high spirited
The UK doesn’t have Liquor stores like the US. Liquor stores are a novel US cultural experience for me. In Britain you buy alcohol including liquor in many (licenced) corner shops and supermarkets. There are shops called “off licences’ that specialise in selling Alcohol. Off-licences normally stock wine and beer as well as liquor.
While exploring a State run liquor store in Charlotte I stumbled across ‘EverClear‘ amongst the bourbons. Bourbon is ‘America’s native spirit’. Evidently you can’t purchase Everclear in Washington State. I purchased this bottle out of curiosity. It is 95% alcohol, 190 proof. That exploded a few brain cells and I hadn’t even taken the cap off the bottle.
It looks like Meths. It’s packaged like meths. Meths is a strong spirit that can be drunk but is meant for other purposes. In the UK you occassionally see bedraggled people on the streets drinking it. I associated it with alcoholism and homelessness.
Wendy: what do you do with this stuff? Drink it or use it for cleaning things?
companion #1: Drink it. Carefully
Wendy: have you ever had any?
companion #2: No
companion #1: Yes. Once. At college. Students drink it.
Other than take the lid of and sniff it I’m not sure what I’m going to do with my bottle. Suggestions welcomed 
July 25th, 2006
Watch out, that stuff is deadly. A sniff might get you drunk
It’s definitely a college thing here in the US. Kool-Aid and grain resulted in one too many blackout nights for me.
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July 25th, 2006
Everclear makes me think of jello shots and 19 year-old boys. It’s difficult to get alcohol when you’re under 21, so you try to make it count. I can almost smell the vomit.
Also the name of a band from the early 90s. An ex-favorite song of mine was “strawberry”.
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July 26th, 2006
Mix it with Diet Dr. Pepper and drink it. We used to drink that mix quite a bit in the Marines on the weekends. It doesn’t taste bad and it was a quick way to get tipsy.
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July 28th, 2006
We would make jungle juice with it and kool aid when I was at university. It was a surefire way to get even the nicest, most peaceful person into a brawl. As I stated on flickr, I almost got arrested one night for trying to start a religious war on our front lawn with a golf club after drinking a few too many cups of that stuff. Needless to say, I was completely wrecked the next day. Ah, the memories.
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October 28th, 2006
Oh my! it smells like industrial nail-varnish remover! Mixes well with a large mug of Horlicks
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