Tag Archives: Oktoberfest

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Mastering Fibbing Friday

Last week Pensitivity101 had a guest fib master, as our questions were supplied by Melissa Lemay. Thanks Melissa! You can check her blog out here.

What do you think these mean/are?

  1. Biscotza
    You dirty, rotten skunk!! You never told me about these delectable, delicious Amish treats – tasty, crispy biscuits – from the French, bis (two, or twice), and cuit (cooked). You are forgiven, because, while they are a boon to my tongue, they are a bane to my waist.
  2.  Blabbermaul
    There’s a difference between tact and truth.  You can say nothing and be thought a fool, or you can open your mouth and remove all doubt.  While out in public, there is no reason to make any of our business, any of their business.  Silence is golden.  Please reconnect the brake lines on your tongue.


3.  Brutz – are a couple of bottles of a particularly obnoxious men’s cologne.

4.  Buss – is the short yellow vehicle that only a small percentage of American students used to ride to their special, collegiate schools in.  Now, the special students are the ones with three digit IQs.
Don’t confuse my son by telling him you flew to Australia for your vacation.  Australia is an island!  You can’t fly there!   😮
Brought to you by TRUMP: 24

5.  Doplich – is when an Amish girl is given cunnilingus.

6.  Schnickelfritz – is a Germanic Dennis the Menace who is part of the unholy trinity of excessive alcohol intake mascots at our local Oktoberfest.  His father is Bavarian beer-barreled Onkel Hans.  His mother is schnapps-soaked Tante Friedl, and his pet is the Distelfink, (thistle finch) which is only visible at the bottom of an empty beer keg

7.  Strubbly – is how the first stein of foamy Bavarian beer looks.  So many German men have large, bushy moustaches, because it acts as a fertilizer.

8.  Glickleck – I am happy that it’s fortunate I know this is a hardy species of lizard that inhabits southern Germany and Austria.  It survives by eating beer bugs.  Most of them are overweight.

9.  Grex – is a new breakfast cereal.  It’s made by a Greek company, so you open the bottom of the box.

10. Schnitz

Schnitz are quiet little fits of rage, thrown by teenage Amish girls, when they are told that they can’t attend the barn dance – and definitely not without their snood.   😕

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Old-Fashioned Fibbing Friday

Pensitivity101 wanted some new definitions of some old fashioned words last week.  Possessing a birth certificate with my date of birth in Roman numerals, I was bowled over.  This was right up my alley.

  1. Brabble

That was where Be’er Rabbit said he didn’t want Br’er Fox to throw him.
Please Br’er Fox, don’t throw me in that brabble patch.

  1. Bedward

That was where the wife recently stayed during her hospital visit.  After spending $500 a night at a too-ritzy hotel, we couldn’t afford another $200/day for a private, or semi-private, room.  Our budget, our insurance medical coverage, and Ontario’s socialized medicine, only go so far.

3. Crapulous

I told you not to eat so many of those ripe cherries.  You’ll be in there all day.

4. Elflock

Elflock is the first glimpse you have of yourself in a mirror in the morning, where you’ve combed your hair with a pillow.

5. Expergefactor

I awoke recently, and realized that the adult content answer that I originally had here was perhaps a bit too racy, so I removed the excessively explicit stuff.  We’re asked to keep our answers family-friendly.  Harvey Weinstein and Randy Andy, don’t constitute a family.

6. Groke

Grok /ˈɡrɒk/ is a neologism coined by American writer Robert A. Heinlein.   Oxford English Dictionary summarizes the meaning of grok as “to understand intuitively or by empathy, to establish rapport with.”  ‘Groke’ is simply the past tense of the word.
Do you want me to explain that joke to you??
I got it!  I got it!

7. Grubble

There is no sense in me talking to She Who Must Be Obeyed.  She doesn’t listen.  If she does, she doesn’t hear – she mis-hears – which can lead to interesting conversations about left-handed cake tins.  I just sit in my easy chair and grubble, grubble, grubble!
Did you say something??!
No dear!

