root canal.
  • They wonder which is worse: denying the kids a quintessential carnival treat, or letting them consume a bag of sugar, additives, and stray bugs.
  • They wonder how a bag of it can cost five freaking dollars.
  • They wish cotton candy contained at least a little alcohol.

Okay, maybe most PNE visitors don’t think that. For those who do, there’s a post-fair solution. Get the kiddies into bed and whip up a Cotton Candy Martini.

Now, you can’t get cotton candy just anywhere—at least not near LBHQ—so if you’re going to pull off this drink, you’ll have to visit a fair. Perhaps a relatively mainstream one like the PNE, or maybe a nasty little midway with multi-nippled circus geeks gobbling chicken heads and gropists throwing knives at each other. Either way, be sure to escape with some candy floss.

One other piece of foresight is necessary: have some sub-zero (sub-32 if you prefer) Smirnoff in your freezer. After a day of freaks with meter-long armpit hair offering you deep-fried Mars bars, you’ll want that vodka to be ready. And Smirnoff is only really tolerable when it’s near-freezing.

If, unlike my parents, you have any sort of respectable bar, you’ll have all the other items, or at least improvisational ones. Grenadine? Coca-Cola? Vanilla rim sugar? Sure…. Not at my house, perhaps, but I hope this stuff is at yours. Here’s the recipe:

  • 8 ounces of freezing Smirnoff vodka
  • 1 tablespoon of cola
  • 1 teaspoon of Grenadine
  • A chunk of cotton candy (about 2″ x 2″)
  • 2 small chunks of cotton candy for garnish
  • Vanilla cocktail candy rim sugar

Rim the glasses, load your martini shakers with ice, toss in the first four ingredients, and close tightly. Shake it like a carny wigging out on paint thinner. The cotton candy will disappear like a pickpocketed wallet. Strain the concoction into your sugared martini glasses and garnish with tufts of cotton candy. UNLESS your dad ate all of it for breakfast before having a root canal.