The best food metaphor for America...
Feuerzangenbowle
Punch Bowl from Hell
... isn't, strictly speaking, food. Nevertheless:
[I]n 1787, two days before their work was done, the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention "adjourned to a tavern for some rest, and according to the bill they drank 54 bottles of Madeira, 60 bottles of claret, 8 of whiskey, 22 of port, 8 of hard cider and 7 bowls of punch so large that, it was said, ducks could swim around in them. Then they went back to work and finished founding the new Republic."So says Barbara Holland in The Joy of Drinking, as related by Robert R. Harris in a recent New York Times book review (May 6, 2007). No accident, therefore, is W.J. Rorabaugh's choice of title for his book on Americans at drink: The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition
Also no accident -- given my theological interests -- is my choice for 'choice' quote from Holland's book. According to her, the Puritan minister Increase Mather held that:
"Drink is in itself a good Creature of God, and to be received with thankfulness, but the abuse of drink is from Satan, the wine is from God, but the Drunkard is from the Devil."Holland maintains that Mather's words are "an early version of our incessant 'moderation' sermons, with only a pint or two dividing heaven from hell," but I insist that Mather's words demonstrate the broadmindedness of Puritans, who knew that Jesus provided abundant wine at a wedding in Cana as his first public miracle (John 2:1-11) and took an occasional drink himself -- occasionally even enough to get himself called a "winebibber":
The Son of man is come eating and drinking; and ye say, Behold a gluttonous man, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners! (Luke 7:34)So if you're wondering whether to enter that bar, or not, just ask yourself, "What would Jesus do?" Well obviously, as the friend of publicans, he must frequently have frequented more than one pub, so go on in!
Though I don't think that the old British expression "drunk as the lord" refers to the Lord Jesus, for that condition would have put him several pints over the line dividing heaven from hell, implying infernal rather than celestial origins, and we know as a point of dogma and modal logic that such is metaphysically impossible.
Those 55 delegates to America's Constitutional Convention, however, did cross that territorial line, and forged so far within the infernal regions that I can only infer from their reported actions that the best 'food' metaphor for America is...
... "the punchbowl from hell."
Labels: Alcohol
posted by Horace Jeffery Hodges @ 4:45 AM
9 comments
9 Comments:
Thankfully, my taste buds never aquired an appreciation of alcohol. Even back in college, I had to force down the first glass, and then after the buzz kicked in, I could drink more. I say "thankfully" because just yesterday there was a health news item about how drinking two or more drinks a day over many years is shown to kill brain cells to the point of accelerating age-related brain shrinkage:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article1739163.ece
A cause of this shrinkage seems to be related to alcohol-induced dehydration:
"When alcohol goes into the bloodstream it causes the pituitary gland to block the creation of "vasopression". Without this chemical the kidneys send the water directly to the bladder instead of reabsorbing it into the body. The body will lose 4 times the amount of liquid that it gained. Thus you get really thirsty the next morning and a headache that is a result of dehydration. The body will actually take water from the brain causing it to decrease in size and pull on the membranes that connect the brain to the skull - ouch!"
http://www.mcvitamins.com/Health%20Opponents/alcohol.htm
If you were ever a guest in my home, I could offer you twenty different kinds of tea from South African rooibus to Japanese kukicha, but alas, not a drop of the spirits.
I hear such contradictory reports about the subtle spirits, so I'm going to go with the positive ones, and if the positive are met by the negative in a dialectical thesis-antithesis moment, then I can hope for a Hegelian negation-of-the-negation, also known as "sublimation" -- a synonym for distillation, I believe.
Somehow, it all fits together in my mind ... despite my alcoholically constricted brain.
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
And my hat size has decreased from 5 and 7/8's to 5 and, no what? And the good doctor tells me to lower my cholesterol by partaking of two drinks per day? Will he have my brain shrink? Is a smaller hat size less expensive?
Breaking news ala Eurekalert shows age is accelerating in proportion to the number of days one breathes.
I'll breathe instead, but restrict myself to wine. Sonagi, was it "thankfully" that drink was best enjoyed in college?
Kidding, my brain is shrinking.
JK
Well, JK, we can rejoice that some things are not becoming inflated with age ... but maybe you used to have thicker, more luxuriant hair?
Ah, those days of wine and roses ... and sitting on rooftops in granny glasses and hillbilly hats.
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
John Lennon lenses, a cap.
Pond some distance from the school's structures.
And perhaps perch. A shining minnow. I've friends who do not care to see me, recall me. Yet I think of Pat.
And of Pat's travail: I cannot help, recognition avails itself only if that man knows I know something of the path.
I; with his help throwing out a a second base, and no argument taken, ball caught. Laughter a bit. And that man taken out is out: his Mother mourned until the day she laughed.
The ball was hid. Backhanded. And second base received. He stood unrealized, yet out.
Oh Pat, you have it within, and without. Your friend whom you've dismissed perhaps, wishes you, and yours, a green field.
JK
"I hear such contradictory reports about the subtle spirits, so I'm going to go with the positive ones, and if the positive are met by the negative in a dialectical thesis-antithesis moment, then I can hope for a Hegelian negation-of-the-negation, also known as "sublimation" -- a synonym for distillation, I believe."
Reading and pondering that sentence has given me a headache worse than any hangover.
Thank you, Sonagi.
As I've always said, "If you can't blind 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit."
And I'd now suggest that you now have yourself a little drink...
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
"If you can't blind 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit."
I like that statement.
Hathor, thank you. It's brilliant, isn't it? Sadly, I cannot claim credit, for I heard someone else use it long ago...
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
Post a Comment
<< Home