8. Lanspresado

This is the latest offering from Starbucks.  They charge 5 Euros/six pence.  The cardboard cup is actually empty, but they use calligraphy to put your name on it in Italic script.

9. Mumpsimus

In a shameless exhibition of self-promotion, click here, if you dare.

10. Rawgabbit

This is what you get from a compulsive talker.  Let them get one word in edgewise, and it’s like tapping the beer barrel at Oktoberfest – a never-ending stream of froth and foam.

Th..Th…That’s all, folks!

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Unreal Fibbing Friday

Last week, Pensitivity101 gave us real words but wanted to know what our definitions were.

  1. Hircine

I’m not saying that my neighbours are semi-literate rednecks but….She talks about astrological symbols.  She says that hircine is Virgo.  It’s obviously a very old one.

2. Roorback

Bentley Roorback is the leader of the Thalian Party.  He thinks that MAGA is a valid word, and that Donald Trump was God’s second son.  I’ve heard that, during his interesting college days, he was caught having sex with a goat, and he now hands out Halloween candy to children, that is laced with LSD, and meth.

3. Antithalian♪

We should all be antithalian.  Those people are seriously worrisome.  Back before the advent of the internet, each village used to only have one idiot.  Now they congregate in electronic villages, to shore up each others’ views, and try to convince saner people that The Earth is flat, senior politicians are actually alien lizards in human disguise, and that Hillary Clinton was operating a child-sex ring from the basement of a run-down pizza shop.

4. Novercal

Novercal is the pharmaceutical street-cousin to Novocaine – all of the up, without any of the down.

5. Accismus

It is quite valid, but this is a term that should never be publicly used, in reference to the butt of any of the Kardashians.  (It’s okay to do it with Caitlyn Jenner – butt you’re a pervert!)  They have more money than most small countries, and a flock of free-range lawyers, just scratchin’ to make a name for themselves, and a fat contingency fee.

6. Mundivagant

Like those who sought the Scarlet Pimpernel, I sought the meaning of this word.  I sought it on Dictionary.com.  I sought it on Merriam-Webster.  Cannot locate mundivagant.  Did you mean mendicant?  I sought it here.  I sought it there.  I sought the blighter everywhere.  I sought it in the forests of Canada, the mountains of Peru, the swamps of Borneo.  I travelled the world, real and virtual – without leaving my computer chair.  😎

7. Prefestinate

Prefestinate is an adjective which describes the fuss, the planning, the hard work, leading up to a big celebration of some sort.  The weeks preceding Kitchener’s Oktoberfest are an orgy of prefestinate organized confusion.

8. Apiculate

Something kept goading me – poking me with a sharp stick- to come up with a smart- ass answer for this word.  But I decided to just leaf it alone.  😉

9. Sloomy

She was the downscale girlfriend in a 1965 song made famous by The McCoys – Hang on Sloomy.  She wasn’t gloomy – she was Sloomy, it’s just that her busy social life kept her constantly short of sleep.

10 Ramulose

Like silver hairs among the gold, here’s a bit of truth among the lies.  Once upon a time…. I had an uncle named Randolph.  He was known to all and sundry, family and friends, for 55 years, as RAM.  And he fit the name – short, muscular, he wouldn’t fit in an empty apple barrel, but with no fat.

When he was widowed, my Mother and sister embarked on a campaign to marry him off to a long-absent widow who had moved back to town to care for her aged mother.

When he died, and the two attended his funeral, I heard them complain, “I didn’t know who the preacher was talking about!  It was, ‘Randy this’ and ‘Randy that.”  I told them, ‘It was Ram-u-lose.’

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A Fear Of Fibbing Fridays

So, Pensitivity101 wants to know, “What do you think these are phobias of?”

Ablutophobia

It’s a fear of having to watch old Popeye cartoons.  Does anyone remember when the bad-guy character, ‘Bluto’ suddenly became ‘Brutus,’ because King Features couldn’t keep their books straight?

