Insomniacs Anonymous

One need never buy alcohol again. There's a far cheaper alternative that requires only a little patience.

Not hooch, although that kind of fits the bill as well. Toss some apples in a plastic bag in the back of a toilet and you can home make your own jailhouse moonshine if you're willing to wait. 

Although technically, moonshine more frequently involves corn as an ingredient and tastes like rubbing alcohol, while I can only assume that apple whiskey tastes like a hint of rustic pome mixed with dysentery and regret. Of course either of those alternatives would be illegal on the moral grounds that the government cannot properly tax you for poisoning yourself. For your own safety, of course.

Find yourself not in the illegal substance trade but want to experience the same results?

Have a hankering for occasional euphoria? Blackouts? Temporary loss of brain function and balance? Slurred, fumbling words and occasional delusions that border on full-out hallucination? Want to bolster a defiance of social mores? Want to get into more car accidents, but with less guilt? 

Rhetorical questions, of course, because we *all* want that.

Sleep deprivation is the way to go. 

Also, it helps with creativity and makes most social events more bearable, keeps various mental maladies mitigated and makes jokes far more humorous. I'm not exactly a communal butterfly, and the larger the group, the more bolstering it takes. I'm pretty sloshed on it at the moment, so I apologize if I meander.

I'm off in a little town for my wife's sister's wedding. Big crowd, remote place. A lot of older folks, and religious ones of the more judgmental inclination too. Mutterings of hellfire and damnation make a curious backdrop to vivid greens, sticky heat, open water and blue skies. 

"Provincial" is an accurate description.

Helluva view though, and really quite peaceful.

Wedding is in a few hours and figured I could either write or sleep, so I'm writing. And, by the sleep--deprivation metaphor-- I suppose I'm pre-gaming as well. I am not designed for crowds.

Almost done the first draft of Wyte, a full length horror novel about a group of amateur, middle-aged adventurers who wish to escape a generally unfulfilling office life and add the Yamal Peninsula in northern Russia to the list of locations they've seen and conquered. They find themselves confronted with a nature far greater and more terrible than the one they understood, and a presence that is not only aware of them but happy to pursue and conquer them in turn.

Been working on a bunch of other projects too, but the straight-forwardness of Wyte has been incredibly fun to write, and I think it will be good to read, when done. Not as much humor as some of the projects, but a more classical aim at horror.

First draft is hardly the same thing as finished product, but it's progress. From then on, it'll take even more time and patience. Everything with writing does. Patience and a willingness to be entirely cheap. So screw the bars and expensive liquors that taste like the arse end of a hippo, those are only for the grossly wealthy and impatient. Wait a while, instead.