beer

Oh, Balls!

/ Diane Henders / 46 Comments

The other day a conversation with a female friend turned into a roundabout discussion that began with fruit, took a rapid detour to testicles, and ended with dirty limericks.  I can’t name the friend without potentially embarrassing the innocent man whose mangoes we were discussing, but the guilty party knows who she is.  I’m pretty sure I can still hear her giggling.

Anyway, I started to wonder why limericks lend themselves so admirably to off-colour content.  Maybe it’s something about the rhyme structure.  You just never see an obscene sonnet or haiku.  (Though if you know any, feel free to enlighten me.)

Most of the limericks I know are so vile I only recite them in the wee hours of the morning at a keg party, after I’ve set my glass aside and begun to drink directly from the pitcher for the sake of efficiency.  The last time that happened was many years ago, and it’s unlikely to happen again anytime soon.

But I still consider it one of my finer achievements to make a dozen inebriated guys gag simultaneously and flee the area.  Abandoning the keg, no less.  That was some limerick.  Needless to say, I won’t be including it in this post.  I can’t afford to lose readers.

I have no idea why I retain dirty limericks on the tip of my brain for instant retrieval when I can’t remember useful information like my sister’s not-so-new-anymore phone number.  And maybe I should be concerned that I can recite three limericks about testicles without a moment’s thought.

Here are the ones that sprang immediately to mind:

There was a young man from Boston
Who drove around in an Austin.
There was room for his ass
And a gallon of gas,
But his balls hung out and he lost ‘em.

Or how about this one:

There was a young man from Devizes
Whose balls were of two different sizes.
One was so small
It was no ball at all,
But the other one won several prizes.

Or:

There was a young man from Madras
Whose balls were made out of brass.
He’d bang them together
To play stormy weather,
And lightning shot out of his ass.

Frankly, that last one never made much sense to me since I happen to know brass won’t create a spark no matter how much you bang it together, but whatever.  It makes a good rhyme.

Maybe dirty limericks are so popular because they’re easy to create (and let’s face it, a lot of people have dirty minds).  Since I happen to believe there’s always room for more bad poetry in the world, here’s my attempt:

There once was a woman from Cowtown
Whose crudity made strong men bow down.
Though they tried to harass her,
They couldn’t surpass her.
The Queen of Vulgarity’s now crown’d.

Anybody else have dirty limericks lurking top-of-mind?  Or, more shockingly, clean limericks?  Do share.

Or feel free to get creative and make up one of your own.  I dare you.

Why Do I Do It…?

/ Diane Henders / 15 Comments

I cling to the delusion that I’m a relatively intelligent human being.

It only took me one try to learn that you don’t guide the plug into the socket by gripping the prongs with your thumb and forefinger.  I’m generally a pretty quick study that way.  When it hurts, I figure I must be doing something wrong.

But I recently came to a realization that shook the very core of my confidence:  I’m a very slow learner when it comes to eating.

Not that I don’t know how to eat.  Far from it.  I’m an eating prodigy.

My problem is I don’t know when to stop.

For some reason, I lack the judgement I’m able to exercise in all other areas of my life.  I apply the “if it hurts, stop” rule with a high degree of success until it comes to food.  Then the rule comes out looking more like, “if it hurts, keep eating until it really hurts, then stop for a while and drink beer until you can eat again”.

I prefer to call this “gusto”, which is a nicer way to say “stupidity”.

After several decades of research and analysis, I’ve concluded my friends are to blame.

It can’t be the beer impairing my judgement, because I’m capable of hurting myself with or without it, though the whole effort is more enjoyable in the presence of alcohol.

It can’t be me, because I don’t eat like that when I’m at home.  I’ve had people come up to me at a party and say, “Wow, I wish I could eat like you and still stay that slim.”  To which I respond, “Don’t bother wishing.  I don’t even eat like me.”

This phenomenon was hammered home a few weeks ago at a friend’s birthday party.  We were sitting around the table eating take-out Chinese and shooting the breeze until suddenly I glanced at the completely cleared table and asked, “Am I the only one still eating?”

And everybody laughed and said, “Well, duh.”

I was in pain.  I had been comfortably full when I took that last helping, and I knew I didn’t need to eat more.  I ate it anyway.  Then I ate brownies and birthday cake.  Then I propped myself in a chair and held my stomach and groaned.  Then I drank some more beer.  If we’d stayed any later, I’d have been back into the snacks.

Why do I do it?

It’s not peer pressure.  Nobody says, “Hey, I bet you can’t eat this.”  In the first place, they’re mature human beings and I’d like to think we’re all a little past the point of silly challenges.  In the second place, they know they’d lose the bet.

But that’s not the point.

I’ve got nothing to prove, and even if I did, I’d be embarrassed to prove it with sophomoric excesses.

So I can only conclude it’s some sort of hive-mind telepathy by which I absorb and respond to everyone else’s appetites.  I’m not eating for me; I’m eating for everybody in the room.  Ergo, it’s not my fault.

Maybe I’ll wear a tinfoil hat to the next party.  Think that’ll fix the problem?

Happy New Y… Wait, Where Are My Clothes?

