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Prohibition Returns!

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Reason Magazine is a fine and well-respected Libertarian magazine that had a very interesting article in last month’s issue. I say fine and well-respected because they saw fit to ask me to write an article for them last year, showing exceptional good taste, and as a result I still get a copy of the magazine each month. The November issue included an article by David Harsanyi, who is a columnist for the Denver Post. Harsanyi is also the author of a recent book called Nanny State, whose subtitle is “How Food Fascists, Teetotaling Do-Gooders, Priggish Moralists, and other Boneheaded Bureaucrats are Turning America into a Nation of Children.” His Reason article, Prohibition Returns! Teetotaling do-gooders attack your right to drink, was adapted from his book and it’s a very interesting read. I wanted to post it when I first read it, but Reason doesn’t put the current issue online instead keeping all but the current issue on the web. As a result I had to wait until now to share it.

One of the most interesting parts of his article involves Candace Lightner, the founder of MADD. She was the original mother against drunk driving who started a crusade. I have on several occasions written unflatteringly about her but what I did not realize is that she’s every bit as disgusted with MADD as I am. For example she told the L.A. Times in 2002 that she realized she was wrong about lowering the blood alcohol level to 0.08% because that strategy “was not a solution to the alcohol problem. The majority of crashes occur with high blood-alcohol levels, the .15, .18 and .25 drinkers.” As a result, Lightner and MADD parted ways in 1985 and she is no longer affiliated with the organization she founded.

From the Reason article:

Lightner has moved on from MADD, and since then has protested the shift from attacking drunk driving to attacking drinking in general. “I worry that the movement I helped create has lost direction,” she told The Cleveland Plain Dealer in 1992. BAC legislation, she said, “ignores the real core of the problem….If we really want to save lives, let’s go after the most dangerous drivers on the road.” Lightner said MADD has become an organization far more “neoprohibitionist” than she had envisioned. “I didn’t start MADD to deal with alcohol,” she said. “I started MADD to deal with the issue of drunk driving.”

I’m afraid I owe her an apology. I take back what I said previously. She has not taken things too far, the people who took over from where she started and fanatically went off to advocate a different agenda have much to answer for, not least of which is that they continue to use the tragedy of her daughter’s death at the hands of a drunk driver in their propaganda despite the fact that know they Lightner no longer agrees with what they’re doing. This also explains to some extent why MADD has gone off in such a radically different direction from the founder’s original intent. Neo-prohibitionists simply took over her organization co-opting it for their own purposes. Given that it’s been 22 years since the founder resigned, they’ve done a pretty good job of keeping that information in the background so that most people — myself included — weren’t even aware that the organization had internally changed so much. MADD’s mission statement changed abruptly in 1985 — the same year Lightner left — and has been changed two more times since then to incorporate the expanding agenda of the organization to include underage drinking and, although not stated explicitly, to end all legal drinking in this country if not the world. I think after learning this I’m even more frightened of MADD than I was when I thought it was still just a pissed-off mother trying to do right by the daughter that was taken from her by a drunk driver. At least I could understand that, even if I didn’t entirely agree with it. Now that I know she’s been gone for more than two decades and in her absence they’ve become more of a neo-prohibitionist organization I confess I can’t understand what they’re doing in the least. Nothing about their current agenda makes any sense whatsoever to me. All I know is we have to do everything we can to make sure they don’t succeed in bringing about another Prohibition.

 

Happy Repeal Day

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Today is the 74th anniversary of the repeal of national Prohibition in the United States. Bob Skilnik has, naturally, the most complete account at his Beer In Food blog. His piece is called “National Prohibition; Its REAL Anniversary” and goes into great detail about the history swirling about at that time. It’s definitely worth a read.

In addition, Eugene, Oregon bartender Jeffrey Morgenthaler has been leading an effort to make December 5 a holiday and he’s also set up a Repeal Day website. And Dewar’s is also running a Repeal Day promotion to celebrate the day (and sell some whisky, of course). Seems like a good idea to me, we can never have too many holidays to remind us what a bad idea Prohibition was, especially with the neo-prohibitionists of today trying so hard to bring about another one.

