Most times, while mentally plodding stumbling skimming through articles in The New Yorker, I have only a vague idea what the author is describing or talking about. Politics bore or annoy me; music reviews rarely interest me or are "so last week"; and ballet and plays are really meant to be seen then read about in depth, I think. Generally, I get through most of the magazine with collar flipped up and head down against the rain of information and the wind of confusion coming down on me from on high (mid-town?), hoping something resembling something close to knowledge or inspiration seeps up threw my brain shoes and absorbs into my grey blanket of a brain to be squeezed out at another time (be it in conversation or in virtual conversation here at My Cube HA!).
And with the people I'm surrounded by at The Bank, these moments are few and far between, if ever, like finding a four leaf clover in your pocket or getting complete satisfaction from a posh wank* in front of pr0n.
But today!
Ah, today. A bright, shiny Memorial Day Monday, I've metaphorically found that four leaf clover in my pajama bottom's pocket (after an unsatisfying non-posh wank; alas, we can't have it all, can we?).
For I read this article today.
And, from personal experience and personal experimentation, I could have nearly wrote the blessed thing myself!
Ah, The Hangover.
The Devil who shows its red-eyed skull after a Night of Dancing with Amber Angels. This hideous Demon of dehydration and enzymes and toxins and embattled livers has locked its claws onto my head, clubbed its tail into my stomach, and shat smoky-sulphur fire and litter box smell into my mouth many times. Our battles are neither political nor religious; or, maybe both at once!
Weapons and shields listed and offered for battle in the article range from the Ritualistic to the Scientific. Some range from the most familiar to the most foreign of items and relics. My hands have grasp a few in Loyal Belief while my mind reels in horror from some suggested and offered.
Like all Human Battles through the Ages, the siege and defense against the Gorgon Hangover is an Individual War. As an Army of Drinkers, Quaffers, and Chuggers, we begin the evening together. We toast one another, we challenge each other to contests of shots, we go rounds and rounds in the Spirit of Camaraderie; but in The End, we fight the (De)Hydra Hangover alone on the battlefield.
We, alone, scream into the streaming dagger sunlight, "Corpsman! Corpsman! Corpsman!"
Drink deep from the stream, eat full from the wheat golden grain fields, ingest concentrated spheres of vitamins, flush thy wounded bladder, and sleep the sleep of Rip Van Winkle that night, my Liquid Legions. That is my only humble advice. That is all I can give you now, even after two lifetimes of Spiriting Slaughter and Nigh-Death Tippling.
Go forth and live!
You walk alone, you walk with me.
*I'd link credit to Artificial Industries author, A., for his coining the term "posh wank"; however, A.I. site doesn't want to load for me.
