Drinking Habits of the Irish Male

I imagine it's a cultural phenomenon. It seems to happen with such regularity to so many of my peers that one can only surmise that it's all part of the shamrocking, gig-doing, do-gigging, sing-songing, song-singing, literary, rare-littering, fiddle-playing, play-fiddling, hey diddle diddle of being male and Irish and in your twenties (however many of them you've had).

The way it works is as follows: during your evening lecture /otherwise productive day, you think about a string of loosely related issues which may include among others:

* All the work that needs doing tomorrow
* How you really need some good sleep
* How pinstripe only looks good on some men and not others
* How you have't been doing much study lately and really oughta knuckle down
* How being hard-working and disciplined is actually very rewarding
* How your finances are looking kinda shaky at the moment
* How that blonde girl is wearing much more makeup than usual and may have a date tonight
*How you don't need to have a drink just because you're in the pub and everyone's drinking
* How you may concede and buy one drink to be sociable but you'll home in bed by 11.
* How things were different before when you used to go out drinkin with youthful exuberance and recklessness and all that has changed now... which is good.

Then what happens generally is that on the way to the pub you think that you're really tired and would prefer to go home but you decide to go and make a perfunctory appearance; say hello, make with some small talk and politely excuse yourself. Shortly after that you realise that if you move from horizontal to vertical, you're quite likely to throw-up some of the 5 pints of stout, the shot of sambuca and the burger you had before you ended up on your mate's sofa at 3 in the morning. Then you come to a few hours later and sluggishly start to wonder if the rain-mud-stains from the friendly (but all too exerting) little wrestle you had on the way home is that visible and whether anyone will especially notice that you're coming into work late, smelling of booze, and wearing yesterday's shirt... again.

Yet I regard myself as one of the more sensible people I know. Seriously.




Fig 1.1

The drinking Irish Male in his natural habitat. Figure 1.1 captures a rare occassion in which the creature is engaged in loftier intellectual pursuits than puns relating to the reproductive organs and practicises of the species. The author is the right-hand specimen (though is himself left handed - so I suppose he's in fact the left-handed right hand specimen). Note that they most often fail to attract the female of the species to thier ritual.


On mornings like this i have to jump start my head a little so that I can concentrate on my work. Writing this helps, but another thing is that I read anything that's written anywhere to exercise my eyes. On the toilet seat in my office (well beside the office - that'd be a bit gross - also would give 'office cubicle' a new slant... anyway) it says the following:

Customer Notice
Clean this product using hot soapy water. If disinfectant is required, a plain, unscented bleach may be added to the water.
Any other cleaning mediums could result in chemical attack.

A threat of a chemical attack over toilet cleansers? Who knew we imported toilet seats from the US?

Yes, that's the joke.

(Sorry)