No. Sin.

     Recently there have been more and more non-alcoholic products making the news.  When magazines such as Bon Appetit and Bloomberg Businessweek start to devote entire sections to the products, then something is indeed hitting the shelves.  All of which led one magazine to ask, who are the people asking for such "drinks?"  Some are speculating that Gen-Z (those grouped as now being 12-27) are the driving force, although I often wonder if social "analysts" are just looking for a simple stereotype.  I say that because in my state (Utah), the Mormon culture practices avoiding both caffeine and alcohol, which has given rise to a chain of "dirty sodas" as defined by the Swig franchise and recently featured in The New Yorker; drive around this state and Swig drive-throughs are nearly as numerous as Starbucks, if that makes sense.  But non-alcoholic products have moved way past beer (Miller and other brewers tried "low" alcohol beer for a bit, but seemed to just give up on that market and limit the choice to yay or nay on alcohol).  You can now get whiskies, vodkas and tequilas with no alcohol, as well as Moscow Mules and margaritas, all with no alcohol.  Wines?   Of course, and the choices are numerous.  And now comes THC, or pot-infused cocktails, sodas, and beers.  But being old-school, I have to wonder "why?"  Let me back up...

     "When I say no, I mean NO" is a common phrase used by most parents, whether to a child or often times, to a pet.  But what exactly is no?  In other languages, no has entered our recognized foreign language vocabulary as "nein" (German) and "nyet" (Russian), but not so much 沒有 (traditional Mandarin).  Yet I had to wonder why so many non-alcoholic drinks use the French version of "no," which is "non."  Why not simply say No Alcohol?  Part of the reason is that many non-alcoholic drinks DO have a small amount of alcohol in them (non-alcoholic beers typically have about 0.5% of alcohol, unless their bottles say --as with Heinekin-- 0.0%).  In Spanish, "sin" means "without," as in sin hielo (seen yay-loh) or "no ice."  Which made me dive into some language sites and discovered an even deeper world of complexity...did you want to say no, as in a command (I told you NO), or no as in missing (NO more eggs in stock), or no as in surprise (oh NO), and on and on.  Venture further into Google Translate or many other apps and realize just how difficult and thorough one must be to get the proper meaning across when trying to shift to another language on the fly.  And why is "no" so similar in many foreign languages but not "yes?"  Si, da, oui, ja.  All of which somehow brought me back to veggie burgers...wait, what??

     In a piece in Business Week, recovering alcoholic Mark Laydorf wrote: Friends who drink are so happy for me.  For 24 sober years, I've settled for seltzer, but finally I can have a cocktail again -- a $20 tumbler of faux gin and tonic.  "Regardless of why you're not drinking, we're proud to offer you the choice of a flavorful, sophisticated, adult option," writes Seedlip, a top seller of nonalcoholic spirits, on its website.  Its yummy aromatic botanicals include grapefruit, "embellished with fantastic bitterness", ginger, with its "mysterious warmth of root" and hay, whose flavor is "unique."  Unique, indeed.  I didn't put down alcohol to drink hay.  As makers of "nonalc" drinks rush to meet --or invent-- a market of adults who want to approximate the festivity of booze without the booze, it's hard not to feel that they're leaving out people in recovery from addiction.  Indeed.  My having a veggie "burger" or "chick'n" nuggets at a friend's gathering is less to blend in with the carnivorous crowd and more to well, blend in, if that makes sense.  I could easily finish their serving tray of roasted potatoes and such, but joining everyone with a plate which included something that looked like meat did cause me to wonder, just who am I trying to please here (or am I just trying to save some of those potatoes for the other guests)?  But dealing with addiction is a different can of worms entirely (腸蟲 is "worms" in traditional Chinese, if you're considering what that can might say after the tariffs hit). 

      My library offers free Noxalone kits, which are meant to temporarily reverse the body's reaction to an opioid overdose (each shot or nasal spray will only last about 10 minutes before the body goes back into overdose shock).  When I inquired about the kits I was told by the librarians that many people carried a kit on their car " just in case."  Not that they expected to travel down seedy alleys but more on the on the off chance that it could save a life when the unexpected happened.  I picked up a kit (it was felt that these kits were being donated by an overdose victim whose life had been saved by such an injection since naloxalone shots by themselves run about $50 each; but they are often provided free of charge at police stations and hospitals, if needed).  But there's that "no" again, as in no-xalone...

     So "no" vs. "non."  When I think of words  that start with non, I find very few...nondairy or nonabrasive; but again, why not just say "not?"  Perhaps the most common "non" word is non-sense, as in "this is all a bunch of nonsense."  But then little in today's world makes sense.  As the poet Sparrow wrote in The Sun: When I was a kid, there was a magazine called Life, a board game named Life and a breakfast cereal named Life.  People were in love with life.  These days I have to wonder.  The haves and the have-nots are separating so rapidly that there seems to be a vast crowd left in the middle and being forced to decide, which side am I?  Or perhaps the question has become, which side did I used to be on?  The devil is in the details, it's said, much as we tend to blame bad behavior on the sins of the father.  So when I read that part of the Bible (Numbers 14:18) which said: The LORD is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion.  Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation, I had to wonder about my views of good and evil, and how taking a letter away from one (good) and adding a letter to another (evil), gives us God and the Devil.  But three and four generations is a long time, as in great grandchildren (father-son-grandson-great grandson).  Now I am quite far away from having any knowledge of the Bible or any religious text for that matter (have never read the Quran), and truth be told I've only read a few tidbits here and there of the Bible itself, so my views can be rightly criticized as one-who-knows-not/non/no-thing.  But it all came up because the same issue of The Sun interviewed author Randall Sullivan, author of the long-researched book of his, The Devil's Best Trick.

