Life Imitates Trek (Again)

Once again life imitates art, or more specifically, Star Trek. Last week a French-American scientist invented a spray that makes you feel intoxicated without drinking alcohol, just like Star Trek: The Next Generation's Synthehol.

What's Synthehol, I hear you asking? Sit back for a Trek history lesson while I tell you. After a hard day's work of keeping the Federation safe from the Klingon menace, you could always count on finding Captain Kirk, Dr. McCoy and Scotty knocking back highballs in the Enterprise's rec room (never Spock, of course. Lord no. He was always in his quarters, busy inserting a fresh stick up his ass). The crew of the Enterprise only drank real alcohol; you know, the hard stuff. Cool, delicious, brain-rottting, and dare I say it-- human liquor. None of these fancy alien brews for Kirk and his men. Well, that's not quite true; Scotty wasn't above sampling a Saurian brandy or Romulan ale, but then he'd drink the anti-freeze from the warp engines in a pinch, so he hardly counts.

Flash forward 70 years or so to Captain Picard and his touchy-feely crew. Vaal forbid real alcohol touch the lips of any of those overgrown boyscouts. No, they exclusively drank Synthehol. Invented by the Ferengi, Synthehol gave the drinker a pleasant buzz, but without all the unpleasant side effects like hangovers, projectile vomiting, liver-implosion, addiction and losing the house to that brittle ice queen you married against your mother's wishes. And its intoxicating effects could easily be shaken off, allowing you to fake-booze it up right before you went on duty.

It would seem that scientist David Edwards (who apparently is secretly Senator Al Franken in disguise) has invented Synthehol a couple of centuries early. It goes by the incredibly catchy name of WA|HH Quantum Sensations, and comes in spray form, much like Binaca. One spritz and you instantly feel pie-eyed. The only problem: the intoxicating effect only lasts a few seconds. It would reportedly take around 1,000 sprays in the mouth to equal the normal effects of one conventional alcoholic beverage, and sounds like something no one should do unless they enjoy bleeding uncontrollably from the tear ducts.

One bottle of the spray costs $26. I honestly don't see this becoming a huge seller. Sure, the concept of instant intoxication sounds great; if your mother-in-law walks in the door, you could get sloppy "I love you, man" drunk in a flash. But who wants to be kippered for only five seconds? When I want to get sauced I want it to last all night, in order to still the shrieking voices in my head for a few precious hours.

Regardless of its usefulness though, Synthehol can now join the ranks of real life Trek inventions, along with cell phones, hyposprays and iPads. I'm still waiting for the transporter though, so I can travel to China in ten seconds without having to sit on a plane next to a screaming baby for 27 hours.

Flea Market Finds

I went to a flea market this past weekend and scored a couple of new (to me!) items. First up is this attractive print from the "Sad-Eyed Kid" style so popular in the 1960s and 1970s. It's about three feet tall and it'll look great on the Wall Of Tackiness. Best of all, it was only $15. It was originally $20, which I was more than willing to pay, but the lady selling it talked herself down to $15 for some reason, with nary a word from me. Someone needs to tell her that's not how you negotiate....

This was most likely part of a matched set of paintings. These things tended to come in pairs, so at one time there was probably a painting of a Harlequin boy in a matching outfit.

The only bad part: now I'm gonna have to rearrange the entire ferkakte wall to make room for it.

Then I found this little guy. It's apparently a hip flask with a rubbery drunk guy's head as a cap. I think the head looks a lot like something I would draw; it's definitely similar to my style. Maybe that's why I couldn't resist it. I like the drawing of the body as well; it's got a definite 1960s look about it.

The only thing I don't like? The flask is made from plastic, much like a bottle of Bactine. Every hip flask I've ever seen (which admittedly is not a large number) has been made of metal. You carry it in your back pocket, right? A metal flask is more likely to hold its shape when you sit on it, unlike a plastic one which will explode in your pants the minute you take your seat. A plastic hip flask is about as useful as a cardboard step ladder. Oh well. I still like his head.

Maybe one of these days I can find a nice metal hip flask and paint a body on it and then transfer his head to it. For purely decorative purposes only, of course. I don't normally carry around a hip flask full of booze.

Now that I think of it, where do you even buy a hip flask? At a liquor store, maybe? I don't drink booze, so I honestly have no idea where you'd find one.

Wheel Unfortunate

This week, perennial game show host Pat Sajak admitted that he's occasionally hosted TVs Wheel of Fortune while drunk.

Dear God, who could blame him?

I feel like I'd need to get hammered just to watch an entire episode of that show. How he's managed to bear hosting it week in and week out for the past 30 years is beyond my comprehension. I honestly cannot conceive of a worse hell. If anything he deserves the country's utmost pity and compassion.

Think about the amount of pure willpower it must take him to force his feet to shuffle into that studio once a week for three decades. Imagine the sheer inner strength he has to muster in order to feign interest in whether a soccer mom from Sheboygan wins or loses. Try to imagine how grating it has to be for him to hear the phrase, "I'd like to buy a vowel" for the 100,000th time. Think of the seething, red hot fury that must build inside him when a mouth-breathing contestant can't guess a puzzle like "CATS AND D_GS."

How this man has kept from climbing to the top of a clock tower with a high powered rifle and going on a shooting spree, I have no idea.

Some may say he has one of the best jobs in the world. He works one day a week and is no doubt a millionaire many times over. There are some things though that just aren't worth any amount of money.

I can't fathom what abominable sin could he could possibly have committed to deserve such a curse. Just remember as you go to bed tonight, thank whatever deity you may worship that you weren't born Mr. Pat Sajak.