The 5 Stages of Drinking

The 5 Stages Of Drinking

Level 1: It's 11:00 on a weeknight; you've had a few beers. You get up to leave because you have to work the next day and one of your friends buys you another round. One of your unemployed friends. Here at level one, you think to yourself, "Oh come on, this is silly. As long as I get seven hours of sleep, I'm cool."

Level 2: It's midnight. You've had a few more beers. You've just spent 20 minutes arguing against artificial turf. You get up to leave again, but at level two, a little devil appears on your shoulder. And now you're thinking, "Hey! I'm out with my friends! What am I working for anyway? These are the good times! Besides, as long as I get five hours of sleep, I'm cool."

Level 3: 1 a.m. You've abandoned beer for whisky. You've just spent 20 minutes arguing for artificial turf. And now you're thinking, "Our waitress is the most beautiful woman I've ever seen!" At level three, you love the world. On the way to the bathroom, you buy a drink for the stranger at the end of the bar just because you like his face. You get drinking fantasies. (Like, "Hey fellas, if we bought our own bar, we could live together forever. We could do it. Tommy, you could cook.") But at level three, that devil is a little bit bigger... and he's buying. And you're thinking, "Oh, come on, come on now. As long as I get three hours of sleep.... and a complete change of blood I'm cool."

Level 4: 2 .a.m. And the devil is bartending. For last call, you ordered a bottle of Jack and Coke. You are artificial turf! This time on your way to the bathroom, you punch the stranger at the end of the bar, just because you don't like his face! And now your thinking, "Our busboy is the best-looking man I've ever seen." You and your friends decide to leave, right after you get thrown out, and one of you knows an after-hours bar. And here, at level four, you actually think to yourself, "Well... as long as I'm only going to get a few hours of sleep anyway, I may as well stay up all night!!! Yeah! That'd be good for me. I don't mind going to that board meeting looking like Keith Richards. Yeah, I'll turn that around, make it work for me. And besides, as long as I get 31 hours of sleep tomorrow, I'm cool.

Level 5: 5 a.m. After unsuccessfully trying to get your money back at the tattoo parlor ("But I don't even know anybody named Ruby!"), you and your friends wind up across the state line in a bar with guys who have been in prison as recently as that morning. It's the kind of place where even the devil is going, "Uh, I got to turn in. I got to be in hell at nine. I've got that brunch with Hitler, I can't miss that." At this point, you're all drinking some kind of blue liquor, like something from a Klingon wedding. A waitress with fresh stitches comes over, and you think to yourself, "Someday I'm going to marry that girl!!" One of your friends stands up and screams, "We're drivin' to Vegas!" -- and passes out. You crawl outside for air and then you hit the worst part of level five, the sun. You weren't expecting that, were you? You never do. You walk out of a bar in daylight, and you see people on their way to work or jogging. And they look at you and they know. And they say, "Who's Ruby?" Let's be honest, if you're 19 and you stay up all night, it's like a victory -- like you've beat the night -- but if you're over 30, then that sun is like God's flashlight. We all say the same prayer then, "I swear, I will never do this again as long as I live!" And some of us have that little addition, "and this time, I mean it!"

From A Horse' Arse to the Space Shuttle

OK I didn't write this ... but it was a fascinating read. Hope you feel so too.

The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the US Railroads. Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.Why did "they" use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing. Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break onsome of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.So who built those old rutted roads?Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England) for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.And the ruts in the roads?Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived fromthe original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. And bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two warhorses. Now the twist to the story... When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two bigbooster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol attheir factory at Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track,as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds. So, a major SpaceShuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass. ... and you thought being a HORSE'S ASS wasn't important!