to what extent does your life revolve around alcohol?

I'm feeling crappily hungover at the moment, and I'm certainly wishing my life revolved a lot less around bouze. Maybe when I grow up.

My social life revolves around music. Because so much of music happens in pubs, bars and places where booze is consumed, I think they become linked. But I think it's far more about the music rather than the booze.

How much my life depends on alcomahol depends on the situation, really. But then I always have these experiments to see if I *can* get through uncomfortable situations sober (gigging is always my nightmare situation- combination of pressure and social situation). And I usually can do it, I just don't enjoy it as much. I've gone years without drinking a drop, I can stop when I want to, but usually start again when I want to, too, simply because life is less interesting without alcohol.

Socialising with strangers and sex are the two things I actually have the most trouble doing sober. I can talk to friends sober, in fact, that's a good judge of how close a friend someone is- how well I get on with them when sober. But talking to people I've just met, or people I don't know very well? Hate doing that sober.

And sex? I don't know why I have to be drunk or at least tipsy to have good sex. I think it's something to do with overcoming self loathing in order to feel *sexy* in the first place. Or someone of course could make the obvious crack that I've just been having sex with the wrong people?

Does this mean you're going back on the sauce after your year of sobriety is up, Chris? I swear to god, you and Jane have switched personalities. She used to be a teatotaller and now quaffs absinthe cocktails, and you used to be a beermonster and you've gone cold turkey. Very strange world we are living in.

Most social events for me do revolve around pub, either as place to gossip and chat, or place to go and see THE ROCK MUSIC, hurrah! I find the idea of being in a pub and not drinking rather horrific. I can do without but I prefer not to. Num num. Nothing beats the wuvvly contented feeling from CURRY AND BEER.

on the subject of which, any laaaaah-ndoners got good pub quiz recommendations? obv a good dollop of music triv, but gen triv OK too. is the legendary rock-hard all-music one in that pub on chalk farm road still going?

Cheshire Cheese, Fleet Street - lovely boozer, like stepping back in time and drinking in caves, I will most likely be there very soon.

The Champion, behind Oxford street - nice pub which can act as a great revitaliser after shopping on Oxford street

Princess Louise, Holborn - victorian gin palace, amazing toilets, I think this is a smiths pub, can't remember too clearly though

Me and another mate used to run a pop quiz in Brighton called Pretty Vacant. It was.... legendary. It also featured a regular before-he- was-famous appearance from Andrew out of Big Brother 1. Happy days...

The beer is absolutely fine. And the pleasure you get when actual change is handed back to you when you buy a round easily makes up for the mediocre quality of the product.

Have you tried the Sam Smiths beer-in-a-bottle? Is it much better than the draft?

if you want to step away from beer then it's gotta be a bloody Mary, it's a meal in a glass.

Such a ILNaNoWriMo site would be fine & dandy - someone get to work on this. My hubris demands that I share my ratty prose with the world.

One time we got drunk on our lunch break. Three people fell asleep at their desks (ONE FELL ON THE FLOOR!), everyone else was very loud. At the restaurant one of the guys broke a glass and we all ran out. The next day we had an emergency staff meeting.

Now that I live in a better bar town,.. well, yeah, alcohol is found at many a cornerstone in my life these days.. heh heh... ugh.

Didn't drink much, if at all, from 14-19. Resumed at a party in 1995 or so, and drank now and again from then until May 1998 at age 21, at my college's outdoor music festival a couple weeks before I graduated, when I got absolutely plastered, far beyond anything I'd ever done before, and spent five hours alternately vomiting and unconscious in a women's public toilet (no one knew where I was, so no one came to help me) until I staggered back to my dorm room at five or six in the morning.

(About five hours later, my father almost died in a fall. Not a good day.)

Since then, I've had but little to drink -- getting that ill took away most of the fun. I don't like the way alcohol makes me feel anymore, either -- it used to have a euphoriac effect on me, but now it just makes me feel queasy, jumpy and vaguely lightheaded. So I have a glass of wine or Chartreuse or a beer every few months or so, and that's basically it. I suppose I miss the glow -- it was especially nice to have 2-3 glasses of wine at a good concert -- but really, once you're legal, it's not that much fun anymore.

That ususally doesn't happen though, and I am the person to see if you want to find out what exactly happened on our evening out...

I'm Irish. I might as well accept that I am a good ol' fashioned habitual drinker.

For all mirth made about self-driving cars.. once they perfect the technology, I think it'll be very good for society as a whole

We can ride around as fucked up as we please.

Problem is Elon's cars don't seem to always be sober

I like the idea of slow cars that are restricted to 15mph, reckon I could handle one of them.

I think Avalon on Catalina Island is golf-cart only

Peachtree City, south of Atlanta, is mostly if not exclusively golf carts. It's like a preserve for old white people.

old drunk white people

I once took my partner's mobility scooter for a very fun test drive, that was basically a mini golf cart - but one that you you are permitted to ride on the pavements. There was plenty of beer storage space on the back as well!

It's like a preserve for old white people.

Cryogenics iirc

our city just got those Bird scooters and on summer nights you can see plenty of clearly drunk people riding them all over the downtown. I saw one flip over a parked car but he seemed okay. only a matter of time before someone gets severely injured on one of those things. you're probably safer in your car.