 

Revelers enjoying the repeal of Prohibition in 1933.
 

Costa Rica Just Says No to Swiss Beer

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I guess it’s good to know that other country’s bureaucracies are every bit as irrational as my own, especially when dealing with the regulation of alcohol and other so-called “controlled” substances. It seems the Latin American country of Costa Rica is having issues with a Swiss beer, Hanfblute, because it contains the essence of marijuana to impart the cannabis aroma in the nose. It’s no secret, that information is listed on the label and Hanfblute has been sold in the Central American nation for four years. And, of course, marijuana is also illegal in Switzerland, too, meaning if there were any mind-altering cannabis (or THC) in it, the Swiss would have put the kibosh on the beer long ago. They do use hemp leaves and flowers in the brewing of the beer, but it contains nothing that could get you high.

Guiselle Amador, the head of the Instituto de Alcoholismo y Farmacodependencia (IAFA) — Costa Rica’s pharmaceutical and drug dependency institute — “expressed her concern for the sale of the beer in Costa Rica for its negative implications that it is good for ones health.” The IAFA is asking the health minister to investigate the importer’s permit and take the beer off the market. Despite the fact that the beer contains no marijuana whatsoever, she’s afraid it might persuade people to start smoking pot. Why, you might reasonably ask, would she think that? Apparently there’s a cannabis leaf on the label (pictured below) which she believes is a subliminal message which could entice people to begin smoking weed. I don’t know what Amador is smoking but if she thinks seeing a marijuana leaf on a beer label will lead people to fire up a spleef then clearly her country has more troubles than just this.
 

Here’s one logo:

And here’s the bottle label:

 

Clearly they’re skating on the periphery of what polite society deems acceptable with their label, but the family owned Brauerei Locher brews at least twenty different beers, of which the Hanfblute is only a small part. This is no hippie commune beer but a serious beer with a nod to a tradition that predates the use of hops in beer. Are they having a little fun with it? Sure, why not? They know the market for their beer. In my experience, hemp enthusiasts are fanatical in their love of the versatile weed. So why not market to a supportive audience?

The first hemp beer I remember was from Frederick Brewing in Maryland. I think it was called Hempen Ale and was made using hemp seeds (I’m shooting on memory here, if anybody knows for sure, let me know). I also remember shortly thereafter having a meeting with Mario Celotto (the former Oakland Raider and now former owner of Humboldt Brewing in Arcata, California) and suggesting to him that with his backyard’s reputation he should make a hemp beer. Several months later (I think around 1998?) Humboldt Hemp Beer made its debut and is still being brewed by Firestone Walker under the same label (they bought the Humboldt brand in 2003).

But I still can’t understand why people in government agencies are convinced that mere labels will corrupt people to the point where they’re afraid to allow citizens to even see something they find objectionable. It’s obviously ridiculous that seeing a cannabis leaf would make someone unable to control the urge to become a drug addict. It’s equally ridiculous that seeing Santa Claus on a label will make kids want to drink beer or seeing nudity on a label will .. well, I don’t really know what the easily offended think seeing nudity will do to harm society, that one will always be a head-scratcher to me. But we see this time and time again in the United States and — as this story makes clear — around the world, too. Most people if asked would probably say the national pastime is baseball and worldwide it has to be football (soccer). Personally, I think the true favorite pastime is trying to control other people in what they think, what they see and what they can do. Determining what is moral or good and trying to impose it on the rest of us seems to occupy a lot of a certain kind of person’s time and energy. The rest of us are just trying to enjoy ourselves and live our lives as best we can. But as long as there are people whose agenda includes stopping people from doing things that they don’t like or making decisions about how to live their lives that they disagree with, the remaining majority of us won’t be able to rest. As for marijuana, my favorite comedian, Bill Hicks, said it best:

Why is marijuana against the law? It grows naturally upon our planet. Doesn’t the idea of making nature against the law seem to you a bit… paranoid? You know what I mean? It’s nature. How do you make nature against the f#%king law? It grows everywhere. Serves a thousand different functions, all of them positive. To make marijuana against the law is like saying God made a mistake.

