ON THE AVENUES: I won’t belong to any Dry January that would have me as a member.

What shall we use
To fill the empty spaces
Where we used to talk?
How shall I fill
The final places?
How should I complete the wall?
-- Roger Waters

Earlier this week I donned headphones and listened to Pink Floyd’s album The Wall for the first time in ages. It didn’t occur to me that it had been almost exactly 40 years since the record's release. The Wall came out in late 1979, and by summer of 1980 it was everywhere, unavoidable and inescapable.

Here's a confession: Pot never really was my go-to substance, but admittedly some of my friends and I smoked a good bit of it listening to The Wall, and I've never regretted a single toke.

Seeing as my default setting, then as now, is to resist simpler (simplistic?) pleasures, it wasn’t enough for me to enjoy the music this week. I felt compelled to catch up on my reading, and into the unremitting rabbit hole of internet archives I dove.

The Wall isn’t the only instance of a massively popular rock band sternly meditating on the torturous aftershocks of stardom, but it’s the most commercially successful example. That’s because Waters, for all his vitriolic rhetoric likening rock shows to combat, wasn’t really a punk. He was a populist. It didn’t matter that he hated actual people: He still sought, perhaps unconsciously, their acceptance, because like all insecure rock stars, the only thing Waters feared more than Pink Floyd being huge was Pink Floyd not being huge.

Vitriolic rhetoric?

Now there’s something I can unequivocally endorse.

In chemistry, a vitriol is a sulfate. The word derives from the Latin vitriolum, or “glassy.” Apparently this is because “the crystals of several metallic surfaces resemble pieces of colored glass.”

At some point after the fall of Rome, vitriol came to be used to describe sulfuric acid, which has caustic, bitter, corrosive and pungent characteristics. Then in the late 1700s someone thought to transfer the word to the realm of human thoughts and feelings, hence vitriol, used to indicate harsh, bitter, caustic and corrosive criticism or comments.

I love this word, vitriol. The synonyms read like a who’s who of the reactions inspired in me by the sheer insipidity of life in New Gahania.

• nastiness
• sarcasm
• venom
• disdain
• hatefulness
• hostility
• malevolence
• maliciousness
• virulence
• acrimoniousness

In my interior world, these terms are to the practice of principled polemics what certain spices …

• Cumin
• Coriander
• Mustard seeds
• Ginger
• Garam masala
• Turmeric
• Cinnamon
• Cardamom
• Spicy red chile pepper

… are to Indian cuisine.

Curry meets contempt, and souls are unburdened.

---

As months of the year go, January doesn’t get any respect. In fact quite a lot of vitriol is aimed in January’s general direction; in addition to being cold, dark and seasonally depressed, all those tax materials aren’t going to organize themselves, and January is when you resolve to wait until the second week of April to get started.

Trust me on this. Every damn year, try as I might.

But as if January weren’t already dire enough, some folks now insist on prefacing it with a tremendously gloomy adjective, redolent of defeatism and despair: Dry, as in Dry January.

It’s bad enough that bizarre pretend-substances like Michelob Ultra, “hard” seltzer and peanut butter “whiskey” pass through human lips, much less that after eleven months solid of all you people swallowing them -- c'mon, it’s not really drinking, is it? -- you're compelled to invent social media strategies to, um, "get healthy," though only for a very short time.

What’s left without booze, milk? It's a horrifying thought. If ever there was a valid rationale for “drying out,” the proper liquid of exclusion would be milk. It’s liquid snot, nasty and not tasty in any way.

Milk is an aesthetic and culinary outrage on a par with Chick-fil-A and Taco Hell.

Milk is a conspiracy foisted on us by the multinational diary lobby.

Milk has no reason to exist for adult consumption apart from the utility of making it into cheese or ice cream.

Once I had a dream in which I was drinking milk and commenting about how perfectly it paired with fish and chips, and this nightmarishness hounded me for months.

Booze is the preferred antidote to this and most other conditions, although make my Russian black, not white. But how on earth does a guy self-medicate during Dry January?

My most malevolent assessments of Dry January are reserved for the planet’s killjoy health fascists, and there’s nothing like the condition of their preferred “dryness” to escalate the vitriol. This makes me appreciate Alain Ducasse even more.

