I began to think vodka was my drink at last. It didn’t taste like anything, but it went straight down into my stomach like a sword swallowers’ sword and made me feel powerful and godlike.
Sylvia PlathAttempts to locate oneself within history are as natural, and as absurd, as attempts to locate oneself within astronomy. On the day that I was born, 13 April 1949, nineteen senior Nazi officials were convicted at Nuremberg, including Hitler's former envoy to the Vatican, Baron Ernst von Weizsacker, who was found guilty of planning aggression against Czechoslovakia and committing atrocities against the Jewish people. On the same day, the State of Israel celebrated its first Passover seder and the United Nations, still meeting in those days at Flushing Meadow in Queens, voted to consider the Jewish state's application for membership. In Damascus, eleven newspapers were closed by the regime of General Hosni Zayim. In America, the National Committee on Alcoholism announced an upcoming 'A-Day' under the non-uplifting slogan: 'You can drink—help the alcoholic who can't.' ('Can't'?) The International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled in favor of Britain in the Corfu Channel dispute with Albania. At the UN, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko denounced the newly formed NATO alliance as a tool for aggression against the USSR. The rising Chinese Communists, under a man then known to Western readership as Mao Tze-Tung, announced a limited willingness to bargain with the still-existing Chinese government in a city then known to the outside world as 'Peiping.'
All this was unknown to me as I nuzzled my mother's breast for the first time, and would certainly have happened in just the same way if I had not been born at all, or even conceived. One of the newspaper astrologists for that day addressed those whose birthday it was:
There are powerful rays from the planet Mars, the war god, in your horoscope for your coming year, and this always means a chance to battle if you want to take it up. Try to avoid such disturbances where women relatives or friends are concerned, because the outlook for victory upon your part in such circumstances is rather dark. If you must fight, pick a man!
Sage counsel no doubt, which I wish I had imbibed with that same maternal lactation, but impartially offered also to the many people born on that day who were also destined to die on it. Christopher Hitchens
Mots clés history war united-states censorship antisemitism alcohol diplomacy china gods birth astronomy communism newspapers jews nazis hitler ussr prohibition israel birthdays britain alcoholism astrology vatican mao united-nations corfu mars damascus albania andrei-gromyko beijing breastfeeding communist-party-of-china corfu-channel-incident czechoslovakia ernst-von-weizsacker flushing-meadows flushing-queens horoscopes hosni-zayim international-court-of-justice nato nuremberg passover-seder the-hague
Alcohol makes other people less tedious, and food less bland, and can help provide what the Greeks called entheos, or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing. The only worthwhile miracle in the New Testament—the transmutation of water into wine during the wedding at Cana—is a tribute to the persistence of Hellenism in an otherwise austere Judaea. The same applies to the seder at Passover, which is obviously modeled on the Platonic symposium: questions are asked (especially of the young) while wine is circulated. No better form of sodality has ever been devised: at Oxford one was positively expected to take wine during tutorials. The tongue must be untied. It's not a coincidence that Omar Khayyam, rebuking and ridiculing the stone-faced Iranian mullahs of his time, pointed to the value of the grape as a mockery of their joyless and sterile regime. Visiting today's Iran, I was delighted to find that citizens made a point of defying the clerical ban on booze, keeping it in their homes for visitors even if they didn't particularly take to it themselves, and bootlegging it with great brio and ingenuity. These small revolutions affirm the human.
Christopher HitchensMots clés reading writing inspiration food christianity religion atheism miracles alcohol boredom wine new-testament brotherhood plato iran oxford ancient-greeks mullahs passover-seder cana entheos hellenism judaea marriage-at-cana omar-khayyam passover symposia
There were, however, a few exceptions.
One was Norma Dodsworth, the poet, who had not unpleasantly drunk but had been sensible enough to pass out before any violent action proved necessary. He had been deposited, not very gently, on the lawn, where it was hoped that a hyena would give him a rude awakening. For all practical purposes he could, therefore, be regarded as absent.
Mots clés funny alcohol humorous drunk drink
99% of all problems can be solved by money -- and for the other 1% there's alcohol.
Quentin R. BufogleMots clés money drinking alcohol humorous-quotations money-issues 1-percent 99-percent drinking-quotes humorous-quotes money-happiness money-quotes
Cover your glass in France or Germany --even worse, in England - and in the voice of someone who has personally affronted, your host will ask why you're not drinking.
'Oh, I just don't feel like it this morning.'
'Why not?'
'I guess I'm not in the mood?'
'Well, this'll put you in the mood. Here. Drink up.'
'No, really, I'm OK.'
'Just taste it.'
'Actually, I'm sort of...well, I sort of have a problem with it.'
'Then how about half a glass?
Mots clés humor drinking alcohol
Shan stared at his glass, then lifted it under his nose. It was the closest he would knowingly get to tasting the hard liquor. It was not because it would violate the vows of the monks, which he had not taken, but because somehow it felt as though it would violate his teachers who still sat behind prison wire in Lhadrung.
Eliot PattisonMots clés alcohol abstinence
She had not character enough to take to drinking, and moaned about, slip-shod and in curl-papers, all day.
William Makepeace ThackerayWe want ecstasy as a way of life, not a liver-poisoning alcoholiday from it.
CrimethInc.Mots clés alcohol sobriety ecstasy
Cheap booze is a false economy.
Christopher HitchensMots clés wisdom alcohol value economy
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