Which I find doubly ironic since most rabid anti-drug and anti-alcohol organizations seem religiously based or at least motivated by some weird morality that they believe is based on religion. But I also think Hicks’ argument works for beer, as well, which is likewise made from all natural ingredients growing wild on the planet. Ive said it before a million times, but if those of us who just want to be left alone and not told what to do and think, we have to remain ever-vigilant against this kind of nonsense wherever and whenever we can.

 

Pacific Coast Brewing’s “A Taste of Holiday Beers”

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The 19th annual holiday beer tasting at Pacific Coast Brewing in Oakland is this Saturday from Noon to 4:00 p.m. Sad to say, I’ve never managed to make it to this one but everybody tells me it’s a great event.
 

 

12.8

Pacific Coast Brewing’s Taste of Holiday Beers (19th annual)

Pacific Coast Brewing, 906 Washington Street, Oakland, California
510.836.2739 [ website ]

 

Van’s Ned Flanders

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rock-bottom
John Foyston had a nice piece in the Oregonian yesterday about one of my favorite — and perhaps most underrated — beers to be poured at the Oregon Brewers Festival. It was certainly my favorite the year it appeared, 2006, and as this story attests, people are still talking about it. The beer is Ned Flanders, a sour beer based on the style Flemish Red Ale, of which Rodenbach Red and Duchesse De Bourgogne (another fave of mine) are perhaps the best known examples. I chose it as my buzz beer of the festival that year. Van Havig, then the brewer at Rock Bottom in Portland (and now a regional brewing manager) put quite a bit of effort into the beer, aging it in five different kinds of barrels and then blending it back together. Responding to a question from Foyston, Havig lays out the full story of this beer, and it’s a fascinating account filled with history and chutzpah.

van-havig ned

Will the real Ned Flanders please stand up? Van Havig and his inspiration for Ned Flanders Sour Red Ale.

Curing A Hangover

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I came across this list at Forbes when I was reading the original Forbes story about the world’s heaviest-drinking countries. This is their list of the Top Ten Hangover Cures, which I’ve reprinted below.

  1. Water (Lots of It)
  2. Sports Drinks
  3. Over-the-Counter Pain Relievers
  4. Vitamins B6 and B12
  5. Berocca
  6. Prickly Pear
  7. Tripe Soup
  8. Haejangguk (Korean for “soup for the stomach”)
  9. Rosiglitazone (used by diabetics to boost glucose levels)
  10. Hair of the Dog

In the beginning of the article, however, they begin with this annoying chestnut. “The best—and most painfully obvious—remedy is not to drink yourself into oblivion.” Can it be possible nobody realized that abstinence cannot be a cure since if you never get a hangover there’s nothing to remedy? I know I’m splitting hairs here but I’ve always found the “just say no” mentality a bit overly self-righteous. Nothing ventured, nothing gained I always say. Keep abstaining and you gain no wisdom, no experience, no nothing that you need to grow as a person.

The first four and the last one are old tried and true ones, but five through nine were largely new to me. I wrote a book in the early 1990s that included an appendix of common hangover cures, which I researched pretty thoroughly at the time. When you drink, your body — primarily the liver — begins processing the alcohol. Once it starts working, there’s really nothing you can do to speed things up. All you can do it wait. Alcohol also dehydrates you making you feel dry because when you drink you lose more water than your body replaces until your liver and kidneys finish their work. While the excess alcohol is waiting to be processed, it is stored in your cells, displacing the water that is normally there: this phenomenon is known as “extra-cellular” and it’s what makes you feel dry and crave water. When you drink faster than your liver’s ability to process the alcohol, it gets backed up. That backup is what causes your misery. The medical record I looked at suggested that there is only one thing that will cure a hangover: time. You may be able to ease some of your symptoms, but there’s nothing to any of the supposed cures that will do anything to speed up your recovery. That doesn’t stop anybody from trying, of course, as people — myself included — will do anything in the hopes of eliminating the pain of a hangover.

