Here at An Alcoholic's Guide To Modern Life (AAGTML), we* strive to provide you, the reader, with fresh daily content for your enjoyment and enlightenment, and before this post we had managed to provide a sum total of two posts for 2018 to date, which frankly is a pretty good fucking hit rate for a blog with "alcoholic" in its title.
Anyway, in big news, I've got a new job that gives enough cash to drink myself to death, but not the time to do the drinking, that old catch-22 of the working man. Of course, the harder you work, the more you value your weekends and so here is my average Saturday, which is today motherfuckers!
ME: Oh Saturday! Finally, a chance to sleep in as long as we like, eh brain?
BRAIN: Yeah, lol, fuck that shit WAKE UP NOW!
ME: But... it's like 6am, like I don't even wake up at 6am on weekdays! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?
BRAIN: I know, I'm crazy! This is what you get, arsehole, for constantly trying to kill me off with booze!
ME: Yeah? [Picks up bottle] Well fuck you! I'm gonna poison you real good now, you self-sabotaging prick!
BRAIN: WHAT? No, no no no no no COME ON DUDE! PLEASE! NOT IRISH WHISKEY! YOU KNOW IT MAKES ME SING! I CAN'T SING! PLEASE!
ME: [chug chug chug]
BRAIN: [Out of tune] 'I met my love by the gas works wall... IT'S A DIRTY OLD TOWN, IT'S A DIRTY OLD TOOOOOOWN....'
ME: HAHAHAHA you really can't sing! HAHAHA THIS IS HILARIOUS!
BRAIN: YOU WILL PAY FOR THIS TOMORROW! YOU ARE GOING TO FEEL SO MUCH PAIN!
ME: Haha... oh shit.
REPEAT.
Here is a loosely related new song by outlaw country act Sarah Shook and the Disclaimers with a clever inversion of the late great Merle Haggard's classic, "Tonight The Bottle Let Me down".
Every day you tell me I'm a drunkard
And every night you lie awake and stew
I never claimed to be anything other, darling
'Cause the bottle never lets me down the way you do
Every night I sit 'til sun-up drinkin'
And every day I wait for night to fall
So I can clear the darkest mem'ries from my recollection
And hear no sounds and feel nothing at all...
* I use the "royal we" coz... I don't need a fucking reason!
Showing posts with label booze. Show all posts
Showing posts with label booze. Show all posts
Saturday, June 30, 2018
Friday, October 20, 2017
Sit Down, Have One More (or: The Kiss Of An Alcoholic Always Tastes Minty)
Sit Down, Have One More (or: The Kiss Of An Alcoholic Always Tastes Minty)
They say too much booze can kill you
Yeah well so can not enough .
I'm fast drinking and slow thinking,
Why the hell can’t I pick up?
You sure you won’t come home with me?
I promise I won’t throw up.
Yeah sure, too much booze will kill you
But then so will not enough.
Well I kicked that drinking habit
but the goddamn thing kicked back.
You see, my love has gone away
And they won’t be coming back.
Without you I'm drinking for two
Someone must pick up the slack.
Yeah I kicked the drinking habit
Then that fucker it kicked back.
I'm at my best after three drinks
At my worst just after four.
Hey, where do you think you’re going?
Come on, sit down, have one more.
There’s nothing on TV tonight
And no one is keeping score.
I'm at my best after three beers
At my worst just after four.
And I wish that I could love you
But I swear it don't feel right.
Now, you're call me a poseur
Coz you know that I can't fight.
Well my favourite pose is standing
But that’s harder late at night.
And you know I'd love to love you
But I swear it don't feel right.
And too much booze will kill you.
But not tonight, it won’t
Not tonight.
They say too much booze can kill you
Yeah well so can not enough .
I'm fast drinking and slow thinking,
Why the hell can’t I pick up?
You sure you won’t come home with me?
I promise I won’t throw up.
Yeah sure, too much booze will kill you
But then so will not enough.
Well I kicked that drinking habit
but the goddamn thing kicked back.
You see, my love has gone away
And they won’t be coming back.
Without you I'm drinking for two
Someone must pick up the slack.
Yeah I kicked the drinking habit
Then that fucker it kicked back.
I'm at my best after three drinks
At my worst just after four.
Hey, where do you think you’re going?
Come on, sit down, have one more.
There’s nothing on TV tonight
And no one is keeping score.
I'm at my best after three beers
At my worst just after four.
And I wish that I could love you
But I swear it don't feel right.
Now, you're call me a poseur
Coz you know that I can't fight.
Well my favourite pose is standing
But that’s harder late at night.
And you know I'd love to love you
But I swear it don't feel right.
And too much booze will kill you.
But not tonight, it won’t
Not tonight.
Posted for Sean Hughes.
* * *
Yes, I know. That thing is sort of a poem, only it has a very basic rhyming structure that surely no poem does, not these days. Not that I know much about poetry. And it is sort of a set of song lyrics, only not set to music or with a chorus or probably many other things.
It is really intended as spoken word and I wrote about 15 years ago, when I first started to listen to a lot of Tom Waits, which is probably obvious as it is more or less something I think I imagined delivered by a Waits-esque character circa-1976's alcohol-soaked Small Change.
Though I wro it so long ago and barely think about it, or the small number of other lyrical-type things I've bothered to write, I've been thinking it about since Irish comic Sean Hughes died of cirrhosis of the liver aged just 51.
Coz that the is obvious irony in that poem/song/thing, of course. Too much booze does kill you, maybe not tonight but some night, like October 16, 2017, in a hospital having a cardiac arrest while getting treated for liver disease, if you are Sean Hughes.
And I am aware I am writing about this on a blog called "An Alcoholic's Guide to Modern Life" with a tag line "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are drink". I guess I just fucking love irony.
One thing about Sean Hughes was he also wrote poetry, like in a way I would never really dream of doing. Serious poetry, like the now-widely reported on poem "Death" that featured in 1993's Sean's Book.
I don't know almost anything about poetry, so I can't judge it, but some of it seemed alright to me, some seemed pretentious, but I don't really know. Sean Hughes could be quite earnest when he wanted.
It is not that I haven't published a lot of poetry in my time, right here on this blog! But, with titles like "I KILL YOU NOW FUCK OFF AND GET ME A DRINK", this stuff is really too genius to even mention among poetry in general. Like it operates on a whole other level of brilliance that is beyond mere mortals (such as the Nobel Prize for Literature judges who keep ignoring me).
I am generally not interested in mortal poetry, even my own. Fuck, especially my own. the rare times I try to write it seriously, I do my hardest to seek to forget the fact.
But in honour of Sean Hughes, I will do something I have never done — and post here something poetry-related that I wrote seriously. Feel free to go to his funeral and heckle him about this point.
I will also note a piece Sean Hughes wrote a couple of years before his death on alcohol. He had quit drinking, then started up again.
The piece, entitled The fine line between drinks and 'proper' drinks, discusses the tragedy of alcohol in society, especially Irish society. Particularly noticeable is the suggestion he makes that his friends welcomed his return to drink as "the old Sean is back" — it is worth pointing out that this is his interpretation, not necessarily an accurate account, but it isn't hard to imagine.
* * *
Yes, I know. That thing is sort of a poem, only it has a very basic rhyming structure that surely no poem does, not these days. Not that I know much about poetry. And it is sort of a set of song lyrics, only not set to music or with a chorus or probably many other things.
It is really intended as spoken word and I wrote about 15 years ago, when I first started to listen to a lot of Tom Waits, which is probably obvious as it is more or less something I think I imagined delivered by a Waits-esque character circa-1976's alcohol-soaked Small Change.
Though I wro it so long ago and barely think about it, or the small number of other lyrical-type things I've bothered to write, I've been thinking it about since Irish comic Sean Hughes died of cirrhosis of the liver aged just 51.
Coz that the is obvious irony in that poem/song/thing, of course. Too much booze does kill you, maybe not tonight but some night, like October 16, 2017, in a hospital having a cardiac arrest while getting treated for liver disease, if you are Sean Hughes.
And I am aware I am writing about this on a blog called "An Alcoholic's Guide to Modern Life" with a tag line "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are drink". I guess I just fucking love irony.
One thing about Sean Hughes was he also wrote poetry, like in a way I would never really dream of doing. Serious poetry, like the now-widely reported on poem "Death" that featured in 1993's Sean's Book.
I don't know almost anything about poetry, so I can't judge it, but some of it seemed alright to me, some seemed pretentious, but I don't really know. Sean Hughes could be quite earnest when he wanted.
It is not that I haven't published a lot of poetry in my time, right here on this blog! But, with titles like "I KILL YOU NOW FUCK OFF AND GET ME A DRINK", this stuff is really too genius to even mention among poetry in general. Like it operates on a whole other level of brilliance that is beyond mere mortals (such as the Nobel Prize for Literature judges who keep ignoring me).
I am generally not interested in mortal poetry, even my own. Fuck, especially my own. the rare times I try to write it seriously, I do my hardest to seek to forget the fact.
But in honour of Sean Hughes, I will do something I have never done — and post here something poetry-related that I wrote seriously. Feel free to go to his funeral and heckle him about this point.
I will also note a piece Sean Hughes wrote a couple of years before his death on alcohol. He had quit drinking, then started up again.
The piece, entitled The fine line between drinks and 'proper' drinks, discusses the tragedy of alcohol in society, especially Irish society. Particularly noticeable is the suggestion he makes that his friends welcomed his return to drink as "the old Sean is back" — it is worth pointing out that this is his interpretation, not necessarily an accurate account, but it isn't hard to imagine.
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
The Daily Carlo: Things I learned from visiting NSW Parliament today.
In today's Daily Carlo, I will share two things I learned by going into the horrible depths of NSW Parliament House tonight at Macquarie Street... that I am going to put *on my blog* despite having put it on Facebook because I have decided that fuck it. FUCK IT. I AM GOING TO START USING MY BLOG TO *MICRO BLOG* AND JUST PUT UP RANDOM SHIT!!! COZ I CAN!!! FUCK YOU!!!
NSW parliament is not like other parliaments I have visited. the WA parliament is no where near as "historic", "prestigious" and "fucking pompous" as this building. SA parliament? Don't joke. The ACT Legislative Assembly is a fucking B-grade , all-plastic convention centre compared to this. Not even the federal parliament feels as "steeped in history"/pompous crap" as the NSW Parliament.
And these are the lessons of my visit to the place:
1) the security police are *much* friendly, nicer and happily jokey than they are when you have to go to court.
2) The fucking beer is reasonably priced in the parliamentary bar. Like I mean $5 for a fancy fucking over-hopped pale ale craft beer that, anywhere else, with that amount of suits and soulless bar atmosphere, would surely cost like $8 or $9. I mean you can barely get a fucking schooner of VB or Toohey's New anywhere in this state for five bucks these days. WE ARE PAYING FOR THESE GODDAMN HACKS TO DRINK REASONABLY PRICED BEER! IT IS AN OUTRAGE!!!
3) Well... I'll get to that.
To expand on point one... at least I *got dressed up for fucking court*. You would think they would give you *some* respect! But no... cold, mechanical, harsh, soulless... that is some of the things the mothers of the cops at Parramatta Court House say about their sons who work there as security.
But Parliament House? Never mind I went in looking like I'd just woken up from my park bench I call home, as I go through and set off the metal detector the cop is all like "steel caps in your boots? not a problem... only problem is you are still sober at this time of night!" (Somewhat presumptuous to assume I was sober...) Way out was met with equally jokey cops. I really am not used to, and feel quite nervous around, friendly cops.
And while we are on the topic of point TWO... I should point out it was hardly a smooth ride... they really didn't seem to want us in their bar and for ages we couldn't get served because the guy behind the bar was very clear that you needed to be associated with some sort of sitting elected parliamentarian. And ours had disappeared to go off to prepare a speech for somethingorather. Eventually one parliamentarian was scrounged up by someone who *knows* these kind of people and the nicely dress man behind the bar was satisfied he was allowed to serve us.
Which was fine until I needed to order another and, standing there for sometime while the man behind the bar did various other tasks, was not convinced I would *get* served at all, what with looking, as I explained, as though I had just arrived from my park bench. But sure enough he did... and I was stunned by the change I got for the twenty I gave him. STUNNED! OUTRAGEOUS! THIS IS THE TAXPAYERS MONEY HE WAS GIVING BACK TO ME!!!
You might be wondering why I was even there.,.. and that reminds me. Point three. I didn't just learn it at Parliament House today, but was told of it once more .. .and that is:
Established, proven, collusion between the British state and death squads in northern Ireland to carry out the most heinous, unspeakable, stomach turning, soul wrenching massacres of civilians is truly ... well fucking unspeakably horrific.