French chef Alain Ducasse, an outspoken opponent of Dry January, has launched an initiative to entice patrons of his restaurants to drink more during the first month of the year, not less.

“I like swimming against the tide,” he told AFP on Tuesday, announcing plans to proffer top bottles of Burgundy and Bordeaux at knockdown prices to encourage diners to order wine by the bottle rather than by the glass.

“I’m obsessed with selling wine,” Ducasse said, adding that he was horrified to see customers in New York order iced tea with their lunch instead of wine.

Ducasse is right. I dislike iced tea almost as much as milk.

---

Listen, just think of me as the harmless reincarnation of comedian Don Rickles. It's nothing whatever personal with regard to anyone who currently is dry in January, or any other time. It's not that I object to health and well-being. I’ve been known to grudgingly contemplate largely unattainable ideals like these, and even put them into practice on widely scattered occasions.

However, like so many other facets of modern life, I’d appreciate greater attention to a daily foundation of quiet achievement and genuine merit rather than a Facebook-driven reliance on asinine hashtags, memes and hysteria.

Esther Mobley is the wine critic for the San Francisco Chronicle. For her, “responsible drinking” is an everyday consideration, one not confined to a particular month or period.

Those of us who write professionally about booze seldom address the issue of problematic drinking, probably to our detriment. I’m unmoved by arguments against Dry January that focus on the negative impacts they’d have on the wine industry: It’s not my job to defend any industry, and wineries ought to have to win customers’ business in sober-curious times as well as indulgent eras. In fact, it’s in the booze industry’s long-term interest that its customers become introspective about their health.

The reason I’m not doing Dry January, however, is because I consider it a more meaningful achievement to practice responsible drinking year-round.

That's my stand, but pay no attention to me. I've become comfortably numb, with or without the milk (or the cream liqueur) of human kindness.

---

Recent columns:

January 9: ON THE AVENUES: Elusive sounds of silence.

January 2: ON THE AVENUES: On patience, grieving, puzzles and a necessary sabbatical.

December 26: ON THE AVENUES: Four more years? Heaven help us all, but there are five reasons to be optimistic.

December 21: ON THE AVENUES HOLIDAY SPECIAL: Truth, lies, music, and a trick of the Christmas tale (2019 Remix).

"The rise of the teetotal student," and what Mencken might say about it.

H.L. Mencken once commented on teetotalism.

Teetotalism does not make for human happiness; it makes for the dull, idiotic happiness of the barnyard. The men who do things in the world, the men worthy of admiration and imitation, are men constitutionally incapable of any such pecksniffian stupidity. Their ideal is not a safe life, but a full life; they do not try to follow the canary bird in a cage, but the eagle in the air. And in particular they do not flee from shadows and bugaboos. The alcohol myth is such a bugaboo. The sort of man it scares is the sort of man whose chief mark is that he is scared all the time.

H.L. Mencken, "Alcohol", Damn! A Book of Calumny, 1918

Concurrently there's nothing surprising about the rise of the teetotal student, and I've no criticism to make of it. Abstinence absent compulsion (for the rest of us to do the same) is just fine, and those who choose to drink should so so responsibly. Cohabitation is good.

Period.

'I'm not spending money on that': the rise of the teetotal student, by Suzanne Bearne (The Guardian)

Universities are seeing an increase in teetotal clubs and alcohol-free accommodation. Why are students drinking less?

... A rising number of young people are abstaining from booze, with 36% of 16-24 year-olds in full-time eduction not touching alcohol, according to a survey by University College London. Dr Linda Ng Fat, lead author of the study, believes that an overall decline in drinking has made it more acceptable for young people to shun alcohol. “It seems that non-drinking is becoming more normative, which could make it easier for more and more young people not to drink, should they choose to.”

Indiana alcohol legislation, teetotaling and "public safety."

Yes, Representative Bill Davis is serious: If small brewers were to sell closed containers of craft beer at farmers markets (as farmhouse wineries already can), public drunkenness and illicit fornication soon would chase the kiddos away from the heirloom tomato stall. I was there in the room when Davis remarked that if he had his way, Prohibition would yet again be the law(less) of the land.

Perhaps soon the legislature of Mississippi will begin its sessions with a new prayer: "Thank God for Indiana, or else we'd be the most ... "

You know, red state shit.

