March 17, 2005
Sláinte is táinte!
But liquor is quicker. And quickest of all, apparently, was ether. From Perrine's Chemistry of Mind-Altering Drugs:
Toward the end of the 19th century, the British authorities attempted to reform the Irish drinking habits by heavy taxation of hard liquor. The wily Irish responded by smuggling ether from hospitals. They found that if you drank a shot of ether it gave a quick 15 to 30-minute high much like alcohol, followed by a return to hangover-free sobriety -- and the production of elephantine flatus, in this case highly combustible, which made the simultaneous use of another psychoactive substance, tobacco, very dangerous. The British authorities realized they had a prohibition-created drug epidemic -- and a major fire hazard -- on their hands: "etheromania" was sweeping Ulster! The common sense that made them so successful as an imperial power soon reasserted itself [sic -- CY], and the Irish were allowed their alcohol again.
Éire go brách indeed. Have a happy and healthy St. Patrick's day!
Posted by coyu at March 17, 2005 04:56 AMDear Coyu:
Noooooow is that true?
Wait a minute, Drinking a shot of Ether?
No, no, no, no...That'll kill you won't it?
WELL, regardless, I'll just tip a Guinness...because as is often said, Guinness isn't beer...Guinness is food. :>}}
Best Wishes,
Traveller
Posted by: Traveller at March 17, 2005 06:14 AMTraveller, I doubt if St. Patrick would want me to blarney on his special day. Here's the cite Perrine gives, and here's a related one. Granted, I haven't tracked down the original papers yet.
Posted by: Carlos at March 17, 2005 06:29 AMWell top o the mornin to yeh! All I want to add is the wee ditty about St. Patrick. I don't believe it is accurate but its a nice song nonetheless
Posted by: Larry at March 17, 2005 07:35 AMOh Carlos, I believe you implicitly in all things...but for a moment I thought that this might be like alki skid-row bums filtering sterno through dirty t-shirts for its intoxicant value.
I seriously tried to find the text to your second link, the Strickland Article...but couldn't find the text. Hummm. Somehow I'm not using the links correctly. This is not real important, but I would appreciate, if possible, a more direct link to the actual text?
**********
And to Larry, a great little song, thanks really!
I'll be humming it all day tomorrow.
**************
And why not, a little fun announcement...I'm off to the Highland mountains of Colombia in less than two weeks, (I've never been there), but my brother called tonight to say that if I have to be Ransomed, it had better be cheap, because we are a poor family...lol
Well.
I'd better get back into my Spanish Immersion. I am so jelous of people that seem able to pick up languages easily.
Best Wishes, (Mi Lamma e`...)
Traveller (Traveling being an occupational necessity for me because the Law just fries my brain at times).
Posted by: Traveller at March 17, 2005 08:14 AMGiven this commemoration of St. Patrick's, I'm somewhat disappointed that no one noticed the Festival of St. Urho yesterday...
http://www.theminx.com/iss3vol2/sturho.htm
(But why does the link to the "Finnish Consulate of Toronto" on that page lead to a porn site? I though that Russian diplomatic services were alone in their practice of providing sex services...)
Cheers,
Jalonen
What can I say - we're not Finnish but Irish. Or, Doug is. Half, anyway. And the kids are a quarter Irish. Enough to wear something green today.
Happy St. Patrick's Day to you all!
Posted by: claudia at March 17, 2005 03:28 PMTraveller, Medline doesn't always have an abstract. But googling around finds that Strickland's article was well-received.
And hey, ether's gotta be better than Pruno or Aqua Velva. (HDTD's legal team reminds me to state that this is not a recommendation.)
C.
Posted by: Carlos at March 17, 2005 05:02 PMWord! Happy Saint Pat's, y'all! I'm tellin' ya, being in Boston, it's Saturday and the fun ain't stopped be nothin'. Word. Hic.
Man, I go back in Brooklyn or "the South Side of East Harlem" or wherever, and ain't got nothin' on this place. I wavin' the Bunker Hill Flag and feelin' the love. Heck, homes, I *be* wavin' the Bunker Hill flag and feelin' much love from the blanquitos. Burp. I love Boston, even if the Red Sox still suck, and the "Bunker Hill Flag" be not more than a figment of their overactive imaginations and a bad painting. A better symbol for the Blue States of America I cannot imagine.
Burp. Perdoname.
But I do have a question for you, Carlos. As the increasingly devoted (to my endless surprise) boyfriend of a teetoltaling Trinidadian --- even if she hates it when I say she's from Queens Village, New York --- I am rather curious about the different alcoholic (and other inebriating substances) cultures between the various islands of the (ex-British) Caribbean. Is there a literature on this topic? Better yet, what can you tell us?
Bestest,
Noel, shocked, SHOCKED, to be dating someone he likes, and who is sure he'll regret posting this
Posted by: Noel at March 20, 2005 05:25 AM"shocked, SHOCKED, to be dating someone he likes"
Who _else_ would you be dating?
Posted by: Bernard Guerrero at March 21, 2005 12:52 AMOh, Bernard, you innocent you.
My favorite [sic] is "dating someone for the sake of dating someone who is dating you for the sake of dating someone". There should be a single word for it, doncha think?
C. -- don't ask.
Posted by: Carlos at March 22, 2005 12:13 AMYeah. Someone's probably got an online pathology of all the different ways to be f****d up while dating
Posted by: Barry Cotter at March 22, 2005 11:56 AMI dunno. I dated girls I _ended up_ not liking, of course, but that state usually signalled that the end was near. I don't know that anything ever went long enough in that fashion to earn the name "pathology". Then again, I've been out of that for nearly 10 years, so perhaps my recollections are not as sharp as they should be. My apologies if I'm being unfair to you all.
Posted by: Bernard Guerrero at March 22, 2005 02:58 PM