[10:16pm: Friends bitching about designing cults for Social Anthropology on Facebook. How the fuck can you bitch about designing a goddamned cult? For points?! I want to do that for the entirety of my BA.]
Much like a toxic mould on a loaf of bread, this column was conceived in fairly unremarkable circumstances. Like many ideas that seem bursting with potential upon conception, it came to me while I was drunk. More specifically, it came to me while I was drunk at a Chinese restaurant in Palmerston North, bitching to anyone unfortunate enough to be in my earshot about a wine I had purchased. After one person (I forget who) suggested I should write this stuff down, I spent a good fifteen minutes hunting down people and asking them if they thought it was a swell idea. Many people, all intoxicated to varying degrees, thought that it was, indeed, a swell idea.
[10:24pm: A kakapo tries to have sex with a zoologist’s neck while Stephen Fry watches on in bemusement. This is what Youtube was made for—nay, this is what computers were made for. A roflcano, this.]
Of course, like many seemingly-swell ideas that come to me while drunk, the reality of the situation was less than pleasing. Somehow, I had managed to maintain a level of optimism about this column throughout a week of sobriety. But once the first column was submitted, I realised—I would have to drink for this. Regularly.
As such, the first thing this column taught me was as follows—never follow through on any promises made while intoxicated if the financial cost of keeping said promises is high.
[10:45pm: I’m sure Barnaby Nicholls is a very nice person, and has awfully good taste in music, but man, is he fucking wrong about the Exogenesis Symphony on Muse’s latest album. And MK Ultra. But as I said, I’m sure Barnaby is an awfully decent person regardless.]
Of course, that’s not the only thing I’ve learned in my time writing this thoroughly enjoyable column. In fact, one could say that I have learned a plethora of lessons from the humble teacher that is writing for Salient.
But Adam, your humble voices cry, what have you really learnt? You’ve spent 400 words procrastinating and being a dick. Hurry up with the good shit like. Well, shut up, you, I’m just getting to it. Writing this column has taught me the following:
• No budget wine with a cork in it can be worth the effort it takes to get the fucking cork out.
• Winemakers seem to like finding tropical fruits where there aren’t any.
• Just because a wine bottle says the wine inside is best consumed with pasta and beef, it does not mean that it works with your spaghetti bolognaise.
• Swine flu should be avoided at all cost.
• Writing about wine is fucking expensive.
[10:55pm: According to LastFM, I listen to too much Red Hot Chilli Peppers. How sad it is that I agree with it.]
But what have I learned? Have I taken anything substantial away from this experience? Well, in short, no. My taste for wine has not developed, my palette has not improved, and my ability to critique wine has not become better. There’s but one final lesson I can take away from this, one last nugget of wisdom.
Budget wine is good for getting drunk, and little else.
Here endeth the lessons.