Drinking from the Fire Hydrant

Don't drink and blog

There is probably a good reason to believe in just about anything. It’s certainly within the relm of possibility that the key to eternal happiness exists somewhere inside the glass containing the dry bourbon manhattan that sits in front of me, nearly gone. And there are good reasons to believe that God exists, and that God cares enough about people on this miserable planet to intercede in their lives. Not that I believe that, because I’ve lived long enough to have seen a long train of possible points of divine intervention pass His Holiness by. Either God isn’t paying attention, or my pitiful existence doesn’t warrant the kind of deux ex machina that would lift me out of this alcoholic haze. 

The word at the office is that the latest round of contractions in the military-industrial complex is going to cost us one out of ten people. By at least two out of five possible ways to calculate things, I’m on the block with my neck stretched. I should problably be more despondent about this, but after a grilled ham and cheese sandwich, two abbey ales and the aforementioned manhattan, it would take a meteor strike to break my euphoria. I’d feel bad about this, except that the whole bizarre charade of life strikes me as a kind of sick joke. So instead, thanks to the magic of bluetooth and a bar that provides far better typing posture than my cubicle ever could, I’m pegging away at this thing that will likely turn into yet another unread blog post on my largely ignored blog.

Discussing said manhattan with the astute barkeep, I mention the delight I take in having it shaken – for a proper dry bourbon manhattan must be shaken, and requires a lime in place of the monstrous abomination of a cherry – sets me up for a round of ribbing from my best beloved, who compares the pleasurable sensation that I receive from having the little shaken bits of ice flow through the gaps in my smile to baleen on a whale. I will attempt not to be offended by this, as I’m more than aware of my own resemblance to said beluga whale; the resemblance breaks down because, unfortunately, I cannot move through the sparse air of terrestrial terrain with anything approaching the grace of my pale white bretheren moving through the deep. Oh, to be that free.

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