And for more information, read this article by some prick who wore a suit to parliament today (and was forced to tolerate me shuffling along after him) about more details. Or watch this documentary about the British state's use of what can only be described as serial killers to slaughter civilians, often wiping out whole families. And think about both how this is a direct continuation of an approach the British state took to other parts of its Empire over the centuries, perfectly the craft, and how this practice in Ireland has led directly to the occupiers actions in Iraq -- using sectarian violence and death squads to divide and rule for Great Power.
If you really want to have your stomach turned, your tear ducts dried out and your heart taken and stomped on and smashed into a thousand pieces at the sheer unspeakable destruction of innocent human life driven by hatred, bigotry, cold-blooded hypocrisy that has never been properly recognised or had anything like justice administered for, then you can read Anne Cadwallader's Lethal Allies.
Oh well. Luke Kelly sings a mean song about the mess, at least.
<iframe width="100%" height="350" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/55OBEs98Pj4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
'With their tanks and their guns, my god what have they done...'
Friday, February 27, 2015
The Daily Carlo: The facts blow 'alcohol-fuelled violence' claims away so let me buy boooze post 10pm you bastards!
Day Four of my Daily Carlo plot to blog every day and here is my fourth one! I am on fire!
YEAH!!! So fuck off with your "alcohol-fuelled violence" bullshit! And most of all... LET ME BUY SOME FUCKING TAKE-AWAY BOOZE AFTER 10PM!!! FOR GOD'S SAKE!!!
Of course, no one could disagree that the violence used to justify these laws is terrible. There is clearly a problem in our society -- but it is cultural problem not a booze problem. the problem is the macho culture and its ever-present twin -- misogyny.
And not only is blaming alcohol for this missing the real culprit, it is way of avoiding even acknowledging the problem. And this isn't just alcohol, but drugs in general -- as the somewhat ridiculous scandal involving a whole lot of rugby league and rugby players apparently enjoying putting coke up their nostrils shows.
It really says something about the nature of our society and how fucked up our priorities are. Here we have charges and claims centred on the apparently shocking that a bunch of professional sports players enjoyed cocaine at such events as a players bucks night and a post-season booze cruise.
You might think that is something of a personal matter, at most unfortunately a legal matter due to draconian failed drug laws. But no. This threatens to tear apart an entire club, the Gold Coast Titans, and ruin the careers of more than a few players -- despite the fact that some of these players have already been involved in scandals involving far worse actions or allegations.
Rugby player and code-hopper Karmichael Hunt, at the centre of the coke scandal, faced sexual assault allegations in 2008. No dent in his career. Greg Bird, suspended by the Titans over cocaine charges, was found guilty of violently assaulting his girlfriend. His career continued.
You can rape and bash women seemingly without a worry in rugby league, but don't enjoy a recreational drug in your own spare time or you are done.
The irony is it is this kinda pathetic hypocrisy that makes drugs and alcohol so essential to fucking survive this goddamn world in the first place.
I keep knockin over whiskeys
no ones laughin at my jokes
they got me spinnin round in circles
like a tin can in the spoke
When i left town this mornin
with a smile upon my face
ahh babe i swear i never knew
I'd end up in this place...
I never thought I'd make it so far! To be honest, when I launched this new Carlo-Internet initiative on Tuesday, I was far from convinced I'd still be alive by Friday, what with my "lifestyle choices" that have been described variously as "less than optimal for living a long, healthy life" and "how the fuck is he still breathing?"
But I think what has got me this far is definitely my new fitness regime. Yes, thanks to the NSW state-wide 10pm closing time for all bottle shops, I am now in better shape than ever! What with my constant sprinting the bottlo at five to 10 every fucking night!
Reddit.com/drunkspiration captures the struggle.
But asides from possibly being the only thing stopping my body from total collapse, what possible good does this 10pm shut down do?
I mean, I don't want to repeat myself here. I have already pretty decisively exposed these lock-out/shut down laws in NSW for what they truly are: a plot to give James Packer even MORE billions via his "magically excluded from the lock-out laws" Star Casino, and now I am just waiting for the Walkley Award it shall inevitably earn me.
But still... there may been some of you out there, who just REFUSE TO LISTEN and STILL think maybe this shit is about "alcohol-fuelled violence"... which is an argument I have NEVER understood.
Like, obviously I get there is violence involving people who are drunk in our society. Christ, I know there is drunken violence. The fucking Daily Telegraph WON'T FUCKING SHUT UP ABOUT IT.
But what the violence has to do with being drunk has never been clear to me.
But what the violence has to do with being drunk has never been clear to me.
Because, and really this is an area in which I feel I have some expertise, I have never noticed that getting drunk leads to any particular increase in violence. Or "king hits". Or "coward punches". Or whatever the fuck the Daily Tele, whose journalists are famous for their sobriety, are banging on about now.
Like, I have been very drunk many times in many pubs. God knows how many. Over many years. I mean, I like getting drunk. And I like pubs.
Like, I have been very drunk many times in many pubs. God knows how many. Over many years. I mean, I like getting drunk. And I like pubs.
And yet I have somehow manage to refrain from king hitting a single bastard (and fuck knows I've been in pubs with many people just begging for a decent king hit) .
In fact, I had seen no real violence at all of any note in any pub until I went to Darwin in 2013 (for a comedy gig for a refugee rights group, so you know, thanks government for torturing innocent people, otherwise I'd have never gotten the chance to see the NT!)
While there, I ended up in some dodgy bar on what they like to call a "main road" in Darwin, drinking with Robbo, who lives up there, and Conehead, who came up for a trip.
Suddenly, at the table right behind us, these off-duty soldiers launched, with no warning, into a brawl that sent beer and chairs flying and only my rapid action in securing our table's beers prevented them joining the sea of spilt booze spreading across the bar room as bouncers rushed over to try to separate two furiously wrestling soldiers, trying to kill each other over God knows what.
Suddenly, at the table right behind us, these off-duty soldiers launched, with no warning, into a brawl that sent beer and chairs flying and only my rapid action in securing our table's beers prevented them joining the sea of spilt booze spreading across the bar room as bouncers rushed over to try to separate two furiously wrestling soldiers, trying to kill each other over God knows what.
Whatever it was, it was clearly not an issue easily resolved, because an hour later, as we sat out on the tables on the footpath, we could see two sides on the road squaring off, headed by the protagonists of the brawl inside the pub.
They stared each other down and shouted abuse before finally fresh kicks and punches started flying in a kinda pathetic half fight in which each side displayed its incompetent failure to actually get a kick anywhere near the other while seemingly imagining they were just like Jean-Claude Fucking Van Damme...
They stared each other down and shouted abuse before finally fresh kicks and punches started flying in a kinda pathetic half fight in which each side displayed its incompetent failure to actually get a kick anywhere near the other while seemingly imagining they were just like Jean-Claude Fucking Van Damme...
And you watch that and get a sense of just how horrific it must be to be a poor fucking peasant in Afghanistan or Iraq occupied by these numbskulls, whose only form superiority is their fucking heavy weaponry.
And you know, it was hard to draw the conclusion that the problem here was they had just drunk too much. I mean, they clearly had -- but so had I!
I had just performed a fucking stand up set in a city thousands of kilometres from Sydney to about 20 people as part of an ill-advised, failed and totally well-meant attempt by these activists to "reach out" to Darwin's redneck community to explain why "blow up the boats" -- a solution advocated to me beforehand by a local -- was perhaps a bit problematic, you know from a "let's not murder innocent people" sorta perspective.
I had just performed a fucking stand up set in a city thousands of kilometres from Sydney to about 20 people as part of an ill-advised, failed and totally well-meant attempt by these activists to "reach out" to Darwin's redneck community to explain why "blow up the boats" -- a solution advocated to me beforehand by a local -- was perhaps a bit problematic, you know from a "let's not murder innocent people" sorta perspective.
So you had better fucking BELIEVE I was drinking. And yet somehow, I managed NOT to be involved in an all-in-brawl. Maybe I just have incredible self-restraint, or maybe, I dunno, the whole "drunkenness leads to violence" thing is utter bullshit.
Turns out there is some solid evidence behind the "it's utter bullshit" view.
Yes, ABC News ran an article headlined "Alcohol-fuelled' violence not caused by alcohol but by 'macho' culture, anthropologist Dr Anne Fox says", that states:
Amidst the introduction of one-punch laws and lock outs, the main concern has been the so-called alcohol-fuelled violence that goes with drunkenness. But one anthropologist believes it is not a result of the booze itself.
Dr Anne Fox has specialised in the study of drinking cultures in countries around the world for the past 20 years and has been looking at Australia and New Zealand ...
"Australians, like many other people worldwide, have a very pervasive belief that alcohol can transform your behaviour, that it's a transformative substance, that somehow there's this genie in the bottle that can make you behave a certain way," she told PM's Mark Colvin.
"Alcohol - as all of the scientific literature shows, which we've reviewed very extensively in the report - cannot be considered a cause of violence. If it was, we'd see uniform levels of violence among all drinkers."
Countries such as Iceland consume more alcohol than Australia but report less violence.
"They have a stronger culture of preloading, they have 24-hour bar opening, they even have high rates of gun ownership, but in Iceland there is almost no recorded violence," she said.
"It's simply not a violent society and they have no belief that alcohol causes violence, and therefore you really don't see any violence in Iceland." Most of Southern Europe follows this pattern, according to Dr Fox ....
According to Dr Fox, alcohol "cannot hijack someone's better nature and make them violent" and the term alcohol-fuelled violence is not accurate. She said the focus should be on the causes and triggers of violence itself ...
"Your inhibitions are just social rules. Anthropologists for decades now have been finding through international cross-cultural studies that the way you behave when you're drunk is mostly the way that your culture teaches you to behave," she said.
"You can see across the world that people behave very, very differently, despite being morphologically similar human beings and drinking the same amounts of alcohol."
She said Australia has a macho culture. "We see that it's not so much the patterns of drinking or the levels or consumption that determine how people behave, but other features of culture that are magnified through drunkenness," she said.
YEAH!!! So fuck off with your "alcohol-fuelled violence" bullshit! And most of all... LET ME BUY SOME FUCKING TAKE-AWAY BOOZE AFTER 10PM!!! FOR GOD'S SAKE!!!
Of course, no one could disagree that the violence used to justify these laws is terrible. There is clearly a problem in our society -- but it is cultural problem not a booze problem. the problem is the macho culture and its ever-present twin -- misogyny.
And not only is blaming alcohol for this missing the real culprit, it is way of avoiding even acknowledging the problem. And this isn't just alcohol, but drugs in general -- as the somewhat ridiculous scandal involving a whole lot of rugby league and rugby players apparently enjoying putting coke up their nostrils shows.
It really says something about the nature of our society and how fucked up our priorities are. Here we have charges and claims centred on the apparently shocking that a bunch of professional sports players enjoyed cocaine at such events as a players bucks night and a post-season booze cruise.
You might think that is something of a personal matter, at most unfortunately a legal matter due to draconian failed drug laws. But no. This threatens to tear apart an entire club, the Gold Coast Titans, and ruin the careers of more than a few players -- despite the fact that some of these players have already been involved in scandals involving far worse actions or allegations.
Rugby player and code-hopper Karmichael Hunt, at the centre of the coke scandal, faced sexual assault allegations in 2008. No dent in his career. Greg Bird, suspended by the Titans over cocaine charges, was found guilty of violently assaulting his girlfriend. His career continued.
You can rape and bash women seemingly without a worry in rugby league, but don't enjoy a recreational drug in your own spare time or you are done.
The irony is it is this kinda pathetic hypocrisy that makes drugs and alcohol so essential to fucking survive this goddamn world in the first place.
Alcohol and drugs can worsen existing problems, but I see no reason why those of us who manage to drink and not punch must be punished. We all relate to alcohol differently... the song below, by that glorious Texas country singer Hayes Carll, sums up my relationship with booze perfectly.... less violence, more pathetic failure at life.
I keep knockin over whiskeys
no ones laughin at my jokes
they got me spinnin round in circles
like a tin can in the spoke
When i left town this mornin
with a smile upon my face
ahh babe i swear i never knew
I'd end up in this place...
So. My fourth Daily Carlo. Don't thank me, just buy me a beer. Via the Pay Pal button on the right of the blog. I promise that after drinking the beer, I won't hit anyone, unless you specifically request it.
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
The Daily Carlo: Science developing a 'sober up' pill? WHAT THE FUCK? WE PAY GOOD MONEY TO GET DRUNK!!!
Well this is Day 2 of my latest Internet-Carlo Sands related innovation -- the Daily Carlo, whereby I blog at least once a day -- and it has already been a runaway success! In the sense that this is Day 2 and I have managed a second post, which is really pretty amazing.
