Nothing says classy like a drink in a bag, but at Vinyl in Hongdae it’s the hot item on the menu. We first read about Vinyl on SeoulEats.com and decided to give it a go.

Photo by Andre Francisco

We stood in a long line of mostly foreigners all looking at the menu: a half Korean, half English list of drinks in a raggedy flip photo album. After ordering, we watched the bartender mix up our cocktail in a sturdy Ziploc baggy. There are no measurements and each drink has a drastically different amount of alcohol in it. When it was all in, the baggy was zipped shut, shaken (never stirred), opened slightly to squeeze a straw through, then passed over to us for a mere 4-5,000 won.

After that it’s up to you for what your night will entail. Perhaps this is a drink to tide you over until you find the next bar. Or maybe it’s to sip on in the park while watching the house band, Soundbox, rock out. Or maybe it’s just a simple start for an enjoyable walk around Hongdae.

A few complaints were the lack of lime in a Cuba Libre and the lack of gin in any of the drinks.

Either way here are a few tips:
1. Expect a line. There’s expats. There’s booze. You do the math.
2. There is a seated area inside, but it is miniscule.
3. Check what alcohols are in the drink and the variety. The larger the number of different alcohols, the stronger the drink.
4. The Long Island Iced Tea is a true Long Island. It’s strong. Beware and enjoy.

By Anna Waigand

This term comes to us from @fatroll reader and fellow co-worker @ryanka. A walktail is essentially a cheaper and healthier version of a cocktail. Think of it like a fitness happy hour with no alcohol but lots of talking and calorie burning. It’s almost like the anti-cocktail with no hangover. Just that natural high you get from increasing your heart rate.

Used in a @fatroll sentence: Meredith and I like to do a four-mile walktail after work once a week.

Send us your @fatroll term to outofcontrolfatroll [at] gmail [dot] com.

So wow… Yesterday, I hung out with a bunch of kids,
and I don’t know why, but I started drinking.
Now, I may be into cigarettes, and I’ll smoke weed every now and then,
but I RARELY ever drink.
Why?
1. I am usually the driver.
2. My dad is an alcoholic and I hate it.
So, I don’t know what got into me, but once I started, I couldn’t stop.
It was all fine and fun, until my friend Peter threw the cap of a bottle of silly string at me.
I became overly angered.
I walked to Gina’s house and then back, and once we arrived back,
I started bawling.
Looking back… I don’t know why.
I was just frustrated with everything and it all just came pouring out.
I don’t remember most of it,
because I started gulping down the last of everything we had as I was sitting on Gina’s staircase.
I know I hurt my friends’ feelings. Maybe.
I pissed them of, that’s a given, but I meant most of what I said.
I told all of them that they’re fake friends and they don’t care about me and that I’m going to kill myself, apparently.
I don’t remember saying anything about suicide,
but many days I do feel used as a friend.
I don’t know.
There’s less than a week left until I go to Lithuania and I am beyond pumped.
And when I come back, they will have either forgotten about what I said or forgotten about me altogether, so this isn’t that huge of a problem, I suppose.
Hm.
Alcohol sucks.

Red wine is one of life’s simple little pleasures for me and the wife. There’s something about turning a bunch of grapes into a bottle of Pinot Noir or Cabernet that just knocks me out. I have a couple of friends in the wine industry and I’m always interested in talking shop with them — it’s a fascinating trade (or art form).

Many of you may be in the same boat as me, but some of you may be a little intimidated by the whole wine culture. Sure, there are some snooty snots that will turn up their nose if they realize you aren’t an experienced wine enthusiast, but worry not — we have some great articles on this very Web site that can take the fear out of learning about wine.

The first thing you should know though, is that you don’t have to know it all. Just learn some of the basics on tasting and what to look for and jump in head first (if you’re of legal drinking age, of course). The important thing to remember is to just go with what tastes good to you and don’t worry about what anyone else thinks.

Here are some great articles to serve as a starting point if you’re new to wine:

Wine Basics
How to Taste Wine
How Wine Aerators Work
How Wine Cellars Work

There are a whole slew of other articles that detail different wine regions throughout the world. You can just type WINE into the search bar and surf away. Remember, in wine there is truth!

