Misadventures with Wine + stuff

NOTE:  I pulled the trigger in this one before I could talk myself out of it. 

We are not wine drinkers here at the El Apartmento. Not by any stretch of the imagination.  But we are wine consumers, in that we use the stuff as a cooking ingredient.

As ingredients, then, we prefer to use a garbage Merlot, and a garbage Chardonnay, the nastiest, cheapest ones on offer, in case I didn't make myself clear.

Not thinking, as seems to happen a lot lately, I put 'garbage white' on the grocery list, presuming that The Biker would get the usual.

He did not.

He got a Moscato.

He got Barefoot Wineries White Moscato..

He did not look when he bought it.

And I did not look when I opened the bottle. 

 

I was feeling saucy that afternoon, so I tipped a little into a glass and took a sip. All my jungle instincts kicked in as it hit the back of my tongue. I turned to the sink, spat it out, dumped the glass, grabbed the bottle, ran for the terlet and flushed it all. One long fluid movement from sip to flush, like a ballet. 

Like this ballet.

I don't blame the Biker a bit. And I never said a word about it. 

 But today I did this:

OO!  OO!  Wha'd it taste like wha'd it taste  like OO OO

OK FINE I WILL TELL YOU.

It tasted like straight Karo syrup and mouthwash.

It even had a texture. 

It was like   

I'm not saying what I was going to say because it's too grosFINE OK.

It was like a slug. It was like as if someone had stepped on a slug, in your mouth.

See, you had to know, and now look at you.

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I figured out how to tell the Conservatives from the Liberals here in Idaho. 

Any institution that has a lot of Hispanic people?  Is Liberal.  Or Liberal-er.  Or -ish.

Unless it's the Catholic church.  Catholicism here is its own special brand of....this: "That Guy In Rome": A Catholic Town in Idaho Where The Pope is a Heretic | Religion Dispatches 

Have I made you uncomfortable?  Good. I know I am. Now I have company.*

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OK here's what I've figured out:

A Vape place is a tiny hole-in-the-wall joint, usually with a drive-thru out back, that sells primarily vape juice and vaping thingies. (Not something I do, so yeah.) They might sell a little pop, they might have an expresso machine.  They all exhale a weird candy aroma, like those cherry-scented things they used to put in gas station toilets.

A Tobacco store sells conventional nicotene products - as long as they're made by Philip Morris. They also carry marijuana paraphernalia, doper lifestyle accessories (like a lighter shaped like a MAC 5 - ask Savannah, she has one in her purse) and black light posters, incense, and things that Snoop Dog has signed. Also craft beer, garbage beer, garbage wine and malt liquor. Oh and let's not forget the massive cases full of Kratom in various forms.

A liquor store sells liquor, beer, wine, malt liquor, mixers, pop, and a little bit of all the above ^^^. Also ice cream treats.

Unless you're up the road in Weiser, where it's just all one thing and they either call it Such and So's TOBACCO STORE or VAPE PLACE... and liquor, in little teeny letters. Along with a bunch of lottery ticket ads.

It would seem that people here are desperate to run shit through their livers. And also obvious that they feel guilty about it.  

There's a hierarchy of sin, too. 

Vape stuff is off the radar, but something really sketch is going on in those places, so black out the windows and put bars over the doors. 

Tobacco is bad for you, but at least it's not beer or wine, which is  bad-ER for you, so here, let's put that in a bag (seen above) so that nobody at all will guess in one million years that you have just bought alcoholic beverages. From the tobacco store.

But hard liquor, now, hey, that's REALLY SUPER EL FUCKING BAD SENOR so let's just put 150 signs advertising lottery tickets all over the place and advertise the tobacco and vape shit, wink wink. Nobody in two million and a half years will ever guess that you stopped in to buy HARD LIQUOR. You just go on now, clutching that long, skinny paper bag that nothing else in the world comes in, BY THE NECK, and we'll all...presumably pretend that this never happened, or something.

Man, Idaho, you are a TRIP.

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*From my hometown, making me proud. They've been around for years. This is the ideal that I grew up with, in my town, in my neighborhood.

Thank God.

Or whoever.

This church is going viral for their openness and their sign game is epic (25 pics)