XDA

Readers have suggested as topics for this blog the subjects sex and drugs and rock and roll a la the Ian Dury song from 1977. OK, but first let's look at that grouping of subjects. Is it not just a repetition of the more famous 'wine, women and song' with alternating more and less specific items? The idea of wine, women and song as a trio of wonderful things has been around for a long time.

Who does not love wine, women and song / Remains a fool his whole life long.

Heinrich Voss (1751-1826)

Omar Khayyám (1048-1131) a mathematician as well as a poet wrote:

"Two sweethearts,
Two flasks of old wine,
A book of verse
And a cosy corner in the garden." (Quatrain xii of the Rubaiyyat--which means quatrain)

which verse has more of the three way fantasy going for it in the original, but which was rendered less racy, less alky and more mainstream by Professor Fitzgerald as follows:

"A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness—
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!"

Which reminds me of a story I read years ago; I'm sorry that the name has escaped me, but the gist is an alien is studying humans for classification in the alien's natural history paradigm and after years and years the alien announces that he is ready to classify humankind. He says that humans are symbiotes What? his human hosts ask startled. Yes, the alien replies, you are symbiotic with the grape, because, without red wine, there would not be enough sex to keep the race going. It could be true. Except for the alien part.

Labels: Drugs, Rock and Roll, Sex