In today's Daily Carlo, however, I bring some terrible news: The Murdoch press is reporting science is working on developing a "sobriety pill" that could "prevent serious levels of intoxication".
What the FUCK, SCIENTISTS? What THE FUCK are you doing??? Why the HELL do you think we get drunk if NOT to eradicate, at least temporarily, the terrible scourge of sobriety?
WE GET DRUNK TO GET SOME FUCKING PEACE AND DROWN OUT THE GODDAMN HELLHOLE KNOWN AS "THE WORLD"!!! AND YOU WANT TO RE-IMPOSE IT ON US WITH A FUCKING PILL???
Jesus. It is not cheap, you know, getting drunk, Not these days. Booze prices are through the fucking roof, and they insist on making it as difficult as possible to actually consume, what with their fucking "lock out" laws and NSW-wide 10pm closing time for all bottle shops.
Jesus fuck, given all the effort we have to go just to achieve "serious levels of intoxication", you'd think you'd get some respect for effort. But no. No respect. It is shameful.
"Oh but things like the lock out laws are there because they care about alcohol-related violence and alcohol abuse and they really care for our health," I hear you suggest over your fucking alcohol-free mocktail, which just goes to how a lack of alcohol rots the brain.
Because what with all the fucking health care cuts and privatising public health this government is launching, the idea these pricks "care about our well-being" is a more ridiculous joke than Andrew Bolt's claims that "sickening ABC bias" is "destroying Tony Abbott".
No, what they really care for, and this really could not be clearer, is helping billionaire James Packer to make as much fucking cold hard cash as possible, and if he can make it in socially destructive gambling industry, bled from ordinary people in an outright shakedown, then all the better.
AND GUESS WHAT? The *key* winner of the lock-out laws in New South Wales is.... The Star Casino owned by James Packer!!! WOW WHO COULD POSSIBLY HAVE FUCKING GUESSED???
Last August, the Sydney Morning Herald wrote:
I just hope that this is a classic Murdoch media beat-up, like that one about how the murder of three Muslims in North Carolina by an Islamophobic bigot was just about "a parking dispute" or that Miranda Devine is a "journalist".
I mean, Jesus fuck.
And yes, sure, heavy drinking and drunkeness comes with consequences.We know that. But we are not just consenting adults capable of employing free will, we also forgive alcohol because we love alcohol. As gypsy punks Gogol Bordello explain so well in their love letter to booze below.
That is another Daily Carlo. Don't thank me, just buy me a beer courtesy of the paypal function on the right-hand side of the blog. Please. Just thinking about that goddamn sober pill makes me thirsty.
In today's Daily Carlo, however, I bring some terrible news: The Murdoch press is reporting science is working on developing a "sobriety pill" that could "prevent serious levels of intoxication".
What the FUCK, SCIENTISTS? What THE FUCK are you doing??? Why the HELL do you think we get drunk if NOT to eradicate, at least temporarily, the terrible scourge of sobriety?
WE GET DRUNK TO GET SOME FUCKING PEACE AND DROWN OUT THE GODDAMN HELLHOLE KNOWN AS "THE WORLD"!!! AND YOU WANT TO RE-IMPOSE IT ON US WITH A FUCKING PILL???
We LOVE being seriously intoxicated!
Jesus. It is not cheap, you know, getting drunk, Not these days. Booze prices are through the fucking roof, and they insist on making it as difficult as possible to actually consume, what with their fucking "lock out" laws and NSW-wide 10pm closing time for all bottle shops.
Jesus fuck, given all the effort we have to go just to achieve "serious levels of intoxication", you'd think you'd get some respect for effort. But no. No respect. It is shameful.
"Oh but things like the lock out laws are there because they care about alcohol-related violence and alcohol abuse and they really care for our health," I hear you suggest over your fucking alcohol-free mocktail, which just goes to how a lack of alcohol rots the brain.
Because what with all the fucking health care cuts and privatising public health this government is launching, the idea these pricks "care about our well-being" is a more ridiculous joke than Andrew Bolt's claims that "sickening ABC bias" is "destroying Tony Abbott".
No, what they really care for, and this really could not be clearer, is helping billionaire James Packer to make as much fucking cold hard cash as possible, and if he can make it in socially destructive gambling industry, bled from ordinary people in an outright shakedown, then all the better.
AND GUESS WHAT? The *key* winner of the lock-out laws in New South Wales is.... The Star Casino owned by James Packer!!! WOW WHO COULD POSSIBLY HAVE FUCKING GUESSED???
Last August, the Sydney Morning Herald wrote:
[T]he Star has been a major beneficiary of the NSW government's liquor reforms. The laws, in effect since February, prohibit patrons entering pubs and clubs in Kings Cross and the CBD after 1.30am and stop bars serving drinks after 3am. The lockout zone ends at Darling Harbour, which makes the Star exempt.
"We couldn't get in anywhere else so this is our last place to come and go," said 18-year-old Melissa Abarca. She and three friends, all from Wollongong, aren't here to gamble, though they concede they're likely to have a flutter.
None of the group has been to the Star before and they are visibly relieved when informed it contains a nightclub where they can dance. "We would have liked to get in to an actual club but we're here now."
This kinda shit, where our lives are play things for the super-rich, is precisely why we fucking get drunk! They are putting all these resources into how to sober us up and not into the important things, like how to solve climate change or building a time machine to go back decades and shoot Kyle Sandilands parents... and then they wonder why our desire for "serious levels of intoxication" only fucking grows!
And quick...
I just hope that this is a classic Murdoch media beat-up, like that one about how the murder of three Muslims in North Carolina by an Islamophobic bigot was just about "a parking dispute" or that Miranda Devine is a "journalist".
I mean, Jesus fuck.
And yes, sure, heavy drinking and drunkeness comes with consequences.We know that. But we are not just consenting adults capable of employing free will, we also forgive alcohol because we love alcohol. As gypsy punks Gogol Bordello explain so well in their love letter to booze below.
Am sorry some of us given you bad name
Yeah, oh yeah, 'cause without you, nothing is the same
Yeah, oh yeah, I miss you so every time we breakup
Just to hit a higher note every time we makeup
And you know that I'll pick up every time you call
Just to thank you one more time
Alcohol, alcohol...
That is another Daily Carlo. Don't thank me, just buy me a beer courtesy of the paypal function on the right-hand side of the blog. Please. Just thinking about that goddamn sober pill makes me thirsty.
Tuesday, February 24, 2015
The Daily Carlo: 50 years ago... on Malcolm X and goon bags
Anyone could tell you the world is in pretty bad shape. The latest climate science is horrific, global inequality and poverty keeps rising and the Western Sydney Wanderers are languishing at the bottom of the A-League ladder with just eight points from 16 games.
So I figured something had to be done and I had a long hard think about what the world truly needed right now. And I concluded: more Carlo Sands on the internet! OMFG! OF COURSE!
But then I thought, how I am going to give the world more Carlo Sands on the internet? And it struck me! I HAVE A BLOG! I may almost never use it, BUT I HAVE ONE!!! THE SOLUTION TO THE WORLD'S PROBLEMS IS AT HAND!!! I WILL BLOG *EVERY DAY*!!!
And so I hereby launch my latest Internet-Carlo Sands-related innovation: The Daily Carlo. It is self-explanatory, I will blog about *something* every single day, more or less, give or take the days I am too hungover and/or drunk to type.
I just can't believe no one has thought of this before! Sure, plenty have maintained daily-updated blogs, that is not new, but not FEATURING CONTENT BY ME! Wow, it is just so obvious now I think about it, it is a miracle no one has beaten me to it!
I expect them in general to be short. Probably very short. Coz I am a fucking busy man. But here we go!!! THE FIRST DAILY CARLO!!!
***
In My Daily Carlo Number One I wish to acknowledge two *very* important 50-year anniversaries for humanity that must be marked: the assassination of Malcolm X in the United States and the invention of "cask wine" -- ie the goon bag -- right here in Australia.
One of the truly great revolutionaries, activists and human beings of the 20th century, African American anti-racist fighter Malcolm X was assassinated 50 years ago on February 21, 1965, probably with active police complicity.
Many of the issues he raised -- of systemic inequality and racist violence, remain pressing issues today.
Malcolm X was one of the all-time great public speakers because he spoke directly, articulately and without any compromise to the victims of the system, as one of the victims of this system, and in doing so helped instill pride, knowledge, awareness, courage and determination in the victims of this system to stop being victims and collectively resist their oppression.
Although he started out as a very successful organiser for the Nation of Islam, which, through a theologically bizarre interpretation of Islam, blamed the "white devils" for racism and abstained from the civil rights struggles of the day, in the last year of his life Malcolm X increasingly saw the global capitalist system as the enemy of humanity and the need for a broad-based mass struggle of all oppressed, whatever their skin colour, to win liberation.
As can be seen in this clip featuring extracts from his 1964 speech to the Oxford Union in England.
The NT News explains:
So I figured something had to be done and I had a long hard think about what the world truly needed right now. And I concluded: more Carlo Sands on the internet! OMFG! OF COURSE!
But then I thought, how I am going to give the world more Carlo Sands on the internet? And it struck me! I HAVE A BLOG! I may almost never use it, BUT I HAVE ONE!!! THE SOLUTION TO THE WORLD'S PROBLEMS IS AT HAND!!! I WILL BLOG *EVERY DAY*!!!
And so I hereby launch my latest Internet-Carlo Sands-related innovation: The Daily Carlo. It is self-explanatory, I will blog about *something* every single day, more or less, give or take the days I am too hungover and/or drunk to type.
I just can't believe no one has thought of this before! Sure, plenty have maintained daily-updated blogs, that is not new, but not FEATURING CONTENT BY ME! Wow, it is just so obvious now I think about it, it is a miracle no one has beaten me to it!
I expect them in general to be short. Probably very short. Coz I am a fucking busy man. But here we go!!! THE FIRST DAILY CARLO!!!
***
In My Daily Carlo Number One I wish to acknowledge two *very* important 50-year anniversaries for humanity that must be marked: the assassination of Malcolm X in the United States and the invention of "cask wine" -- ie the goon bag -- right here in Australia.
One of the truly great revolutionaries, activists and human beings of the 20th century, African American anti-racist fighter Malcolm X was assassinated 50 years ago on February 21, 1965, probably with active police complicity.
Many of the issues he raised -- of systemic inequality and racist violence, remain pressing issues today.
Malcolm X was one of the all-time great public speakers because he spoke directly, articulately and without any compromise to the victims of the system, as one of the victims of this system, and in doing so helped instill pride, knowledge, awareness, courage and determination in the victims of this system to stop being victims and collectively resist their oppression.
Although he started out as a very successful organiser for the Nation of Islam, which, through a theologically bizarre interpretation of Islam, blamed the "white devils" for racism and abstained from the civil rights struggles of the day, in the last year of his life Malcolm X increasingly saw the global capitalist system as the enemy of humanity and the need for a broad-based mass struggle of all oppressed, whatever their skin colour, to win liberation.
As can be seen in this clip featuring extracts from his 1964 speech to the Oxford Union in England.
And in my opinion, the young generation of whites, blacks, browns, whatever else there is, you’re living at a time of extremism, a time of revolution, a time when there’s got to be a change. People in power have misused it, and now there has to be a change and a better world has to be built ... And I, for one, will join in with anyone—I don’t care what color you are—as long as you want to change this miserable condition that exists on this earth.
And the second anniversary, as the ever reliable NT News informs us, is that this year marks 50 years since cask wine was invented! YES THE GOON BAG IS TURNING 50!!!
Happy birthday, goon bag!
The NT News explains:
THE humble cask wine may have caused countless hangovers, but it holds a proud place in our nation’s history and today it reaches a major milestone. It’s one of South Australia’s little known inventions, created in the 1960s after riverland winemaker Tom Angove searched for an alternative to the half-gallon flagon...
Here are some little known facts about ‘the cask’:
• Invention was patented in April 1965
• It was inspired by the flexible packaging of old goat skins that stored wine in biblical times.
• Angove was inspired to store wine in a plastic bag and store it in a box.
• The ‘airless flow’ of the cask is why the invention is genius; wine comes out, but no air goes in. Therefore the wine doesn’t become oxidised.
A Big Cask to celebrate cask wine.
But it hasn't always been easy, what with the crypto-prohibitionists and their "complaints" about the "cheap and nasty" nature of goon. In just 2011, there was a campaign to essentially ban cheap goon by means of heavy taxation that would cause its cost to quadruple! IT WAS INSANE, OUTRAGEOUS AND I BLOGGED ABOUT IT HERE!!!
