I know you have waiting in breathless anticipation for the breakdown of the VP Drinking Game results. I figured I had best get them out the door before the Presidential Debate tonight (a random but satisfying arbitrary deadline), so here, as they say, we go:
If one faithfully followed the rules of the game, there would have been a total of 98 drinks taken over the course of an hour and a half; this does not count those drinks taken for "As many drinks as you need each time Cheney is too smarmy or smug or oily to be borne without more alcohol in your system." For this rule, I am placing an average count of 4 drinks, based loosely on the number of times each such incident made me scream "I HATE YOU!" at the screen. In this case, that brings the final total of drinks up to roughly 130, given eight occurrences of Cheney's unbearable oiliness.
Further results:
Ten instances of "Halliburton."
Two of "trial lawyer."
I spotted just two examples of what I would term a boyish grin, but a full five grimaces from Cheney -- wherein "grimace" is a rather subjective term, as his normal face can generally be described as such.
Fourteen usages of "American people," "stem cell," or "weapons of mass destruction," of which I think twelve came from Edwards talking about American people. Sadly, nobody used a sentence with all three phrases at once.
Nobody said anything about people misleading, decieving, or lying; there was plenty of talk about distortions and confusions, but I was trying to be strict here.
Gay got hit on seven times, lesbian three, and dyke not at all.
The big winner was mentioning your own running mate by first and last name: a full thirty examples, to my count. All but two of those were Edwards, including two times in a question when he was specifically asked not to mention his running mate by name. Cheney generally resorted to using "President Bush," and one time he broke out the W.
Edwards got folksy twice and recounted childhood stories and the like.
Cheney implied twice that Kerry was going to get your kid blown up with a rectally-inserted explosive device, although he didn't flat-out state it, which would have been damn funny. Edwards implied Bush was planning to invade the rest of the world just once.
Now, how drunk does this get you?
Let us assume a few things. First, we are drinking wine, which for the purposes of this exercise (as long as we imagine so freely) we will declare to be a really great full-bodied red that you would never order at a restaurant because it is too expensive. Second, each "drink" of wine equals a sip, which we will place at a volume roughly equal to a single ounce (a shotglass is about an ounce and a half). 130 ounces of wine is about the same as 3.9 liters, or 5.2 regular-sized bottles. At about 14% alcohol, and at a body weight of (oh, why not just use mine) 185 pounds, over the course of an hour and a half...
That would put one at a blood alcohol level of approximately .715%. To put this into perspective, .08% is legally drunk, and .5% is legally dead.
So there you have it! Not only would my game have rendered one completely hammered, it would also have had the added benefit of pickling your corpse so you always remain young and beautiful.
If you would like to create your own drinking game for tonight's Presidential Debate, feel free. I suggest using a few of the following rules:
"On their watch."
"Folks."
Saying the moderator's name in a response.
Using time from one question to go back and answer a topic that has quickly become old hat.
Ignoring questions entirely and spewing out a canned response to something else.
And definitely, definitely take a drink any time someone does the closed-fists-but-still-pointing-with-your-thumbs-for-emphasis gesture. Two drinks for both hands at once. God, I hate it when they do that.