Complex Numbers

Alcohol

PROMPT January 17th

Use the following words in your entry today: tumultuous, navigate, journey, and gargantuan.

English is missing an important word.

We have the word "hunger," which means a physiological or psychological urge to consume food. We have "thirst," which signals a need for hydration. What we don't seem to have, and desperately need, is a word to describe the psychological desire to drink enough booze to alter one's state of mind for a limited time.

I'd want such a word to be distinguishable from the negative connotation of addiction, as befits my alcohol-positive lifestyle. It's not as if I feel that way every day, or even every week. When I tried to navigate the most common search engine to find an appropriate word, Google sent me to a bunch of sites like "How to cut back on alcohol" or "How to stop drinking booze" or "Reasons to live alcohol-free." While I'm sure those are helpful for some people, fuck you, Google. That's not what I asked for. First you censor porn and now this?

So to hell with it. When we want new words, we can usually turn to Greek or Latin. Unfortunately, I never learned Greek and don't remember much Latin. Fortunately, even if Google is run by accursed puritans these days, it can still provide translations, though perhaps of dubious provenance. According to that apparently neo-Prohibitionist, and thus suddenly suspect, search engine, the Greek word for wine was something like oinos, and one Greek word for desire was epithymia or epithumia. So for the purposes of this one blog entry I'm going to call it oinothymia. It's my blog and I can make up words if I want. If I were less hung over, I could probably come up with a better word, perhaps even of Anglo-Saxon origin. Maybe I will, eventually.

Point is, prior to the Bordeaux wine tasting that I talked about in yesterday's entry, hosted by the French person from France, I started to feel oinothymic. (That would be the adjective version of oinothymia.) Consequently, I decided to walk to the tasting in case I would be in no condition to drive back home. It was to be in a grocery store in the same retail paradise as the movie theater / drafthouse I've mentioned in here before, and close enough that I would feel silly Ubering over there (yes, I have verbed that noun; sorry, Lyft, you should have come up with a better name because Lyfting is kind of taken) when it's only a half-hour journey by foot.

It being January, that meant I needed to dress warmly, so it was also an excuse to wear my black leather trench coat. Last time I wore it, I was much heavier, and it didn't really fit. Now, I can actually button the thing, and I gotta say - I checked myself out in the mirror wearing it, and damn, it looks good on me.

So I walked in the chill January night, the bitter wind flapping my coat hem and scarf, with my shadow, when cast from a streetlight or a passing car's headlamps, making me feel like Harry Dresden or some film noir private investigator. I'm not that impressive a person, so I take my joy where I can.

On the downside, crossing streets at night whilst wearing all black is probably not the best idea. Still, the hazard is worth the risk in order to look as awesome as I did.

When I got there, the supermarket was packed solid with people, like a gym on New Year's Day, a tumultuous crowd rushing around the store. At first, I was puzzled by this; it was Thursday evening. And then I remembered: one weather report had predicted a 5% chance of a few flakes of snow on Saturday. Around here, that's all it takes for the mob to descend upon the grocery stores and clear the aisles of milk, bread, eggs, vanilla extract and cinnamon. For some reason, everyone makes French toast when they're snowed in. Or even if there are five minutes of flurries. Or the remote possibility that a flake might waft from the sky. Hell, it wouldn't surprise me if they closed all the schools today, you know, just in case.

It's a good thing, then, that the wine tasting was in a private room in the back of the store. After all of the above, I'll spare you the details; suffice it to say that 1) the wine was excellent and 2) there wasn't enough of it. Consequently, after purchasing a bottle of the most excellent of the wines, I moseyed on over to the taphouse - by which I mean the one that's not in the movie theater, but the other taphouse in the shopping center (this place has everything I need in life except for a cigar store) - to satisfy my oinothymia with some delicious craft beer.

In addition to wanting more booze, though, I was also hungry. While they had provided some palate-cleansing cheese between wine courses, all that did was whet my appetite. So I sauntered up to the bar and ordered a pint and a gargantuan salad.

What? Don't look at me like that. I'm still losing weight, and booze has calories.

Yeah, oh yeah, you seen me walk on burning bridges
Yeah, oh yeah, you seen me fall in love with witches
And you know my head is held inside by stitches
Yet you know I did survive all of your lonely sieges

And you know that I'll pick up every time you call
Just to thank you one more time
Alcohol, oh alcohol, alcohol

And you know that I'll survive very time you call
Just to thank you one more time for everything you've done
Alcohol, alcohol