I am a frequent pedestrian and bike commuter. My neighborhood is rife with app-rented scooters and bikes. Come Sunday morning they litter the sidewalks like dying cicadas.

With all respect to frogbs I don't think it's feasible (or even necessary) to apply the same sobriety standards to rent-a-scooters as cars.

Sorry if this sounds ghoulish and cynical but: if someone is driving drunk I would rather they be doing so on a 40-pound motorized skateboard than a two-ton Death Machine. If they get injured it will be their own damn fault; if they get involved in a crash with a car or a telephone pole or a wall or whatever it will most likely be them who gets injured and/or dead.

In my ideal world, of course every tipsy person would just poke the Lyft / Uber icon or find a taxi.

Given that there's still a hard core of people who just can't stop making terrible decisions, I am okay with having their terrible decisions mostly affect themselves (and as few other people as possible).

admittedly it's kinda funny to see people wipe out in these things while drunk, provided they just get up and walk away. its like when a cat totally biffs a long jump and just struts away like nothing happened

all these non-drivers need to stop rolling the dice putting their lives in my hands lol

lol that sounds like I drive drunk or something, I just meant people on non-motorized vehicles doing dumb shit in cities

Getting a bit off topic, but the most terrifying vehicles in NYC are the delivery guys on e-bikes. They are silent, they move fast, they tend to ride next to the sidewalk or between rows of cars where they are harder to see, and they tend not to obey traffic signals.

lol that sounds like I drive drunk or something, I just meant people on non-motorized vehicles doing dumb shit in cities

― not too strange just bad audio (brimstead), Friday, February 10, 2023 2:31 PM (nine minutes ago)

why do you drive a car in the city

Day drinking>night drinking

Heellll no

day drinking leads to night drinking, in my experience

Yeah, clearly not.
xp

idk, if anything day drinking leads to passing out by 5pm.

why do you drive a car in the city

― G. D’Arcy Cheesewright (silby)

you know, i bite my tongue not to say this every single time someone complains about driving in the city, or just mentions driving in the city in whatever context. i gotta learn to be more confrontational.

Xpost It fucks my entire day plus the evening is my reward for being productive during the day

I'd love not to drive in the city, believe me, if my city's idea of public transportation wasn't an awful bus system that often shows up to stops hours late, drives by them outright or doesn't show up at all, or are full with no room to board when they show up...

Or a rail system which doesn't run on weekends and has only a small number of boarding stations

Or take Ubers and Lyfts, which is just outsourcing driving in the city.

While an occasional drive in a quiet road can be nice, can't tell you how many times I went out for a drive to clear my head and what happened in the drive resulted in me getting stressed out more.

Excited about the expansion to Bright line long distance rail, but I would dream about selling my car (which I own) if I could do it. I like jamming tunes but drivers here are sociopaths.

The thing that always makes me happy about my visits to NYC are just walking and subwaying everywhere.

Heh, well, it's easy for me to say cause I don't know how to drive. I walked everywhere even when I lived in the burbs.

There's nothing like carrying 40lbs of groceries 3 miles back to your house on a sweltering day in August.

I get the transit fatigue, believe me. Trying to get home in the middle of the night on the barely functioning subway system, I mean, I was through with going out before I even turned 21.

I tried our local bus once out of necessity when my car was towed, how bad could it be, $2 all u can ride. It took me two hours to arrive at the tow place, which was five miles away, due to a) the inane routes leading to 70 transfers and b) one of the buses blew the stop and I had to wait for the next.

Wound up having to lead a conference call on the bus that day cos I got back so late. My project manager asked me where the Hell I was due to the noise lol

lol that sounds like I drive drunk or something, I just meant people on non-motorized vehicles doing dumb shit in cities

― not too strange just bad audio (brimstead), Friday, February 10, 2023 2:31 PM (nine minutes ago)

why do you drive a car in the city

people tend to do things like drive cars and drink alcohol because it’s makes them feel comfortable but I don’t know, we can’t be having that

Man I hate my life. Lol.

I have a buddy who's a notoriously prolific drunk driver (and got caught once).. but he recently started dating a woman who has zero tolerance for it, and lo & behold - now he's walking everywhere (which is mostly what I do)

Pretty sure I'm going to die at the hands of a motorist while walking down the side of a road that's unsuitable for pedestrians, I do that shit all the time and no matter how cautious I am, it's dicey.

lol at the conference call on a bus.

I have always felt that if I get hit by a car and survive I get a big payday and if I get hit by a car and die then I won’t be around to care meanwhile the driver will have to live with themself so I really come off better

very fatalistic lol

you could also get hit by an uninsured hit & run driver and get nothing but lifelong paralysis

I'm honestly counting on early death by vehicular manslaughter, I have no idea how I'm going to provide for myself in my old age otherwise.

Neando I think you should do all your conference calls from increasingly outlandish locations going forward just to mess with the project manager.

'Are you at.. are you at a bullfight??'

I was walking back to my car once after seeing Slayer at the Jaguars stadium and I was kinda in the road cos there was no actual sidewalk and one of the cops yelled at me "are u nuts being in the street, just about everyone driving is drunker than hell" and I yelled back "then I'm no safer on the sidewalk either" and kept going

Died and hour later, RIP me

angel of death!

ME (getting ready for dinner out this weekend with friends): "I'm going to try not to drink a cocktail before dinner."
WIFE (laughing): "I'm going to try TO drink a cocktail before dinner."