Is our Aggie an incipient lush? This is not an idle question. When the Irregulars enter the social whirl, the girl's always enjoyed a hearty pink gin. Or two. In her brave quest to develop interesting new dysfunctions for us to metablog, she has lately mentioned scarfing two bottles of red in quick succession. And she's a writer. We all know what that means. Big risk factor. Think Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker (Hell, the entire Algonquin Round Table...), Raymond Carver, Adela Rogers St. John, Charles Bukowski, Jean Stafford, and for all I know, Ann Landers and Dear Abby.
Just yesterday, she posted that trying to be a metamuse was more difficult than she'd ever imagined, and wondered what it took for us to notice her. I sense that this bid for attention may be a wrenching cry for help.
Must we ESIs stand idly by as Agatha sinks into a slough of sloe? Will we urge her to find a 12-step program as we enter one of our own, for co-dependents? Should we stage a showy intervention, a la certain extended-cable-package reality televison programs with lamentable production values?
Or perhaps we need look to the danger signs behind the windows of our own glass houses first, and ask ourselves what roles we have played in this sorry saga -- 4th Dwarf's ever-present rum flagon and documented bent for erratic nautical courses; the Chair's trademark martini glass and Dean Martin-esque warbles at parties; Conch Shell's secret compartments and unexplained -- but fishy -- long absences; the Independent Observer's penchant for glasses of all kinds. And yes, my own weakness for quantities of fermented chokecherries.
Tangled questions. Perhaps we need to call an emergency meeting...
