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Showing posts from August, 2010

One on Zero

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The chart above shows that this post has a serious, quasi-academic quality Way back in 1984, in the Pleistocene era, there was a movie called "The Lonely Guy." I always remember it as an Albert Brooks movie, but it was Charles Grodin who actually played the title character. Sometimes hard to separate one sad sack from another I guess. This was in Grodin's BBSBWCTS (Before Becoming a Smug Bore With a Cable Talk Show) period, when he was funny on screen, and I remember having some laughs and feeling the pathos of the story. Steve Martin was in it, too, so there's that. Grodin plays Warren Evans, a man who finds his wife in flagrante with another man, gets divorced, becomes lonely and despondent, chokes on a toothpaste tube cap and dies, and is eaten by his cats before his body is discovered. Wait a minute, that's not right - this is a comedy with a Neil Simon screenplay - I think I was imagining it as a Coen Brothers movie or something. Sorry. The actual story has

Atheists at happy hour and other thoughts

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If you're young, smart, have a little money and don't believe in God, chances are you're looking forward to the start of your weekend and knocking back a few. In fact, chances are you don't wait for the weekend - according to the latest Gallup survey on drinking habits . Now, you could just follow that link and read the thing for yourself, but I recommend you pour yourself a fresh one and let me lay it all out for you, along with my sparkling observations of the meaning behind the data. Unlike Gallup, I have no science to back up my claims, but that's never stopped me before. First, let's qualify that first sentence: "Young" in this case means 54 or less (I like that definition of young) because the numbers are the same 18 to 54. In the 55+ range there are fewer drinkers, and I take that to mean at a certain age you either (a) lose your taste for the stuff, or (b) lose you ability to find your car keys so you can't get to the liquor store, or (c) l