Thanks in no small part to my campaigning on the issue, the goon bag survives to this day, as does the gloroious Australian invention -- one of the few contributions of which our nation can be proud -- the party game of Goon of Fortune!!!
Goon of Fortune.
And, is this my first Daily Carlo, well... I suppose I'll give you all a very special treat! Here is some dodgy footage of the first time I ever performed stand up, in a wild, unfocussed and rambling set that included yelling quite furiously and insistently on the government plot to take our goon away! IKR? Don't thank me, buy me a beer -- via the pay pal button on the right of the blog! GO ON! DO IT!
'This is a fundamental attack on our way of life!' From the very start, I used the medium of stand up to pose the big questions.
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
It is nice when your efforts are appreciated
Hey, look, not a problem! Seriously dude, it's my pleasure! It is just nice when someone appreciates your efforts, you know?
(Heads up to Ben for pointing out the existence of a sign dedicated to my life's work.)
Friday, January 03, 2014
So what the fuck's been happening, world? 2013? What *was* that shit?
Yeah well, end of the year, and what a fucking year eh? There were some real horror stories, some real nightmarish "how can humanity DO this?" moments. And I am sure the absolute lowest moment for all of us was the truly stomach-churning news emerging from Nigeria in November:
Christ... all that beer... 240,000 bottles... it is so hard to see the good in the world when you read things like this. Man's inhumanity to beer, eh? It gets to you. For God's sake, world, how could we have JUST SAT ON YOUR HANDS WHILE SUCH SLAUGHTER WENT ON?!?
But, amid the carnage, there was progress. For instance, Tilburg has become the latest Dutch city to embracy "drunk voting".
Sure, this might seem a small thing, but symbolically this is an important win. I mean, just look around the world and see what happens when you force electorates to vote sober.
Meanwhile, in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un showed the world *just how it is fucking done* by ordering the execution of two advisors to uncle and counter-revolutionary traitor Jang Song-Thaek -- while said to be "very drunk".
Fuck, *that* is how you rule a country! In my opinion, this style of government should be extended globally. The Australian political situation would be a *fuck load* more interesting if you never knew which political figure or high-ranking bureaucrat had been bumped off when you checked the news in the morning.
Hell, I might even start watching Q & A just to see who had survived -- especially if they show footage of the executions from the past week. Among other things, you give Labor hacks machine guns, there goes the "workers' party" in a glorious burst of gunfire and blood splatters.
And they say binge drinking is out of control among young people in this country! Exactly how many people do they execute on an average night out?
The sad truth is it is all a beat up. Kids don't drink *enough*. Seriously, whenever I hear the youth of today are out of control with their drinking, my response is *if only*. In my experience, this is the most sober-minded young generation I have ever had the misfortune to meet.
Sure the media and cops and governments beat up "drunken violence", but stats actually show a *21%* decline in non-domestic violent assaults since 2008.
It is just as an excuse to give the cops more powers. And more often than not, as this horror story of a savage unprovoked violent assault from Brisbane shows, it is the *cops* you gotta worry about if you're out at night having a drink.
But on the youth... I don't get their lack of commitment to drunkenness, I just don't. I mean, I get that the price of alcohol in licensed venues is outrageous... and all the decent pubs are being gentrified into stainless-steel hellholes, and the severe undermining of the social safety net has left a generation dependent on precarious casualised work just to survive, and the pressure of actually making sure the education you increasingly pay more and more for actually translates sooner rather than later into a badly needed job is really high and... well FUCK just typing that shit makes me want a drink.
Of course, shit aint easy all round. The Global Recession begun by the 2008 financial crisis is hitting millions of people really hard, but sometimes, it is the personal stories that really bring it home. Like the heartrending story of England's Princess Michael of Kent.
But there are good news stories amid all the gloom! Why, here in Australia, we just recently heard the *great news* that 2900 Holden workers have been, in Prime Minister Tony Abbott's words, "liberated" from their jobs.
Yes, no more are these longs-suffering proletarians oppressed by a reliable, livable wage! Modern-day Che Guevaras are the liberation fighters known as General Motors executives, who took millions every year in taxpayer-funded subsidies only to shut down all production when profits weren't good enough.
Sure, liberation is never easy, as Comrade Abbott acknowledges: "Some of them will find it difficult, but many of them will probably be liberated to pursue new opportunities and to get on with their lives."
And of course, this year we actually got to see the End of the World, and I am not talking about some shit self-referential Hollywood film. I am talking about the End of the World that wasn't broadcast -- in the Philippines post-Super Typhoon Haiyan, possibly the strongest storm to hit land on record.
In the Philippines, you'd struggle to find a single person willing to accept, or even listen to, Australian environment minister Greg "But I read It On Wikipedia" Hunt's insistence that referring to the scientifically-accepted impact of global warming on extreme weather events is "playing politics". It is hard to do that when it is a matter of life or death.
Also, last year was Australia's hottest on record and globally, 13 of the 14 hottest years on record have occurred since 2000. But whatever. Nice planet we had, and all that. In more important news, what has happened in *my* life?
Well, thank you for asking, I thought we'd *never* get round to it! I've been writing my Carlo's Corner column for Green Left, coz the goddamn editor keeps insisting, no matter how hungover I try to point out I am when, a day or so after the deadline, I am pressed for copy.
And in the process of writing "Carlo's Corner", I got blogged by far right-wing climate denying crypto-fascist/Daily Telegraph comment editor Tim Blair -- after I dared to mock Australia's role in destroying the UN Warsaw climate talks -- and Blair's congratulatory celebration of this ugly fact.
I was then predictably attacked in the comment section by Blair's right-wing zombies, which is only to be expected... but one went too far and *dared* to criticise my poetry!!! MY POETRY!!! HE SPECIFICALLY LINKED TO THIS POEM WHICH IS MY ABSOLUTE MASTERPIECE!!!
I then defended my poetry, and another of these bastards, called "Right Wing Demon", said: "Carlo, so I went to the link and read your poetry. Sorry, it is not much better than my poetry which is crap. I wouldn’t be so proud of that effort if I were you."
All I can say is I *really* wanna read Right Wing Demon's poetic efforts, if his poetic efforts (and we can say with 100% certainty we are dealing with a "he") are even worse than my totally serious and and not at all written as fast I could type them while drunk masterpieces.
Asides from that, well I did some stand-up stuff, particularly via the ever-wonderful Comedy on Edge at The Pub Formerly Known As The Shannon in Chippendale). I didn't do a huge amount, really, but when I think on it, I kinda got to do some incredible shit.
* I got to take part in Green Left's annual comedy debate down in Melbourne hosted by Rod Quantock. Performing with Quantock meant a lot to me, coz he is a legend of the comedy scene -- renown for his left-wing political bent and for starring for years in all those ads as Capt'n Snooze. He also said some nice shit about me, which you can read on the poster for my own show a bit below.
* I got flown to Darwin to do a gig for the Darwin Asylum Seeker Support and Advocacy Network in August. Rod Quantock was originally going to perform at the event, but had to pull out. After they almost secured a bunch of performers with actual *names* in comedy, my name got thrown into the mix.
Never having been to the Northern Territory, I was pretty keen... until, having agreed, it was revealed the gig was just outside Darwin in Palmerston at a Sports Club with the explicit aim of drawing in the redneck locals to seek to "educate" them away from hostility to asylum seekers via a free comedy and trivia event.
My mental image of having to make a Blues Brothers-esque escape from the venue as bottles rained down around me was not altered when, before it started, a local, not knowing I was there to perform, cheerfully told me his exact views on these dickheads who'd come to his local to talk about boat people, and his personal solution to the problem of all these boats coming: blow 'em all up.
As it turns out, I had no need to worry. The locals all happily shunned the well-meaning event and stayed in the front bar while I performed to the 20-odd refugee rights supporters who had turned out. Which was fine by me... And then afterwards, I got to see Darwin and other bits of the Top End with Robbo and Conehead, who had made the trip up.
We saw the best Darwin's nightlife had to offer, featuring a violent bar brawl involving off duty soldiers. Then we went to Adelaide River to see far more socially agreeable creatures.
* I did my first show at a festival, going up to Brisbane for the Brisbane Fringe Comedy Festival to perform "The Yucky County: Just Make Clive Palmer PM". It went well, was quite a lot of fun, and, in passing, I got Rod Quantock to give me a nice quote for publicity.
* And I performed, along Twiggy Palmer (who interrupted Abbott's victory night speech), Newcastle comic Hannah G, and Michael Hing who has been on TV and shit, at Green Left's enormously successful "Welcome to the Abbottoir" in November. You can see my clip below, and all four performances are here.
But, of course, it would be totally remiss of me to not mention the most important, inspiring and just GODDAMN GLORIOUS event in the ENTIRE WORLD for 2013 ... the Western Sydney Wanderers winning the A-League premiership in their FIRST EVER SEASON!!!
This feat was achieved in the very final game of the regular season on March 29, when many thousands of Wanderers fans made the trip up the see the mighty red and black down Newcastle 3-0 to conclude one of the most remarkable feats in sporting history.
Well... fuck, that was glorious. But anyway, here is Texas country singer Hayes Carll summing up what it is like trying to *live* in this godforsaken hellhole of a world.
Police enforcing strict Islamic law in Nigeria publicly destroyed more than 240,000 bottles of beer in an attempt to crack down on alcohol consumption and other "immoral" behavior in the area, an official said Thursday.
Graphic scenes of a beer holocaust emerged from Nigeria in November.
Christ... all that beer... 240,000 bottles... it is so hard to see the good in the world when you read things like this. Man's inhumanity to beer, eh? It gets to you. For God's sake, world, how could we have JUST SAT ON YOUR HANDS WHILE SUCH SLAUGHTER WENT ON?!?
But, amid the carnage, there was progress. For instance, Tilburg has become the latest Dutch city to embracy "drunk voting".
For the next municipal elections in March 2014 Tilburg, the sixth biggest city of Holland, opens a special voting booths at midnight in the city centre to attract more voters. In other big cities like Rotterdam, The Hague and Groningen this was already the case four years ago. Several hundreds of people made a small stop to vote when they returned home from the bars.
Sure, this might seem a small thing, but symbolically this is an important win. I mean, just look around the world and see what happens when you force electorates to vote sober.
It can only improve the political situation.
Meanwhile, in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un showed the world *just how it is fucking done* by ordering the execution of two advisors to uncle and counter-revolutionary traitor Jang Song-Thaek -- while said to be "very drunk".
Fuck, *that* is how you rule a country! In my opinion, this style of government should be extended globally. The Australian political situation would be a *fuck load* more interesting if you never knew which political figure or high-ranking bureaucrat had been bumped off when you checked the news in the morning.
Hell, I might even start watching Q & A just to see who had survived -- especially if they show footage of the executions from the past week. Among other things, you give Labor hacks machine guns, there goes the "workers' party" in a glorious burst of gunfire and blood splatters.
'I'm drunk! Kill him!' We need a ruler like this, if only to make current affairs programs more watchable.
And they say binge drinking is out of control among young people in this country! Exactly how many people do they execute on an average night out?
The sad truth is it is all a beat up. Kids don't drink *enough*. Seriously, whenever I hear the youth of today are out of control with their drinking, my response is *if only*. In my experience, this is the most sober-minded young generation I have ever had the misfortune to meet.
Sure the media and cops and governments beat up "drunken violence", but stats actually show a *21%* decline in non-domestic violent assaults since 2008.
It is just as an excuse to give the cops more powers. And more often than not, as this horror story of a savage unprovoked violent assault from Brisbane shows, it is the *cops* you gotta worry about if you're out at night having a drink.
But on the youth... I don't get their lack of commitment to drunkenness, I just don't. I mean, I get that the price of alcohol in licensed venues is outrageous... and all the decent pubs are being gentrified into stainless-steel hellholes, and the severe undermining of the social safety net has left a generation dependent on precarious casualised work just to survive, and the pressure of actually making sure the education you increasingly pay more and more for actually translates sooner rather than later into a badly needed job is really high and... well FUCK just typing that shit makes me want a drink.
Of course, shit aint easy all round. The Global Recession begun by the 2008 financial crisis is hitting millions of people really hard, but sometimes, it is the personal stories that really bring it home. Like the heartrending story of England's Princess Michael of Kent.
Princess Michael of Kent has explained how she and her husband have been hit by austerity; meaning they can no longer dine out as it's "too extravagant".
The Princess, who is an interior designer and author, told The Times in an interview to promote her debut novel: "I am in very austere economic times too, thank you very much! We’ve cut back dramatically ..."
The Princess, who lives with her husband at Kensington Palace, added: "We invite people here [Kensington Palace]. I cook. Well, if I’m giving a dinner party I get in help."