In my own experience, I’ve found preventative measures are always more effective than anything you can try the morning after. When I put together my appendix, I divided the various methods to keep yourself feeling fit into four categories based on when to administer them.
 

  1. Before Drinking
  2. During Drinking
  3. Before Going To Bed
  4. The Morning After

 

Naturally, there are exponentially more supposed cures for the morning after than for anytime the night before. I think that’s because the preventative measures involve common sense and a few basic ideas, things that most of us forget to do once we start drinking. My personal regime is to take a vitamin B supplement and two Advil (I used to take Tylenol until I read that it can be hard on your liver) before going to bed. I’ve had a pretty good success rate with that, which is why I still use it. I’ve started reprinting my hangover cure appendix so you can take a look at it. I only have up the first three categories, and a few from the morning after, but little by little I’ll get it all up there.

 

How To Win Friends and Influence People

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I got a comment the other day to one of my old posts about Rolling Rock when the brouhaha was going down in Latrobe, Pennsylvania earlier this year. E-Rokk, the person who posted the comment, apparently had a run-in with an Anheuser-Busch distributor’s rep. He also has a blog with four friends called Hey Stupid, which according to their byline “is a collection of writers that are pissed off at society, culture, the world and most importantly…you.” E-Rokk is a former Pennsylvania resident who moved to the Rapid City, South Dakota area and took with him a fondness for Rolling Rock beer. He claims to be a beer connoisseur, but his list of favorite beers is not exactly bursting with esoterica. In fact, more than half of his list includes generic industrial light lagers, most of whom are made by the big three but marketed under their original regional brand names. His favorite three are Yuengling, Iron City Light and Rolling Rock, which pretty much tells you everything you need to know.

Anyway, he tried the new A-B-made version of his beloved Rolling Rock and found that it no longer tasted the way he remembered it, and so he wrote a rant on his blog that spared no one’s feelings and told A-B in no uncertain terms to go fornicate without a companion, though, of course, not in those words. A little while later, he received a response from his local A-B distributor, Eagle Sales of the Black Hills, Inc. The letter was apparently written by the distributor’s “Contemporary Marketing Coordinator,” Cassie Kimball. I can only imagine what that job description entails. Anyway, to satisfy myself that her response was legitimate, I checked out the distributor’s website and sure enough she is the last person listed at the bottom of the web page “Our People.” He reprinted her response in it’s entirety and it’s a terrific example of how not to interact with your customers, especially when E-Rokk still listed several beers as his favorites that Eagle Sales distributes.

Because technically her letter is copywrited material, I won’t publish it here, but please go read it at E-Rokk’s Hey Stupid blog, you won’t be disappointed. She basically swears back at him and further tells him his band will never receive any promotional support from A-B (which is odd since I didn’t even know he was in a band). It’s riddled with typos and grammatical nonsense, which is pretty scary especially since I would think communication skills would be fairly important for someone in marketing. I know people can make mistakes — hell, I make them all the time — but her letter seems to show only a rudimentary familiarity with the English language and how to communicate coherently. But perhaps I’m being too hard on her.

My favorite thing she says, though, is about her beer knowledge. She claims that mainstream beers are called “American premiums” — I just love this aside — “as real beer connoisseurs like to say.” That has me doubling over. American premium is essentially a made-up term used as a category by Nieslen, IRI and other businesses when discussing a particular group of goods, to distinguish them from sub-premium and other categories. It has no meaning in the real world but only as business jargon. And I don’t know many beer connoisseurs, real or otherwise, who refer to this type of beer as American Premium, not with a straight face anyway. It is a subcategory at GABF under category 26, American-Style Lager, but that’s more to allow the big companies a place to enter their products. Likewise, it’s a subcategory under BJCP guidelines for category 1, Light Lager. But you won’t find it coming up in any serious discussion of beer styles. But then again, maybe I’m not as “with it” as she is. After all, she’s the “contemporary” marketing coordinator, whereas I’m just an old curmudgeon.

