Why we drink

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Completely drained by a Kids Eat Free dinner shift, I only have the energy to relay an actual conversation with a table this evening:

A family of nine, Ma, Pa, Grandpa, Auntie and a passel of young 'uns which included a little girl around 4 years old that was a ruddy little butterball ordering dinner. After a starter of cheese fries each of them ordered fried chicken and substituted their vegetables for a double helping of cheese fries with extra ranch dressing. It was at this time that I began to suspect the cause of their collective obesity...

Grandpa decides he wants fajitas, to the clan's consternation.

Me: "How do you feel about guacamole?"

Paw: "Huh what?"

Me: "Are you a fan of guacamole?"

Paw: "Naw."

Me: "Would you like something in place of guacamole, more pico de gallo or sour cream perhaps?"

Paw. "Jest give it to me normal."

Me: "It comes with sour cream, pico, mixed cheese and guacamole. If you don't like guacamole we will  double up on one of the other things. Which of them would you like?"

Paw: "Jest make it like it comes."

Me: "I need you to tell me what you would like it to come with."

Paw: "I want it normal. Do it like normal."

Me: "It is up to you, sir to determine what normal is. What. Would. You. Like. With. Your. Fajita?"

Paw looks around the table at his slack jawed kin. He is beginning to regret deviating from the fried chicken option. "I want it like how you make it."

This goes on for some time until I am forced to make an executive decision: "You appear to be big  fans of cheese. How about cheese? A lot of cheese?"

It turned out he didn't want "none of that other stuff" after all.

Valentine's Day is rubbish

Too soon?

It's that time of year again, gentle readers when I go on my perpetual Valentine's Day rant. For those of you currently in the throes of a dizzy romance, just read on and shake your head at how jaded I am. Then come back to it in about a year and a half. That's right. Because romance is rubbish and Valentine's Day is the high holy day of nauseating delusion and of course, marketing. If the jewelry store ads were honest they would say "Compensate your wife for putting up with you for another year! A tennis bracelet is cheaper than divorce!"
Or perhaps, "Get a necklace for your girlfriend this Valentine's Day and she may go down on you! Sure it would be cheaper and more of a sure thing to go to the Happy Fortunes Health Spa but that will make you feel dirty inside."

That's the ugly truth. Not that Ugly Truth. Even the presence of Gerard Butler couldn't persuade me to endure that movie, yet another comedy that uses irreverent 'guy humour' and sex as the bait on a barbed hook of what is obviously a chick flick. However, the picture says it all. The truth is that love, that breathless, passionate whirlwind that feels like a family of chipmunks in your gut, that kind of love is a myth. What?! Yes indeed. As far as Mother Nature is concerned, we are meat puppets she moves around with hormones in order to ensure a constant supply of  more little meat puppets and so on. Eventually she will probably change her game plan in light of how messy we have made the place but for now it's the mating game all the way. And the chief puppet string in all this is oxytocin. It's this hormone that makes us go on the crazy love bender. It engenders feelings of elation and suppresses cortisol, the stress hormone that we restaurant people are junkies for. It makes us feel safe and all tingly inside. It makes us feel in love. What produces oxytocin, you may ask. Well let's just say there's a lot of it going around at the Happy Fortunes Health Spa. Blowjobs. Yep. And all that good stuff. Orgasms are nothing but oxytocin generators and when you're trippin' on that stuff you feel just like Bella in a meadow with Edward, frozen in a moment of endless adoration. But, like sparkly vegetarian emo vampires, this feeling is fictional.

"How could this EVER get old?"

 Of course it feels authentic while you're experiencing it. The Flower Children in the '60's really believed the Age of Aquarius was upon us and the Nuwabians believe in the Spell of Kingu. Seriously, Google it. The point is that the use of drugs persist in our society because they work. Love is just another of these chemical compounds. It looks like this:

Mmmm.That's good lovin'.