Androphobia

It is the fear of having yet another Terminator sequel movie released.  It would be sad to see Arnold hobbling around like a geriatric T-800 model with a cane, or walker.

Ataxophobia

This is the fear of the approaching, mid-April deadline, both with the American IRS, (Notice that The IRS spells theirs) and the UK Inland Revenue.  Canadians get another two weeks of paralyzing terror each year – until the end of the month.  It’s no favour!  I say it’s like ripping a Band-Aid off.  Be like Nike, and Just Do It!

Autophobia

This is the quite-reasonable distress caused by having to go out upon the streets and roads with all those Other Drivers.  I’m okay, but they’re all just a bunch of weird accidents, waiting to happen, and probably catching me in the crunch.
Anyone who doesn’t drive as fast as me is an idiot.  Anyone who drives faster than me is an asshole.  Forget World Peace – envision using your turn signals.

Bathmophobia is the fear of the end of the day, when you have three preschoolers and a sandbox.  Soap suds spreading faster than The Big Bang – and when you finally get them all clean, you discover that one of them is the neighbour’s kid.  😳

Chromophobia has suffered technological obsolescence.  50 years ago, the little gear-head greasers plated every piece of exposed metal on their cars bright and shiny silver.  Today’s OY-Generation decorate their penis-substitute Lego-plastic toy cars with neon brothel-lights, rear spoilers whose only purpose is to hold beers while they brag to each other, and modify their exhausts so that little Dachshund cars sound like Great Danes.  They claim that they soup them up!  Yeah, right – soup in a sieve.  😯

Ephebiphobia is the feeling of unease, when you realize that your unmarried aunt has been batting for both teams all along.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Genuphobia is the fear non-Catholics have, of having to attend a wedding or baptism in a Catholic church.  You never know when to kneel, or when to stand up, or sit down.  They’re all up and down like a prostitute’s panties.  By the time you figure it out, they’ve got the hymnbook out, and are singing.

Heliophobia

Ever since Kobe Bryant’s little mishap, it’s what has caused me to decide to not use gasoline-powered aerial eggbeaters as a mode of transportation.  It’s not what I want people to mean when they say, “He was a down-to-Earth person.”  👿

Nomophobia

This is an irrational fear of garden figurines.

Osmophobia was the absolute panic I felt when I heard a rumour that some television network, desperate to replace lost viewers, was going to give Donny and Marie another hour-long variety show.  At their age, they can’t carry a tune in a bucket.  Donny’s ‘little bit Rock and Roll’ would be shuffle and wheeze, and his purple socks would be orthopedic.

Podophobia is a fear of being unexpectedly called upon to say a few words at some community gathering.  Unaccustomed as I am at public speaking – I’m gonna sit down, have another beer, and let the paid performing seals do their job.

Trypophobia

This was the terrible uncertainty that I felt recently.  I went into the office break room early in the morning.  Someone had put out a Tupperware container of fudge brownies, so I took one.  I returned soon after, to see if the coffee machine had finished.  There was now a note on the brownie box.

I Made These Brownies For Shits And Giggles
Half of them have cannabis.
The other half have laxative
Try One. Wait a half-hour, and find out which.


Wiccaphobia

Which way did they go?  How many of them were there?  When did they leave?  I must find them – for I am their leader.

This is the fear that you are going to be assigned another project, because your boss is not sufficiently computer-literate to access the internet and look for himself.  Not only will you have to do extra research, but it will be on constantly-changing websites that can be edited by people who wear MAGA hats, and believe that the world is flat.  😥

Zuigerphobia

It’s the feeling of imminent doom that arises locally, beginning about the middle of September, when we realize that half a million people who want to get drunk and obnoxious, and throw up in a different town, are about to descend on our city for Oktoberfest.  Before I retired, I used to book the week off – not to party, but because I was tired of getting pulled over in DUI/RIDE Program Traffic checks.  That really sucks.  😉

***

I have a phobia that Pensitivity didn’t list.  It’s demifiniphobia.  That’s the fear I felt when I looked at all these big, fancy words, worried that I will only be able to respond to about half the prompts, and end up looking like a half-assed halfwit.

