|
Page 1 2 3
Alcohol: The Healthy Alternative to a Boring Society
by Jason Roth
Alcohol solves all the problems of a boring conversation. On the most basic level, it gives you something to do with your hands. It also gives you the mild satisfaction of witnessing the immutable laws of nature, insofar as it allows you to recall that the act of lifting your hand will, in fact, cause the glass of beer to reach your mouth. Of course, after testing and re-testing this cause-and-effect phenomenon, you may become less successful in achieving the goal. I.e., you might get so drunk that you pour your beer all over your fucking shirt.
Furthermore, the act of drinking alcohol can plug up those initial lulls in the conversation, when you're wondering who or what convinced you to come to this thing in the first place, or when the annoying bitch in front of you will stop talking about her fucking cat. In other words, this pre-buzz drinking enables you to partake in simple, yet effective, goal-directed action. The thought-process is something like the following:
I'm holding a beer in my hands. I wouldn't mind having a sip of this beer. Now, if I raise this beer to my mouth, I could have a sip of the beer, and that would be good. Therefore, I'm going to raise the beer. There it goes. The beer is coming up towards my mouth. Almost there. Just about. Getting closer...
Mmm. Beer.
I never said the goal-directed action was anything like discovering a continent or building a fucking rocket ship, but Jesus Christ, it's better than nothing.
Arguably, the best part about alcohol is that once you finish what's in your glass, you can have more. An empty glass of beer is only a glass waiting to be filled. (No one can accuse me of being a pessimist, that's for damn sure.) If you want to be really crazy, you don't even have to fill your glass with the same thing. Sure, some people would advise against mixing your alcohol, but I say go for it. Beer, then scotch, then Jagermeister, then Blackhouse, then something with a fucking umbrella sticking out of it, whatever. Switch glasses, use the same glass, drink half of one thing then toss it for something else. It's up to you. (In a free country, as at a party full of drunks, you're free to commit just about any act of asinine nonsense you want to.)
Do you see how interesting and entertaining this can be? And all throughout the process, you're gradually forgetting about how boring all these people are. And, since presumably they're all also drinking, the boring people are becoming interesting and entertaining themselves. The important thing to remember is that our standards of "interesting" and "entertaining" change when we talk about drinking. By "interesting", we are not referring to unique observations about philosophy, and by "entertaining", we are not referring to witty remarks about politics. Rather, we're talking about slurring words, more frequent references to one's boss as a "fucking moron", and if we've really struck gold, a woman's shirt being thrown off while its owner dances around on top of a flaming bar while her soon-to-be ex-boyfriend yacks up Tequila and beer nuts in the bathroom. What was once "boring" has now become a drunken scene of anarchic absurdity. In other words, a thing of beauty.
I'm not sure if you would find "boredom" listed as a social disease in one of those big psychology reference books. But if it is, there should be one prescription of choice.
Booze.
|
