Thursday, December 01, 2005

A LITTLE BAR POLITICS

So we find out that the groovy place to find girls on the island is the Whale Bar from the man who tells us, in a voice that runs through its syllables at the same rate that a blender on medium shreds a banana, how to get to the public dock to launch our kayaks. This was after we'd followed his advice about going down the river with the low tide and found out that the man was one of those souls who confuses right with left: a critical defect in a man who routinely gives directions. On the other hand, it is a defect I share as well. In any case, after the dolphins and the weird bird and the oar manipulation that is surely going to reverberate tomorrow -- although I need that upper body exercise -- and we are driving away after putting the boat back uptop the car and listening to the radio and we hear what the SOB president has to say about Iraq. This is after I am thinking of who to compare that combination of ignorance and incapacity to -- Admiral Horthy? Claudius? James II? So we elbow into the Whale bar and find a very diminished crew, and not a very female one there, but what the hell. The bartender turns out to be a live wire, matching us drink for drink even though it turns out that in South Carolina by some bizarre state law drinks can only be served from those tiny two ounce bottles of liquor that you get on airplanes. Anyway, this gray haired guy with that expression of a man of fifty who still loves the Beasty Boys starts to do a bit of a rap about Iraq, and I am pleasently surprised that - here in the heart of Bush zombiedom -- it seems to be over even for the believers. The rap begins with Murtha, god bless that bloodthirsty pol, and ends with a display of an ashtray in the shape of the state of Texas and the bartender putting his cigarette out in it and saying, and so fuck him. Meaning, of course, our idiot president, a man who has mistaken his own impotence for a Churchillian stance.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I went to college in Charleston and the whole time I was there I never got over the tiny bottle method of bartending. It makes no sense to me and makes getting drunk (in public, at least) such an expensive undertaking.

Roger Gathmann said...

Winn, it is a little freaky to enter a bar and feel like you've entered an airplane crash site where the survivors are celebrating. Hold those 2 ounce tequilas aloft, campers!
Supposedly they are changing the rules pretty soon, as South Carolina drifts into the orbit of the country as a whole. Not something South Carolina likes to do. For bad reasons (apartheid nostalgia), and good (cussedness).

Anonymous said...

I am honestly worried-abut W's State of Mind (fanatically certain) and the scary, scary people around him. Am I being a crank to speculate that somewhere deepm in the bowels of the White House, Langley, or even the Pentagon, the black ops folks are planning another "terrorist event" to bring the country back into fearful conformance? Is this paranoia on my part? I hope so.

(By the way. Either I need new glasses, or the anti-spam software is becoming more difficult. I could barely read this post's version) :)

Roger Gathmann said...

Brian, I think this antispam wear is best done through the ie browser. I've been cut off several times by the damn thing myself. Alas, I need it, or I'd pitch it right away. Sorry.

Roger Gathmann said...

ps - make that ware

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