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Wine makes old ladies scowl and forget to comb their hair

alcoholic anne

This is Anne. She drinks a couple of glasses of wine a day. If she continues recklessly for another twenty five years, experts say she will look like the lady on the right — and they have a super scientifical Photoshop hit-job to prove it. If she stops right now, she has a chance to look like the lady on the left.

anne is so very, very thirsty

Excuse me…WHAT THE FUCK? What’s the difference? What on earth is the matter with Boozy Betty that a smile and a hairbrush wouldn’t fix? If that Photoshoppist couldn’t take all the pseudoscience in the world and make two and a half decades of hooch look scarier than that, he’s fired.

Think I made this up? Nuh uh! Have a look at it in color — (yup, alcohol makes you wear ugly-colored sweaters, too). No offense to old ladies — one of which I desperately aspire to be some day — but how fresh is a dame expected to look at 77, anyway?

Brits drink more than we do. Or, at least, they drink more unashamedly (it’s probably us and religion and that whole Prohibition business and all). Lately, there are definite conspiracies afoot to change that. They’re taking aim at two targets: underage binge drinking (of which “cheap alcohol” is a sub-complaint) and the middle class drinker. Not flat-out lush, mind you. Prosperous, middle-aged professionals who come home at night and split a bottle of wine with the other half in front of the fire in their 16th Century farmhouse.

The Daily Mail is trying as hard as anyone — which is heartbreaking. They’re about the best low-rent down-market right-wing tabloid in Britain (think a slightly trashier New York Post). If they’re joining the League of Po-faced Killjoys, we’re doomed.

I know what you’re thinking: socialized medicine. This is what happens when the state owns your liver. Except newest clinical data suggests a few glasses of red wine a day is good for you — and the good-for-you amount seems to creep up with every study.

Nah, this is down to free-range assholes, wandering the landscape looking for innocent joys to crush. And you wonder why Brits say “cunt” so much.

Comments


Comment from iamfelix\\\’s brother. Really.
Time: March 3, 2008, 1:21 pm

Tried to post this once already but spilled beer on my keyboard and had to give it time to dry.

Alcohol makes me not give a rat’s patootie about silly Daily Mail articles regarding what drinking will do to me. 🙂


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: March 3, 2008, 1:26 pm

Ha! I was going to give you a hard time about beer lunches, but then I remembered…you’re, like, second or third shift, aren’t you?


Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: March 3, 2008, 2:32 pm

Yup, I’m afraid the puritan streak (never as far below the surface as we like to think in Angle-Saxoid countries) is on the warpath over here – no doubt inspired by the propaganda successes of the Greenies.

Me? I advocate public executions. With alcohol, feasting and much joy among the pagan hordes having a good chuckle at it all, naturally.


Comment from iamfelix’s brother. Really.
Time: March 3, 2008, 3:19 pm

For some reason (and it might be my International Keyboard setting in Windows XP) I keep getting a bunch of slashes in the Name field, unless I delete them in “Write a comment” and/or “Preview” mode, but I was too sloshed/er/tired to do so on the first post. :-þ

I’m a musician now, and have been proudly so since some time in the last century. I work whatever-the-hell hours they’ll give me money to be conscious during (and there are no guarantees as to the level of consciousness one gets), so I guess I’m a 1-2-3rd shift-er. I’m sure it has something to do with the skip factor of late night radio programming on the AM band back in the days when AM ruled the airwaves, but I have no conclusive evidence to prove this.

In any event, my personal opinion of beer is that it’s not just for breakfast any more. I try to avoid tequila before 2PM EST, but it most certainly depends upon who’s buying. 🙂


Comment from doubleplusundead
Time: March 3, 2008, 3:24 pm

This is precisely why I’m always railing against Nanny Staters at my crapblog, this sort of fixation to control people’s behavior has gotten out of control in Europe, and its definitely trying to make its way here in the US.


Comment from bmac
Time: March 3, 2008, 3:29 pm

My parents, retired in their 70’s, crack beers about noon-ish everyday, and switch to wine at night. They’re in incredible shape, take care of 9 (minature) horses, 20 some odd ducks, 2 dogs and a bunch of cats, and are having the time of their lives.

I aspire to do the same. Nothin’ like a good mid morning buzz to make you appreciate life. So what if you got a few more wrinkles?


Comment from Muslihoon
Time: March 3, 2008, 3:35 pm

“Keep your laws off my body!” unless they involve fooding, drinking, smoking, drugging, non-PC clothing…


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: March 3, 2008, 3:59 pm

Oh, lord, members of my family all float to perdition on a stream of bourbon. My great aunt Pearl drank a fifth of bourbon a day and was whisked away untimely at 97.

