It's time for a game I like to call, "What (and how much) was he drinking?" in which I pore over draft posts I've written while intoxicated (but not posted) in an attempt to reason out what (and how much) I might have consumed. From 9.30.05:

Okay. Okay. Here goes. Okay. The task of a historian, allegedly, is to attempt to make sense of the past based on records of the said past left in the here-and-now. My goal in life, at present, is to attempt to become a historian. My task, additionally, is to get over my absurd love of postpostitive phrases and qualifiers. But enough about me. Let's talk about me: Should I have trouble reconciling the fact that I can ostensibly play at reconstructing the past based on the remaining traces thereof while I can make little or no sense of my own present, which I am currently experiencing? To what extent will a triple shot of whiskey and several beers impair or enhance my ability to interpret (create? enact? reenact? deenact?) the past? Changing gears abruptly: have you seen Anaconda? If so, what the hell kind of accent is John Voight putting on in that movie?

The preliminary evidence ("a triple shot of whiskey and several beers") indicates strongly that I may have been drinking whiskey and/or beer. This prima facie evidence is telling, but hardly conclusive. By my own testimony, I had been drinking, which no doubt severely impaired both my ability and desire to convey valuable information about what has traditionally called 'empirical reality'. As we all know, there are only four possible emplotments for a historical narrative. These are romance, tragedy, comedy, and satire. However, after engaging with the narrator of this piece we are made to wonder, oughtn't White to have included drunken rambling? All of which begs us to ask the question; can this (admittedly intoxicated) statement be said to make any kind of truth claim? The answer, as with any historian, is always that the answer is more complicated.

First of all, we ought to be cautious about assigning any kind of value to tantalizing details, no matter (or perhaps because of) how self-confessional they might seem ("a triple shot of whiskey and several beers", e.g.). After that much to drink, the likelihood that I could produce something that appears to have no typing errors. On the other hand, for me to have been watching Anaconda suggests that more than the mentioned amount of drinking may have occurred. In the face of such conflicting testimony, we ought to consult extra-textual evidence. Based on a survey of the bottles and cans I have seen lying about, it is relatively safe to conclude that the intoxicant(s) in question must be on the following list:

Maker's Mark
Jack Daniels
Cafe Santos
PBR
Sam Adams
Winner's Cup Vodka
Heineken

The Cafe Santos and Winner's Cup can be dismissed out of hand as unrealistic candidates. The use of obnoxious grammatical terms like 'postpositives' suggests Maker's Mark may have been involved, and the timing of the writing suggests the same, as the Jack had not yet been purchased. However, the drinking in question having taken place on a Thursday night, there remains the possibility that I did some, perhaps all, of my drinking out of the home, which would eliminate the aforementioned list as a useful tool of analysis. The relatively common choice of blue-ribbon beer while out of the home means that perhaps our emphasis ought to be put there, rather than on any of the other candidates.

Seriously, I could go on like this all night without making any kind of significant progress. So I'm going to stop now, and go make some headway on something else on which I've not been making enough progress lately: sleep.