Today’s Booze Nooze
How about a bath and a beer? Better yet, how about a bath in the beer? A Japanese spa has installed a gigantic beer mug-shaped bathtub and are inviting clients to soak in a nice beer bath.
In this mountainous hot spring resort just a day trip from Tokyo, a spa park is offering a bathtub, shaped like a beer mug, filled with heated amber water and white foam with the aroma of hops and barley.
The Hakone Kowakien Yunessun is also pouring and spraying real beer into the bath and onto the customers three times a day until December 31.
The beer bath installation, which began late last month, pays homage to the "beer fights" of professional baseball season winners, much like the champaigne fights of their US Major League counterparts.
"We wanted ordinary people to enjoy the fun," the spa said in a statement.
The facility says the beer bath moisturises and cleanses the skin.
Supposedly Cleopatra took beer baths, so it isn't like this is a new idea. Besides, the Germans have already beaten the Japanese at this game: Beer Swimming Pools! On to another continent entirely then as we go 'round the world of booze. Australia: Nurse! Bring me another martini.
BRISBANE, Australia - Doctors plugged an Italian tourist into a drip-feed of vodka to save him at a hospital in Australia that ran out of the medicinal alcohol it would normally have used for treatment.
24-year-old Italian, who was not further identified, was brought to Mackay Base Hospital in northeastern Queesland state and was diagnosed as having ingested a large quantity of ethylene glycol, a common ingredient of antifreeze that can cause renal failure.
Pure alcohol is often given in treating such cases because it can inhibit the toxic effects of ethylene glycol.
Mackay Base Hospital Dr. Pascal Gelperowicz said the man was given pharmaceutical-grade alcohol when he arrived, but that the hospital's supplies soon ran out.
"We quickly used all the available vials of 100 per cent alcohol and decided the next best way to get alcohol into the man's system was by feeding him spirits through a naso gastric tube," Dr. Gelperowicz said in a statement.
"The patient was drip-fed about three standard drinks an hour for three days in the intensive care unit," he said. "The hospital's administrators were also very understanding when we explained our reasons for buying a case of vodka."
The hospital administrators did, however, object to the vermouth and the olives. (Three drinks an hour 'round the clock for three days? Holy smoke, that had to be the mother of all hangovers. Then again, he woke up.) Finally, let's head over to Britain where the beer smuggling is good:
The 150 pallets of beer of various well-known brands was found by officers who raided an industrial unit on Lorne Street in Bolton on Wednesday.
Two men were arrested at the scene and a further two were arrested trying to flee the site.
HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) officers said the estimated duty and VAT evaded is in excess of £140,000.
There'll be a party at the Manchester police barracks!
World news | Gaius Wednesday, 10 October , 2007
By quilly mammoth, Wednesday, 10 October , 2007 @ 4:09 pm
You missed the story of a man saved from poisioning by being administered three stadards drinks per hour for three days. Honest!
http://justbarkingmad.com/?p=2130
By Gaius, Wednesday, 10 October , 2007 @ 4:24 pm
Um, QM. It’s in the post.
By Quilly Mammoth, Wednesday, 10 October , 2007 @ 5:26 pm
I can’t believe I skipped over that. I coulda sworn it was just about beer. Rats.
By nedludd, Thursday, 11 October , 2007 @ 6:27 pm
This doesn’t make sense. The purest alcohol that can be ingested is 95% (180 proof). To make “100%” alcohol you have to add benzene to the distillate to get the final mixture which contains trace amounts of benzene and is considered toxic. Why would the article get that wrong?
By Gaius, Thursday, 11 October , 2007 @ 6:51 pm
They did say “pharmaceutical-grade” in the article - the quote was from the doctor. (Which is actually a fairly good catch by the reporter, by the way.)
But the report uses mixed terms, “pure” and “100%” both of which - as you point out - are not at all correct.
As I recall, the “laboratory-grade” alcohol when I was a lab assistant in high school ran about 95% according to the label.