Death makes a better Cosmo cocktail

As in numerous and previous times, it is rumored once again that we would die and we have to repent. If it wasn’t in the year 1000, it could have been in 2000, if not in 2000, in 2008, and if not in 2008, it would certainly be in 2012. The Mayan calendar says so. Nostradamus says so. The Bible says so. My 70 year old mother says so.

Some smart people from NASA discovered, on Catalina Sky Survey, an asteroid called TU24 that would have closely shaved the earth on January 29, at 10:33, sometime last year, at 1.4 lunar distances (don't Google it, I am telling you how much that is in metric system: 537.406 km).

So voila, once again, we got away with it and TU24 took mercy and spared us, only "slightly" touching us with an error of half million kilometers, not giving a comet's ass on those who share 98% of their DNA with the chimps. That would be us, in case you had doubts.

For a short while, I thought 'no bloody way, I get alive from bang bang Beirut so I can die in “exotic” Bucharest under a comet's sorry ass and the eschatology theories self-fulfill?'

Are, praise the Lord, hallelujah, Jehovah's Witnesses true? Do I have to repent for my sins like the Venetian from “A destiny of her own?”

Now, a believer or not, is not exactly light news hearing on the official channels (radio news bulletins, in between the news about the floods in Northern Europe, the blizzard in South East, the wars in the Middle East and the droughts in Africa) and you feel like your rye toast comes to a halt in your suddenly dry throat hearing the earth "might just come into a direct collision with an asteroid with 600 m in diameter". Gulp.

Before time, there were always "well intended" nihilists that couldn't help themselves from pouring their infectious pus of unhappiness over the heads of the more optimist and naive ones. Like myself. However, whether you laugh hearing such news or not, a question pops up: what would you do if you'd find out that you'll die on January 29, at 10:30 am, precisely?

What would anyone do? Why it is not advisable to make such news public? I mean, since we would die anyway, why would we care if mayhem is created? Is the imminence of death an annihilator of our reasonable censorship? Who would care if we go with dignity, hanging on the good moral behavior that led our lives or we just release our rage and seek revenge. I personally know a few people that I would gladly punch their faces. Apocalypse or not.

I will tell you a short story which led me to ask this particular question. A while ago, I was walking from pub to pub with a couple of friends and we felt like sipping a Cosmo to help kill the time and warm up a cold evening.

Said and done. So we sat our sorry asses at the bar and we apathetically asked for three Cosmos.

We all know what makes a Cosmo, a great Cosmo: the cranberry juice. Except that, these particular Cosmos, not only that had a problem with the cranberry juice, but this missed altogether. I asked the waiter what seemed to be the problem and he said bluntly: "there was no cranberry juice, so I skipped it".

An absurd dialogue, that would make Eugene Ionesco go green with envy has started between the waiter and me:

"But, I started shyly, you do realize that a Cosmo with no cranberry juice, is not actually a Cosmo, right?"

"This is a Cosmo, has all the ingredients, except the cranberry juice", added the waiter imperviously.

"But’, I stubbornly insisted, already blinking faster, ‘this is what makes a Cosmo, a Cosmo: Cointreau, vodka, lemon juice, and cranberry juice. Otherwise you call it something else like: Vodka Lemon Cointreau cocktail, not Cosmopolitan".

"Well, this is as good as a Cosmo. It is just missing the cranberry juice", added the Cosmo master.

For a second there, I thought I might be either in a Ray Bradbury's episode of Twilight zone or on candid camera (MTV's Boiling Point or something). And I have such a low boiling point. Duck everyone, am about to lose it.

I told him I didn't want the drink unless he could add some cranberry to it, and I wouldn't pay for something I didn't order.

The evidently pissed off the waiter, with an amazing attitude, just grabbed my glass of vodka lemon juice mixture and threw it in the sink, frowning and most probably cursing me silently!

I took a deep breath and on a second thought, ignoring idiocy seemed a better solution. I didn't even dare to laugh nervously. If you laugh at stupid people they might think they have humor. So is always better to keep that smirk of yours as a mental note.

Now the moral of this small encounter is not the rudeness of the waiters, as I am so used to it. What puzzled me is the fact that he found it rather normal to nonchalantly serve us a drink we didn't order, relying most probably on the fact that we had no idea what a Cosmo was, so if he could cheat us, he would.

The morale of the fable is: do people refrain from cheating (killing, stealing, being immoral in general) because the legal system stops them or because their moral system prevents them in doing so? Do we have a morality center in the brain? If we all had the chance to steal, cheat or kill and there would be no law to prevent that, would we all be doing it?

To what extent are we protected by the law, and to what extent we rely solely on our moral values to maintain our humanity with all its components?

Reverting to the asteroid and the imminence of death as a moral valve. What else keeps us moral, beyond the incumbency imposed by the morals and laws?

The idea that life is short and unrepeatable? The social constraints? The fear of consequences? The potential punishment? The qualms of conscience?

What instincts would kick in? The desire to live, at any cost, evidently. But since that is not an option anymore, what else would we do? Sex? Murder? Food?

Do you think that people would unleash hell and leave their most primary instincts free? That it would be a total chaos, debauchery, murders, stealing, mass rapes, sexual orgies, or truth frenzy in which people would finally admit what they think of each other or god? Would religious people admit there is no god? Would atheists admit they believed in god all along, but atheism seemed like a more suitable approach to the academic stand? Would they die for the idea? Would they die for themselves? What about exchanging the dear ones for an idea? What keeps us within the limits of legality, truth, morality and goodness?

Would I still care about the cranberry? Could it be that in his immoral way, the waiter was right to teach me not to stumble upon the petty things, like the lack of some juice and enjoy the greater scheme of things, like the rest of the ingredients? In any case, thank you, my dearest rude waiter, for teaching me what makes a Cosmo great: the imminence of death and enjoying life and not some cranberry juice.

(2014)