Every Inordinate Cup

If wine is "bottled poetry" as RLS proclaims, surely GBS is also right in referring to whiskey as "liquid sunshine." Tonight's Scotch tasting, er Scotch drinking, will only serve to drive this point emphatically home. A mere pittance of $45 to attend - a fare to be covered by the firm under the guise of "business development", no less - in exchange for the sampling of a range of products designed to set the mind and soul alight. The hour cannot arrive soon enough.

As we while away the time, Shakespearean Friday thoughts (happy birthday, Dean) turn to poor Cassio's regret over his actions while under the influence of the sinister grape (Act II, scene iii):

Exeunt all but IAGO and CASSIO

IAGO
What, are you hurt, lieutenant?

CASSIO
Ay, past all surgery.

IAGO
Marry, heaven forbid!

CASSIO
Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost
my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of
myself, and what remains is bestial. My reputation,
Iago, my reputation!

IAGO
As I am an honest man, I thought you had received
some bodily wound; there is more sense in that than
in reputation. Reputation is an idle and most false
imposition: oft got without merit, and lost without
deserving: you have lost no reputation at all,
unless you repute yourself such a loser. What, man!
there are ways to recover the general again: you
are but now cast in his mood, a punishment more in
policy than in malice, even so as one would beat his
offenceless dog to affright an imperious lion: sue
to him again, and he's yours.

CASSIO
I will rather sue to be despised than to deceive so
good a commander with so slight, so drunken, and so
indiscreet an officer. Drunk? and speak parrot?
and squabble? swagger? swear? and discourse
fustian with one's own shadow? O thou invisible
spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by,
let us call thee devil!

IAGO
What was he that you followed with your sword? What
had he done to you?

CASSIO
I know not.

IAGO
Is't possible?

CASSIO
I remember a mass of things, but nothing distinctly;
a quarrel, but nothing wherefore. O God, that men
should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away
their brains! that we should, with joy, pleasance
revel and applause, transform ourselves into beasts!

Heh. Though you'll remember, prior to his quaffing, Cassio confesses to having "very poor and unhappy brains for drinking". Ours are made of sterner stuff, and so we shall embrace the coming cloudy darkness as a warm, enlightening breeze. For what else can "change your ideas and make them run on a different plane like whiskey," as Hemingway said. And there shall even be rums and absinthe on hand as well. O glorious day.