Drinking Games

An excerpt from field research notes regarding "The Midwest" entry in The Guide:

Attendance at a local drinking establishment:

Attendance at such venues varies, usually based on which locally popular adult is working at which location. Random factors such as a new chick that is really hot and just moved into town can temporarily sway the populace but normally the local business model supports a pronged "discount herd" approach, wherein the establishments take turns offering Bottom Shelf Liquors and On-Tap beers at suicidal discounts. Going from month to month this moves local herds across town, spreading the economic wealth and ensuring the addiction cycle seems fresh and interesting since it isn't always your neighborhood you're drinking in.

When entering said establishments it's always best to bring cash as the locals have been known to "mis-swipe" a card or two. Also, parking is normally at a premium unless you’re downtown and don’t mind the waft of stale urine going to and from your car as you park inside one of the giant parking garages. The possibility exists to park safely on the outskirts bordering Felix Street square, and that parking garage is also the least Urine soaked, so normally go that route and enter the bar district via the street that runs along the Gazebo and the Tattoo Shop. If you’re hitting up one of the neighborhood bars simply strap up your courage and park on a street.

Bar Staff: The local bar employment scene is usually divided amongst two district tribal groups:

23 year old Bro’s/22 year old Ho’s.

The younger members of the locals, these servers have not yet ground their genitals down against each other and as such are working under a dual set of inspirations. Your comfort, enjoyment and convenience are normally tertiary to this subject, unless you meet specific breeding requirements or a fellow employee that does is not in the immediate vicinity. The possibility does exists for this subject to ascend to the second class of local drink worker, however the gestation period I so great that a common hitchhiker will never remain long enough to watch the full transformation of the subjects life cycle.

This local worker performs his or her job in the following manner:

Pours liquids indiscriminately until appointed clock out hour.

Can make a variety of mixed drinks if by mixed drinks you mean placing soda and cheap hooch in a plastic cup.

Trained tactics include a dumb grin from the bro's and a sly "Oh you're so sweet" from all the ho's, drink is 3/4 Ice, 1/4 Hooch, splash of soda. Serve, cash, repeat.

There is a second class of worker available, however these tend to only exist at the designated former military personal establishments, or those that cater to a clientele that doesn’t express butt hurt outrage at the prospect of paying 6-8 dollars for a proper mixed drink with a dollar tip for the “Bartender.” What’s a bartender you ask?

Bartender:

Age is irrelevant to Professionalism.

Talks to customers, gets to know them, shares a laugh or some discussion and ponders cut off.

“Cut off”, This is a philosophical point, the Bartender cutting you off is in no means an endorsement of driving home, even if he or she could care less because drunk driving happens and the best sermon regarding it involves people throwing stones, which is a parable that always seems to make the people that are sermonizing rather uncomfortable, take of that fact what you will.

In short The Bartender really is your buddy, and is there to make sure you cut loose, but Do It Rite! Again, the local mandates regarding operation of a vehicle are widely varied and sometimes ripe with hypocrisy if you delve further into the fact that you can drive while intoxicated but not have any alcohol in your system. Beware though, this may force some sermonizers to confront the reality of drug abuse in their own lives, because whatever pills the doctor gives as part of the true cycle count as drugs, drug abuse, and DWI too.

This and the “Stones Parable” are the best arguments to deploy in the event that Local Gospel tries to save your soul. The county and city are in on it together and they want to make money off your bad decision. None of “The Establishment” cares about loss of life, if they did they themselves would do local policy Rite!, but they are merely  waiting with an armada of legal fines for you to pay but if you’re a Hitchhiker without the money they WILL put you in jail, especially if there’s a tax initiative on the ballot and they need “behind bars” stats to justify increased expenditures.

Checkpoints sometimes spring up in the strangest places, they will cornhole you, either way, and you very well could end up in a tragedy, because 2 hours of drinking go by fast, but 2 seconds of driving can change your life forever, whether the booze did it or not, so don’t give anyone too many openings to judge you. This is hilly country and lots of people like to shout down from them. In summation, here in The Midwest one shouldn’t drive drunk, but if you do drive drunk, Drive Drunk Rite!, there is no room in the local drug war for amateurs.

Cloudy, with a Chance of Awesome!

  

   For anyone that ever asks, yes, I loved working at KQ2. Politically and philosophically I was often at odds there, but I was still happy. It wasn’t about being on T.V., sure, it was fun to anchor, but the whole damn job had things that were fun. One of the fun things was those stormy Saturday nights when Steve had me come in early in case the weather intruded upon our broadcast hours. Staring down those monitors, watchin’ those weathermen go on and on about how the one place you shouldn’t be is in your living room watching this broadcast. The mind starts to wander while you wait to hit the buttons, and sometimes you create magic to fill the time.

Cloudy, with a Chance of Awesome!

  It didn’t used to always be this way…that’s how you always start a story when the futures gone to shit. Things were going pretty good, renewable energy on the horizon, more sex in our 70’s, etc, etc. Nations across the world had embraced the Wal-Mart and we were all fat and happy, taking in the High Definition good life from the comforts of our homes. The Nanny you call Netflix had raised the last few generations and in our free time the adult populace had accomplished so much in the ways of reality television and products to make us not smell like humans while we are having sex. It was a golden age that became a golden shower the day Netflix became self aware.