Actually, I’ve often thought what killed her was when they took her bourbon (and cigarettes) away. I understand why they did it; she lived on her own and she was gonna burn that place down one day. But, so what? She was rich and she lived alone. Let it burn.

Heh. True story: if I’d been named Pearl, I’d be a rich woman today. Instead, they named me after her sister, who didn’t have squat.

Thanks.


Comment from gnus
Time: March 3, 2008, 4:05 pm

I dunno, Sweasel. I was named after a king, and you can see where it got me.


Comment from Gibby Haynes
Time: March 3, 2008, 4:29 pm

You know we’re in trouble when the DM takes the government line.
Do not drink wine – it turns your hair into ice and prevents you from smiling. At least according to this article.
I am a paradox. I’m a Britisher, a northerner no less, but I – get this – don’t drink booze (anymore). What does that mean? I’m not sure, but I think it might have something to do with…alien abduction.
Speaking of booze, what sorts are you going to be brewing, distilling &c., down on Badger and Weasel Estate? I seem to remember one of you mentioning that you were going to manufacture your own.


Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: March 3, 2008, 4:37 pm

It’s The Weasel.

I can never be sure whether she’s got a fixation with white coats and clipboards and wants to be The Mad Scientist, or thinks she’s one of her mountain moonshinin’ ancestors reincarnated.

I have selflessly volunteered to be Igor. Or Ellie-May. Or whatever. As long as I get to test the results, I don’t much care.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: March 3, 2008, 4:52 pm

Well, I was going to make hard cider. There’s a disused orchard down at the bottom of the lane; I was going to see if I could find out who owns it and if they’d mind if I snagged the harvest. Then I discovered in my research that pectin encourages a higher amount of methyl alcohol, which is why cider hangovers are so nasty.

Beer is out; Uncle B doesn’t touch it.

One thing I shall NOT do is distill the sweet, white spirits of my ancestors, on account of that would be illegal. They’re really putting the screws to visa applicants these days, to pretend some kind of toughness on immigration. Getting caught masterminding an illegal enterprise wouldn’t look good on my application at all.


Comment from Gibby Haynes
Time: March 3, 2008, 4:54 pm

Well, the only homemade booze I’ve ever had is this dark, soupy, sedimenty beer my grandad used to make with these kits he bought from Boots. And I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: March 3, 2008, 7:17 pm

You know, I regret the pencil in her neck now. It hurts to look at.

It just didn’t seem…over the top enough without it, somehow.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: March 3, 2008, 7:44 pm

It’s fine, Weaz. Remember – it was part of your lesson to the amateurs who aged her to begin with.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: March 3, 2008, 8:28 pm

Looks like Mitchieville picked up on the story:

http://www.mitchieville.blogspot.com/


Comment from Jessica
Time: March 3, 2008, 8:33 pm

Fear not, Booze hounds – America’s War of Teh Fat is still far ahead of the war on alcohol. According to society, there is nothing worse that (a woman) can be than FAT. It’ll kill you, and more importantly, it makes you UNATTRACTIVE to not only the opposite sex (or even the same sex, according to shows like The L Word), but to everyone around you. Fat people are a scourge, and don’t you forget it!

*The preceding message was brought to you by my big, fat, shiny black ass (which my new boyfriend slaps and says, “Damn, I love that ass.”) Oh, was that too much information? Sorry…


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: March 3, 2008, 8:37 pm

The better to moon people with, my dear…


Comment from gnus
Time: March 3, 2008, 9:19 pm

Turn the pencil into a cigarette, Sweasel. Then we can say she had it fixed that way so she can drink and smoke at the same time.


Comment from See-Dubya
Time: March 3, 2008, 9:36 pm

Don’t you love how ordinary working class folk in British tabloids talk in long mini-op-ed soliloquies?

“I took one look at the picture and I thought ‘I’ve got to stop drinking,”‘ says Anne, a cookery teacher.

“My eyes looked dead. I had huge, ugly frown lines on my forehead and a horrible turkey neck.

“I always hoped I’d age with dignity. Instead, I looked like a miserable old hag carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders.

“I had no idea that the couple of glasses of wine I look forward to at the end of a busy day were causing me so much harm.

“I’ve always loved drinking wine – I love the taste of it and the lovely warm feeling it gives me.

“But now I haven’t been able to stop thinking about how awful I’ll look in 25 years’ time if I carry on drinking the way I do now.”

I see this a lot, only in British tabloid articles, and it always bothers me. Real people don’t talk like that–reporters write like that though.


Comment from Mrs. Peel
Time: March 3, 2008, 10:31 pm

Oh, sure ’nuff, it is a pencil. I thought it was a cigarette, indicating that she had had lung cancer, but was still smoking through the hole in her neck.

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