The Irish Don’t Drink — Much

beer

Tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day, the one day a year when everybody wants to be Irish!  Which is interesting — given that Irish history is a litany of famine, conquest, rebellion, exploitation, betrayal, some more famine, mass emigration, civil war, bombings, assassination, another famine, whiskey, guns, God, and a particularly vigorous branch of the Catholic Church.  (But that’s a story for another time.)  Personally, I think most people celebrate St. Paddy’s Day because they’ve have been sucked in by the myth that the Irish drink a lot, and they just want to get in on some of the action.  I have no idea where the world got the impression that Ireland is basically 5 million alcoholics, clinging to a rock in the north Atlantic — I’m looking at you, Hollywood — but it just isn’t true.  And today’s as good a day as any to shoot that fairy tale in the head and bury it in the back garden.

Disclaimer: I’ve been known to throw back an adult beverage or two in my time, so I cast no aspirations on any country, region, ethnic or religious group — and if they’re eagerly offended, it’s their own damn fault!

No, the Irish are not the biggest drinkers in the world.  (They aren’t even in the top ten.)  According to no less an authority that the British media outlet The Telegraph, the biggest boozers on Earth are the good citizens of Belarus.  I’ve never been to Belarus, but I’ve seen bits of it on TV and quite frankly — I’d drink, too.  After that, the top ten have all the usual suspects — Lithuania (#3), Russia (#4), Romania (#5), Ukraine (#6) — and a couple of surprises, Moldova (#2) and Andorra (#7.)  I have no idea where Moldova is, but I assume it’s a scrubby little country east of the Balkans, and Andorra is basically a handful of mountains stuck between France and Spain.  Quite frankly, if I was sitting on a mountain, looking at the politics of those two, I’d be tempted to pull a cork or three — and that’s exactly what goes on in that part of the Pyrenees.  It turns out, that, per capita, the folks in Andorra drink more wine than anyone else on the planet.  However, they’re not that far ahead of #2, Vatican City, which, coincidently, also has more priests per square centimetre than anywhere else in the world — which probably makes “morning after” confession a piece of cake.  The other weird one in the top ten list of wine drinkers is the Falkland Islands — although it’s not surprising.  After all, what do you do in the Falklands?  Watch the wind blow and hope to hell it isn’t full of Argentineans — again?

Actually, the only place Ireland even figures into the top ten of drinking anything is beer.  However, they’re only #7 — substantially behind the Czech Republic (#1) and another couple of rowdies, the Seychelles (#2) and Namibia (#5.) The Seychelles are about 100 strips of sand, half- submerged in the Indian Ocean, so I imagine there are a ton of drunken tourists upping their numbers — but Namibia?  Good, bad or indifferent, Namibia normally never comes up on the panel.  About the only thing I can say, with any confidence, about Namibia is they drink beer — a lot more than the Irish.

So tomorrow, if you feel the need, have a Green Beer or a Guinness or whatever your pleasure, but if you want to sop hops with the big boys, wait a couple of days until March 21st.  That’s Namibia’s Independence Day, and the truth is those folks know how to drink!

The Television Cure

remote-controlWe live in a complicated world.  There are any number of hairy, scary ooglies out there, trying to do us harm.  External germs, internal neuroses, the dolt down the block with his motorcycle — it just never ends.  Luckily, I’ve been around for a few decades now, and I’ve discovered that just about anything can be fixed with television.  Think about it!  When you were a kid and you got sick, what did your mom, dad or legal guardian give you to make you feel better?  A day off school and full control of the TV remote.  Parenting was a lot easier in those days, but it must have worked ’cause you’re still here.  So, with that in mind, let’s take a look at a few other ways to cope with these troubled times.  (BTW, for some of the bigger problems, we’ve added alcohol to the mix.)

Stress (Men) — Any television game that involves a ball — and beer.

Stress (Women) — Braless, red wine, chocolate and back-to-back-to-back Kate Winslet movies

The Common Cold — Mad Men and mimosas. It will dry the snotties, make you feel better about your lot in life, and the orange juice will give you a jolt of vitamin C.  (Plus, it kinda drags in the middle, so you might fall asleep.)

The Flu — Chicken soup and Daytime TV.  Trust me!  Bob Barker, The People’s Court and Days Of Our Lives have done more for the general health of this world that any pharmaceutical company.

Depression — Any recent Ben Affleck film.  Seriously, if that guy can succeed in this world, your sorry ass shouldn’t have any problems.

Road Rage — Game Of Thrones!  The worst commute in the world doesn’t hold a candle to what those poor bastards have been going through — for 7 years!

Procrastination — Lost!  This pointless piece of junk goes so far sideways that eventually you’ll just walk away and do anything — ANYTHING! — rather than watch another minute.

And finally:

A Broken Heart — Pizza, red wine, baggy pajamas and a weekend binge of Ryan Gosling movies.  For really serious breakups, throw in a couple of Ryan Reynolds movies and a tub of Rocky Road ice cream.

Time Is A Telescope

clock

Next Sunday in North America, we are switching to Daylight Saving Time, which means we move our clocks ahead one hour.  What a crock!  That’s like cutting the top end off a blanket, sewing it to the bottom and saying you’ve got a longer blanket!  Here’s the deal.  Time is a telescope.  It contracts and expands and, depending on how you look at it, throws everything out of proportion.  For example, an itch in the middle of your back can seem like an eternity; whereas a kiss, no matter how long it lingers, is always gone too soon.  When I was a kid, Saturdays were too short, summers were too long and February frequently had 35 days.  Now that I’m an — uh — older gentleman, days, weeks, months and even years are flashing by at warp speed.

The reality is, though, time is actually getting bigger.  The rotation of the Earth is slowing down ever so slightly, so a second is now an itty-bitty bit longer than it was when we first discovered them.  Luckily, the international time people (Coordinated Universal Time) have noticed this, and they add a leap second to the clock every once in a while so we don’t stray that far from solar time.  Cool fact, huh?  Here are a few more that might change your concept of time.

It takes most people more time to tie their shoes than it takes Usain Bolt to run 100 metres.

There are only 525,600 minutes in a year.

Cleopatra’s reign in Egypt is closer to our time than it is to the time when the Pyramids were built.

Oxford University is older than the Aztec civilization in Mexico.

Spain was a predominantly Moslem country for 200 years longer than it’s been predominantly Christian.

Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone the same year Crazy Horse and his buddies killed General Custer and all his troopers at the Little Big Horn.

The 10th President of the United States, John Tyler, who was born in 1790, has a grandson, Harrison Tyler, who is alive today — and living in the family home, Sherwood Forest Plantation, Virginia.

This year’s Oscar presenter Eva Marie Saint is older than the Empire State Building, Hoover Dam, Mount Rushmore and the Golden Gate Bridge.

Barbra Walters, Christopher Plummer and Anne Frank were all born in the same year.

Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show toured Germany and Austria in 1906 — when Adolf Hitler was 17 years old.

William Shakespeare and Pocahontas were contemporaries.

But my absolute favourite is:

According to The Economist, the median age of all the humans on our planet is 28 years– which means that half the people on Earth were born after the first episode of The Simpsons!