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37th-Day Adventist Fibbing Friday

This is Pensitivity101’s Pass The Buck version of Fibbing Friday.  Thanks to Jim Adams who supplied the questions this week. You can check out his blog here.

  1. Why did all the dinosaurs die?

Fred Flintstone opened an automobile dealership, and sold cars to almost all of them.  T-Rex had trouble steering his, because of his short arms.  Then a Brontosaurus learned how to make fern wine.  Within a couple of years, dinosaur drunken driving accidents had reduced their numbers below the breeding survival limit.  They didn’t want to admit that they were a bunch of saurian sots.  They blamed it on a single meteor, but really, it was Fords, Meteors, Monarchs, and a few Taunuses.

  1. Why are there so many stories about the great flood?

What with Global Warming, wildfires and decades-long droughts, it’s just a way for people to fondly remember the good old days when illegal Mexican immigrants needed at least a raft, or an inner tube, to sneak across the Rio Grande into Texas.  Now they can do it with a skateboard.

On the other hand, if Iceland’s glaciers continue to melt, and sea levels rise, London’s East Enders will be living on houseboats, and Paris will be a deep-water port.

  1. What happened at Hadrian’s Wall?

A drunken Scotsman (Are there any other kinds?) fell off it, while trying to get over it on his way home from the pub.  He landed on his sporran, spraining it badly, and dropped his takeaway packet of chips and Scottish egg.

  1. How long was the hundred years war?

576 miles, 3089 feet, 7 ¾ inches.  Any longer than that, and it would have reached past the Maginot line, into Germany – and we all know how grumpy those folks can get when you interrupt their Oktoberfest parade.

  1. Why was it all quiet on the western front?

There was a COVID-caused supply chain problem, and an entire shipment of hearing-aid batteries were not allowed across the border, because the truck driver was a vaccine-denier, who refused to wear a mask.

  1. What was the Boxer Rebellion all about?

That was when I firmly put my foot down when the wife tried to get me to change over to bikini briefs.  The very idea! 😳   At my age my underwear has to cover a lot of territory.  I just silently (But very rebelliously) declined to buy any.

  1. What caused the Titanic to sink?

Leonardo DiCrapio’s enormous ego.  If he hadn’t been standing up at the bowsprit with his arms spread, doing an impersonation of Amelia Earhart, the ship’s pilot might have been able to see past his swelled head, and avoided that delivery of ice for the ship’s bar.

  1. Why do they want us to remember the Main?

Americans would like Brits to remember that it was a battleship named after the State of Maine.  Its sinking in the Havana harbour in 1898 was the putative cause of the Spanish/American War – the first made- for- television newspaper conflict.  Publisher/producer William Randolph Hearst told a photographer who was on the scene, “You get me the photographs.  I’ll get you the war.”  😯

  1. What happened to Amelia Earhart?

She was originally Flighty Spice, the 6th member of The Spice Girls, but she became so embarrassed that she got plastic surgery, changed her name, and came back as Britney Spears – far less demeaning.

  1. Who was involved in the Iran Contra scandal?

If you can believe the testimony, – and who would think that anyone, especially respected American politicians, would lie under oath? – Nobody was involved!  It was all just a fig newton of our collective imagination, and never really occurred at all.

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Giving Thanx For Comedy

Since so many people like a drumstick at Thanksgiving, geneticists developed a six-legged turkey.  No-one knows what it tastes like because they can’t catch one.

A collection of quotes about Thanksgiving, from people you may know.

