As near as I can tell, nobody is drinking tonight, save the following people (what are you? wusses?):

My Brilliant Mistakes
BrockLi Soup
Shade

It’s enough to drive a man to drink. NaDruWriNi? Come on!

I think the chick on Torchwood is kinda hot, particularly (I’m not too ashamed to admit) when she wears one of those British police officer uniforms. The actress’s name is Eve Myles. And seeing as how this show is “adult” (and putting my general humanist concerns to the side), I’ve been waiting for her to take her top off, out of a kind of professional curiosity on my part. Come on, Russell T. Davies. If you’re so “adult,” why isn’t there much in the way of sex? I’m disappointed. This is about as “adult” as David O. Selznick paying for the line, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” Ooohhh! Mr. Cutting Edge!

One shot of Wild Turkey.

And then I tried out a combination of bourbon, sweet vermouth and Coke. I don’t recommend this. It’s a mix only slightly more repellent than the Hangman’s Blood. So now I’m on Bailey’s for a while. Bailey’s — that port in the storm when you don’t want to wimp out with a yuppie drink like a white wine spritzer, but you can’t handle straight shots.

I’m at a loss as to what to write about, but will happily take requests. Your thoughts?

Hello and welcome to National Drunken Writing Night, where sentences are incoherent, thoughts are even more so, and bloggers have an excuse to sit around the house and drink. The sun is fading beyond the trees in the Park and I’m polishing off an Irish highball as my first drink. I suppose I could have opted for a tequila sunset, but that would have been too cruel a drink to start off with. And besides, there isn’t any tequila at the bar. In fact, much of my bar is composed of bottles leftover from last year.

A few things I should observe: I generally do not write when drinking. Bad enough that caffeine is a part of my writing habits and that I often go nuts with the coffee when working on a lengthy piece. But I cannot imagine much sense to come from drinking and writing — never understood the idealization. I’ve heard stories of an editor regularly insisting to his staff, “Write while drunk! Edit while sober!” Why? Is it not better to get everything as taut as possible in the first draft? To write as coherently as you can?

Granted, there is some value if the commandment were to suggest, “Keep it loose and dirty in the writing stage. Use your brain in the editing stage.” So perhaps this is what the editor was suggesting.

Incidentally, the combination of Jameson and ginger ale is not as bad as I expected, although it does seem incongruous to the Jameson. I think I’m going to man it up a bit and follow this with a straight shot of bourbon.

Although some agua was imbibed last night to soften the blow (thus hindering credence of this conclusion), here is the final verdict on the Hangman’s Blood: As Burgess reported, there is no hangover to speak of. Despite a good deal of champagne, several whiskey and cokes, a nutty rum and whisky concoction invented on the fly, a few Guinnesses and, of course, the HB. The HB then is recommended for people who have a fully stocked bar, aren’t terrified of a cocktail with a noxious taste, and greatly desire to have alcohol affect their head, arms and various portions of the upper torso with celerity.

Burgess was quite wrong, however, to impute a “metaphysical elation.” The results were almost immediately corporeal, but not extra or supernatural in any real sense. The metaphysical failings here are likely my own, since I am certainly not as smart as Burgess, limited only to casual philosophizing, and I don’t really associate drinking with any rise of the intellectual bar.

As it so happens, Pinky’s Paperhaus did participate in last night’s festivities and Mr. B is to be commended for his cartoons and personal riffing. I cannot imagine the hangunder poor Jeff will have from all that coffee, but I do hope he got some solid sleep. Heaven help poor Wholesale Pants Warehouse, who not only went off the deep end but lost track of his wedding ring in the process. This is the kind of typing that some of us were striving for, but somehow failed to achieve. And leave it to Abroad Abroad to post drunken letters to Dave Eggers, among other things.