News from The War on Alcohol: "ONE person drinks themselves to death every hour, according to figures that expose the full horror of binge-drinking Britain." That's a higher fatality rate than knifecrimes! The same article notes that the low price of certain kinds of booze "means young people can get drunk for less than the price of a chocolate bar," which, you know, what am I doing stuck on this side of the pond?
Monday, October 19, 2009
9
Ha! I Russia Alcohol DRINKS YOU!
""We're not drinking," said a construction worker named Vasily Pik who stood gulping down cans of beer with a couple of buddies at noon on a weekday. "We're just killing our hangovers." Asked about Medvedev's anti-alcohol campaign, Pik burst into raw gasps of laughter "It's impossible. He doesn't stand a chance," he said. "The Russian man will always be drinking. Russians don't surrender."
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2009902545_russalcohol20.html
In other words, the last time they cracked down on vodka, the soviet union collapsed.
Technically, the official decision to dissolve the Soviet Union involved Yeltsin, Lukashenko and Kuchma and a shitload of vodka in a vacation house on the Crimea. So really, freeflowing vodka helped end it.
The Honey & I were visiting with my moms the morning after a particularly boisterous evening of drinking with My People, and she immediately saw that he was feeling the pain of it. She proceeded to pour him an enormous glass of cognac and said, "Here, this will make you feel better."
That's not drinking; it's breakfast!
(Also? Totally worked.)
If I were dating someone from Liverpool, I would drink heavily too.
I'm going out drinking tonight. I'll let you know if I'm still alive tomorrow.
One of the annoyances I've found, since retreating to the New World after the UK collapsed, is that Strongbow cider here at the LCBO (the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, the biggest and most powerful purchaser of booze in the world - woohoo socialism!) is so damn overpriced. In England cornershops and supermarkets practically give the stuff away (in pint cans, and in enormous 3 litre plastic bottles) whereas here, while I can buy superb German and Czech beer for less than the cost of Canadian/US swill, a nice dry, refreshing can of Strongbow costs double what it ought to.
When you download their actual .pdf pamphlet it provides plenty of grist for denial.
First of all, I'm sure the author is quite esteemed; still it's disconcerting that he so often employs the first-person tense in what seems to want to be a short informational pamphlet published by a respected medical organization about a pressing global problem.
Worse, the author uses his "I's" to pat himself on the back for more or less single-handedly ending the scourge of cigarette smoking. Your knowing that secondhand smoke kills and every cigarette ban worldwide and tobacco becoming socially frowned upon are all thanks to him, according to him.
Now he has set his sights on "secondhand drinking," or whatever he calls it. It seems for all the world like a formerly best-selling author going back to his proven formula for another big payday.
Personally I have no objection to fame-whores trolling for ego boosts, but in this case (as most always) I wish he would leave me out of it.
That's how I'm going to ignore this so I can keep drinking, anyway.
That statistic is really saying something, because the Brits LOVE a good knifefight.