     What is evil, or sin, for that matter?  And what the devil is "the" devil, he asked?  A red humanoid?  A shape-shifting demon?  A figment of our imagination?  Sullivan said: Saint Gregory the Great, more than a millennium ago, said the devil makes suggestions and offers encouragement.  That makes sense to me.  I do believe in possession, but, as my friend Michelle told me when we were about to walk into a Black Mass in the Mexican jungle, evil can only get into you if you let it.  I believe it works through influence.  The devil whispers in our ears.  I'm not saying anybody hears a voice, but the idea to do something wrong comes into a person's mind, and they make a choice.  That idea may offer some sort of pleasure or relief or gratification.  I think the devil encourages evil enjoys evil, cultivates evil.  And if "sin" can mean without, how did the word suddenly come to mean something bad or evil...was that meant to signify without faith, or belief, or morals?   And does "the father" of the sins of the father include the father?  I ask these questions only to show the play of language and not to cause any question of religions or beliefs since I admittedly know so little about those subjects.  And yet, I can't help but notice the language interplay between minister and administer (does sinister fit into that grouping?)

     But that idea of good and evil, and especially our trust in things (government, institutions, health systems, etc.) does still pester me like a mosquito bite.  Several recent developments came to mind, one being the Senate --on a strictly GOP majority vote-- deciding to lower air pollution regulations by deleting EPA standards which had been in place for 55 years (the looser regulations just passed now allow higher concentrations of mercury, PCBs and other toxic metals and chemicals to be released into the air).  The other concerned China.  Wrote an opinion in Bloomberg:

Photo: Truth Social post/Trump

                          Photo: Truth Social post/Trump
 

China’s approach toward US allies and partners isn’t all about playing nice, though.   The Commerce Ministry last month warned that it will “take reciprocal countermeasures” against countries that do deals with the US at the expense of Beijing’s interests...It’s a message well understood in capitals around the world.  Japan, which had its own brush with Chinese coercion when Beijing cut supplies of rare earths in 2010, intends to push back on any US effort to bring it into an economic bloc aligned against China.  That’s according to current and former Japanese government officials speaking to Bloomberg last month.  Asked about China’s evolving approach toward geo-economic competition with the US, the most recent American ambassador to the nation, Nicholas Burns, said, “The new part is this: The Chinese have been publicly suggesting to the Europeans, the Japanese, the Koreans that they should gang up against President Trump.”  Added the piece: At first glance, a map of the Pacific Ocean shows a huge expanse of water with the US on one side, East Asia on the other and Hawaii in the center.  But look closer and you’ll see 14 island nations, whose combined GDP of $36 billion belies their control over shipping lanes, deep-sea ports and undersea cables.  So step back from the current nationalistic view and view this from another side.  If China does manage to woo not only European ports and countries, but also those of Vietnam (which now has a 46% tariff on its exports to the US), Japan and South Korea, and then decides the US must pay to cross those shipping lanes (and thus effectively prohibit the military from entering such waters), where would that put us?  Add to all of that the undersea cables now on the table.  Those cables control most of our internet and other communications among other things (hello, or goodbye, Wall Street).  What happened to cooperation and solidarity?  And perhaps belief in our government?  As Winston Churchill said: Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party.

     "For all we know," wrote Carl Sagan, "biology is literally mundane and provincial, and we may be familiar with but one special case in a universe of diverse biologies."  The universe I grew up in did indeed view cocktail bars as somewhat lonely places, and far from "tender."  Drinking at such bars was often much lonelier than drinking in a pub.  But that was my universe, one far away from sports bars and nightclubs, far away from spring breakers having fun (perhaps too much fun), almost a galaxy far, far away.  And if our current secretary of education thinks that AI is actually more of a steak sauce, perhaps I have to accept that my universe has changed.  Which may mean that I have to also shift my views of what is good and what is evil.  Or do I?  One has to wonder that when a sitting President of the US can photoshop himself as the Pope --and post on his own sitem "I’d like to be pope. That would be my number one choice"-- just hours after the existing Pope passed away, just where are we with our principles?  Would that be considered a sin in today's world?  Would that indicate our shifting beliefs?  Would that indicate our shifting views of good and evil?  Would all this be happening is a new universe?  For all we know, sang The Carpenters: ...look at the two of us, Strangers in many ways...Let's take a lifetime to say I knew you well.  For only time will tell us so.

Yet another tee caption from Roadkill...

In a bit of shameless nepotism, my nephew's son wrote about a newly introduced bill in Congress which could have dire consequences should it continue further (his posts delve much more into American history and background than I do).  You can read his recent post here...