puritans are like mental cripples
Sep. 18th, 2007 11:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miriam_eDo you know why methylated spirits is called that? It is really ordinary ethyl alcohol (like in booze) with methyl alcohol added.
Do you know why methyl alcohol is added to it? It's because puritans have such a problem with people gaining access to cheap, raw alcohol that they add methyl alcohol to deter people from drinking it. So why add methyl alcohol? Because it makes you go blind. Obviously puritans must think that a person going blind is far preferable to them getting booze.
Previously they used to add ground glass to cheap alcohol, thinking that would prevent people drinking it, but puritans are notoriously stupid. People simply filtered the ground glass out.
Are puritans horrible mental cripples or what?
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Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
Do you know why methyl alcohol is added to it? It's because puritans have such a problem with people gaining access to cheap, raw alcohol that they add methyl alcohol to deter people from drinking it. So why add methyl alcohol? Because it makes you go blind. Obviously puritans must think that a person going blind is far preferable to them getting booze.
Previously they used to add ground glass to cheap alcohol, thinking that would prevent people drinking it, but puritans are notoriously stupid. People simply filtered the ground glass out.
Are puritans horrible mental cripples or what?
----
Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
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no subject
Date: 2007-09-19 02:43 am (UTC)The real crime is willfully adding blindness on top of that. It confuses and complicates matters. The puritanical decision to poison people more because they are poisoning themselves is.. insane. Obviously it isn't going to work because these people are already poisoning themselves and it hasn't stopped them yet. Poisoning them even more is committing an evil justified by twisted logic.
As far as I can see, alcohol is the visible part of the problem, and like an iceberg, it is not the main part.
Most of the problem is in social attitudes regarding drinking (and smoking, and gambling, and eating, etc). How many movies and books have you seen where someone is presented with devatating news and their response is that they need a drink? How many tales where drunks are portrayed as funny, cuddly, and harmless?
The other part of the problem is how some of the metabolites of alcohol affect some people's brains. I had a girfriend once who was the sweetest, most wonderful, charismatic person you could ever meet, but whenever she got drunk she changed into a sharp-tongued, horrid person who enjoyed being hurtful. She never saw the change and thought she was just having a good time. (She died some years ago, an alcoholic. A terrible loss to the world.)