Cory W

really good stuff, maybe you have seen it before, but it is always worth a second read! It was my first time to check it out.

http://www.drunkard.com/issues/05_0...bobbleheads.htm

Drunkards have no shortage of enemies these days.

From the addled reactionaries of the religious right to the odious pronouncements of the MADD Mothers, our right to get splashed is under attack from all quadrants of the political spectrum. The Right and the Left, normally far apart on many ?issues,? have slithered onto an anti-booze common ground. Neither side, however, could have inflicted so much damage were it not for their many allies ? ideological fellow travelers who, if not directly involved on the front lines of the fight, are certainly keeping the bonfires ablaze back home.

Take for example our national news outlets, and their addiction to atrocity. They've convinced themselves that tales of woe are better for ratings and, in fact, constitute better journalism, than tales of joy. Mass media coverage of drinking is, by and large, a never-ending litany of doom and destruction. I'm certain they think such actions are in aid of keeping the community informed, but since their actions are one-sided and anti-democratic, we must give them a thumbs down.

The largest abettors of neo-prohibitionist strictures aren't the national media. It's their paymasters in big business. Even as Big Alcohol does its best to promote drinking while simultaneously warning against it, the rest of the Corporate World is growing increasingly hostile toward booze and those of us who dare say we enjoy the stuff. It's safe to say that no other sector of American society is quite so narrow minded and joyless as Corporate America. The clinical name for what afflicts them is ankyloproctia, or a severe constriction of the anus. I mean really, if there's a more stultifying, vanilla, play-by-the-rules environment than a contemporary cubicle warren, please show it to me. Even prisons have created a commendable body of poetry and country-and-western songs.

Most corporations have these things called ?mission statements.? They are supposed to provide a snapshot of the company's goals, a list of reminders to ensure that everyone is drawing on the same sheet of vellum. On them you'll find statements like these: ?Create An Environment of Mutual Respect Among All Employees,? ?Develop Personal Perfection,? and ?Provide Five-Star Customer Service.? Mission statements are kept intentionally wispy in order to play down the real mission of any big corporation: ?Keep the Workers in Line and Make Piles of Cash.?

A corporation employs many methods to keep its ?team members? in line, but you can combine them under the general heading of: ?Revoke Their Joy.?

Top-floor executives routinely off-load their shares of the company's worthless stock while smiling benignly at the underlings and assuring them that all is well here at Mt. Vesuvius.com. Wages paid to average men and women are so nightmarishly low, especially when compared to management's compensation, it's a small miracle that office towers aren't equipped with suicide nets. The disparity is so great between the highs and the lows that Scrooge McDuck recently subscribed to The Nation as a sponge against his night sweats. Employees are spied upon by closed circuit video and hidden microphones record their private conversations. Statistics show that the average Big Corporate employee is captured by some electronic device up to 12 times each day, or about as often as the average maximum security prison inmate.

Ready for a drink yet? Better keep one handy. Because even if we disregard the above examples of corporate vindictiveness we still must contend with the ways corporate honchos try to pretend they aren't a honking gaggle of myopic greedy assholes. It's when corporations feign decency that daily life around the water cooler becomes such a transcendent hoot. Ever worked in a big office? If yes, the following will sound familiar.

Corporations claim to reward hard work, but their slavish devotion to protocols and hierarchies ensures that little worthwhile hard work ever takes place, thus giving the workforce the appearance of hamsters running on wheels ? lots of activity, getting nowhere fast. No one ever gets an actual job description, either. Job descriptions are way too specific and might actually be adhered to. Instead, workers operate according to an ever-mutating list of ?action items.? Via the ?action item? the employees' duties are updated hourly, leaving little time for pondering the depth to which their time and their persons are being violated. Every so often a ?fun day? is scheduled for the workers. It might be an ice-cream bar in the break room, or a support-the-local-sports-team day, or the always-odious ?wacky hat day.? Stacked against the bleakness of normal office existence a ?wacky hat day? has the same chance of brightening our doldrums as we'd have filling the Grand Canyon one pebble at a time. Last and certainly least, upper management tolerates a repulsive level of shameless ass-kissery. At one company I worked for the winner of the Halloween costume contest dressed as one of the vice presidents. Fart-sucking of this sort is omnipresent.

Very few people stand in more dire need of liquor therapy than office workers. Intoxication, though, is a very touchy subject. Drugs are totally off limits, screened for at most companies by mandatory urine testing. Drinking isn't far behind. Most members of a corporation's ?leadership team? take a dim view of hooch. The old days are gone. No more three-martini lunches. No more week-night reveling. It's a two's-my-limit world out there, folks. Better make it two Diet Cokes, just to be on the safe side.

Somebody, sometime in the last twenty years, decided that drinking has a negative effect on ?productivity.? There's no telling where this spurious notion originated, but it has become gospel within the business community. Back in the day, American workers were sometimes paid in booze, and regularly took a mid-morning break called an ?elevener,? where they lined up at the hooch cart for their dram of spiritus sanctus. Mindless drudgery has never again been so palatable.

The whole no drinking at the office thing has turned the American workforce into a nodding bunch of bobblehead dolls. It's a joke, and a sad one at that.

So, suck it up, Mr. Nine-To-Fiver. You know you want a few beers with lunch or a splash of whiskey in your morning latte. Stop denying yourself joy. It's up to you to make your life giddy. Take a stand. Your preening illogical bosses aren't going to do it for you. No, they are going to stand in your way. Drink, my friend. And do it with your head held high.

Cheers.

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Gabriel

Too long of a read, plus the Long Island Iced Teas from Claim Jumper are kicking in.

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