I also love her revisionist history when she claims A-B bought the Rolling Rock brand “to help it stay alive.” Their own flagship brands’ sales woes had nothing to do with wanting to pick up another brand for their distributors. That’s hilarious. I feel kinda sorry for her, in a way. She just keeps putting her foot in her mouth. At least she does it with confidence, I guess. She really seems to believe what she’s saying and yet appears to have no idea about what’s really going on in the industry she’s a part of. Ah, to be young and ignorant.

The way she just attacked and swore back at her critic has to have come up in PR 101 as how not to communicate with a customer, no matter what they’ve said. It’s frankly pretty astonishing. E-Rokk responded by writing back to her, to what end I can’t fathom. It was just as bad as his original rant but it will be interesting to see if his baiting works and she writes back again to escalate things even farther.

 

Drink, Drank, Drunk: Who’s Number One?

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Last year, the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development surveyed per capita consumption of alcohol across the world and ranked the top fifteen. They ranked them a bit differently than most of these surveys do. They looked at the raw amount of alcohol consumed each year per person rather than the number of servings. This apparently had the effect of equalizing the results across beer, wine and spirits since they all have very different amounts of alcohol.

Below is a table of the results:
 

NationLiters Per Capita Annual Pure Alcohol ConsumptionLiters Per Capita Beer ConsumptionLegal Drinking Age
1. Luxembourg15.584.416 (beer)
18 (spirits)
2. France14.235.516 (beer)
18 (spirits)
3. Ireland14.2131.118
4. Hungary1275.318 (to purchase—none for consumption)
5. Czech Republic11.8156.918
6. Spain11.583.816 (drinking)
18 (purchasing)
7. Denmark11.589.918 (bars only; otherwise no limit)
8. Portugal12.959.616
9. Switzerland11.257.316 (beer)
18 (spirits)
10. Austria11.1108.316 (beer)
18 (spirits)
11. Germany10.5116.814 (beer)
16 (wine)
18 (spirits)
12. United Kingdom10.49918 (for purchase)
13. Belgium10.39316
14. Netherlands10.17916 (beer)
18 (spirits)
15. Australia9.8109.918

 

As a result of the methodology, the top fourteen are all European countries and only the last nation lies outside of the EU. Previous studies, along with this new one, seem to point to social, political and cultural factors — along with tax structures — to account for this seeming anomaly. The new data, which includes 2006, is available from the OECD for a pretty hefty amount — much more than my budget will allow — but there is data from previous years available if you dig around. And while the numbers have changed over the decades, from year to year they change only slightly so we can see where other countries below the top fifteen probably fall in the rankings. Looking at 2003, the last year I could find with complete statistics, the top 15 are almost exactly the same (only numbers 14 and 15 are reversed). So below those, here are some of the likely remaining rankings (based on 2003 data).

 

  1. Finland
  2. New Zealand
  3. Korea
  4. United States
  5. Poland
  6. Italy
  7. Canada
  8. Japan
  9. Slovak Republic
  10. Sweden
  11. Iceland
  12. Norway
  13. Mexico

 
The U.S. barely cracks the top twenty and Canada comes in at Number 22. You can also see how beer consumption is very different from overall alcohol. The top ten for beer are:

 

  1. Czech Republic (156.9)
  2. Ireland (131.1)
  3. Germany (116.8)
  4. Australia (109.9)
  5. Austria (108.3)
  6. United Kingdom (99)
  7. Belgium (93)
  8. Denmark (89.9)
  9. Luxembourg (84.4)
  10. Spain (83.8)

 
There is a note, however, in the raw data excel spreadsheet indicating that Luxembourg’s data does not “accurately reflect consumption by residents, due to significant levels of consumption by tourists and cross border traffic of alcoholic beverages.” That seems to suggest that data for Luxembourg is overstated and that it may not be as high as expressed in this study. So if we throw them out of the beer consumption list, the Netherlands slide into the number ten spot with liters per capita of 79.

So, while there’s nothing terribly surprising here, I thought it was an interesting peek at who’s drinking what and how much around the world.