I celebrated Thanksgiving the old-fashioned way.  I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had a big feast, and then I killed them all and took their land.
Jon Stewart

Thanksgiving is an emotional time.  People travel thousands of miles to be with people they see only once a year – and then discover that once a year is way too often.
Johnny Carson

Cooking tip: Wrap turkey leftovers in aluminum foil – and throw them out.
Nicole Hollander

Thanksgiving, man, not a good day to be my pants.
Kevin James

I took me three weeks to stuff the turkey. I stuffed it through the beak.
Phyllis Diller

I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage.
Erma Bombeck

The Thanksgiving tradition is, we overeat. ‘Hey, how about at Thanksgiving we just eat a lot?’ ‘But we do that every day!’ ‘Oh. What if we eat a lot with people that annoy the hell out of us?
Jim Gaffigan

If you stand in the meat section at the grocery store long enough, you start to get mad at turkey. There’s turkey ham, turkey bologna, turkey pastrami. Someone needs to tell the turkey, man, just be yourself.
Mitch Hedberg

Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread and pumpkin pie.
Jim Davis

If you want to save a species, simply decide to eat it. Then it will be managed—like chickens, like turkeys, like deer, like Canadian geese.
Ted Nugent

Most turkeys taste better the day after; my mother’s tasted better the day before.
Rita Rudner

Last Thanksgiving I shot my own turkey. It was fun. That shotgun going, Blam!  Everybody at the supermarket just staring. Why track them when I know where they are?
Kenny Rogerson

We’re having something different this year for Thanksgiving. Instead of a turkey, we’re having a swan. You get more stuffing.
George Carlin

Even though we’re a week and a half away from Thanksgiving, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Richard Roeper

You can tell you ate too much for Thanksgiving when you have to let your bathrobe out.
Jay Leno

If you wish to make an apple pie truly from scratch, you must first invent the universe.
Carl Sagan

I got to go home for Thanksgiving and sit at the adults’ table. That’s ’cause, you know, somebody had to die for me to move up a plate.
Andre Kelley

Thanksgiving is America’s national chow-down feast, the one occasion each year when gluttony becomes a patriotic duty.
Michael Dresser

An optimist is a person who starts a new diet on Thanksgiving Day.
Irv Kupcinet

I’m from Canada, so Thanksgiving to me is just another Thursday with more food. And I’m thankful for that!
Howie Mandel

Thanksgiving is a magical time of year when families across the country join together to raise obesity statistics.
Stephen Colbert

Here in my city, the Canadian Thanksgiving becomes the first weekend of a 9-day Oktoberfest, where over-drinking and overeating go hand-in-hand, like Hansel and Gretel.  I am thankful that I don’t have to drive through that insanity anymore.  If you’ve seen one drunk guy with bare legs, in leather shorts – you’ve seen one too many.

 

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Flash Fiction #235

PHOTO PROMPT © CEAyr

YOU CAN’T GET THERE FROM HERE

How do you get to the K-W Oktoberfest Parade??!
Well, I wouldn’t start from here.

Summer road construction diversions were completed in time for the autumn detours.

Just go around the big COVID Obstruction, then straight through the Bicycle Virtue-Signalling Snafu, where 5000 traffic cones have produced cycling lanes, but reduced miles of four-lane major streets to two-lane parking lots.

Seating in beer tents will be every third chair, and special Pandemic masks, with little holes to drink beer through straws will be provided.

Extra test kits, and extra hospital staff, will be on hand.  Have fun, but stay safe.  👿

***

I published a post some years ago, https://archonsden.wordpress.com/2012/07/30/you-cant-get-there-from-here/ with the above title, describing traffic problems on local streets, which were laid out by cattle, rather than surveyors.  The City has gotten bigger, but so have the traffic problems.

Last year, we had 700,000 people attend Oktoberfest in 9 days.  At this time, the 2020 Oktoberfest is still a go. with – what is hoped are – sufficient safeguards.  There will be no parade, and fest-halls will not be as crowded as elevators.  The Oktoberfest Committee seem to be hoping that COVID – rather than a chunk of the population – will be dead by Canadian Thanksgiving, or a vaccine available.

