December 2009

The Lush Chronicles: Why We Drink, Part One- Pain and Potables

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Liquid culture fascinates me. You can tell a lot about a person by how they drink, and I really mean that. Not just what they drink, but when, where, why and by which means. For example, you'll never meet someone who both only likes super-sweet drinks and is also a respectable adult.

All kidding aside, human beings have a real connection to ethanol. It has long been a source of everything from religious inspiration to rights of passage. Though roughly a billion or so members of our species forbid the stuff, the other five usually find a way to have a very complicated relationship with alcohol. Unlike most other recreational drugs, we drink for a wider variety of reasons than the high, or addiction, or pain relief. Drinking, like the great human experiences of love and wanderlust, is strange and irrational. Mine is a complex question with as many answers as there are barstools in the world. Why do we drink?

The Lush Chronicles: Cold Weather Drinking

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Ask any of my friends or close relatives and they'll tell you that I'm one vodka-soaked olive short of a total lush. Or alternately, ask any of the sworn enemies I've collected from a solid year of making fun of people on the Internet and they'll tell you I'm an inveterate drunk. Though there's likely more than a kernel of truth to these accusations, I'm a writer, it's part and parcel to the profession and has been since Homer. All the same, us varsity-level drinkers get to be smug around the holiday season as the more responsible folks start indulging for the usual reasons people drink during yuletide festivities. I've never been one to join in on the absurd sloshing about of Christmas and New Years, but there are a few drinks I enjoy exclusively in the month of December. These are my cold weather drinks.