 

Spot the Drunk

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Maybe it’s just my peculiar sense of humor but anytime I hear the phrase “spot the … anything” I think of Monty Python, as in “Spot the Looney.” So that was my first thought when I heard that Britain’s Home Office had issued very specific guidelines to members of the police on “How to Spot a Drunk.”

A few days ago the UK’s Home Office launched a new campaign against — and here’s the part I don’t get — being drunk in a bar. It’s called the “Responsible Sales of Alcohol Campaign” and British and Welsh police have apparently identified 1,500 pubs that they will be visiting every weekend between now and Christmas Eve to make sure that no bartender “knowingly” sells any alcohol to someone who is drunk. To me, that’s already a weird law (more on that below) but it’s been on the books for awhile now, though up until now there’s been no shortage of confusion about exactly what it means, legally at least, to be drunk. Anyone found selling to a drunk person will be levied “an £80 fixed-penalty fine.” But now the Home Office has issued more specific guidelines trying to define drunkenness. They have no legal standing, of course, but they are asking the police to use them to “identify potential drunken customers” and then “gather evidence of drunkenness, witness a sale and deal accordingly”. So even though it’s claimed that they do not have actual legal standing, if the police are using the guidelines, as they’ve been asked to, then they de facto do have standing.

Here’s the part I don’t get, though. If you can’t be drunk in a pub, where exactly are you allowed to be drunk? Since when is it the business of the police to decide how pissed anyone wants to get on any given evening? I think in many states here a bartender’s not supposed to serve a person if they’re excessively drunk — equally difficult to gauge and define. But this law makes it sound like you are permitted to go to a pub, order a beer, drink it, perhaps have another, but the moment you’re drunk you have to stop drinking immediately or the pub owner will face a hefty fine. That doesn’t make any sense to me. Assuming I’m not bothering anyone else and as long as I’m walking, taking a taxi or otherwise not endangering anyone but myself how the f@#k is that anyone’s business but mine? I should be able to drink until I can’t stand up straight if I want to. I’m not saying that’s a good idea or that anyone should want to drink that much, but the point is simply that it should not be the government’s business to protect me from myself. That’s what friends and loved ones are for. That’s paternalism at it’s worst.

So here are the guidelines:

A Noticeable Change in Behaviour

  • Bad tempered, aggressive;
  • Offensive language;
  • Becoming loud, boisterous or disorderly;
  • Becoming physically violent;
  • Becoming incoherent;
  • Slurring, or making mistakes in speech; and
    becoming argumentative.

A Lack of Judgment

  • Being careless with money;
  • Annoying other persons, employees etc;
  • Exhibiting inappropriate sexual behaviour;
  • Drinking quickly or competitively (“down in one“)

Clumsiness & Loss of Coordination

  • Swaying;
  • Staggering;
  • Difficulty with walking;
  • Falling down;
  • Bumping into furniture;
  • Spilling drinks;
  • Difficulty in picking up change; and
    Fumbling for cigarettes, or other items

Decreased Alertness

  • Drowsiness, dozing or sleeping;
  • Rambling conversation;
  • Loss of train of thought;
  • Difficulty in paying attention;
  • Not understanding what is said;
  • Glassy eyes and
  • Lack of focus.

Appearance

  • Unkempt
  • Dishevelled

 

I think you’ll agree after perusing his list that many of the items here are obvious and self-evident. Defining being drunk is a bit like pornography: it may be hard to define but we all think we know it when we see it. But others make almost no sense at all, especially by themselves. This story originally appeared in the British trade publication, The Publican, and many of the pub owners they interviewed agreed, to wit:

Licensees have slammed the guidelines. David Wine, licensee at the Six Bells in Felsham, Suffolk, said: “This is an absolute nonsense. So what if someone is dishevelled? Does that mean Bob Geldof will not be able to get served in pubs?”

Steve Andrews, licensee at the Seven Stars in Devon agreed the campaign was “absolutely ludicrous”. “I have a lot of farmers and builders come in here and they’re dishevelled.”

“I would also question why police should be paid to sit around in pubs on a Friday and Saturday night.”

