"That's the first hippy who didn't want to stay and get stoned. I guess you guys can put away the stones."
Gil Shelton, as I'm sure you all know, is the author of many a fine comic strip, including the iconic Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. Since the eponymous trio in that series espoused drug abuse as a hobby, avocation, profession, and art form, you will remember or can easily imagine that the word "stoned" appeared frequently, in literal usage and as a pun. So with a bow to Shelton and the brothers, I follow suit, and announce that I got stoned for Christmas. In particular, an old friend stoned me.
If you look at the accompanying picture, you'll see two of the stones in question, a pair out of a set of nine dimensionally identical soapstone cubes, intended to be kept in the freezer and used in lieu of ice cubes in one's glass of whiskey. They work just fine, bringing the creature to a nice cool state, not icy cold but definitely below room temperature (it occurs to me that despite owning at least three kinds of thermometer which would have told me just how cold, I haven't performed that simple test. Oh, well.)
The other items in the picture are all, of course, necessary ingredients in the making of Splunge, the traditional Serbo-Elbonian holiday drink (the required three-quarters of a kilo of ground squirrel (not to be confused with groundsquirrel) were still in the double boiler when we took the picture.)
Anyway, thanks from the stonee to the stoner and Sláinte (pronounciation) to all, in anticipation of New Year's! ... are there any women here today?
