Wednesday, January 6, 2010

My nose may be the colour of a cochineal beetle, but it is a feature not a bug

I resent the commercially-coopted drinking culture in my current city of residence, where a couple of central streets are promoted as the official slough of iniquity where people enter in the evening and from which they are evicted in the wee hours when their wallets are empty, to stagger home or yack up in a bus-stop or start fights with lamp-posts and save their yacking-up activities for the back seats of taxis. Call me old-fashioned, but I feel that self-destructive blacking-out alcoholic excess is like Christmas -- it should be an outlet for personal spontaneity rather than an empty commercialised ritual.
Vittore Carpaccio -- Courtenay Place at Sunrise (Berlin Gemäldegalerie)

Officially the City Council deplores the immaturity of our drinking culture, and has reacted to the scandalous scenes of staggering and up-yacking by instituting Liquor Ban Zones where public possession and consumption of alcohol are only legal in the bars on which these zones are centred (or in the fenced-off, partly-privatised sections of footpath in front of bars). No-one could possibly have anticipated that giving publicans a monopoly over the public consumption of alcohol would have increased the amount of staggering and up-yacking. Anyway, the Council periodically extends the area covered by these Liquor Bans, and more bars appear in the Slough, and there is more public drunkenness, and let's not squabble about what is cause and what is effect.

If the current NZ moral panic about the "obesity epidemic" gets any worse, I imagine that the City Council will introduce Food Ban Zones where eating in public is illegal unless performed in a fast-food restaurant.

13 comments:

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

Perhaps the scene at teh Slough of Despond would be less desperate with the addition of some vomitoriums?

Edunt ut vomant, vomunt ut edant -
Juvenal
~

mikey said...

Hello? Hey dood, it's me. What're you up to? Yeah, right now. We're having a party over here at my place. You oughta drag your ass over here. Nah, it's easy to find. Last cave on the right. I've got a band rockin the place up on the roof right now, dood. Sure, just go past the pile of skulls in the front yard, oh, and pay no mind to old henry. He's passed out on the bench again, and the sheet's not covering much, if you catch my drift. Come down the road toward the end. If you hurry, you might be able to get a spot to watch the widow Markley take a bath, but it's a pretty popular passtime, so there might not be any peeking room available. From there, just go past all the busted up shit my hillbilly neighbors don't seem willing to police up, and you're there, dood. Bring some Gin, ok?

Substance McGravitas said...

I believe that is an ad for Japanese DOWN-again-yacking porn.

Hamish Mack said...

It does say Yahoo! at one stage so it might be Cowboy themed yakking pron.

mikey said...

Emmie just wants us all to know he's hilive...

Smut Clyde said...

Is Emmie our first spam-bot? Perhaps he or she was triggered by the words "Liquor Ban", or the phrase "watch the widow Markley take a bath".

The position of "Official Riddled Troll" is still open.

I'll clear up the empty bottles from the liquor cabinet as soon as I'm back, OK?

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

more bars appear in the Slough, and there is more public drunkenness

I will be booking my flight-STAT!

What is the City Council's take on public lewdness?

Smut Clyde said...

Public lewdness is deprecated if performed for free by untrained but enthusiastic members of the public. Conversely, if a member of the Chamber of Commerce is making money from the displays of the ecdysiastic art, then they are a positive contribution to the Vibrancy of the City Night-Life.

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

Public lewdness is deprecated if performed for free by untrained but enthusiastic members of the public.

I will have to rethink my plan.

mikey said...

Y'know, it's the rigidity I have a problem with. After all, one man's lewdness is another man's aerobic exercise...

Smut Clyde said...

it's the rigidity I have a problem with
We are going to get A LOT of spam comments if mikey keeps saying things like that.

Hamish Mack said...

How long must Mikey suffer simply because he likes to loosen up on the bus???//!11

mikey said...

Well, sure and to be honest trousers bind in places that should be unbound.

You'll notice that before the whole jesus thang doods wore these drape/wrap/sarong kind of things. Ghadafi is still all over that letting the boys swing dress code.

And what, WE'RE the advanced race? We got something called 'slacks', which are nothing but trousers made outta leftover curtains, and TIES fer fucks sake, which getcha a little "got it all together" points at the expense of, oh, I dunno, being able to TURN YOUR HEAD!!

I'm not a huge fan of wool, so you can keep your kilt and shit, but gimme some of that linen dress they had going on before they decided everybody had to WORK and shit, when the crops were good to go and the beer was brewed everybody just hung out and tried not to catch plague.

Lots to recommend the ninth century, is all I'm saying...