Tuesday 20 December 2011

Your pocket guide to festive drinking

Observed Alexander Pope, “Drink is the feast of reason and the flow of soul.”

So drink sensibly this Festive Season, i.e., start early, then lash yourself securely to a bar.

And tell the wowsers to go to hell. It’s what hell was invented for. For wowsers.  For wowsers who try to deliver “Good News” like this:

_Quote_IdiotIf any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife,
and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he
cannot be my disciple.--[Luke 14:26]

Because even if this was his birthday (which it isn’t) that’s not someone whose disciple you’d want to be, or something you’d want to celebrate. Ever.

At Christmas time we don't say "sacrifice and repent," we say enjoy yourself and thrive! Especially enjoyable when you know  Islamic "scholars" find "saying Merry Christmas worse than fornication or killing someone."  So hold your drinks high, shout loudly “Merry Christmas and a Salacious Saturnalia,” and celebrate the Season as a time of unabashed earthly joy.

Because it’s entirely self-evident that flourishing and being happy about it is good for you.

So as Tom Waits once said, “Champagne for my real friends, and real pain for my sham friends.” Here’s the Champagne Song from Die Fledermaus to get you started with the appropriate toast: “It’s not how much you drink, it’s what you drink.  A toast to King Champagne!” (Kiri’s toast starts about 2:00 in.)

And here’s the drinking song from Verdi’s Otello, sung by an unusually ebullient bunch of Laplanders*. The loose translation is ‘Wet Your Throat,’ but you hardly need an ace translator to work out what they’re singing about.

* Well, almost. Finland is pretty close, right?

5 comments:

the drunken watchman said...

thanks for the suggestion, yeah, drink Waikato!

Shane Pleasance said...

My beer fridge is fast filling with fine festive follies from far flung fields!
Recently added was a rather large crayfish, which, still alive, will be standing guard - right up until xmas morning.

Rather more bowser than wowser.

DenMT said...

Haven't had the time to read/comment as much as previous years, but merry Christmas to you and yours PC.

DenMT

Richard said...

"The virtue of Rationality ... means one’s total commitment to a state of full, conscious awareness, to the maintenance of a full mental focus in all issues, in all choices, in all of one’s waking hours."

No prizes for guessing the identity of the wowser who said that. Frankly, I think her disciples deserve to be lashed to a bar. For their own good.

Have a very Merry Christmas, PC!

Jasmine Kamante said...

Merry Christmas to you and Carol! Or god jul, as the Swedes say! They have the right idea - celebrations start on the 24th, with Schnapps! The festivities here remind me of another Tom Waits quote: "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy". Clever man.