My home is out on the West side of town, so that prevailing winds should blow any infection away from me.  I’ve installed HEPA filters on the air intakes, and won’t be leaving the house for over a week.  😆

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Go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple https://rochellewisoff.com/ site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

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Have You Ever Called The Police?

BC Mountie

In the wake of the George Floyd, Black Man Death By Minnesota Cop fiasco, MSN’s daily poll asked
Have you ever called the police?

Usually, they show up just when you don’t want them.  When it happens to someone else, we revel in the schadenfreude.  I was recently held up at a major intersection by a driver who – finally – made an illegal left turn…. right in front of a cop car.

The only time I ever called the police was the night that I was a little late for my Security Guard shift at a downtown hotel.  I was allowed to park free in the hotel’s parking garage, and keeping an eye on its contents was part of my job.

Around 2 AM, I noticed a teenage boy wandering among the cars, and went out to accost him.  He quickly disappeared.  I went to my car to get my lunch and found that, in my haste, I was the only one who forgot to lock my car.  In a garage full of a hundred Cadillacs, BMWs, and Mercedes, he got into my little Volkswagen and lifted a cheap backpack, a towel, my lunch, two pocket books and a bag of hard candies.

With no hope of getting them back, I called the station to give a description and incident report.  Two hours later, a him-and-her cruiser team showed up to take a statement, and I was offered a beer from a six-pack they had on the front floor with them.

How comfortable do you feel when in the presence of police officers?
Very comfortable
Somewhat comfortable
Somewhat uncomfortable
Very uncomfortable
I don’t know

Somewhere between Somewhat, and Very Comfortable.  I begin with ‘White Man’s Privilege’.  I am far less likely to have a bad interaction, than members of many other groups.  I have been exposed to members of police forces at various levels, all my life.  I have seen them perform stupid, questionable, dangerous, and illegal acts (see six-pack, above).  I am not impressed.  They put on their egotistic persona one leg at a time, the same as I do.

My own self-confidence borders on arrogance, but that is a fine line that should not be crossed.  Police forces, and most individual officers – including the females – run on testosterone.  They like to feel that they are the alpha, but are realistic enough to accept that there are those above and outside them.  I can dismiss or discount them, but I’d better not disrespect.

It is best to sternly treat them as a schoolmarm would deal with a ten-year-old bully.  EVERYTHING is illegal.  If they think that they have been insulted, they have ways to make even an innocent man guilty.

When I worked as a Security Guard, I was accepted as one of the pack – a wolf cub – but one of them, someone in a uniform, trying to keep order.  Police don’t necessarily want to enforce the law.  They just want social peace and quiet.

Have you ever been stopped by the police?
Yes
No
I don’t know

I would be interested to meet the hermit who has never been stopped by the police, at least once in their life.  Just before I turned 13, a group of us yobs were returning from the beach bowling alley, down at the south edge of town, after it closed at 1 AM on a warm August night.  A half-block from the main street, there was a lane – an alley – which ran behind the stores, for deliveries.  The group had come to a stop while we discussed something.  I noticed headlights coming up the street behind us.  They got brighter, but they didn’t pass.

I turned, to see the local police cruiser nestling up to the group.  I threw a startled look, and took off running full-tilt up the alley.  Wellll….  Barney lit ‘em up – lights and siren, in hot pursuit.  If I had wanted to ‘escape,’ there were walkways.  I gave him room on one side and continued up the lane.  The cruiser screamed past, he cut me off…. and I calmly walked over to the car.

He tumbled out, and immediately demanded;
Why did you run??!
Because I can.
Where are you coming from?
The bowling alley.
What were you doing?
I just stared at him – fast food, girls, entertainment, swimming.
Well, why did you run??!
Exercise?  Youthful exuberance?
Where are you going?
Home.
Well, you make sure that you go straight home, (which he can’t legally demand) and don’t let me catch you (doing what?) again!

