November 7th, 2005
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The healing power of bad wine
Though I will be the first to decry the horrors of how you can seriously do physical, emotional, and property damage to yourself and others due to alcohol, of course I won’t go so far as to damn recreational beverages en masse. It’s as Mr. Larson’s shirt says, “Guns don’t kill people, I KILL PEOPLE.” And as such, a little nip here and there is nothing to be ashamed of. It can even be good for your blood… assuming it’s not the 399-yen infamous (meaning more than famous), Ureshii Wain, which translates very simply as “Happy Wine.”
And such was last Wednesday night, the eve of the hallowed and venerable Bunka no Hi (Culture Day). I play a little game from time to time, it’s essentially the same game I’ve been playing since I was about nine, but whimsy is increased, and the stakes are decreased (perhaps). Basically, there is a tried-and-true adolescent logic that dictates events seemingly uncontrollable by us mortal humans should dictate the decisions we make, or at least be an irrefutable sign heralding the will of the gods.
If Mom doesn’t scream downstairs to yell at me for breaking the vase before The Simpsons is over, it means she’ll never find out, or if she has, she doesn’t think it was me and I’m off the hook.
If that overhang doesn’t collapse and kill that sad, bloated cat, I should jump this ditch.
If the parking ticket doesn’t stay on the windshield when I’m doing 74 on The Parkway, it wasn’t meant to be paid.
Perhaps you’ve used this kind of hermetic reasoning at one point or another in your life. It may also be easily extended from what other people do (or do not) do, to what you can do yourself, some inane trivial feat, usually whose stakes are decided upon when you are halfway through accomplishing it.
If I can hit the tennis ball forty times without dropping it, I got an A on my math test.
If I can hold my breath until I get to the top of all the stairs in the house, I should go play Nintendo.
If I can run backwards up the driveway to get the mail and crabwalk back down without someone seeing and laughing at me, Stephanie has forgotten completely about that episode on the bus.
…and so forth.
As I said these canons are so set in stone from frequent use that they are second-nature even in modern society. Such that when I ride my bike home at night, the state of the traffic lights upon my crossing largely dictates whether I go to the grocery, buy a beer, or hang out in front of Shinjuku station looking for someone to annoy. [Though I've ridden up and down Yamate dori so much that I have just about every timed pattern memorized by heart, so there's not so much fun in it anymore.]
So there I was last Wednesday and it just so happened that I was in the mood for a drink since Thursday was a holiday, and it just so happened that I caught the lights to ride by the Mini-Stop on the way home, instead of branching off before it. Now I’ve had run-ins with the so called bottle of frugal mirth once or twice before and hated every drop of it, but I was too lazy to stop by any other convenience store (even though there were two directly in my path about a hundred meters down the road), so I plunked down my 399 and heeded the wisdom of the lights.
Whether it was the happiness, the hastily eaten dinner, or the fact I was just extra tired, I fell asleep playing Star Ocean 2 for the third time in two weeks, with the TV, PS2, and lights (as eternally dim as they are in my house) on, one arm draped over my withered stomach with a greasy Dual Shock, another around the neck of about 300-yen’s worth of Red #6 and Prestone. The same twenty-second world music somehow stayed looping all through my dreams and several half-hearted attempts to get up and make a proper movement towards bed; in the end about ten and a half hours sitting outside of Central City, where I had been busy compounding Skanda ointments. Unfortunately I didn’t save before I nodded off, and I had succeeded about seven times in making the power-ups, so I needed to end the overworld binge of nothing and eat the idle time on the game clock when I finally rose to the sounds of birds and laughing children.
Since pouring out ANY kind of liquor is alcohol abuse, I chugged through the happiness while preparing my lunch for the day. It actually put quite a spring in my step, and had me bopping around to Culture Club in boxers before heading out. It was also probably the crux of my inspiration for the charming thoughts on beauty previously posted.
I have notes here to talk about some of the things that actually happened after I left the house, but I’ve run out of lunch hour, so they’ll have to come later. Until then, I wish you the very happiest of days.
#elseif
[That whole thing about not paying the parking ticket if it flies off the windshield, I used that one so many times I was nominated for a Nobel Prize for Breakthrough Scientific Theory in Consumer Advocacy. Actually, no, not really. The truth is that I'm putting my life external to a medium-security correctional facility at jeopardy if I dare get behind the wheel of so much as a tricycle in the Great State of Pennsylvania. I had one ticket minus the towing limit in four of Pittsburgh's boroughs, worth well over eight hundred dollars in fines with compounded late fees. I pity the man who drives that shining red Grand Prix west of Breezewood, I tell you.]
