I'm sitting at my computer struggling with GnuCash 1.8.1, trying bring my financial records up to date after months of neglect so I can get my data organized for my tax guy. (I have splendid excuses for procrastinating, but take my word for it so I can spare you.) I try to run a transaction report and keep getting a useless error message "There was an error while running the report." No shit. I go out there and google for some help and come up empty. I think, dude, let's see if there's a newer version. There is. I think, dude, you should upgrade. Ah, but if the upgrade opens some hideous can of worms and makes matters worse, what then? I confess: I am somewhere beyond newbie but way short of expert in matters Linux. The venerable RedHat Package Manager is famed for its ease of use, but how do you roll back an upgrade with RPM? I could research that and figure it out but I am under pressure here and have little patience. So I think, dude, just download the rpm and upgrade. But I hesitate. This is my only Linux machine, and if something goes seriously wrong, with all my financial data in a massive XML data file that dumb-ass Windoze programs like Quicken and Money do not understand, I am fucked. Time to make a decision.
Enter our reliable old friend, alcohol. I think, dude, go upstairs and pour a nice hefty vodka with cranberry and OJ, and knock it back. I do this. Then I go back to the machine, close GnuCash, become root, run
rpm --upgrade gnucash-1.8.8-0.9.i386.rpm.
It sits there thinking for a few seconds so I go back upstairs (to the liquor cabinet) to await my fate.
Bingo. GnuCash is rocking and I am back in the ballgame, thanks to a sound decision arrived at with the aid of the demon alcohol.
Ah, but the suffering that distilled piss, like Sapporo for example, can create after one of my many "enkai"s offsets the temporary benefits to the nth degree. I wasn't even drunk drunk at last night's party but I still suffer. It's true, though, that I get the most creative with a nice, warm buzz from some good Belgian beer but when did my age suddenly put a stopper on my intake? Cheers! Lancelot x
So: is the net value of alcohol's contribution to the human race negative or positive?
Of course no one knows for sure, this isn't susceptible to objective quantification, but it's still an interesting question (for a shit-talkin' drunk like me).
Of course it can be argued that Stephen King wrote his best stuff when he was an alchoholic, coke junky. Got cleaned and then starting writing a lot of crap. Some was good crap but crap none-the-less. Go back to the bottle, Stephen! Ciao. Lancelot x
Stephen King used to drink? How charming. Shame that he wasn't killed. We all pooled our limited funds and paid the guy but he just missed by a bit. Told him not to try it with a mini-van but he insisted. The '79 coupe de ville would have done the trick with ease but the guy .... well, you know: the douche-bag hadn't been drinking. We told him to get quart of jack with a six of (heinekin! fuck that shit)Pabst Blue Ribbon!!, but he wouldn't listen. Fucking pity. My how I fall into despair when the first thought of some poor smegma sucking nancy boy, pondering alchoholic writers, can only come up with King. It is a sign: the end of the world.
Oh, my. A challenge to list contemporary, alcoholic authors?... Nah. Why bother wasting my time replying in detail to your negative, sorry ass. When you've enjoy the success that King has (which will mean lowering your elitist literary standards to appeal to a wider audience I'm afraid) then maybe you'll stop blogging crap without a point except to offend and raise hackles. Why I do bother even with this much?