Legislature had little taste for alcohol bills, by Maureen Hayden (CNHI Statehouse Bureau)

Greensburg — When it comes to alcohol, the 2013 legislative session may be marked more by what it didn’t do to boost booze sales than what it did.

Legislators did decide to let a small group of well-established wineries and breweries to get into the business of distilling spirits, and it cleared the way for an auction of some cheap liquor licenses for lakefront development in a resort community on Lake Michigan. But they crafted both bills to have narrow impact.

In turning down another bill that would have given Indiana breweries the same right as Indiana wineries to sell their products at farmers’ markets, the legislative gatekeepers signaled their distaste for lifting Indiana’s historically strict limits on alcohol.

“If we did that, the next thing you’d know, we’d have farmers markets turning into liquor stores,” said House Public Policy Chairman Bill Davis, a Republican from Portland who’s played a key role in killing alcohol expansion bills.

Davis is a teetotaler who’s repeatedly killed a bill that would allow grocery and liquor stores to sell carry-out alcohol on Sundays. But he said decisions aren’t based on his personal views, but on what’s best for the public safety.

Mencken on teetotalism and the pecksniffian, barnyard Romney.

Words to remember as we trudge off to vote.

Teetotalism does not make for human happiness; it makes for the dull, idiotic happiness of the barnyard. The men who do things in the world, the men worthy of admiration and imitation, are men constitutionally incapable of any such pecksniffian stupidity. Their ideal is not a safe life, but a full life; they do not try to follow the canary bird in a cage, but the eagle in the air. And in particular they do not flee from shadows and bugaboos. The alcohol myth is such a bugaboo. The sort of man it scares is the sort of man whose chief mark is that he is scared all the time.

H.L. Mencken, "Alcohol", Damn! A book of Calumny, 1918

The tragic tedium of teetotal.

An article I was reading last night reminded me:

"Mitt Romney does not drink for religious reasons."

This was vexing, and so I turned immediately to my own scriptures, where W.C. Fields provided the ethical guidance I was so earnestly seeking:

"Never trust a man who doesn't drink."

Case tested and closed. Does it imply (as I joked on Facebook) that I'm a one-issue voter? Maybe, maybe not, but I'm not about to stand in Romney's way as he rushes to offer second, third and eighteenth issues to justify my vote against him. Yesterday, many of his own ideological supporters were feeding me anti-GOP ammo, like David Brooks of the New York Times. For a while there, it seemed too good to be true, and I thought I was on "Candid Camera."

Then I remembered: The candid camera was focused on Romney.

Folks, this is David "Right Wing Apologist" Brooks, not Michael Moore or Mother Jones, and with a pop culture reference as solid as William Claude Dukenfield.

Thurston Howell Romney

 ... There are sensible conclusions to be drawn from these facts. You could say that the entitlement state is growing at an unsustainable rate and will bankrupt the country. You could also say that America is spending way too much on health care for the elderly and way too little on young families and investments in the future.

But these are not the sensible arguments that Mitt Romney made at a fund-raiser earlier this year.

On my profound distrust of non-drinking political aspirants.

Over the weekend, I turned off the laptop for almost two full days, and caught up with some reading. The presidential election year looms, and I've been trying not to think about it. Mitt Romney's been the likely GOP nominee from the start, and I cannot support him for three reasons: First, he's a Republican, and so we have likely insurmountable policy differences. Second, he's campaigning on the basis of his business experience, and his business experience (in finance) is not an asset; it's the problem. Third ...

Building a Better Mitt Romney-Bot, by Robert Draper (New York Times)

 ... Stories of Romney’s wooden people skills are legion. “The Mormon’s never going to win the who-do-you-want-to-have-a-beer-with contest,” concedes one adviser, while another acknowledges, “He’s never had the experience of sitting in a bar, and like, talking.”

Today's Tribune column: "Teetotalers, ward heelers and us."

After all, it's noon somewhere ... except when Councilman Cappuccino forgets to wind his Bazooka Joe wristwatch.

BAYLOR: Teetotalers, ward heelers and us

Hallelujah! After long decades of discrimination, a resident of New Albany finally will be able to enjoy a perfectly legal glass of beer — whether standing at the bar, seated in a restaurant, or reclining on the floor of his parlor.