She also told the interviewer of her love for budget carrier easyJet saying: "it’s the only direct route to Biarritz [a luxurious seaside town in south-west France]."
But there are good news stories amid all the gloom! Why, here in Australia, we just recently heard the *great news* that 2900 Holden workers have been, in Prime Minister Tony Abbott's words, "liberated" from their jobs.
Yes, no more are these longs-suffering proletarians oppressed by a reliable, livable wage! Modern-day Che Guevaras are the liberation fighters known as General Motors executives, who took millions every year in taxpayer-funded subsidies only to shut down all production when profits weren't good enough.
Sure, liberation is never easy, as Comrade Abbott acknowledges: "Some of them will find it difficult, but many of them will probably be liberated to pursue new opportunities and to get on with their lives."
'All we have to see, is that I don't belong to you and you don't belong to me! Freedom!' Holden workers have learned to appreciate George Michael's wise words now they have been liberated from a regular, decent wage.
And of course, this year we actually got to see the End of the World, and I am not talking about some shit self-referential Hollywood film. I am talking about the End of the World that wasn't broadcast -- in the Philippines post-Super Typhoon Haiyan, possibly the strongest storm to hit land on record.
In the Philippines, you'd struggle to find a single person willing to accept, or even listen to, Australian environment minister Greg "But I read It On Wikipedia" Hunt's insistence that referring to the scientifically-accepted impact of global warming on extreme weather events is "playing politics". It is hard to do that when it is a matter of life or death.
Also, last year was Australia's hottest on record and globally, 13 of the 14 hottest years on record have occurred since 2000. But whatever. Nice planet we had, and all that. In more important news, what has happened in *my* life?
Well, thank you for asking, I thought we'd *never* get round to it! I've been writing my Carlo's Corner column for Green Left, coz the goddamn editor keeps insisting, no matter how hungover I try to point out I am when, a day or so after the deadline, I am pressed for copy.
And in the process of writing "Carlo's Corner", I got blogged by far right-wing climate denying crypto-fascist/Daily Telegraph comment editor Tim Blair -- after I dared to mock Australia's role in destroying the UN Warsaw climate talks -- and Blair's congratulatory celebration of this ugly fact.
I was then predictably attacked in the comment section by Blair's right-wing zombies, which is only to be expected... but one went too far and *dared* to criticise my poetry!!! MY POETRY!!! HE SPECIFICALLY LINKED TO THIS POEM WHICH IS MY ABSOLUTE MASTERPIECE!!!
I then defended my poetry, and another of these bastards, called "Right Wing Demon", said: "Carlo, so I went to the link and read your poetry. Sorry, it is not much better than my poetry which is crap. I wouldn’t be so proud of that effort if I were you."
All I can say is I *really* wanna read Right Wing Demon's poetic efforts, if his poetic efforts (and we can say with 100% certainty we are dealing with a "he") are even worse than my totally serious and and not at all written as fast I could type them while drunk masterpieces.
Asides from that, well I did some stand-up stuff, particularly via the ever-wonderful Comedy on Edge at The Pub Formerly Known As The Shannon in Chippendale). I didn't do a huge amount, really, but when I think on it, I kinda got to do some incredible shit.
* I got to take part in Green Left's annual comedy debate down in Melbourne hosted by Rod Quantock. Performing with Quantock meant a lot to me, coz he is a legend of the comedy scene -- renown for his left-wing political bent and for starring for years in all those ads as Capt'n Snooze. He also said some nice shit about me, which you can read on the poster for my own show a bit below.
* I got flown to Darwin to do a gig for the Darwin Asylum Seeker Support and Advocacy Network in August. Rod Quantock was originally going to perform at the event, but had to pull out. After they almost secured a bunch of performers with actual *names* in comedy, my name got thrown into the mix.
Never having been to the Northern Territory, I was pretty keen... until, having agreed, it was revealed the gig was just outside Darwin in Palmerston at a Sports Club with the explicit aim of drawing in the redneck locals to seek to "educate" them away from hostility to asylum seekers via a free comedy and trivia event.
My mental image of having to make a Blues Brothers-esque escape from the venue as bottles rained down around me was not altered when, before it started, a local, not knowing I was there to perform, cheerfully told me his exact views on these dickheads who'd come to his local to talk about boat people, and his personal solution to the problem of all these boats coming: blow 'em all up.
As it turns out, I had no need to worry. The locals all happily shunned the well-meaning event and stayed in the front bar while I performed to the 20-odd refugee rights supporters who had turned out. Which was fine by me... And then afterwards, I got to see Darwin and other bits of the Top End with Robbo and Conehead, who had made the trip up.
We saw the best Darwin's nightlife had to offer, featuring a violent bar brawl involving off duty soldiers. Then we went to Adelaide River to see far more socially agreeable creatures.
Adelaide River. More agreeable company than off-duty soldiers in a bar. Photo by Conehead.
* I did my first show at a festival, going up to Brisbane for the Brisbane Fringe Comedy Festival to perform "The Yucky County: Just Make Clive Palmer PM". It went well, was quite a lot of fun, and, in passing, I got Rod Quantock to give me a nice quote for publicity.
'Carlo Sands is a sharp, well-informed political comedian who crafts laughter from the absurdities of Left and Right '-- Capt'n Snooze.
* And I performed, along Twiggy Palmer (who interrupted Abbott's victory night speech), Newcastle comic Hannah G, and Michael Hing who has been on TV and shit, at Green Left's enormously successful "Welcome to the Abbottoir" in November. You can see my clip below, and all four performances are here.
'So Adelaide's bus tickets, eh?' If there is one thing I have learned performing comedy across this wide brown land of ours, it is that people love to laugh at Adelaide.
But, of course, it would be totally remiss of me to not mention the most important, inspiring and just GODDAMN GLORIOUS event in the ENTIRE WORLD for 2013 ... the Western Sydney Wanderers winning the A-League premiership in their FIRST EVER SEASON!!!
This feat was achieved in the very final game of the regular season on March 29, when many thousands of Wanderers fans made the trip up the see the mighty red and black down Newcastle 3-0 to conclude one of the most remarkable feats in sporting history.
'Who do we sing for?' Wanderers players (above) celebrate winning the Premier's Plate in the club's first ever season with the fans (below).
Well... fuck, that was glorious. But anyway, here is Texas country singer Hayes Carll summing up what it is like trying to *live* in this godforsaken hellhole of a world.
'And I'm out here in the filth and the squalor... and all I wanna do is stomp and holler...'
Saturday, June 09, 2012
The greatest drinking game ever invented -- or 'life', as I call it
The Overthinging Person's Drinking Game was a post by a friend on Facebook, that wonderful outlet that provides a window into so much that is culturally important, especially if we are talking about my incessant posting of Tom Waits clips.
Finally, a drinking game based on deep-seated angst, alienation and uncertainty. Or, as I like to call it, "life". Now I know what you are thinking: surely I drink purely for the endless joy heavy drinking brings to my life! What the fuck does *Carlo Sands* have to be uncertain about, what personal angst could possibly haunt the life of a man with such truly wondrous cheekbones, as shown in the profile pic thing on this very blog?
I know, I know. My cheekbones are truly amazing. But even the combination of my cheekbones and extensive collection of Tom Waits' albums, I too -- yes even Carlo Sands -- stare in panic into the empty pit of horror that is life in late monopoly capitalism sliding ceaselessly towards a eco-holocaust, wracked by war and Nickelback.
To prove my point, I provide a short list of just some of the terrors haunting me right now:
Facebook: It is fucking up. My account has been a nightmare for the past week or so, with comments not appearing or disappearing or being unable to access things and shit repeating and JESUS FUCK I have built my entire existence around that fucking thing. It is extremely disturbing -- like having things in your daily life just fucking disappear, like your bed at 3am, or a train that just never ... ah... actually, maybe the bastards who run CityRail have bought a controlling interest in Facebook's public float. That could explain it.
My latest Carlo's Corner YouTube rant: Like seriously, just not enough of you bastards have watched it. What, 178 views? For an angry rant about the Queen's Diamond Jubilee? Who the fuck knew there wasn't mass market for that? Watch it, you useless pricks. Then go and give me a jubilee, it is long overdue.
Trying to do stand-up comedy: What kind of mentally deranged idiot would decide to try and do stand-up comedy, and embark on a series of open-mic gigs in Sydney's suburban pubs? Severely mentally deranged idiots who probably also have drinking problems that unhinge them further.
Based on my experience on Wednesday, here is a pretty accurate guide to how such a thing is likely to go: Call time will be 7.30pm, and when you show up, defying extreme weather warnings and pouring rain and cold, it will just be a group of comics sitting around a table "workshopping" jokes among themselves until well past the start time until someone finally makes the effort to cajole enough of the pub regulars to make the thing worthwhile and then the MC won't even bother telling you when, in the line up, you will be called to the stage to perform in front of 10 or so comics who have mostly seen your shit and the handful of pub regulars dragged in in a desperate bid to give the evening some kind of point as you stand in front of a microphone on a concrete floor in the semi-exposed coldest part of the fucking suburban pub and look out, blinding by two HUGE FUCKING SPOTLIGHTS they have set up just two metres in front of the mic stand that achieves nothing except to disorientate you and stop you from having any clue as to how your rant is being received beyond the few laughs you can hear come up every now and then, but not from the only audience member you can actually see... a bloke sitting right to the side so that he is out of the glare and he just spends the entire time looking up at you blankly, never once even smiling, or even frowning in disapproval just looking at you with a studied boredom AND NOT EVEN YOUR JOKE ABOUT HOW THE QUEEN'S JUBILEE OBVIOUSLY IS GOOD FOR THE ECONOMY BECAUSE ECONOMICS 101 STATES CLEARLY THAT WHEN IN A SEVERE ECONOMIC CRISIS THE FIRST THING TO DO IS BUILD A GIANT STAGE AND PUT ROBBIE FUCKING WILLIAMS ON IT WILL CAUSE HIS REACTION TO SHIFT EVEN ONE MILIMETRE!
Fucking madness. I am doing it again next Wednesday at the Laugh Garage.
Essendon Football Club and the "Curse of June": It is June, time for the Mighty Bombers to start losing in the Australian Football League. Their season structure has been quite well-developed over the past three or four seasons: runaway success in the early stages, stunning fans and observers alike with an exciting brand of footie that helps the Bombers win games against teams much more fancied and generate excitement that maybe, just maybe, the Bombers are back! Then the calendar ticks over to June and Essendon, with the same sense of dramatic panache with which they raced up the ladder, start to lose to teams no one should ever lose to. Like Melbourne. Which is exactly what happened last Saturday night.
Seriously, I think Essendon's forwards had some sort of sponsorship deal whereby they get a dollar every time I scream: "FOR FUCK'S SAKE KICK STRAIGHT YOU USELESS BASTARDS!" If they did, they'd at least have secured financial security in retirement out of that game alone.
And while we are on the topic, let me add the near impossibility of actually watching an AFL game in fucking Sydney. True, the Melbourne game was on digital TV, an advance over ever single other Essendon game this year bar the one against Richmond (which, it not yet being June, Essendon duly won), but I don't have a fucking set top box coz that shit costs money, I have none and what little have goes on my booze bill.
So, I trudged into some fucking dive of a place in Redfern with a TAB on the ground floor and a restaurant and bar upstairs and, after much cajoling, managed to convince them to turn one of the dozen or so TV screens all showing the fucking rugby league onto the Essendon game -- the smallest screen out the back in the semi-exposed cold bit (which seems to be where I spend *all* my evenings these days) with the sound down so the people playing pool could hear the rugby league.
And then, having been earnestly watching and drinking beer, just before three quarter time, with Essendon still just in front but Melbourne coming back and the tension level building to near breaking point, a Melbourne player takes a mark about 40 metres out and walks in to a bid to kick the most important goal in the game so far and I am on the edge of my seat willing with every inch for him to miss and just as he goes to kick the ball the GODDAMN RUGBY LEAGUE FINISHES SO EVERY SINGLE SCREEN IN THE ENTIRE PUB SWITCHES TO MUSIC CLIPS AND BEGINS PLAYING "THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO HMMMM".
It took me about 15 minutes of desperate, panicked pleading and looking like I was about to cry to convince the manager to change the thing centrally so all the screens changed from clips of shit music from 1991 that no one was watching to the Bombers-Demons game. So that I could, nearly having multiple heart attacks, watch Essendon lose by a goal. To Melbourne, a club in free fall who had not looked close to winning a single game all season up until that point.
So, as you can see. I have problems. I need to drink. Clearly. So, be as cool as Carlo Sands and try out the drinking game below that someone else has written but which I have copied and pasted to my own blog. No need to thank me, just buy me a beer. I am serious. GET ME A FUCKING BEER!
