The Vodka brewed in Sommerville Massachusetts. Why not “from the cool, clean waters of lake eerie!” or “from the rolling hills of Chernobyl!”? It is the worst tasting vodka in the history of history. Poor Siberian farmers made better vodka in their toilets. Seriously, it tastes like an awkward combination of sludgy and yet chalky. Basically, it tastes like elmers glue.
But there’s a bigger story here. Cossack Vodka is tied in with the story of the worst night of my life.
It was back in College when I lived in a two floor house with my 6 of my best friends from school. The night was none other than the disparaging game 3 of the ALCS in 2004 and the Red Sox had just got their asses handed to them on a silver platter by the Yankees. My roommates were also having a party at the time. It wasn’t a huge party, but there were enough people to constitute a large get-together. And most of them I didn’t know for some reason. I was extraordinarily depressed by the game and a number of other recent and decided to take out my sorrows with the time-tested approach of copious amounts of alcohol. I’m normally quite the merry drunk, but this night was bad news bears.
We didn’t have much of a choice. The liquor stores were closed and all that was left was a bottle of “Cossack Vodka” that had been sitting around for some reason. My good friend Little Mike and I decided to start taking shots in effort of comraderie. We started of with 3 quick shots to get that “quick drunk” buzz. What struck me immediately was the horrible taste in my mouth. It was Epic-Fail bad. The horror-striken taste was totally analogous to the terrible night. So we started drinking more in an effort to stop tasting it. It started an epic streak really where we consumed 11 shots in 30 minutes. I proceeded to take 4 more in the approaching 15 minutes to little mike’s two. That means in 45 minutes I had 15 shots of horrible vodka to Little Mike’s 13.
That’s a lot of awful booze.
Apparently somewhere during that home stretch we were going back and forth at our neighbors house. I don’t really remember much anymore, though I did remember this stuff the next day.
Anycrap, flash-forward a half an hour and I feel awful and I make my way to a toilet, to perform my santicmonious duty of throwing up. I immediately start thinking “this is good, just get it out, you’ll be fine”.
Thirty seconds into the proceedings Little Mike is being pushed into the same bathroom after throwing up on our friend. Needless to say, she wasn’t amused, but she was being a good sport. So there I am throwing up in the toilet as Little Mike pukes (rather messily) in the sink. It sounded like two horses dying in heat.
This went on for hours. It was not one and done. It was puke-fest 04. Getting up constantly in the night to hurl. All the next day, to hurl. I couldn’t get it off of the lining in my stomach. It was horrible. And all the while, I tasted that awful chalky texture of Cossack vodka.
Maybe the worst part of all of this was that Little Mike somehow still uses this as night where he “beat me” in a drinking contest. The first problem with this is that the drinking contests with myself and Little Mike didn’t develop til later on in the semester, all of which I won handily. The Second problem is I drank two more shots of vodka. The third is if I knew it was a contest I could have easily handled the next thirty seconds and held it in. Fourth, I never would’ve puked on a girl. Ssssssssssorry Little Mike.
The only good thing about it is I think of it like my “baptism by fire” and the Red Sox went on to do the impossible, win 8 straight, win the world series, and lift the curse.
But damn. When I think back to that night. I can still taste it.
I have a temper about the weirdest shit. It rarely, rarely, rarely comes out and it’s almost never directed at humans. Why not humans? Cause I can usually understand the fallacy of human error and chalk it up to individual interest (basically objectivism). No, what usually gets me angry is incredibly stupid stuff like traffic patterns, or in the case of today: THE SAME FUCKING DEFECTIVE COFFEE LID.
This is BS man. I got some coffee (which again, I rarely do) and didn’t even fill it up all the way. I put the lid on. Walked outside. INSTANTLY SPILLING OUT BOTH SIDES OF THE CUP. Luckily, I was smart enough to bring napkins this time to help take care of the mess. I had to pour out a bunch of the coffee out into the trash to even get it mobile. Lo and behold, I get into the elevator and the lid starts spitting out coffee when I’m pretty much perfectly still. My hand continues to burn and I finally get upstairs to my office. I pour more out (i have like 1/2 a cup by now) and finally sit down to drink this thing because I’m tired and desperately need caffeine.
I check to be sure the lid is on extra tight again. I raise it up… instantly spilling out from underneath the lid and onto my jeans.
Needless to say I hurled that fucking cup across my cube. Yes, it was at my trash can and it went in, but coffee is now everywhere. I made a half hearted attempt to clean it up but now it just smells like coffee.
Now this is usually the point where you suspect someone has an anger problem. But like I said, I only do about the weirdest shit. And I don’t even care, cause that coffee lid can totally kiss my ass. How can we not make coffee lids that work?!??!!
So why don’t you analyze me interwebs! ANALYZE THIS!
I just sit near them and only one of them is even in my department.
It’s a simple mistake and I’m more than happy to help you anyway I can with anything simple. I’d be happy to drop them word of anything when I see them or even even deliver something you’re dropping. But after I explain to you I’m not said person’s assistant can you please not ask me to do assistant type jobs for them? No I don’t have access to their calendars. No I can’t go through their files and get you something they need. No I have no idea what the heck you’re asking me about.
I bitch about traffic a lot on this. But this may be the worst.
Attention fucktards of the universe. Use your turning signals. It’s easy and it lets drivers behind you know what the fuck you’re doing. I have no idea what you’re doing if you don’t. I just see you screech to a halt then move across five busy lanes to take a left on red. Today coming to work, I saw 14 people NOT use their turning signals. 14. It only took me 30 minutes to get to work today too. This is horseshit.
