Freedom Isn’t Just Another Word

August 31, 2009 12:00 pm Richard Uncategorized 1 Comment

Read a strange and disturbing thing at the bar the other night. (Yes, I’m the whack-a-doo who reads in bars.) Was making my way through an interesting tome called Booze by Craig Hebron, a Canadian with all sorts of stimulating and diverting stuff to say about the history of drinking in his native land.

It seems that when the Prohibitionistas started running rampant through Canada in the 1920s, one of the philosophical underpinnings of their tedious movement was the notion that abstaining from intoxicating spirits would help people enjoy a higher degree of freedom, and assist them along the road toward more complete individuality.

Did your Bullshit Meter just go off like a midnight banshee? It should have.

The concept is, prima facie, idiotic and reckless. It turns any reasonable definition of “freedom” inside-out and back-asswards.

Simply put, people do not achieve an extra measure, or ascend to some higher level, of freedom by denying themselves access to life’s experiences. Sublimation is closure. Autonomy is born of acceptance. Life is just chock-full of experiences, after all. Our daily existence is defined by how we process and react to the second-by-second torrent of data that comes our way. A satisfying life is one that is lived in full engagement with variety; one that regularly enjoys a few shots with the unexpected and the uncommon; one that hoists its tankard and joins in a jolly toast with Life the Universe and Everything.

Qualifying events and occurances doesn’t broaden life at all. It truncates it. And that’s the polar opposite of freedom.

Yes, some behaviors, some actions and activities, are absolutely to be avoided. Rape, Murder, Child Abuse—come on. Who would advocate shit like that? But I’m not talking about getting your snuggle on with acts where one person damages—to any degree—another person. I’m talking about the things we do that effect us as individuals. And if there is anything more personal than one’s relationship with booze, I haven’t the foggiest what it might be.

Alcoholic intoxication provokes a wide range of responses in each of us, responses which are entirely dependent upon the psychological, sociological, and biological vagaries at-large in each of us, and which are as variable as our reactions to a movie, a sculpture, a Snicker’s bar, or a poke in the eye with a pointy stick. (And I’m not even going to get into the fact that the responses aroused by alcohol vary wildly from one type of alcohol to another—e.g., a tequila drunk differs quite a lot from a rum drunk.)

Cutting yourself off from something as illuminating, sociable, and complex as a booze-born high is the same as amputating a limbic limb; as puncturing your inner authority. It is the philosophical equivalent of performing dental work on yourself with a soldering iron and a Makita screw gun.

Temperance is low-rent fence-sitting. Abstinence is an exercise in delusional self-aggrandizement. And as far as revealing a triptych to freedom, neither does the job.

Anti-alcohol zealots are gaining strength in this country. Groups like M.A.D.D., and their lickspittles in government, will stop at nothing to take away your right to drink. And from the time such people first slithered from their soggy dens, one of their more repellant tactics has been to go after our language and change it around so that it fits with their topsy-turvy ideology.

So, go out and drink, friends. Get drunk. Raise your wrist with pride. And if some teetotaling douche-bag starts mouthing off about how “free” he is because he doesn’t drink, just flash him your best H.R. Drunkenstuff grin—and ignore the silly bastard.

Cheers.

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What the Hell?

August 19, 2009 7:36 pm Richard Rant, Uncategorized No Comments

I love drinking in Denver, and have always believed that this city has produced some of America’s foremost drinkers. I mean, you don’t get voted “Drunkest City in America” three times unless people around here have their sozzled shit wired tight. But something weird and foul has reared its odious little head in my town. And not only in my town, but right on Colfax Ave., no less—one of the country’s last bastions of dizzy debauchery; of free-wheeling and fuddled fun.

I won’t name bar in question (mostly because, for reasons that needn’t be rehashed here, I hate them and they hate me) other than to say it pretends to be an Irish pub, and this: it sponsors a running club.

Yes, a running club.

And not one of those cool sort of clubs where you stop every mile or two and shotgun a beer. No, this is an honest-to-Bruce-fucking-Jenner club for people who jog. Just jog; without shame, without fear, and, apparently, without so much as a jot or a tittle of booze. They pop inside the bar for water. Water! And on top of that, they have T-shirts. For real. T-shirts that say “The Blah-Blah Running Cub” or something equally daffy, with a little logo to round out the whole Up With People atmosphere.

What the hell is this? I mean it simply makes no sense. It’s non-Euclidian. It’s like AA sponsoring a shot luge, or the Southern Baptist Convention getting behind “Harvey Milk Day.” The words “running” and “bar” don’t even belong in the same sentence (other than this one, I guess). Bars sponsor darts leagues, pool tournaments, trivia contests, karaoke, motorcycle rallies, and that kind of thing. Gyms sponsor running clubs. I was bitching about this the other night and a guy said my thinking was too conventional. Maybe so, but look at it this way. Do you go to the zoo to see the critters, or to play golf? Do you visit a brothel to rent some rumble-tumble, or play Skeeball?

And another thing: jogging is just stupid all on its lonesome. Running just to run? That’s what hamsters do, and they have a brain roughly the size of a sunflower seed. You ever take a good look at a jogger? They look fucking miserable, man. Loping along, soaked in sweat, with this face like they just swallowed a maggoty turd. And the really serious runners, the marathoners, the 20-mile-a-day dingbats, they barely look like people anymore, with their ropey arms and legs, and their skin baked to that splendid shade of melanoma brown. They look like beef jerky in track shoes.

Who would do such a thing on purpose? I’m running, there had better be a pile of gold or a hot willing lady in front of me, or something with a gun and fangs and a snotty fucking attitude behind. Otherwise, let’s play basketball, or run from a herd of cranky bulls, or make it to the liquor store before it closes. Then, at least, you’re expending lots of energy for a demonstrable purpose.

Now, I realize that, with the economy the way it is, a bar has to address its attractions to stay in the long green, but damn. A bar sponsoring a running club is an affront against the gods. At least the ones who have taken any interest in my wobbly world. I plan to park my truck along one of their jogging routes with several cases of beer on ice. I dunno, just to fuck with ‘em, I guess.

Cheers.

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