Don't Drink To That

A minister's conjecture that it is "plausible that alcohol consumption was a contributory factor" to a bloody Sunday is no excuse for a dry Christmas. Try that discriminatory weekend ban on alcohol at Clarke Quay, and be prepared for another close encounter of an angry kind.

Alcohol don't cause riots, people cause riots. Specifically, unhappy people who take it out on the establishment, especially those representatives in uniform with a history of selective bullying and abuse. And guys who blog about it aren't always unhappy, they are just waiting to uncork the champagne bottle when the day of reckoning dawns.

What did the Bard say in Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 3?

"Drink sir, is a great provoker of three things... nose painting, sleep and urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes; it provokes the desire but takes away the performance."

Just ask the ladies, women and alcohol don't mix. Our top cops from the SCDF and CNB probably were stone cold sober when they rose to the occasion to receive female gratification in parked vehicles. No wonder there was no alibi offered for being "under the influence".

Excess consumption of alcohol does have its effects. One time we were guests of the brewery at Tuas, where they have free beer on tap. As in a direct line to the manufacturing process. After 4 (or was it 5) glasses of their finest product, the face turned greenish. The helpful host suggested a good lager should reverse the chemical reaction. The result was a mad dash to "drive the porcelain bus". People can be cruel.

Not all drinking buddies are out to do you in. Mates in Australia recommend a good chunder as essential preparation for the next beer challenge. Bonds are built that way.

It's not the same with those characters drunk with power. People who talk about repression and making love in the same paragraph,

"... it is easier the second time. The first time there may be pangs of conscience, a sense of guilt. But once embarked in this course, with  constant repetition, you get more and brazen in the attack and in the scope of the attack."

If the guy in charge can treat the act of procreation as a violent initiative, it figures why there is a chronic shortage of babies. What he really needed was a stiff drink, check with Willy Shakespeare.

And then there's the mini-George Patton waging all out war on the "lunatic fringe". When he goes berserk with his blood and guts mimic of a Bavarian corporal, you can bet he's referring to our blood and not his guts.  Don't look at North Korea for a psychopathic type leader who "prances around stadiums seeking adulation", they have anointed one right here.