Share some of your favorite wines and wine deals in the comments.

From the people that bought us the Valentine’s Scratch ‘n’ Sniff Cinema and the Jelly Banquet is a new concept bar in Soho where, rather than drinking, you inhale a mist-ified G&T. Find out more about the aptly named Alcoholic Architecture here.

On continue avec le Soju et aujourd’hui je vais vous présenter le Charmsoju Je ne connaissais pas ce soju jusqu’à ce que je découvre que la belle Son Dambi était la nouvelle ambassadrice de la marque. Rien que pour ça, j’aimerais bien tester ce Soju Va vraiment falloir que j’organise un voyage-découverte dégustation en Corée pour faire la route du Soju Qu’en pensez vous chers lecteurs, ça pourrait être sympa, non?

Exercise and a healthy diet…is the real Cure-All

Our fact for today concerns liquid intake for a healthy body.

An average human drinks about 16, 000 gallons of water in a lifetime.

It is estimated that the average life span in the United States is 78 years. That means that we drink an average of 205 gallons of water a year, or a little over .056 gallons per day. My math skills leave a lot to be desired, but if I’m right, if a person drinks, say 8 eight ounce glasses of water a day, (which is what some diet plans call for, that means they are drinking a half a gallon of water a day, which figures out to be approximately 182 gallons a year. I don’t know about you, but I’m not a real fan of water as a drink, so I don’t drink anywhere near a half a gallon of water a day, but I do consume many other things that contain water, so I am not dehydrating myself.

The reason water is so important to the body is that over 70% of our body is water.

Muscle is made up of about 75 percent water.
Fat is made up of about 50 percent water.
Bones, too, are about 50 percent water.

While I think liquid in the body is very important, because dehydration is not a pretty sight, it is pretty much up to the body as to what it needs. In an article found on the internet www.Telegraph.co.uk news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/ entitled Healthy Eating: Do You have Portion Distortion the following was written:

(Celebs often attribute their glowing good looks to a daily two-litre H2O fix (rather than, say, Botox). “But it’s complete rubbish,” says nutritionist Fiona Hunter. “First, anything with a high fluid content will keep you hydrated.” A piece of steak is at least 60 per cent water, which will add to your fluid intake. “And the amount you need depends on body size, lifestyle, whether it’s hot?… You might need to drink just a few glasses of water a day or two and a half litres.”

So how do we find our ideal intake? Your body is the best guide, says Hunter. “Just look for signs of dehydration – lethargy, low concentration, headaches, dark urine and constipation.”

“Coffee and tea are dehydrating, so you should limit your intake and replace each cup one-for-one with water. “A myth,” replies Dr Chris Smith of BBC radio series The Naked Scientists. “These drinks don’t dehydrate you unless they’re very strong. An average coffee hydrates you. I drink hardly anything but tea and coffee, so my bladder ought to be like a raisin. Even alcohol has to be more than 10 per cent alcohol by volume to affect your fluid levels adversely. There are limits – pregnant women should seek advice – but we’ve drunk tea and coffee for decades without all keeling over. Limit yourself to three cups of coffee a day”

There aren’t enough bathrooms in the whole city of Houston to take care of me if I drink eight ounces of water a day, so I limit my pure liquid intake and find substitutes in my food. I probably don’t drink more than one to two glasses of water a day, a couple of cups of coffee, a glass of wine now and then, ice tea if I go out for a meal, and the rest is just whatever I get from the food I eat. I have never had a kidney problem, and my bladder problem is not because I don’t drink enough water. If you are drinking those eight glasses of water a day because your body needs that much, then for Heaven’s sake, continue drinking them, but if you are forcing yourself to drink that much water because your diet plan says to do so, and you hate every drop of it, find a substitute that will keep your body hydrated. Plain ice tea or any liquid that does not add calories to your diet can help reduce your daily caloric intake.

Think Thin Thoughts!

Adinear

This is one of the best photo shops I have ever seen. The message it is portraying is great too.

An important message in my eyes. Stories can be spun, lies can be told, but where does the truth lie?