* * *
The Overthinking Person's Drinking Game by Leigh Alexander
When you experience a vague sense of inequity or deprivation but don’t have a template for whether your expectations are fair, drink.
When you aren’t sure whether the lingering sensation that you aren’t liked enough is a rational response to unfair circumstances or is in fact symptomatic of your tendency to blame your environment for your own failure to self-actualize, drink.
Drink if you experience a sudden flood of shame at the realization that you haven’t done much to deserve really any of the things to which you aspire.
If you suddenly realize you actually felt militantly entitled to something while sabotaging yourself, drink twice.
If you spend a long time mulling the nature of ‘deserving’ and what it actually means, and if you can’t really resolve the question of whether anyone specifically ‘deserves’ anything and come to an impasse about chaos and the innate unfairness of life, drink.
When a person or situation isn’t what you thought it was going to be, and you can’t figure out whether this is your fault for projecting unfounded qualities onto the person or someone else’s fault for actually misleading you, mistreating you or letting you down, drink.
Drink when ambivalence haunts you.
If you notice that you unconsciously but consistently put yourself into situations that deprive you of your resources and move you further away from your goals, drink.
If you cannot work out whether your present situation, challenge, relationship et al is yet another state of unconscious self-sabotage despite the fact you feel deprived, drink.
If you can’t tell whether you’re actually in a negative situation or just an ungrateful person who blames everyone else for your problems, drink.
Drink if you aren’t sure whether you are assuming too much responsibility for your own current unhappiness or not enough.
If you find that after long hours of contemplative malaise you suddenly feel as if nothing in particular is actually wrong and you feel the desire to relax or celebrate, drink.
If you suddenly find yourself highly focused on gratitude and create for yourself a long list of all the things that you are doing successfully or correctly or that you are fortunate to have and want to feel unburdened or euphoric, drink.
If you can’t decide whether you are actually ‘celebrating’ or simply engaging in artificial gestures of relief, take two drinks.
If you can’t tell whether you are an overly-strict person with inappropriate guilt about normal human self-moderation behavior or an avoidant adult child making excuses for your poor coping, drink.
If you feel persistently like you are failing to grow up, drink.
If you can’t tell whether a certain youthfulness in others represents an admirable refusal to adhere to repressive social norms or an actual inability to deal with difficult adult challenges, drink.
If you aren’t sure what it is right to expect of yourself, drink.
If you aren’t sure whether you are repeatedly failing to reach a personal set of behavioral goals or simply consistently feeling inadequate no matter how hard you work, drink.
If you aren’t sure whether you need to ‘lighten up’ or employ more self-discipline, drink.
If you aren’t sure whether you do or don’t want to talk to your friends about it because you aren’t sure whether you are a reasonable person experiencing occasional insecurity or a neurotic person who cannot be soothed, drink.
If you suspect you might not even have much reason to be unhappy and in fact just overthink everything and lack a stable internal compass, drink.
If you think you might just feel lost because you drink too often, but then you think too much when you aren’t drinking, cry.
If you’d rather not think about this kind of thing right now or maybe ever, take two drinks.
'I don't have a drinking problem, 'cept when I can't get a drink.' There you go, an *alternative* version of a Tom Waits classic. Seriously, get me a fucking beer right now! Use The Paypal function in the right column if you have to. I am fucking thirsty.
Finally, a drinking game based on deep-seated angst, alienation and uncertainty. Or, as I like to call it, "life". Now I know what you are thinking: surely I drink purely for the endless joy heavy drinking brings to my life! What the fuck does *Carlo Sands* have to be uncertain about, what personal angst could possibly haunt the life of a man with such truly wondrous cheekbones, as shown in the profile pic thing on this very blog?
I know, I know. My cheekbones are truly amazing. But even the combination of my cheekbones and extensive collection of Tom Waits' albums, I too -- yes even Carlo Sands -- stare in panic into the empty pit of horror that is life in late monopoly capitalism sliding ceaselessly towards a eco-holocaust, wracked by war and Nickelback.
To prove my point, I provide a short list of just some of the terrors haunting me right now:
Facebook: It is fucking up. My account has been a nightmare for the past week or so, with comments not appearing or disappearing or being unable to access things and shit repeating and JESUS FUCK I have built my entire existence around that fucking thing. It is extremely disturbing -- like having things in your daily life just fucking disappear, like your bed at 3am, or a train that just never ... ah... actually, maybe the bastards who run CityRail have bought a controlling interest in Facebook's public float. That could explain it.
My latest Carlo's Corner YouTube rant: Like seriously, just not enough of you bastards have watched it. What, 178 views? For an angry rant about the Queen's Diamond Jubilee? Who the fuck knew there wasn't mass market for that? Watch it, you useless pricks. Then go and give me a jubilee, it is long overdue.
Trying to do stand-up comedy: What kind of mentally deranged idiot would decide to try and do stand-up comedy, and embark on a series of open-mic gigs in Sydney's suburban pubs? Severely mentally deranged idiots who probably also have drinking problems that unhinge them further.
Based on my experience on Wednesday, here is a pretty accurate guide to how such a thing is likely to go: Call time will be 7.30pm, and when you show up, defying extreme weather warnings and pouring rain and cold, it will just be a group of comics sitting around a table "workshopping" jokes among themselves until well past the start time until someone finally makes the effort to cajole enough of the pub regulars to make the thing worthwhile and then the MC won't even bother telling you when, in the line up, you will be called to the stage to perform in front of 10 or so comics who have mostly seen your shit and the handful of pub regulars dragged in in a desperate bid to give the evening some kind of point as you stand in front of a microphone on a concrete floor in the semi-exposed coldest part of the fucking suburban pub and look out, blinding by two HUGE FUCKING SPOTLIGHTS they have set up just two metres in front of the mic stand that achieves nothing except to disorientate you and stop you from having any clue as to how your rant is being received beyond the few laughs you can hear come up every now and then, but not from the only audience member you can actually see... a bloke sitting right to the side so that he is out of the glare and he just spends the entire time looking up at you blankly, never once even smiling, or even frowning in disapproval just looking at you with a studied boredom AND NOT EVEN YOUR JOKE ABOUT HOW THE QUEEN'S JUBILEE OBVIOUSLY IS GOOD FOR THE ECONOMY BECAUSE ECONOMICS 101 STATES CLEARLY THAT WHEN IN A SEVERE ECONOMIC CRISIS THE FIRST THING TO DO IS BUILD A GIANT STAGE AND PUT ROBBIE FUCKING WILLIAMS ON IT WILL CAUSE HIS REACTION TO SHIFT EVEN ONE MILIMETRE!
Fucking madness. I am doing it again next Wednesday at the Laugh Garage.
Essendon Football Club and the "Curse of June": It is June, time for the Mighty Bombers to start losing in the Australian Football League. Their season structure has been quite well-developed over the past three or four seasons: runaway success in the early stages, stunning fans and observers alike with an exciting brand of footie that helps the Bombers win games against teams much more fancied and generate excitement that maybe, just maybe, the Bombers are back! Then the calendar ticks over to June and Essendon, with the same sense of dramatic panache with which they raced up the ladder, start to lose to teams no one should ever lose to. Like Melbourne. Which is exactly what happened last Saturday night.
Seriously, I think Essendon's forwards had some sort of sponsorship deal whereby they get a dollar every time I scream: "FOR FUCK'S SAKE KICK STRAIGHT YOU USELESS BASTARDS!" If they did, they'd at least have secured financial security in retirement out of that game alone.
And while we are on the topic, let me add the near impossibility of actually watching an AFL game in fucking Sydney. True, the Melbourne game was on digital TV, an advance over ever single other Essendon game this year bar the one against Richmond (which, it not yet being June, Essendon duly won), but I don't have a fucking set top box coz that shit costs money, I have none and what little have goes on my booze bill.
So, I trudged into some fucking dive of a place in Redfern with a TAB on the ground floor and a restaurant and bar upstairs and, after much cajoling, managed to convince them to turn one of the dozen or so TV screens all showing the fucking rugby league onto the Essendon game -- the smallest screen out the back in the semi-exposed cold bit (which seems to be where I spend *all* my evenings these days) with the sound down so the people playing pool could hear the rugby league.
And then, having been earnestly watching and drinking beer, just before three quarter time, with Essendon still just in front but Melbourne coming back and the tension level building to near breaking point, a Melbourne player takes a mark about 40 metres out and walks in to a bid to kick the most important goal in the game so far and I am on the edge of my seat willing with every inch for him to miss and just as he goes to kick the ball the GODDAMN RUGBY LEAGUE FINISHES SO EVERY SINGLE SCREEN IN THE ENTIRE PUB SWITCHES TO MUSIC CLIPS AND BEGINS PLAYING "THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO HMMMM".
It took me about 15 minutes of desperate, panicked pleading and looking like I was about to cry to convince the manager to change the thing centrally so all the screens changed from clips of shit music from 1991 that no one was watching to the Bombers-Demons game. So that I could, nearly having multiple heart attacks, watch Essendon lose by a goal. To Melbourne, a club in free fall who had not looked close to winning a single game all season up until that point.
So, as you can see. I have problems. I need to drink. Clearly. So, be as cool as Carlo Sands and try out the drinking game below that someone else has written but which I have copied and pasted to my own blog. No need to thank me, just buy me a beer. I am serious. GET ME A FUCKING BEER!
* * *
The Overthinking Person's Drinking Game by Leigh Alexander
When you experience a vague sense of inequity or deprivation but don’t have a template for whether your expectations are fair, drink.
When you aren’t sure whether the lingering sensation that you aren’t liked enough is a rational response to unfair circumstances or is in fact symptomatic of your tendency to blame your environment for your own failure to self-actualize, drink.
Drink if you experience a sudden flood of shame at the realization that you haven’t done much to deserve really any of the things to which you aspire.
If you suddenly realize you actually felt militantly entitled to something while sabotaging yourself, drink twice.
If you spend a long time mulling the nature of ‘deserving’ and what it actually means, and if you can’t really resolve the question of whether anyone specifically ‘deserves’ anything and come to an impasse about chaos and the innate unfairness of life, drink.
When a person or situation isn’t what you thought it was going to be, and you can’t figure out whether this is your fault for projecting unfounded qualities onto the person or someone else’s fault for actually misleading you, mistreating you or letting you down, drink.
Drink when ambivalence haunts you.
If you notice that you unconsciously but consistently put yourself into situations that deprive you of your resources and move you further away from your goals, drink.
If you cannot work out whether your present situation, challenge, relationship et al is yet another state of unconscious self-sabotage despite the fact you feel deprived, drink.
If you can’t tell whether you’re actually in a negative situation or just an ungrateful person who blames everyone else for your problems, drink.
Drink if you aren’t sure whether you are assuming too much responsibility for your own current unhappiness or not enough.
If you find that after long hours of contemplative malaise you suddenly feel as if nothing in particular is actually wrong and you feel the desire to relax or celebrate, drink.
If you suddenly find yourself highly focused on gratitude and create for yourself a long list of all the things that you are doing successfully or correctly or that you are fortunate to have and want to feel unburdened or euphoric, drink.
If you can’t decide whether you are actually ‘celebrating’ or simply engaging in artificial gestures of relief, take two drinks.
If you can’t tell whether you are an overly-strict person with inappropriate guilt about normal human self-moderation behavior or an avoidant adult child making excuses for your poor coping, drink.
If you feel persistently like you are failing to grow up, drink.
If you can’t tell whether a certain youthfulness in others represents an admirable refusal to adhere to repressive social norms or an actual inability to deal with difficult adult challenges, drink.
If you aren’t sure what it is right to expect of yourself, drink.
If you aren’t sure whether you are repeatedly failing to reach a personal set of behavioral goals or simply consistently feeling inadequate no matter how hard you work, drink.
If you aren’t sure whether you need to ‘lighten up’ or employ more self-discipline, drink.
If you aren’t sure whether you do or don’t want to talk to your friends about it because you aren’t sure whether you are a reasonable person experiencing occasional insecurity or a neurotic person who cannot be soothed, drink.
If you suspect you might not even have much reason to be unhappy and in fact just overthink everything and lack a stable internal compass, drink.
If you think you might just feel lost because you drink too often, but then you think too much when you aren’t drinking, cry.
If you’d rather not think about this kind of thing right now or maybe ever, take two drinks.
'I don't have a drinking problem, 'cept when I can't get a drink.' There you go, an *alternative* version of a Tom Waits classic. Seriously, get me a fucking beer right now! Use The Paypal function in the right column if you have to. I am fucking thirsty.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Scientists take three decades to discover what one evening's session proves
Did you know it is 2012 already? I fucking noticed, to such an extent I even got three quarters of the way through a blog post on 2011 and the horrors awaiting to us in the new year ... until I procrastinated on finishing it long enough for laptop to fuck up, the cause of much whining on Facebook.