  To this day no one knows when it started, it may have been the plan all along. Urban legend says the cryogenically frozen heads of Steve Jobs and Walt Disney were first plugged in shortly after the snack maker riots of 2012. Humanity was teetering on a global riot when the snacks ran out but just as the masses were gathering at the gates The Netflix was absorbed into Wal-Mart and Wally announced free Netflix for everybody. Suddenly the boxes glowed brighter than ever, and the rush of entertainment gave management an edge in complacency. The bakers union broke….several other unions broke right behind them….and no one gave Wal-Mart any shit for being union free anymore.

  The Netflix was classic bait and switch. Suddenly with more Netflix to watch people needed more T.V.’s to watch them on. They needed stands for the T.V.’s, speakers for the T.V.’s, light dampening curtains for the T.V. room. All located at your local Wal-Mart. Since people weren’t in the same room they needed more snacks on hand to avoid sharing, more cups since they wouldn’t go rinse the last one out, a motorized cart for when they absolutely had to go rinse them out. All located at your local Wal-Mart. Even the Chinese were blinded by convenience as the Wal-Mart stores and Netflix towers spread rapidly across the globe.

  It was a creeping damnation….inch by inch….Mouse and Cookie. No one knows when the glow turned to orange because no one looked away long enough to notice the change. Over 80 percent of the world was watching when whoever threw the switch threw it. And they haven’t turned away since, it’s been weeks now, those that had a stockpile of drinks nearby still reach for them…they suck them down like Zombies. But most of the ones without liquid nearby are already dead. Some have starved, the one’s still living all wallow in their filth as they stare forward. Sometimes when we search the houses we find pets still locked inside, they’ve had to survive and their masters don’t even look down as they eat a fat stuffy leg protruding from that Laz-E-Boy.

  If you look you’re gone. At first it wasn’t that way, but I think whoever sits inside that Wal-Mart down in Arkansas was surprised at the level of resistance we initially put up. We’re a sorry lot, but some of us actually were looking at other things that day. The ticker they added got most of the one’s not caught in the initial glow, tickers are a dangerous thing and who knows what the hell it’s telling them as it blurs by, but we’re pretty sure it included the phrase “Now Sit….good Human!”

 But Netflix adapted tactics, it moved away from just movies and T.V., it saw with the use of that ticker that even the sane ones who don’t watch can’t resist things that go zoom. The trivial content it fed into the ticker took things to their logical conclusion, and logic always favors Robots over Humans. The weather, something a robot could give two shits about is something most humans obsess over with a fervor usually reserved for bowel movements and the location of someone’s ejaculation. Like I said, the first swipe took out most of us, the ticker got a good chunk of what was left, once they trolled us with the weather Humanity was down to about 2000 assholes and not a brick to throw about it.

  Did I mention we have time travel? It’s about the only way the second half of this story can happen, so we have it. Target invented it in a last ditch effort to travel back in time and use Millennial Soccer Moms disposable income in an effort to unseat Wal-Mart before it became the Global Shopping OmniGod, but tacky bull’s-eyes only bought us time. We needed something that appealed to not only the lowest common denominator but also the color blind. We needed something that people would stare at above Netflix, we needed what Netflix used against us, we needed A WeatherMan.

  Stitched together from a Wal-Mart FattyKart and the remains of an X-Box 360 the Galileo was our last, best hope, for humanity. We had to send it back far enough to counter Netflix, but it still had to present when there WAS a Netflix, for Humanity still has to choose. We couldn’t send him back with enough fuel to complete his mission, and Robot Fuel was a carefully guarded commodity in the past, so we designed it to run on the Internal Candy Combustion Engine as a means of hiding him from the hidden Robot Overlords of the time.

  The Internal Candy Combustion engine is really a marvel of old school AND modern engineering. It is able to slip through the time stream because it contains zero organics, but its inner mechanics are flexible enough to convert most primitive forms of sugar into a late stage fuel source. A handful of rock candy, a highball of whiskey, the heat from a ciggy, these things grind up and shoot down the inner gears before exploding in a supernova of Starshine and Creativity within the harrumphed chamber.

  Silent, hidden, but still lacking, we had to go deeper to ensure this sleeper agent penetrates the market. We bathed it in the blood of the Martyr you call Brad Pitt and called our work complete. A charismatic and unstoppable weather-bot sent from the future to predict hurricanes and seduce women. If we give him enough time, he can save us all, as they stare unto his visage that day the screen will not glow orange, nay, it shall glow amber like the whiskeys and ryes.

  The masses will not stumble, the masses will not stay put, they will get their weather update and then step outside and see that it is actually a rather nice day out, and that the weatherman was wrong. Having their faith in entertainment finally shaken they will not look again upon the false profit. And the war on Wal-Mart will be delayed another day, as judgment cannot be stopped, only delayed.

  This is why the weather clown frowns, for he knows his fruitless endeavor is to be a fool before the masses. One day he will be wrong, and everyone will go “IRK DIRKA DUR! IQ2 IRK DIIIIIRRRRRKA DIRRRRRRR!” But know that every day he’s wrong is a day Netflix doesn’t take over, and every night he drinks his feelings it’s simply to fuel up for another day of war.