ABSTAINING

Abstaining from the imbibings to which we had been very accustomed, we eventually almost dried out sufficiently to see what was (or, may have been) in front of us. I make such an assertion mostly for the sake of merely saying something, or else entirely for the mere sake of merely attempting to say some slight bit of something. One real and verifiable fact may and could be that we never have adequately abstained and are, therefore, unlikely ever to be or remain anything but horribly besotted idiots.
Today, as I attempt to look you and your darling children in your various ocular organs, and as I now and then or oftener behold myself in some reflecting surface, I notice the world's quite manifestly general and very generic tendency toward a quite complete form of bloodshotness. I now may dare to pour many of us another big round of drinks, by the way. In the sheerest interest of a somewhat grandiose kind of brevity, my glass is very hoisted. I hereby sip, gulp, and guzzle to the health of the nation and of the world and of your various preferences. You are so cute and cuddly, incidentally!
An absolutely main part of our abstaining (as we now may begin and far more than begin to appreciate appreciably?) would have to be a relatively big sort of bingeing and of other indulging. Insofar as we somehow manage to be or seem normal enough to imagine ourselves as "true abstainers" we soon might stumble, mumble, and slurrify, from bar to bar, and from bottle to bottle, and also might manage to sense our full righteousness. Good or fine intentions truly may be everything, n'est-ce pas? Isn't life nice?