the songs would melt your face

[phosfate]

I normally ignore St Patrick's day, since as near as I can tell my ancestors spent several centuries persecuting the Irish, and appropriating their holiday seemed like adding insult to injury. Plus, I hate those fucking hats.

But this year, I thought, Fuck it. Try something new. So I decided I would try to get drunk.

I don't drink much. I'm not fond of booze, except for that red thing Sharon gave me to drink in Downtown Disney, which tasted like heaven, and the name of which she has never been able to remember. Besides, I'm supposed to avoid alcohol with my meds, and I'm usually the one driving. But fuck it. I am edgy and dark, as you know.

So, Saturday. Grocery had Guinness on sale. Beer tastes like horsey pee, but Guinness tastes like dietetic A&W Root Beer, so I can tolerate it. SERVE CHILLED, the bottle says, so I brough it home to put in the fridge, and gave half the six-pack to the neighbors because even in my most grandiose fantasies, drinking a six-pack of anything would make me die. Then I went to run errands and pick up a pizza. So far so good.

Put in Eddie Izzard DVD, ate pizza w/Diet Pepsi, then...showtime. Pause Eddie. Take CHILLED bottle from fridge.

Now, I swear to God, I know there is a bottle opener somewhere in my house. I know it. It's got a turqoise handle, and I absolutely recall seeing it as recently as 1974.

An hour later, I've found a rusty, magnetic Hide-A-Key box, a melon baller, those swell spaghetti tongs Susan gave Mom, lots of string and batteries, a shrimp fork, several nutpicks, a corn-on-the-cob handle, a wheat penny, and 300 wooden clothespins. Also, my sister was right and Grandma's cookbook is black and not blue. "Fuck!"

So, off to Target.

Our Target is remodeling. It is currently a retail Skinner box, with sudden walls of shoes materialising out of nowhere, phantom dairy cases, and sharp turns into vicious racks of bras. It takes half an hour to find the bottle openers, but the one I come away with looks like something James Bond would use to take a villain's eye out. And I got a nice bra for $3.00. On the drive back, I see a man in a kilt playing volleyball.

Back home, poor Eddie is still on pause, and probably in a snit about it. Bottle is no longer CHILLED, so I swap it out for another one. I pop that bad boy open, park in front of the TV, and prepare for an evening of hardcore substance abuse, the likes of which have not been seen since the days of some time when they did that sort of thing a lot.

An hour and a half later, Eddie's done his thing, and I have managed to drain the bottle to approximately an inch below neck level. I know this because I have got bored enough to peel the label off. My head feels like a dull game of Tetris -- the kind where you keep winning and don't want to shut it off, since after all you've spent a whole quarter on it, but at the same time you're kind of bored and wish that maybe Dig-Dug or one of the ships from Galaga would wander over and liven things up a bit. My arms are mildly numb, but otherwise, I feel no desire to wear a lampshade or drive into a shop window.

And the bottle is making a rattly noise. WTF?

There is something inside my bottle of Guinness. Besides the Guinness, I mean. It's white, shaped sort of like a duck call.

So I do what anyone would. I reach for the phone and text people:

My bottle of guinness has a whistle or something floating in it. Have i been poisond? I can't quite get the hang of capital letters on this phone.

Sadly, yes, comes a reply from Gretchen. I assume the rest of you were too debauched to reply. Bastards. You'll be dead by morning unless you get the antidote. Good luck with that!

Well fuck. Now I'm going to die. I'm only mildly inebriated and don't like it much. This is the worst St Patrick's Day ever! I watch a thing on the History Channel about the Spartans and wait for death.

Two hours later, still not dead. Gretchen, apparently, lied to me about the toxicity of the Guinness whistle. I still don't know what it's for. I have learned that the Spartans were fucking insane. They were also my high school mascot, which explains a lot about my high school.

There's probably some sort of moral here, but I'm damned if I know what it is.

Sorry, it's really not much of a story, but life's like that sometimes. Okay, most of the time.

Comments

[ginnytonnick.livejournal.com]

I like Guinness in stew, and that's about it. But now that I know they include prizes in the bottles, I may make another pass. Hopefully there's a decoder ring in the one I try. Those are awesome.

[tikistitch.livejournal.com]

I have to agree, delicious in a beef stew, miserable out of a bottle, and especially bad lukewarm, the way they serve it in the UK.

Moose Drool--now, THERE's a beer. Mmmmm.....

[ginnytonnick.livejournal.com]

When I was growing up, there was a train that separated the downtown from the lower edge or the 'wrong side of the tracks.' But you see the town baseball diamonds were on the other side. So the town built this big covered walking bridge that went over the tracks, and people used that to get back and forth. Except at night. At night the homeless would sleep there. Well, after several years the smell of urine was so incredibly strong, that one would have to take a deep breath and hold it the entire length of the bridge. If you actually breathed during the walk, most would get dizzy and some would vomit actually adding to the smell.

To me, all beer tastes the way that bridge smells.

[tikistitch.livejournal.com]

Mike Royko's comment about American beer (made circa 1972, prior to rise of the micros), which I still think is pretty awesome:

"And regardless of what label or slogan you choose, it all tastes as if the secret brewing process involves running it through a horse."