I bought some pear brandy the other night. I had spied it out at the liquor store a while back and it sort of floated around in the back of my mind. The more I thought about it, the tastier I thought it might be. Pears? Why, they are delicious. Pears in 80-proof form? Hot damn. The bottle claimed it was 'a product of Hungary' and I had an image in my mind of Hungarian peasants in a smoky wood tavern drinking and dancing to folk songs as the werewolves howled outside.
My friend was having a little gathering at this apartment on Saturday night, so I picked up a bottle to bring along. I got a couple of people into his kitchen so we could all try a shot together, so we could share the bliss. I poured; we toasted, and down the hatch.
Oddly enough I saw the expressions of disgust from the other people before it fully hit me. The stuff was foul… beyond foul. If there had been any pears in there they had long ago died and crawled off to hell. I was suddenly irritable for having wasted twenty bucks on a bottle of turpentine. Lessons learned, drink nothing made from pears or is a product of Hungry. My image of happy peasants quickly dissolved into a gathering of wretched third world people slurping this crap from dirty wooden barrels and then brawling with each other over who gets to fuck the towns prized goat.
Because that booze was gross I ended up mooching my friend's rum and polishing off a couple of bottles of Champaign I had brought along. I ended up getting trashed. I recall at one point arguing what the true meaning of 'upside down' was and then doing a headstand against the wall and forcing my friend to do the same.
Alan drove me home that night and when we got home I decided what a nice balmy night it was and went and sat in my back yard, where I promptly fell asleep. I woke up I don't know how many hours later by a cat gently batting my face as if to say 'wtf you doing out here?'. I then crawled back inside, woke up around 8 AM starving, drive to shoneys and ate too much bacon, and then came back home and slept until noon. Hangovers can really ruin a day.
And now I cannot find my phone. WTF. Where is my phone. Ring a ding ding.
Yesterday afternoon some bizarre overcast rolled over Sanford and cooled everything off. For a couple of hours before dusk it was amazingly nice out. I ended up mowing my lawn and taking care of a sewer problem. A while back I had run out of toilet paper, so I grabbed a roll of paper towels and threw it in the bathroom. I was actually enjoying the paper towels because I was sick last week and had a mild case of diarrhea. A big absorbent square of paper towels can really take care of some damage control. However, even as I was using them, a little alarm was going off in my mind about the dangers of paper towels and the sewer. Sure enough, a few days later my line backed up, causing the toilet in one of my rooms to fill up with sewer water and filling the room with its pleasant stench.
So, grumbling, I went outside and opened up the emergency cap and ran a snake through the line. Much to my pleasant surprise I managed the clear out the line with a minimum of effort. I did not even have shit spill on my sneakers. I was happy as a guy can be next to an open sewer line.
While nursing a mild hangover I slouched on the couch and ended up watching the movie 'Meatballs'. It's been ages since I saw this thing. A couple of things that stood out in my mind were how damn ugly the leading woman Bill Murray was hitting on was, and the horrible 70's shorts everyone wore. Those were those horrid little tight shorts with a stripe down the side that were pretty popular in the late 70's and early 80's. Both men and women wore them, and although they could be fetching on the females (if they had that bleached blonde 70's hairdo) any man who wears these shorts looks like a homosexual, and not simply because you end up showing off your package whenever you lift a leg. They are just horrid.
For some reason I am full of energy this morning. Maybe I'll even take the time to clean out the old pot pie that has been sitting in my fridge for the past 2 weeks.
2026 Update
Setting the dial to September 2007, where Ed buys pear brandy, flushes paper towels, and loses his phone.
Ah, 2007. Ed's whole evening is a fossil of the late oughts. His lost phone brings a smile to my horned face—now my little imps carry tracking apps, so losing a phone means retracing your steps in an app instead of ringing a ding ding and wandering the yard. Twenty dollars for a bottle of Hungarian pear brandy was real money, and now you'd read seventeen reviews before touching a suspicious bottle, if you even left the couch. The sewer backup from paper towels? That lesson hasn't changed, but today he'd have a plumber's snake on a subscription, probably. And watching Meatballs from a couch while nursing a hangover? Still possible, but streaming has replaced the DVD, and the casually dismissive language about 1970s gym shorts hits differently in 2026. We've traded one set of absurdities for another: instead of losing his phone in the grass, Ed would lose his charger, his keys, and his will to live in a sea of subscription logins. The pot pie in the fridge, though—some horrors are timeless.
“2007 Ed, what exactly did you expect from a bottle of Hungarian pear brandy, and did the cat's disappointed paw finally convince you to check your pockets before falling asleep outside?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2007 Ed: So, Beelzebubba, I honestly expected a little taste of Hungary, maybe some smoky tavern magic, pears turned into liquid sunshine. I figured if peasants drank it and danced, it had to be decent. Turns out those peasants were probably just too drunk to notice it tasted like nail polish remover and bad decisions. And no, the cat's paw did not teach me a damn thing. I woke up, crawled inside, and didn't think about pockets until the next morning when I went to call Alan and my phone was gone. I still haven't found it. I checked my pockets, checked the yard, checked under the couch, nothing. That cat looked at me like I was an idiot, and honestly, he was right. I'm just lucky the sewer snake didn't have my phone in it too. Ring a ding ding, indeed.