I have been waved over into several RIDE Program checkpoints, both in a car, and on my motorcycle, during the Oktoberfest drunken craziness week.
I was stopped while driving the daughter back from a dog breeder, because she was cuddling her adopted puppy on her chest/shoulder.  The patrolman marched up to the car, realized that she was holding a dog, and waved us on.  If you’re in an accident, it’s acceptable to kill a pet – but children must be restrained in approved car seats.  My Weekend Weak-End

I was stopped at 1:30 AM – in August – for going too fast in a school zone.  He was right, but he was also bored, and wanted to flex his legal muscle.  I didn’t get a speeding ticket, but a $30 fine for not having the most recent proof of insurance in the car.

I was stopped, driving three co-workers home after a 4PM to 1:30 AM shift at a railway warehouse on the edge of town.  We just reached the end of the driveway, when a cruiser went past to the right.  I turned left – in-town – but soon had flashing lights behind me.
What are you guys doing?
Going home after work at XXX Transport.
I didn’t know anybody worked out here on Saturday.
(Then you don’t know your patrol area well)
But officer, this is the end of a Friday night shift.
Oh…. yeah.  Okay, away you go.

The site manager, and the shipper, both drove past while we were detained, after stopping to lock the gate, and wanted to know what and why on Monday.

I am bewildered by the existence of an “I Don’t Know” option at the end of the second and third questions.  If you’ve been pulled over, or had to call the police, wouldn’t you know??  Wouldn’t it be exciting enough to be memorable??!

Martha, that time we had a home invasion, and those three guys with guns broke into the house, what did we do?  Did we go on the Dr. Phil Show?   🙄

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The Aftermath

Pot Smoker

Come for the education. Stay for the drunken orgy.
Saint Patrick’s Day celebration at a local University – by the numbers.

10:30 AM – First reveller taken to hospital

11:00 AM – First keg party – with 300 students – busted.

10 busloads of out-of-town Uni students – 4 from prestigious Brock University, then parked abandoned in the University-area Starbucks parking lot.  I’ll bet they were thrilled

42 Peel Regional Police sent up to assist a small army of Waterloo Regional Police – because Brock Uni, and one other, are in Peel Region.

47 ambulance calls by 6:00 PM

25 trips to the hospital by paramedics with partygoers,
5 of them in serious/critical condition – all alcohol-caused.

52 students treated at Grand River Hospital, closest to the bash. Both of Kitchener’s hospitals had extra staff on Saturday to prepare for a possible influx of drunken students, and injuries due to falls.

100 extra security officers on duty at Wilfrid Laurier U. buildings

40 sober students to volunteer for the Sunday morning cleanup

2 large dump trucks, to block off each end of a two block stretch of student housing, for safety, because the partiers owned the street.

400 beer cans/bottles collected as of 2:00 PM, by an under-employed man with a shopping cart full of garbage bags, for their 10cents/ea refund. He was hoping to get $99, to take his girlfriend to Niagara Falls for an overnight stay.  He regularly cruises the student housing, and takes discarded beer cans and bottles out of blue recycling bins.  St. Patrick’s is like Christmas to him.  Two non-partying students gave him some hot food, and an alpaca sweater.

27 students on one house front porch, when the railing snapped. One girl received bruises, but was not included in the ambulance-run statistics.

250 cases of water and 5000 Timbits (donut balls) were handed out by Red Frogs, an international student support group. Slate Church also brought in water and Timbits.

20,000 – The estimated crowd within the two-block stretch. Police say that it easily eclipses last year’s 15,000.

248 police calls in a 12-hour period
619 charges laid
435 were alcohol-related
18 were Criminal Code, including one guy waving a knife
22,400 final ‘official’ Police estimate of the crowd – but you know the police, anything over a dozen doughnuts, and they lose track.  They counted all the legs, and divided by two.

Ezra Party

Teens coming from universities in Toronto, London and Guelph were stopped on area roads, and charged with speeding, drug possession, drunk driving, and other liquor offenses. Students hung off balconies, climbed trees, and onto roofs.  Several arrests were made for public intoxication, assault and sexual assault.

