Amateur night on the town

Mark Steel proposes:

Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve so it’s going to be FUN. Because this is when you’re not only allowed but encouraged to get drunk ….

…. New Year’s Eve is like those boards that local authorities put up for kids to graffiti on, or the chants that baseball fans are directed to sing by stadium announcers. By making these acts official the fun is ruined ….

…. [Y]ou’ve a better chance of having a brilliant time at Christmas and New Year if you ignore the fact it’s Christmas and New Year. Or join a religion that insists the Christians are three days out, then get absolutely smashed on January 4th.

There are a couple of other holidays like this; there is plenty of drinking and revelry on the Fourth of July in the United States, and wasn’t St. Patrick’s Day, 2008, moved to the ides of March to avoid everyone getting drunk on Sunday and being hung over on Monday?

I once asked a friend of mine if he had any plans on St. Patrick’s Day, and he said, “No, not really. Too many amateurs out tonight.”

He has a point.

Now playing in middle America

Um … right. The AP reports that a man has been charged with drunk driving … while on a barstool.

Authorities in Ohio say a man has been charged with drunken driving after crashing his motorized bar stool.

Police in Newark, 30 miles east of Columbus, say when they responded to a report of a crash with injuries on March 4, they found a man who had wrecked a bar stool powered by a deconstructed lawn mower.

Twenty-eight-year Kile Wygle was hospitalized for minor injuries. Police say he was charged with operating a vehicle while intoxicated after he told an officer at the hospital that he had consumed 15 beers. Wygle told police his motorized bar stool can go up to 38 mph.

Wygle has pleaded not guilty and has requested a jury trial.

America, America, God shed His Grace on thee!

The ingenious, innovative spirit of Americans is boundless.

Be the best at what you do (a dubious honor)

Whatever you do, make sure you do it better than anyone else. I’m doubting this is the all-time record, but hey ….

When they got Meagan Harper to the hospital, her blood alcohol level was .55 percent — about seven times greater than Oregon’s legal limit for driving.

“You just don’t see numbers that high,” said Dr. Mohamud Daya, an Oregon Health & Science University associate professor and emergency room physician.

At that level, some people are so drunk they stop breathing, he said.

Harper has drunken driving convictions in Washington and Multnomah counties and was convicted in Wasco County of operating a boat while intoxicated, said Ryan Chiotti, deputy district attorney in Clackamas County. He said she is on probation for driving under the influence and is awaiting trial on another drunken driving charge next month.

A Clackamas deputy found her passed out in a car at a pizza restaurant on Nov. 28.

Judge Gilroy, for the record, did tell Ms. Harper to get help. And we should hope she finds it, because it seems a rather dubious title to be the Most Dangerous Drunk in Three Counties.

A nod, of course, to the Associated Press and Seattle Times.