Now it is working again, I shall limit myself to merely noting this important news: Scientists have done it once more. Let no one ever call the fuckers useless again.
Yes... according to the Sydney Morning Herald, scientists, after a full 30 years of research, have provided conclusive evidence that drinking alcohol is fun.
A full 30 years of research, and they say: "Drinking alcohol makes people feel better because it produces the same chemicals in the brain as exercising and laughing, a study has proved for the first time."
In fact, we may say here that the therapeutic value of drinking, so important given the state of the world, is further heightened by the fact that I always find a drinking goes hand in hand with laughing. Quite possibly due to the fact that I always find that alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, encourages me to dance.
And, on this topic, let me make it perfectly clear: I will "dance" while shouting "look at me, I'm dancing like Jarvis Cocker!" in return for booze. Same thing with my renowned turn as Axl Rose. (My rendition of Blaze of Glory is free. It is my gift to the world.)
If drunk, I will offer my rendition of this one for free, as my gift to the world.
And exercise... anyone who who has had a decent session in the company of the Conversation film series co-creator Ben knows that, at a certain time of the night, you are going to be sprinting from the cops ... or indeed Ben, carrying his tattoo gun bought for 30 bucks over the net from some obscure Chinese vetinary clinic, shouting "Do you trust me? Come on, just a small one!"
Apparently, these scientists studied the brains of drinkers and discovered the act of drinking releases happiness-inducing endorphins.
Now, I don't wish to be misunderstood here. Such a finding can only be welcomed in this age of relentless anti-booze propaganda and associated calls for laws to restrict our ability to consume it.
But... now, I do not wish to question the intelligence or efficiency of the scientific community. I would not dream of such a thing at a time when scientists can be killed with impunity by The Only Democracy In The Middle East (TM). (Seriously, why is it if I kill a scientist with a car bomb I am an "evil terrorist", but Israel does it and the world is all like, "whatevs"?)
And I mean it is not like there is anything more pressing for scientists to try and deal with.
But... I mean... 30 years??? What the fuck is wrong with these people? One decent fucking session at the Townie is more than enough evidence.
I mean, you work a fucking horrible job and you live in a fucking horrible world ... you want a fucking drink. Why? Because in a world run by goddamn arseholes you need *something* to make you feel good.
Oh but that is just alienation... OF COURSE IT FUCKING IS!!! If you are not alienated from a status quo as horrific as this one, you have some serious issues and are probably some sort of sociopath.
The only possible explanation I can think of for why it might take scientists 30 years to draw such a screamingly obvious conclusion is that they began their experiments back then and have only now sobered up enough to write up their findings. In which case, I can only say to them: WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING??? Get back to pub you bastards, you are missing the very aptly-named happy hour.
Siobhan is having a whiskey, Siobhan is having a gin ... and she is happy and she’s warming, cause Siobhan is having fun! In one two-and-a-bit-minute song, The Tossers sum up what it seems to have taken scientists three fucking decades to figure out.
Now it is working again, I shall limit myself to merely noting this important news: Scientists have done it once more. Let no one ever call the fuckers useless again.
Yes... according to the Sydney Morning Herald, scientists, after a full 30 years of research, have provided conclusive evidence that drinking alcohol is fun.
A full 30 years of research, and they say: "Drinking alcohol makes people feel better because it produces the same chemicals in the brain as exercising and laughing, a study has proved for the first time."
In fact, we may say here that the therapeutic value of drinking, so important given the state of the world, is further heightened by the fact that I always find a drinking goes hand in hand with laughing. Quite possibly due to the fact that I always find that alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, encourages me to dance.
And, on this topic, let me make it perfectly clear: I will "dance" while shouting "look at me, I'm dancing like Jarvis Cocker!" in return for booze. Same thing with my renowned turn as Axl Rose. (My rendition of Blaze of Glory is free. It is my gift to the world.)
If drunk, I will offer my rendition of this one for free, as my gift to the world.
And exercise... anyone who who has had a decent session in the company of the Conversation film series co-creator Ben knows that, at a certain time of the night, you are going to be sprinting from the cops ... or indeed Ben, carrying his tattoo gun bought for 30 bucks over the net from some obscure Chinese vetinary clinic, shouting "Do you trust me? Come on, just a small one!"
Apparently, these scientists studied the brains of drinkers and discovered the act of drinking releases happiness-inducing endorphins.
Now, I don't wish to be misunderstood here. Such a finding can only be welcomed in this age of relentless anti-booze propaganda and associated calls for laws to restrict our ability to consume it.
But... now, I do not wish to question the intelligence or efficiency of the scientific community. I would not dream of such a thing at a time when scientists can be killed with impunity by The Only Democracy In The Middle East (TM). (Seriously, why is it if I kill a scientist with a car bomb I am an "evil terrorist", but Israel does it and the world is all like, "whatevs"?)
And I mean it is not like there is anything more pressing for scientists to try and deal with.
But... I mean... 30 years??? What the fuck is wrong with these people? One decent fucking session at the Townie is more than enough evidence.
I mean, you work a fucking horrible job and you live in a fucking horrible world ... you want a fucking drink. Why? Because in a world run by goddamn arseholes you need *something* to make you feel good.
Oh but that is just alienation... OF COURSE IT FUCKING IS!!! If you are not alienated from a status quo as horrific as this one, you have some serious issues and are probably some sort of sociopath.
The only possible explanation I can think of for why it might take scientists 30 years to draw such a screamingly obvious conclusion is that they began their experiments back then and have only now sobered up enough to write up their findings. In which case, I can only say to them: WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING??? Get back to pub you bastards, you are missing the very aptly-named happy hour.
Siobhan is having a whiskey, Siobhan is having a gin ... and she is happy and she’s warming, cause Siobhan is having fun! In one two-and-a-bit-minute song, The Tossers sum up what it seems to have taken scientists three fucking decades to figure out.
Monday, June 06, 2011
More terrible booze news
I don't know if it is true this world is going to Hell in a hand basket. I don't know what means are being used, exactly, to carry this goddamn fucking world into the fire-ridden pits of Hell.
It strikes me, however, that a hand basket would be impractical. Unless it was a really FUCKING BIG hand basket.
And that raises the obvious question of where a hand basket big enough for all the shit going to Hell could possibly be found.
And, if it is a really fucking huge hand basket, is it fair trade? Cos that sounds like a lot of starving African villagers, whose nations have been raped by the IMF, working some pretty fucking long hours.
I suspect it is more likely to be New South Wales' CityRail that is responsible for the travel arrangements, which would explain the overcrowding and delays.
Let us review the evidence, and it really is not very good.
More bad news on climate change with a fresh study showing carbon emissions higher than 2008, the previous record high.
The horrific slaughter of Afghans by their civilised occupiers bringing democracy continues -- as does the persecution of those seeking to expose the war crimes.
And as if that was not enough bad news, latest figures show -- and tears are streaming down my face as I type this -- that beer consumption is down in Australia.
Yes, beer consumption is at a 62-year low in this country. The last time less beer was consumed in Australia, the prime minister was Ben Chifley and he hadn't even gotten round to smashing the miners' strike by bringing the fucking army into the coal fields.
That year was 1947 and the country suffered post-war scarcity issues.
The average consumption per person of beer over 2009-10 was a mere 4.56 litres of pure alcohol coming from beer!
I mean, 4.5 litres??? That is just 12 stubbies of pure alcohol -- or a mere *handful* of decent nights out.
This demoralising statistic is utterly pathetic and embarrassing. To give a sense of how far we have fallen as a nation, in 1974-75, the figure was 9.2 litres per person.
And what is the government doing to reverse this trend? Where is the stimulus package providing incentives to average citizens it increase their consumption?
At the very least, if they are too tight for that, where is the fucking public awareness campaign?
An example of the type of badly needed public awareness campaign to reverse the frightening drop in beer consumption that this government refuses to invest in.
No. The government is moving in the *exact opposite* direction.
You see, in these depressing stats, I was pleased to note *one* area of improvement.
Wine consumption is up -- to a record 3.8 litres of alcohol from wine per person for 2009-10.
Well, more fucking fool me for trying to find a bright spot.
It seems our benighted government -- which seems on a crusade to make alcohol consumption as difficult as fucking possible for its citizens -- also took note of the same statistic.
Their response was reported in the media today. And, even given the crypto-prohibitionist moves this government has already implemented, it is shocking.
The government is seriously considering a proposal that could see the price of cask wine quadruple.
Yes, they want to dramatically raise the price of goon. They want to end this country's proud tradition whereby every citizen has the *goddamn right* to cheap wine!
From the four litre casks of Morris Dry Red to your more fancy two litre casks of Yaaumba Reserve Cabernet Shiraz for the more discerning customer, you can get your goon in bottlos across the country for, if not a tenner, then a twenty with a fair chunk of change.
But for how much longer?
Federal health minister Nicola Roxon has agreed to the development of the concept of introducing a legally binding "floor price" per standard drink.
At the moment, the price per standard drink is about $1.20 for beer, but only about $0.30 for goon.
No wonder beer consumption is down and wine is up.
But rather than doing the fucking obvious and *lowering* the price of beer, they wish to *raise* it for wine to the level of our overpriced beer.
And this godforsaken nation already some of the highest prices for alcohol in the world!
What the fuck are teenagers going to drink? What are impoverished uni students going to do? Or workers who just want something plentiful to put in their glass at the end of a shit day?
Will anyone ever make up a huge saucepan full of mulled wine at a party in this country ever again?
A thing of the past for all but the rich? The 'goonbag on the washing line' was one of Australia's few proud traditions.
You can forget Islamic fundamentalists and "illegal immigrants", this is the greatest threat to our way of life since this *same fucking government* declared four standards drinks to be binge drinking.
And that wasn't even a fucking law -- just the propaganda campaign to set the groundwork for shit like this!
The inventor of the goonbag, South Australian grape grower Thomas Angrove who died aged 92 just last year, must be be doing pirouettes in his grave.
(Our greatest-ever inventor and he didn't even score a knighthood -- which is just another reason in favour of becoming a republic.)
Let us look at the justification for this horrific idea.
Dr John Boffa said the government should not wait for a review but implement the plan now. He said: "We can cut self-harm, cut suicides and cut homicides by doing it now."
Really? Coz this proposal certainly makes this blogger vacillate between suicidal and homicidal tendencies.
Dr Boffa piles insult upon insult, being quoted as saying: "What would change is the price of awful cask wine that no one other than young people and heavy drinkers go near."
It is hard to know where to start, but let us unpack everything wrong with this statement.
First, what an elitist and judgmental fucker.
Awful??? Different drinkers like different things. Some quite like the bouquet on a cask of goon.
Second, what the *fuck* does he expect this nation's teenagers to drink?
They have to drink something or how will they learn alcohol's joys? For christ's sake, WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE KIDS?
And I want to say to Dr John Boffa: "YOU USELESS GODDAMN FUCKING HYPOCRITE!"
He grew up with cheap goon to get pissed on and now he wants to deny a new generation the same privilege!
And I will bet what is left of my liver that, somewhere in the world, there's a photo of a passed out 15-year-old John Boffa in a park with goon bag for a pillow.
Nicola Fucking Roxon is probably in the same photo passed out next to him
And third: "...and heavy drinkers".
C'mon John, why not be more precise and say, "and heavy drinkers TOO POOR TO BUY MORE EXPENSIVE BOOZE".
You know, unlike politicians who are famous as one of the biggest-drinking sectors of society -- but on the expensive shit they pay for with OUR FUCKING TAX DOLLARS!
So, the plan seems to be that now only the better off in this society get to destroy themselves at their pleasure in order to numb the pain of existence in this hellhole they have the gall to call a society.
Sure, the better-off like to get wasted, and who can blame them? But they have less of a *driving need* to kill the pain than others.
And so the cruel irony of this plan is it makes it much harder for those that really *need* a decent drink to actually get it.
I mean what sort of society do we actually in live here?
Well, this lovely country is one in which the government moves quickly, in response to public outcry following a devastating expose on a current affairs show, to take action against the horrific conditions in which cows are exported from Australia and slaughtered in Indonesia.
Of course, the treatment of the cows is not particularly pleasant. But this is *the same government* that keeps human beings imprisoned *indefinitely* in horrific conditions, without being charged let alone tried of any crime, in what are little more than concentration camps in which incidents of self harm occur daily.
Some of them, they even seek to deport back to Afghanistan to risk being slaughtered in ways no nicer than the cows -- a country declared "safe" by the government despite the ceaseless atrocities committed by the occupying forces, of which the Australian military is part.