/ Diane Henders / 19 Comments

It’s a sad fact that I’m long past the age when that question should be on my lips.  It’s also a sad fact that I asked myself that very question this New Year’s Eve.

I only had three pints.  Honest.  And I was home by 9 PM.

In my defense, I was fighting a cold, and I didn’t feel much like eating.  Many people would consider it unwise to start slugging down beer when one’s entire food consumption for the day has been two slices of toast, an apple, a granola bar, and some guacamole.  Apparently, I am not one of those people.

The beer was very tasty.  I had good intentions to anchor it with a pizza, but the pub cook dropped my pizza in the kitchen (no, I’m not making that up).  So they had to make it again, and by the time it arrived, I’d already downed a pint.

Let’s just say it was a very effective pint.  I strive for efficiency in all things, and in this case I outdid myself.  By the time the pizza arrived, it was far too late to act as an anchor.  All it did was bob like a pathetic dinghy in the rough swells of my second pint.

The third pint was, frankly, unnecessary.  But oh, so tasty.

At approximately 1.2 pints, I achieved the correct level of intoxication for shooting eight-ball.  Anything under a pint, and I’m trying too hard.  At the magical “optimum beer saturation level” (OBSL), pool becomes easy.  I can still triangulate with both eyeballs.  I effortlessly calculate angles, the cue feels like an extension of my own arm, and I sink balls one after the other, swaggering around the table with only a tiny bit of cockiness to clear the table and sink the eight-ball.

The problem is, it’s impossible to maintain OBSL.  Exactly one game after achieving it, it slips away again, at which point I might as well try to guide the cue ball using the Force.  ‘Cause I sure as hell can’t guide it with the cue anymore.

We rang in the New Year for St. John’s, Newfoundland at 8:30 local time (thank goodness we live in a multiple-time-zone country), and headed home.  Walking, fortunately.  At least the cold didn’t bother me.

I went upstairs to change my clothes.

I couldn’t find them.

I stumbled around the bedroom, looking in all the usual places.  Closet: Nope.  Bathroom:  Nuh-uh.  Chair in the corner:  Not there either.  At last, I discovered them cleverly hidden in plain sight, lying on the bed.  (It was dark in there.  Never mind.)

I’m a little foggy on how that could have happened, because when I know I’m going to put the same clothes on later, I usually leave them where I removed them.  The walk-in closet and the ensuite bathroom are the usual locations.  If I had actually taken off my clothes beside the bed, I’d have been mooning the neighbours.  And that was when I was sober.

I guess I’ll never know for sure.  But if the neighbours avert their eyes and snicker the next time they see me, I’ll have a pretty good idea.

Happy New Beer!

Gettin’ Down At A Piss-Up

/ Diane Henders / 9 Comments

This weekend, we attended the Grape Escape, a showcase of food, wine, and liquor.  As usual, there was a mind-boggling and delicious array of food and booze.  As usual, we poured ourselves into a cab afterward and managed to maintain a semi-vertical orientation while we staggered into our house.

Many of the other attendees didn’t manage to stay even semi-vertical.  By the end of the four-hour event, bodies were propped against the walls, and I was saved from being crushed only because a garbage can intercepted the fall of the very tall man stumbling determinedly in my direction.

Considering that 2,500 shit-faced strangers are confined in one large hall for four hours, it’s a remarkably orderly event, probably due to the pairs of police officers sprinkled strategically throughout the venue.  We go every year, so none of this surprised me.

What did surprise me was the sheer number of seductively-dressed women in attendance.  I obviously failed to realize the hook-up potential of the show.  It was -20 outside.  I saw more exposed flesh there than at a Calgary beach in the middle of summer.  Not to mention 4”+ stiletto heels, which are truly entertaining when their wearer couldn’t walk a straight line if she was barefoot and holding two handrails.

The crowd was cheerful and all-embracing.  Literally.  I wore jeans, a T-shirt, hiking boots, and a wedding ring.  By the end of the event, guys even started coming onto me.  I’m not sure whether they couldn’t see straight enough to realize they weren’t talking to the cute young thing beside/behind me, or whether they just didn’t care that much anymore.  Gotta love beer goggles:  improving middle-aged women’s self-esteem since the invention of beer.

I felt sorry for the long-suffering vendors by the end of the night, though.  I’m pretty sure there were only a handful of us who were still capable of focusing both eyes on the label while they extolled the virtues of their Sauvignon Blanc.

Some of that was their own fault, though.  They were generous with their samples, and there were a couple hundred different kinds of beer, wine, liqueurs, and hard liquor.  Take even a mouthful of each, and you won’t make it around all the displays.  I speak from happy experience here.  Very happy.

I was delighted to discover some new favourite beers and wines, but I guess I missed the main point of the event, which was apparently to get pissed and get down.

I didn’t quite achieve “pissed”, but I was close.  Next year, I’ll try harder.  And maybe I’ll get myself some 4” stilettos, too.  It’s cheap amusement to see a guy’s expression when I peer down at him from a 6’2” height.  Fortunately, Hubby’s secure in his manhood, and at 5’7”, he doesn’t mind being eye-level with a couple of my more outstanding features.

And, hey, when you’re wearing heels that high, getting down at the end of the evening is a sure thing.  Who says four inches can’t be satisfying?