I've mentioned it before and no doubt I shall again in days to come. I'm not a drinker. Yet I always end up going to parties where I know that will be the main, if not the only, "activity". I think I go because I enjoy being smug. I can attend and say with a slight smile, "I would never dribble vomit out of the side of my mouths onto my pants like that" (when I do it, I do it right...the whole mouthful right on the crotch).

At this specific party I am thinking of, I was sitting with a friend away from the rest of the crowd, talking and doing my favorite thing at such events; eavesdropping. I took note of a group of three entering. These three I could barely tell apart, so exactly dressed in garb from head to toe were they and each wearing a baseball cap that just sat above their eyes with bills so rounded they almost touched ends to form a tube shape. So of course I paid special attention to them.

They begin to joyfully sip on canned urine when one of them exclaimed, "beer doesn't affect me, no matter how much I drink". Which we all know is bs, especially for one as toothpick-sized as he. His friends then pressed him (with great interest) to know what did indeed have an effect on him to which he replied, "hard liquor...but I can't drink it...it tastes bad". He, from what I could gather, was of the 'drink to get drunk' type as opposed to the 'drink in social settings to be social' type so my first thought was that taste wasn't the biggest of issues. Especially if you are drinking beer, which even the most hardcore drinker will admit is hideous. Or perhaps it really taste good but they are just drunk and don't really know what they are talking about, so they falsely claim it tastes bad.

None of the above really matters unless you heard the actual voices in this conversation, high-pitched and annoying as they were. Since I'm assuming none of you did, we'll move on. The whole point of all this is to see if anyone out there can decipher the following cryptic logic. If so, please feel free to tell me as trying to figure it out on my own is pushing me to the brink of insanity (or at least madness).

They moved onto the topic of smoking and Mr. Immune To Beer began to tell everyone why he chose not to smoke (to which I'd say "bravo" had it not been for the following). Apparently, you "need air to breathe and therefore live" and evidently smoking "makes breathing more difficult". Who knew? Here the confusion sets in. Right after this comment and without a pause he said, "it's not like we live in Ethiopia where they can just break your jaw". Then he stopped talking and sipped on his drink. Even his friends had fallen silent. I managed to somehow fall silent a second time.

Now, I have discussed this with a friend whom I consider to be more wise than I, and he too was perplexed and stared at me in much the same way I stared at Immune To Beer Man and the same way that you, no doubt, are staring at the screen. The only thing I can come up with is that he was referring to your air passages, and perhaps that American doctors aren't as skilled (or as ruthless, you be the judge) as Ethiopian doctors and are unable to break the jaw away from the face to allow the air to flow (my guess is he doesn't know what's really going down in that country). How breaking the jaw affects the long-term problem of lung cancer I'm afraid I didn't get to ask, though I'm sure the answer was deep and brilliant. Rhetoric believes that I missed a very quick and very low additional comment from across the room which would have made the statement make perfect sense. Though as he said it I didn't feel as if he really believed it.

So what did the guy truly mean? The world may never know (and likely be better for it).

(I know I use lyrics from the same bands a lot but this one below is my favorite of them all. And I don't like to admit it, but the first 4 lines always bring a tear to my eye, due to the way the words were used towards me in a letter from Loba way back in the day. I still remember every word of it)

devolve | evolve