A Trump voter bought me a beer in Boston last night.

November 11, 2016

I hit a serious wall of brain fog around 3:30pm yesterday, so I decided to get some fresh air and walk to the pub.

(And for the record: yes, this is a thing I actually do. I go to the pub by myself to read or to write or just to BS with strangers and feel like I'm being social after being cooped up in my house all alone and writing all day. And of course, being me, my pub of choice is an Irish hipster punk rock dive bar named for a radical socialist LGBTQ-friendly IRA poet, because, duh)

At some point, I was sitting there reading this article from The Intercept on my phone when I ended up in conversation with the guy to my right over which whiskey he should order. I just overheard him talking to the bartender about voting for Trump, and given the number of election-related thinkpieces about "understanding Trump voters" I had tried to absorb during my earlier brainfog, I decided to keep the conversation going. He was a 50 year old white guy, and being that I live in the kind of progressive bastion neighborhood that would protest a god damn Whole Foods, I was curious what kind of Trump voter would end up at a pub like that.

The 5 Stages of Inebriation (circa 1868)

January 14, 2015

More proof that Australians are crazy. From the State Library of New South Wales:

The photographs illustrate drunkenness in five stages, played by a male subject in a studio. Possibly commissioned by a local temperance group for educative purposes, the photographs may also have been used by an engraver for illustrations. The penultimate frame of the drunk in a wheelbarrow resembles S.T. Gill's watercolour 'Ease without Opulence', 1863 (PXC 284/30). The printed studio mark on reverse reads "Photographic Artist. C. Pickering, 612 George Street, near Wilshire's Buildings, Sydney"

It's also possible that these images were commissioned in response or relation to the Drunkard's Punishment Bill, introduced by New South Wales Premier James Martin in 1866.

Now that all that history's out of the way...I don't know, I think it's pretty accurate.

Egalitarianism vs. Feminism; or, semantic blah blah blah

May 7, 2014

So the other night I'm having a pint with my buddy, and we made friends with the couple next to us, who were playing trivia. That is, until my friend self-identified as an "Egalitarian," a phrase which somehow branded us both as sexists. Yeahbuwhat?!

Temporary Drinking Buddies

June 13, 2011

You know that friend who you always see at parties and when you're both drunk s/he is totally your best friend and you talk about everything, but then when you're sober and back in the real world, it's awkward because you're not really actually friends and you don't hang out or anything and then you see him/her on the street and it's totally weird? Yeah. You know the one.

Today on FiveByFiveHundred.com, I share my own story of my favorite drinking buddy from the local pub who I don't actually know. His name is Paul.

Cheers!