LTE Forum TU 08/28/12

Good AM, folks!

Word watch: "go/went ballistic," overused and meaning "lose/lost one's temper," recently seen in a comment about the excitable Chris Matthews. To go ballistic is to be unguided/unsteered. This phrase was more accurately encountered in descriptions of air-to-air engagements where missiles failed to guide, flying on a ballistic trajectory instead. Once a projectile/missile/brickbat/etc. has separated from its launch vehicle, it is on a ballistic trajectory, unless it has some sort of mid-course or terminal guidance system. A pitched baseball, passed football, fired bullet, tossed snowball, all "go ballistic," subject to classical laws of physics.

Users of this weary descriptor would be closer to their intent if they say, "go nuclear," a phrase military planners used to describe NATO's response in the event attacking Soviets broke through the hopeless lateral defense of West Germany.

Left over from last week: OT responded to my comments re the mismanagement of Schlitz beer brewing by mentioning the union-staffed Schlitz plant that once produced the formerly fine liquid south of town. In my younger days, I consumed quite a bit of the union-brewed quaff. Now, I bet you think I'm heading off on an anti-union diatriabe . . . nope, this is much more fun.

Once, when I was a mere slip of a lad attending Guilford College, the Schlitz plant invited Guilford students to visit and enjoy its products. On the appointed evening, Schlitz prudently sent two buses to collect the thirsty students. I was either attending a night class or out on a date, so I eschewed this bonanza, with no doubt a salubrious effect on my life expectancy. Schlitz was bountiful and generous in its entertainment of my fellow students, who in turn displayed their appreciation for the plant's hospitality by trying to drink the place dry (I had enjoyed the plant's Brown Bottle room in the past, and the fresh beer was indeed excellent).

I was back in my room when the buses returned and parked outside my dorm. Celebrants stumbled off, plastered to the point of foaming, and cheerfully bellowing college cheers like "Get drunk, m****f*****s!" More solicitous guzzlers issued slurring calls for assistance in removing less than ambulatory partygoers from the buses.

The scene was the stuff of college legend or scripts for movies like Animal House. The bus floors were awash in regurgitated beer and worse, with effluent running down the steps. Stupified and sodden revelers slouched against windows or each other. The two bus drivers were portraits of misery, having had to endure an hour of yelling, vulgarity, belching, vomiting, and incontinence.

We dragged the besotted passengers off the buses and tossed them on the grass, laughing at them and cursing them liberally. We then helped the walking, no, staggering, wounded, to their rooms, and placed trash cans by bedsides, in the likely event of subsquent rumination.

Every so often, one of the drunks on the lawn would stir, and we would help help him to his room. A couple of human beer barrels would have spent the night on the lawn had Security not come around and had us drag or frog march them indoors. I took a shower after helping my filthy dorm mates. I don't recall Schlitz issuing a repeat invitation, more's the pity, but understandable, since the regurgitation began before their guests left the Brown Bottle.

It was very quiet the next AM. Thanks to Schlitz and its salaried and unionized workers for a laughing memory.