In a Society that is obsessed with being the best, having the most , and making sure everyone around you knows that you do. It’s important to think of the truth and facts before you believe any story.

Mugabe defiant:“Only god can remove me from office.”

Prisons become potent breeding ground for radical Islam:Even “former BNP activist {} converted to Islam”

Brown to tell Saudi oil chiefs to invest their billions into British renewables:Renewables market – “stable”

‘Disadvantaged communities’ bribed to give up smoking:“£12.50 a week [] if a carbon monoxide breath test proves they have not been smoking”

No end to alcohol and pornography ban for aborigines:“Australian PM Rudd said he remained committed to the initiative”

School rules for England Rugby players on tour:“banned from bringing women back to {} hotel rooms”

And finally…

Insomnia? You need a perscription of zopiclone, valium and temazepam(SCIENCE CENTER)

Image courtesy of news.bbc.co.uk

Alcohol and Violence

Taken from http://www.marininstitute.org/alcohol_policy/violence.htm

•  Alcohol availability is closely related to violent assaults. Communities and neighborhoods that have more bars and liquor stores per capita experience more assaults. ¹

•  Alcohol use is frequently associated with violence between intimate partners. Two-thirds of victims of intimate partner violence reported that alcohol was involved in the incident. ²

•  In one study of interpersonal violence, men had been drinking in an estimated 45 percent of cases and women had been drinking in 20 percent of cases. ³

•  Women whose partners abused alcohol were 3.6 times more likely than other women to be assaulted by their partners. ⁴

•  In 1997, 40 percent of convicted rape and sexual assault offenders said that they were drinking at the time of their crime. ⁵

•  In 2002, more than 70,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 were victims of alcohol-related sexual assault in the U.S. ⁶

•  In those violent incidents recorded by the police in which alcohol was a factor, about nine percent of the offenders and nearly 14 percent of the victims were under age 21. ⁷

•  Twenty-eight percent of suicides by children ages nine to 15 were attributable to alcohol. ⁸

•  An estimated 480,000 children are mistreated each year by a caretaker with alcohol problems. ⁹

If you notice that a relative seems to have developed a drinking or drug problem call Narconon for help. 877-413-3073

Conoces estas calles demasiado bien
las has recorrido desde tu infancia.
Mira el parque aquel a lo lejos,
en el jugabas de pequeño con otros niños,
ahora acabas ahí tirado por las noches
con varias botellas de vino barato
vacías a tu alrededor,
y una terrible resaca al día siguiente.
Así te ves, asi te ven
donde antes pegabas patadas a un balón
y te hacías daño jugando al futbol
o te ruborizabas
cuando se te acercaban las niñas
con esas sonrisas de oreja a oreja.
Mírate ahora, como has acabado.
Burroughs probó con todo tipo de drogas
fue un experto adicto a las mas peligrosas,
pero tu no te has atrevido
con otro tipo de droga mas que el acohol.
Pero eres joven.
Bukowski escribió su primer libro
a las 49 años.
Tú tienes menos del doble.
Puedes emborracharte las noches que quieras,
pero no vuelvas a quedarte ahí tirado
porque otra noche no estaré aqui
y no podré venir a recogerte
o te veré tirado y no querré ayudarte
y me entretendré mirando
como te ahogas en tu propio vómito ¿vale?.

imagen; kphotos

The iron man of football apparently has an iron liver. Reported by Peter King of SI.com, Deanna Favre, wife of future Hall of Famer Brett Favre, recently released a book about her struggles of surviving breast cancer. The book reports that the gun slinger had quite the big drinking problem that led him to a reported second rehab stint and almost caused him his marriage. Deanna writes…

He came into the house and begged me to let him stay, but I was firm. ‘If you’re not going to quit drinking, you can leave,’ I told him. ‘I’m not going down that road again; I’m done. I’ve already spoken to an attorney.”

Those are some powerful words from the wife of the Packers cult hero.

In a different story Strubb.com learned that Brett Favre auditioned for the part of Joe Kane in ‘The Program,’ but his agent thought that ‘Something About Mary’ was better for his image.