Others locked up despite committing no crime are to be sent to Malaysia.
This is a nation that has never even signed the international convention on the rights of refugees, so as not to even bother with the hassle of violating it.
A nation in which refugees, like those our government is going to hand over, face horrific torture -- including regular incidents of caning so severe that it rips away the victims flesh.
This form of torture, according to Amnesty International, was meted out in Malaysia to 34,923 foreigners between 2002-08.
But the victims of such treatment are not cows -- they are only FUCKING HUMANS who happen to be FUCKING POOR AND DESPERATE. So FUCK THEM!
This is also a country in which we are subjected to governments that like to hand down budgets that kick the poorest and most vulnerable, such as the disabled, single parents and the long-term unemployed.
But a country that *also* has shock jocks and tabloid press that scream bloody murder about the same budget for supposed brutal attacks on those who earn 150 grand a fucking year -- who, we are assured, are most certainly NOT rich.
*This* is the country we live in and they think we DON'T NEED A FUCKING DRINK???
"Mummy, what's cheap wine?" will soon be the question asked in cars all over the country when the "classic rock" stations play this song by Australia's most famous pub rock band. That is assuming our government doesn't ban the song for "encouraging an unhealthy culture of binge drinking".
Do you wish to help resist? You can donate to the Carlo Sands Fighting Fund to help take on the crypto-prohibitionists, by helping ensure I can stay drunk enough to write this shit, via the PayPal button conveniently provided on the righthand column.
It strikes me, however, that a hand basket would be impractical. Unless it was a really FUCKING BIG hand basket.
And that raises the obvious question of where a hand basket big enough for all the shit going to Hell could possibly be found.
And, if it is a really fucking huge hand basket, is it fair trade? Cos that sounds like a lot of starving African villagers, whose nations have been raped by the IMF, working some pretty fucking long hours.
I suspect it is more likely to be New South Wales' CityRail that is responsible for the travel arrangements, which would explain the overcrowding and delays.
Let us review the evidence, and it really is not very good.
More bad news on climate change with a fresh study showing carbon emissions higher than 2008, the previous record high.
The horrific slaughter of Afghans by their civilised occupiers bringing democracy continues -- as does the persecution of those seeking to expose the war crimes.
And as if that was not enough bad news, latest figures show -- and tears are streaming down my face as I type this -- that beer consumption is down in Australia.
Yes, beer consumption is at a 62-year low in this country. The last time less beer was consumed in Australia, the prime minister was Ben Chifley and he hadn't even gotten round to smashing the miners' strike by bringing the fucking army into the coal fields.
That year was 1947 and the country suffered post-war scarcity issues.
The average consumption per person of beer over 2009-10 was a mere 4.56 litres of pure alcohol coming from beer!
I mean, 4.5 litres??? That is just 12 stubbies of pure alcohol -- or a mere *handful* of decent nights out.
This demoralising statistic is utterly pathetic and embarrassing. To give a sense of how far we have fallen as a nation, in 1974-75, the figure was 9.2 litres per person.
And what is the government doing to reverse this trend? Where is the stimulus package providing incentives to average citizens it increase their consumption?
At the very least, if they are too tight for that, where is the fucking public awareness campaign?
An example of the type of badly needed public awareness campaign to reverse the frightening drop in beer consumption that this government refuses to invest in.
No. The government is moving in the *exact opposite* direction.
You see, in these depressing stats, I was pleased to note *one* area of improvement.
Wine consumption is up -- to a record 3.8 litres of alcohol from wine per person for 2009-10.
Well, more fucking fool me for trying to find a bright spot.
It seems our benighted government -- which seems on a crusade to make alcohol consumption as difficult as fucking possible for its citizens -- also took note of the same statistic.
Their response was reported in the media today. And, even given the crypto-prohibitionist moves this government has already implemented, it is shocking.
The government is seriously considering a proposal that could see the price of cask wine quadruple.
Yes, they want to dramatically raise the price of goon. They want to end this country's proud tradition whereby every citizen has the *goddamn right* to cheap wine!
From the four litre casks of Morris Dry Red to your more fancy two litre casks of Yaaumba Reserve Cabernet Shiraz for the more discerning customer, you can get your goon in bottlos across the country for, if not a tenner, then a twenty with a fair chunk of change.
But for how much longer?
Federal health minister Nicola Roxon has agreed to the development of the concept of introducing a legally binding "floor price" per standard drink.
At the moment, the price per standard drink is about $1.20 for beer, but only about $0.30 for goon.
No wonder beer consumption is down and wine is up.
But rather than doing the fucking obvious and *lowering* the price of beer, they wish to *raise* it for wine to the level of our overpriced beer.
And this godforsaken nation already some of the highest prices for alcohol in the world!
What the fuck are teenagers going to drink? What are impoverished uni students going to do? Or workers who just want something plentiful to put in their glass at the end of a shit day?
Will anyone ever make up a huge saucepan full of mulled wine at a party in this country ever again?
A thing of the past for all but the rich? The 'goonbag on the washing line' was one of Australia's few proud traditions.
You can forget Islamic fundamentalists and "illegal immigrants", this is the greatest threat to our way of life since this *same fucking government* declared four standards drinks to be binge drinking.
And that wasn't even a fucking law -- just the propaganda campaign to set the groundwork for shit like this!
The inventor of the goonbag, South Australian grape grower Thomas Angrove who died aged 92 just last year, must be be doing pirouettes in his grave.
(Our greatest-ever inventor and he didn't even score a knighthood -- which is just another reason in favour of becoming a republic.)
Let us look at the justification for this horrific idea.
Dr John Boffa said the government should not wait for a review but implement the plan now. He said: "We can cut self-harm, cut suicides and cut homicides by doing it now."
Really? Coz this proposal certainly makes this blogger vacillate between suicidal and homicidal tendencies.
Dr Boffa piles insult upon insult, being quoted as saying: "What would change is the price of awful cask wine that no one other than young people and heavy drinkers go near."
It is hard to know where to start, but let us unpack everything wrong with this statement.
First, what an elitist and judgmental fucker.
Awful??? Different drinkers like different things. Some quite like the bouquet on a cask of goon.
Second, what the *fuck* does he expect this nation's teenagers to drink?
They have to drink something or how will they learn alcohol's joys? For christ's sake, WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE KIDS?
And I want to say to Dr John Boffa: "YOU USELESS GODDAMN FUCKING HYPOCRITE!"
He grew up with cheap goon to get pissed on and now he wants to deny a new generation the same privilege!
And I will bet what is left of my liver that, somewhere in the world, there's a photo of a passed out 15-year-old John Boffa in a park with goon bag for a pillow.
Nicola Fucking Roxon is probably in the same photo passed out next to him
And third: "...and heavy drinkers".
C'mon John, why not be more precise and say, "and heavy drinkers TOO POOR TO BUY MORE EXPENSIVE BOOZE".
You know, unlike politicians who are famous as one of the biggest-drinking sectors of society -- but on the expensive shit they pay for with OUR FUCKING TAX DOLLARS!
So, the plan seems to be that now only the better off in this society get to destroy themselves at their pleasure in order to numb the pain of existence in this hellhole they have the gall to call a society.
Sure, the better-off like to get wasted, and who can blame them? But they have less of a *driving need* to kill the pain than others.
And so the cruel irony of this plan is it makes it much harder for those that really *need* a decent drink to actually get it.
I mean what sort of society do we actually in live here?
Well, this lovely country is one in which the government moves quickly, in response to public outcry following a devastating expose on a current affairs show, to take action against the horrific conditions in which cows are exported from Australia and slaughtered in Indonesia.
Of course, the treatment of the cows is not particularly pleasant. But this is *the same government* that keeps human beings imprisoned *indefinitely* in horrific conditions, without being charged let alone tried of any crime, in what are little more than concentration camps in which incidents of self harm occur daily.
Some of them, they even seek to deport back to Afghanistan to risk being slaughtered in ways no nicer than the cows -- a country declared "safe" by the government despite the ceaseless atrocities committed by the occupying forces, of which the Australian military is part.
Others locked up despite committing no crime are to be sent to Malaysia.
This is a nation that has never even signed the international convention on the rights of refugees, so as not to even bother with the hassle of violating it.
A nation in which refugees, like those our government is going to hand over, face horrific torture -- including regular incidents of caning so severe that it rips away the victims flesh.
This form of torture, according to Amnesty International, was meted out in Malaysia to 34,923 foreigners between 2002-08.
But the victims of such treatment are not cows -- they are only FUCKING HUMANS who happen to be FUCKING POOR AND DESPERATE. So FUCK THEM!
This is also a country in which we are subjected to governments that like to hand down budgets that kick the poorest and most vulnerable, such as the disabled, single parents and the long-term unemployed.
But a country that *also* has shock jocks and tabloid press that scream bloody murder about the same budget for supposed brutal attacks on those who earn 150 grand a fucking year -- who, we are assured, are most certainly NOT rich.
*This* is the country we live in and they think we DON'T NEED A FUCKING DRINK???
"Mummy, what's cheap wine?" will soon be the question asked in cars all over the country when the "classic rock" stations play this song by Australia's most famous pub rock band. That is assuming our government doesn't ban the song for "encouraging an unhealthy culture of binge drinking".
Do you wish to help resist? You can donate to the Carlo Sands Fighting Fund to help take on the crypto-prohibitionists, by helping ensure I can stay drunk enough to write this shit, via the PayPal button conveniently provided on the righthand column.
Monday, January 03, 2011
The right response when the fuckers try and stop you enjoying a drink
We live in a pretty fucked up world. The brutal imperialist war on Afghanistan and Pakistan continues unabated by remote control, the rulers of the world have decided to ignore the dire warnings and to allow ongoing ecological destruction, and new statistics suggest the most influential person online is the devil child himself: Justin Fucking Bieber.
And, in the face of all of this, the approach of those that rule us seems to be to make it as difficult as possible to cope with the horrors of their system by enjoying a fucking drink or twelve. Just to really torture us.
Hell, as well as proposals in some states to raise the drinking age to 21, the Northern Territory has gone ahead and banned the sale of cask wine in quantities of more than two litres!
This is going too far - the four litre goonbag is part of the goddamned national culture. Poor old Tom Angrove, the inventor of goon who sadly passed away last March aged 92, will be rolling in his fucking grave.
If you can't get a four litre cask of the red-coloured goon for about ten bucks, then what the hell is this godforsaken country about? What the fuck are highschoolers and uni students meant to fucking do? At the very least, it is going to require return trips to the goddamn bottlo.
Well, take heart fellow liver destroyers, at this inspiring tale of resistance by prisoners in a British jail.
All the poor fuckers were trying to do is what people have been doing the world over as a new year rolled in: drinking to forget what a fucked-up year it was and to forget how fucked-up the next one will inevitably be too.
An AFP article, entitled Buildings razed in British prison riot, tells the heroic story:
LONDON: Specialist police have quelled a riot at a British prison after inmates set buildings alight when staff tried to breathalyse some of the 200 prisoners amid fears alcohol had been smuggled in on New Year's Day.
Authorities are investigating the day-long rampage involving about 40 inmates which began early on Saturday at Ford open prison near Arundel, in Sussex in south-east England.
Several buildings were burnt to the ground and police in body armour and firefighters were called in. Television pictures showed flames leaping from several buildings at the 1960s-era prison.
And why shouldn't the poor bastards be allowed a fucking drink? Or is getting pissed only for the rich and privileged in Britain, as suggested by a recent study showing high income earners drink the most?
Carlo Sands says good on the prisoners! That is how you fucking do it. We need more of this.
I personally witnessed a smaller version of this type of resistance a week or so ago when I was on the the first floor balcony of the Newtown pub Kelly's at about 3.30am. The pub security guy had been trying to put a downer on people's alcohol-fuelled fun when one young guy from a table of drunks got up and bravely started singing Bohemien Rhapsody as loud as he could.
Inspired, from every table on the balcony people rose as one to join him in his stand - as the security man raced out in a panic, despairing as he tried to put down the Queen Rebellion.
It was a small gesture, perhaps, but it shows the collective power of a group of drunken strangers when they decide to unite, stand as one and shout "Mama just killed a man, put a gun against his head, pulled my trigger, now he's dead!"
It would, of course, been much better had they been singing The Pogues, but you take your inspiration where you find it.
"And in the Euston Tavern you screamed it was your shout, but they wouldn't give you service so you kicked the windows out. They took you out into the street and kicked you in the brains, so you walked back in through a bolted door and did it all again". The Pogues "Sick Bed of Cuchulainn" would have been a better choice for drunken rebellion, but, in a world as fucked up as this one, you take your inspiration where you find it.
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