This just in....

Drinking is fun. Drinking can be good for you. Drinking can be good for the economy. And there may be a link between drinking and the performance of your particular economy of interest. Okay, I made that last one up but one has to wonder with the rate of exchange between the Euro and the dollar (US).

Family booze bill tops $4000 a year

"Knocking back a regular pint of beer or a glass of wine is costing an average family $80 a week, new research shows."

WOW!!! I know that this is in Australian dollars but still.

"The family's alcohol consumption would equate to 883 stubbies of medium and full strength beer, 77 bottles of wine, 311 bottles of pre-mix drinks, 8.4 casks of wine, 14 bottles of spirits and 171 stubbies of low alcohol beer."

And I thought I could drink...Doing a little research yielded the following translation: 'Stubbie is a 375mL bottle'. Adding up the bottles of beer (both high and low alcohol) that comes to more or less 527 - 12 oz beers, almost 42 - 12 packs per household per year. And that's just the beer. There is still hard alcohol, whatever 'pre-mix drinks' are and wine. And speaking of the wine, this breaks down to about 1.5 bottles of wine per week. All of this drinking and the Aussies are still handing the Americans their ass when it comes to the exportation of wine. Unbelievable.

"It's almost become a grocery product in a way, people shop for it in the same way they do their milk and bread," he said.

"The other trend is that young women have really caught up with men in their drinking."

What a novel concept! To my friend Huge Johnson, there yet still be hope.

And just think what could have been had we bypassed that whole 'Prohibition' thing.