There is a great scene in “Shoot Em Up” where Clive Owen is driving and someone fails to signal. He proceeds to ram this guy off the road. I wish I had that kind of courage.
It kind of reminds me of that King of the Hill episodes where bobby takes the RAD classes and kicks all the school yard bullies in the nads while screaming “I DON’T KNOW YOU! THAT’S MY PURSE!”
The modern world contains many inconveniences and annoyances. Between grand-standing politicians, annoying TV personalities, and rising gas prices, it seems like there’s no shortage of ways in which society can bring me down. That being said, nothing quite sticks in my craw like the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group.
For instance, it was recently reported that Steven Spielberg has withdrawn as an artistic adviser to the 2008 Olympics, due to China’s inaction in regards to Darfur. Way to go genocide! Now he’ll probably be replaced with Michael Bay or something, and the Opening Ceremonies will culminate in the torch being lit by an RPG fired by Josh Hartnett.
Unfortunately, genocide is nothing new, and although historians have debated about when exactly the first genocide occurred, it is generally agreed upon that the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1917 was the first genocide of modern times. The genocide began when the Ottoman Empire was defeated by Russian forces in the early days of World War I, and the Ottoman military blamed the loss on Armenians who collaborated with Russian forces. Now right now you’re all probably thinking: “They were collaborating with the enemy. They had to be destroyed. What else could they have done?”. Now normally I’d agree with you, but here’s the thing: THEY WEREN’T REALLY TO BLAME FOR THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE’S LOSSES. THEY WERE JUST BEING SCAPEGOATED BY THE MILITARY TO DEFLECT BLAME FROM THEMSELVES. All of a sudden genocide doesn’t sound like such a good idea, huh? Hundreds of thousands of Armenians were killed just because the Turkish military didn’t want to accept responsibility for their failures. Talk about an overreaction!
Another annoying thing about genocide is that it’s so awful that other atrocities get overlooked. People may suspect that the days before genocide were a simple, peaceful time. However, this simply isn’t the case. Society was replete with all sorts of terrible crimes that struck horror in the heart of men. Things such as stagecoach robbery, pretty girls being tied to railroad tracks, and muttonchopicide (the forcible removal of mutton chops). However, nowadays, you don’t hear as much about these things because the public can only process so much horror before it grows indifferent. But does that make a man being ambushed by a band of Comanches any less tragic?
Now don’t get me wrong, we’ve all had times where we wanted to commit genocide (I’ve wanted to get rid of “Lord of The Rings” fans for years now), but history has shown that it never really works out. Much like suicide, it’s a permanent solution to a temporary problem. If instead of flipping out and killing everyone, the Turks had sat down with the Armenians and had a frank & open exchange of views, things might have turned out a lot better for everyone. It may be tempting to think that genocide only affects small groups of social undesirables, but history has shown us otherwise. Genocide is something that truly affects us all, by forcing us to wear ugly ribbons and/or wristbands.
Helpful Hint: To find the nearest genocide, go to a local college campus and find a liberal arts major. He/she can give you a long-winded spiel about the nature of the conflict, and make you feel guilty about not donating money to help.
Fun Fact: Everyone knows about the Holocaust, but did you know that there have been plenty of other not-nearly-as-interesting genocides? For example, in Rwanda in the 90’s, tensions between the Hutu majority and Tutsi minority escalated to the point where…oh fuck it, it’s too boring.
Silver lining: The ending to “Future Legend” off of Diamond Dogs, where David Bowie goes “This ain’t rock n’ roll! THIS IS GENOCIDE!!” is pretty sweet.
Author’s Note: Although Kate Nash has no known ties to genocide, I found the picture irresistibly adorable.
I almost have to tip my hat to the NeoCons. It’s really amazing. They’ve politicized and distorted an issue that I thought was pretty much un-distortable.
Global Warming is a scientific fact. The overwhelming majority of scientists have confirmed this including the IPCC and every single prominent country within the National Academies of Science. Yet the more evidence we gain over the years, the more people seem to make up reasons to disagree. A recent poll showed fewer people believe in global warming then they did 10 years ago.
And there’s key word in there: “believe”. That’s what this is all about now. The issue has been politicized into red and blue. The Bush admin has adopted the notion of that it’s a scientific debate and not an established scientific fact. First of all, yes, there are individual scientists who offer theories of dissent, but their minority cannot be stressed enough. Better yet, almost any one of their theories and examples can be refuted by any student with a couple of oceanography classes under their belt. That’s not hyperbole either. Most dissenters use evidence that is self-contained and not reflective of system based changes. How so? This is an extreme example but recently a scientist cited the lack of devastating hurricanes last summer as evidence global warming wasn’t true (since global warming raises water temperatures which strengthens hurricanes). What said scientist failed to mention was that el nino/la nina has been wreaking havoc on weather patterns and other parts of the world were suffering from the extreme weather patterns at the time. This example of the “contained example” is completely indicative of the kind of thinking the anti-global warming folks are using.
Look, I understand someone seeing Global Warming and going “Eh, who cares, I think there are more important things.” That’s fine because it’s an personal and ethical decision based on the facts. But to use an agenda to distort the obvious scientific reality is an insult. The republican war on science is a complete travesty.
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Red Sox, baseball, don't like, drink, hate with the passion of a thousand suns, inconveniences | Tagged: 2004 ALCS, bad puking, bad vodka, Cossack Vodka, drinking contest, drunk, epic fail, little mike, Massachusetts, puking, Red Sox, shots, Sommerville, Sommerville Massachusetts, vodka, Yankees | 
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