Fortified Wines: Racism One Swig at a Time
For this morning's BYCU, a throwback to 2024
Topic
BYCU
A collection of 16 issues
Is "Dry January" Just a Neo-Prohibitionist Trick?
News and commentary to fuel your weekend
Waiting for the Biggest Bar Night of the Year
đź’ˇBYCU from 2021
“The waiting is the hardest part.”
Tom Petty
#blackwednesdaysmatter
It sits there. Five days away, the biggest bar night of the year, two years removed from the last one.
Black Wednesday.
I will have the traditional BYCU Special Edition next Wednesday.
Today, I wait. I’m itching
BYCU: Variety is the Spice of Life . . . and Good Health
Brews You Can Use
I Spent Wednesday Evening with a Bottle of Gin and a Pile of Old Magazines, Wasting Time on a Stupid Task
It was a delightful waste of time.
These May Be The World's Most Unusual Booze Brands
Arkhi Vodka
Once upon a time in ancient Mongolia, the nomadic horse tribes began fermenting
mares' milk to make a drink called airag, a product similar to the drink we know
as kefir. At some point, they started taking this fermented mares' milk and
distilling it to make
Dorothy Parker was a Brilliant Slut and Four Other Sundries to Entertain Your Friends at the Bar Tonight
The godfather of modern libertarianism, Albert Nock, was in his prime during Prohibition. Needless to say, he railed against it, noting once that it’s absurd to regulate something that, in nature, flows as freely as water.
He’s right, of course. And the fact that it flows as freely
The Art of Ghosting (First Take)
Don't tell them "goodbye"
It’s not often that I read something at Slate and say, “Rat own!” But this guy pretty much nails it, even if he doesn’t go quite far enough in my opinion: Don’t Say Goodbye.
He advocates a thing called
English Drunks, Both Fictional and Not
I linked to The Guardian’s obituary of Wilfrid Sheed (1940-2011) yesterday. Sheed’s first book was A Middle Class Education (1960), which was apparently semi-autobiographical, much like Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited.
The Guardian notes that there’s a lot of drinking in Middle Class:
Owing more to Kingsley
How Alcohol Fuels Civilization
Gonna pick me up a six-pack of art this evening
Marshall McLuhan made himself a household name, writing about media. Media are tools, things that extend ourselves: a hammer extends our fist, flashlights extend our eyes, etc.
I'm not sure he ever considered whether alcohol might be a