Yeah, that disheveled one does stand out. It’s as if you’ll have to dress up to go to your local if you want to be served. Since when does good grooming and a fashion sense equate with soberness? The “bumping into furniture” and “spilling drinks” would give my wife some trouble, as she tends to be quite clumsy without the slightest amount of alcohol in her bloodstream. Even if any of these aren’t dispositive, they will undoubtedly get you noticed by the bar Bobby as someone who bears closer watching. And that hardly seems fair: targeting the butterfingered and slovenly for special attention. Don’t they already have enough to worry about?

Overall, looney does seem the right word to describe this scheme to keep barkeeps from overserving to enforce a law that seems quite odd in the first place. Can this really be the most important thing Britain’s police force has to contend with right now? Surely there must be some more serious threats to the peace.

 

Ennui? Oui!

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pint
I know it’s been quite a while since I’ve posted anything new and a few people have written me to see what is the matter. It’s nice to know that I’m missed so I thought I’d update everyone. I’m just tired and took a little unscheduled time off to spend with the family and, hopefully, recharge my batteries. I traveled a bit in October and November and the last three Novembers I was working feverishly on novels as I participated in NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, where you challenge yourself to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days (and which I managed to be successful at each of the three years). I wasn’t able to do NaNoWriMo this year because I was in Germany for two weeks the first half of the month and I think I missed out on all the energy that enterprise produces. It’s hard to explain, and a bit counter-intuitive, but writing that constantly (at least 1,700 words per day) doesn’t really make me tired, but instead is more exhilarating because I’m creating something out of nothing. I guess that’s why I chose to be a writer, because even though it can be hard mental work it’s also very satisfying. It feels more like something I have to do rather than just something I can do. It’s been that way since I made up stories as a kid, when I wrote for the school newspaper and when I plotted out the endless books I never wrote. So that’s probably part of it.

The other part is I’m feeling more than a little ennui, which is common for me at this time of year. The holidays have been difficult for me for some time now. Most of my family — mother, father, grandparents, etc. — are all gone and have been for a lot of years. What family I have left is in Pennsylvania. My wife and her family are all out here and they’re great plus I now have the added joy of seeing the holidays through my kids’ eyes. I wouldn’t trade my life now for anything. But for some reason I always feel a touch of sadness at this time of year. Some years it’s better than others, but for this year it’s been tough. Also, over the last few months I’ve gotten a number of very unpleasant comments and e-mails from strangers (and organizations) who just don’t agree with my unfettered opinions. That’s to be expected, to be sure, but it is wearing me down. Many folks on the internet often don’t seem to realize that there’s another person involved and without the social cues of face-to-face communication seem to feel no compunction about treating their fellow human beings with appalling cruelty. It’s often so bad that even the most loathsome among us would never dream of treating even a stranger in a similar fashion if they were right in front of them. There’s a term for it, too: deindividuation, which essentially means “if we reduce our sense of our own identity we are less likely to stick to social norms.” That’s from an illuminating article in New Scientist and there’s some more good info in a Guardian opinion piece. There’s also another nice article at Salon by Gary Kamiya on manners online (for more about this, see Netiquette and RFC 1855). Of course, I’m often pretty obnoxious myself so perhaps I have it coming, who knows? Anyway, It’s gotten a little hard to take lately. I don’t mind disagreements — in fact I relish a good debate — but being called names and worse may not break my bones but it sure can drag down a mood and chill my enthusiasm for my fellow man.

Writing is, of course, a solitary endeavor so I find myself alone a lot of the time. I work from home, of course, so apart from my kids and the odd neighbor, I don’t really see, talk or interact with adult people all day long. My friends are all pretty spread out and rarely does anyone just stop by for the hell of it. Do that long enough and one does tend to go a little stir crazy. To everyone who wrote to inquire about my well-being, thanks, I appreciate it. It really helped to get me off the couch. So enough of my pathetic ramblings, tomorrow a new month begins and I’ll try my damndest to get back to pissing people off as best I can. Happy holidays.

neville
N is for Neville who died of ennui.
From Edward Gorey’s wonderful Gashlycrumb Tinies.