One female Laurier student interviewed, said, “It’s not that much fun unless you’re drunk. I had a bad day until I got drunk.”  She said that some young men were playing a game to see how many young women they could kiss.  She was asked for a kiss, but declined, and fortunately, wasn’t sexually assaulted.

Several ‘civilians’ stopped by, to walk the gauntlet and view the happening.  One couple said that they saw several young females drunk and passed out on front lawns.  Young men have raging hormones, and a generally poor opinion of females who put themselves in this situation. Drunken young men have trouble controlling their raging hormones, and passing up a free chance at winning the intercourse lottery.  It is fortunate that there weren’t more sex assaults.

Forgetting that Saturday was St. Paddy’s Day, the wife and I drove through Waterloo’s main intersection at 1:00 PM. Luckily we were a mile south of the big party, but still…. 5 green-adorned, very intoxicated young men spilled out of a bar and staggered up the main drag, each clutching an open beer.  Very much a No-No in Ontario, they probably got away with it because every cop was at the melee.  They all leaned against each other like teepee support poles.  If one of them had tripped, they’d have all wound up in a pile.

And a good time was had by – some. For a lot of others, dealing with this debauched drunken Bacchanalia was a lot of work and expense.  Now we have the K-W Oktoberfest to look forward to in six months.  We get the same kind of numbers, but they’re spread out over 10 days.  Anybody wanna come to town, and PARTAY??   😯

by

WOW #16

Beer Can

The Word Of the Week, if you can remember it when you sober up, is

Cannikin

Definitions for cannikin

a small can or drinking cup.
a small wooden bucket.

Origin of cannikin

Cannikin comes from Middle Dutch cannekijn, Dutch kanneken “small can.” The cann-, kann- element comes Middle Dutch kanne, Dutch kan, and is closely related to German Kanne, Old Norse kanna, Old English canne, and English can, all from Germanic kanna meaning “tankard, container, can.” It is possible that this Germanic word is a borrowing from Latin canna “reed, reed pipe, flute, cane,” which itself has a very long history going back through Greek kánna “reed, cane” to Semitic, e.g. Assyrian qanū “reed.” Nouns ending in the diminutive suffix -kin are not common in English, and most of those (e.g., catkin, gherkin, firkin, manikin) are of Dutch origin and date from the mid-16th and mid-17th centuries. Dutch -kin is related to German -chen, as in Liebchen “sweetheart” or Häuschen “little house, cottage.” Cannikin entered English in the mid-16th century.

Now that you’ve learned more English word-history than you really wanted, this post is about the different ways that Americans and Canadians buy beer, and go about getting drunk, soused, high, pissed, lit….etc., etc. English has a seeming infinity of words to describe intoxication,

If a Canadian, or at least one from Ontario, wants to buy beer, he buys a case – 24 beer at a time, and usually in bottles. Based on very limited personal research, mostly in New York State, Florida, Ohio and Michigan, I find that most Americans don’t buy beer by the case.  Even when they purchase 24 at a time, they get them in 4 sissysix-packs.  Damned amateurs, no real commitment.  At least most of them don’t drink it with a straw.

Canned beer generally outsells bottled. They don’t break when you drunkenly accidently drop one at a tail-gate party or Barbecue, and they won’t flatten your ATV’s tires later, when you fling them out your pickup’s windows.  When you’re fishing and drinking, be kind to the environment.  Don’t just toss the empties out of the boat.  Fill them with water, and sink them to the bottom.

Mind your Ps and Qs.  The British still drink beer by the 20 oz. pints and 40 oz.quarts.  It’s getting better, but quarts don’t get warm while you drink them, because much of the beer they serve is still unrefrigerated.  If any of you Americans want to see how beer is really drunk (and the patrons are really drunk, too) c’mon up to Kitchener during our Oktoberfest, and watch it guzzled from one-liter (wimpy 32 oz.American quart) steins.  The beer has a head tonight.  You’ll have a head tomorrow.

Hans Haus