2008-06-06 - 5:16 p.m.

You may have been wondering where I’ve been. My absence may have concerned you. Your brow may have furrowed as you fervently clicked on this site in order to feast upon my confessions. ‘How I wish he’d write something new! What else does he have to do, anyway?’ Such spiteful thoughts are to be expected. The disgraceful truth is that I’ve been waiting for an event. Something monumental to occur, something to shake my foundations and instill inspiration. A life changing moment, something to catapult my pasty broken body into manhood. Now it has happened. Now is the time. A new dawn felches. My cup runneth gloriously over. Oh yes, it has! My plan has come to fruition, my sacrifices and cruelties now manifest splendidly. At long last my spleen can vent, my lunatic howls can echo, my triumph can dance. You see, you dear dear thing, it’s finally happened. I can now recline in crapulent victory. Bear with me, I’m building up to something here. You, my mark, my target, my cynosure, shall presently bear witness to the grisly revelation. Can you sense it?

You see, what I’ve been doing the past year and one half is building a collection of beer can ringpulls. Every time I’ve snapped one off my latest ale I’ve deposited the brittle souvenir into an empty can of that pointless water, Tennants, that sits gloatingly on my desk. All my energies were subsumed into this Herculean task. It took a lot of ringpulls and a lot of beer drinking. The effects were largely pleasurable if destructive. I was to possess a bulgy aluminum monument to my weakness. Oh, how it embiggened me, the noble drunkard, the obsessive fool, this cirrhotic plaque that transfigured my every decision! I undertook this mission with due care and vigor. I did not succumb, even when there was little space left in which to cram another fob. I bled for the cause, ribboning my fingers as I forced another of the blasted things into its stale dungeon. What satisfaction I garnered by slicing open the pregnant belly of the can and letting all the metallic little demons spew forth onto my desktop.

How many? Four hundred and ten. 4 1 0. It took me about 20 shirtless minutes and another beer (the ringpull of which was not included) to complete the stock take. I counted them into bundles of ten to make it easier on my blurred vision. Some were gold, some were silver, each a fragment of sacred indolent moments. Strangely, when I tipped them all into an empty pint glass, they didn’t fit and overspilled. The can was clearly some sort of Tardis-like container. Now it lies, sundered and finished atop the snotty detritus in my wastebasket. So what’s four hundred and ten beers over eighteen months? A bit less than an average of one a day I suspect. I won’t do the math. Before you think me week and uncommitted, this total precludes everything I drank in pubs and at social events – I’d add another two hundred or so to the pint total for a fairer reflection of my consumption. The more sinister footnote is the bottles of wine and spirits that have passed through my turgid body in the interim. Beer only gets you drunk if you’re really trying, after all. For proper intoxication one requires spirits. Spirits! Does the name not give you a clue? Those glimmering harbingers of dreamlands and cityscapes. Clear, pure, undulating, calling, on the shelf. Drink me, love me, I am your mistress and you are my beautiful slave. I genuflect and collapse tranquil.

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