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Word of the Every So Often

empandemonium: (verb) Milton made up both “Pandemonium” and “imparadise,” and if he can make up words, so can I. Empandemonium is the opposite of “imparadise.” To make anything or anyone hellish; to make a person utterly miserable. Mrs. Bimbaum empandemoniumed everyone in her third hour grammar class by insisting that the language was immutable.

The Almost Daily

It's National Zinfandel Day, yet another holiday devoted to drinking. Whatever your opinions are concerning alcohol, there's no denying that humans like to drink. Mind you, not always for their betterment, but they do it just the same. In fact, many animals like to imbibe. There’s a wallaby in Tasmania that likes to nibble on opium plants. Many birds, such as the Stellar Jay, purposefully choose fermented fruit. There’s even a drunken parrot season in Australia. There are monkeys on St. Kitts that hang around the tourists and finish off their drinks. There are reindeer that fight over who gets to eat the hallucinogenic mushrooms. It’s not just mushrooms that’ll get ya high. Lichen will do it, too – a favourite of bighorn sheep. And the list goes on. Why they do is a subject to debate. The most obvious reason is that alcohol has calories. If you can eat fermented fruit, it’s another food source, and those animals that can eat the most stuff have the best chance of survival. Compare, for instance, the endangered panda (that eats only a certain type of bamboo) to a very non-endangered crow, that will eat just about anything. As well, fermented fruit is easier to smell, so it’s easier to find. And those fermented fruits and vegetables may help control certain parasites. Who knows? It may even make them more susceptible to mating. I mean... it works with humans. But then, another reason that animals get stoned could be the same reason humans do – to relax. It may be that they’re just hungry, and here’s food, and… woah! Dude. Look at all the colours. But that does make them more vulnerable when they’re high. Birds wasted on fermented berries have been known to crash into windows, often fatally, or not even be able to fly. But then, maybe they don’t care.

A zinfandel, by the way, is a sweeter wine, because the grapes tend to have thicker skins, and, therefore, more sugar content. And because it has more sugar, then its alcohol level tends to be a bit higher than other wines (see above). Zinfandels can come in both red and white, the white having had less contact with the grape skins. It is noted for its fruity taste.

Cartoon of the Week

STUFF

Birthday Beer

On my 18th birthday I went to Kansas with my buddy Dave, just so I could buy some beer. No pretending. No hoping they wouldn’t check my ID or, if they did, look at it too closely. It was all legal and above the board. I was 18, and I could buy beer in Kansas. Well, it was 3.2 beer, but who cared? If it had been .0001 it would’ve still been beer, and that’s what mattered.

We went to a grocery store. Not a 7-11 or the Beer Barn or some place where buying beer before 10 a.m. on a Saturday morning would seem normal, but a regular grocery store where regular people were buying regular groceries. We went back to the liquor department and I perused the beer like I actually had an opinion, and I carefully selected a six pack. Probably Coors. Back then we thought Coors was special. We had a lot to learn.

With one hand under my six pack, and the other on top, I proudly held my six pack up against my chest as we stood in line behind mothers doing their weekly shopping, waiting for our turn, slowly moving forward. I think the lady in front of us considered letting us go before her. After all, we only had one item, and she had a whole cartful. But when she saw that our one item was beer – me, grinning like an idiot while proudly holding it there in front of me – she ever so slightly huffed, turned around, and started unloading her cart. She wasn’t in a hurry. Neither were we.

When she was finally out of the way, I sat my six pack on the conveyor and watched it come to a stop in front of the cashier lady. She could have easily been my mother, or my high school English teacher. Neither had a sense of humour. She was somebody who was tired before she ever clocked in, and still had the better part of the day to work. Somebody who had no room for nonsense in her life. Ever. She looked at the beer. Then she looked at me. I smiled even more than I had been before. She frowned even more than she had been before.

“You’re not old enough to buy beer!” she said with a sneer.

I begged to differ, and I held out my ID for her inspection. She snapped the ID from my hand, and after taking her reading glasses off the top of her head, carefully inspected the ID... both sides. Then she looked at me once again over her glasses before checking my ID once more. Then, in disgust, she threw the ID back at me. She seriously threw it, as she said, “Oh, good grief! Today is your birthday!”

And she didn’t say anything more. Not a word. This was back when cash registers had keys, and those keys could be pounded. And she did. Bam! Bam! Bam! Caching! She then snatched the money out of my hand and stuffed it in the register. She dug out my change and slapped it down on the counter. There was no counting. There was no offer of a sack. And she sure as hell didn’t wish me a happy birthday. She didn’t need to.

To this day, I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed a beer more than the one we drank in the parking lot of that grocery store. And it was just ten in the morning. I still had the rest of my birthday in front of me.

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