Rhetorical SUCCESS!!

So my night class tonight started something like this:

Brian: "You up for dollar draft after class tonight?"
Me: "Fuck yeah!  My students have driven me to drinking and I honestly need to blow off some steam."
Brian: "Sweet, Landon you in?"
Landon: 'Maybe, I'll have to check with my girlfriend."
Me: "Pssshhh.  Where is she?"
Landon:"Hospital"
Me: "Hell, she can walk over.  You're coming out"

Sammy, our Prof walks in

Brian: "You forgot to bring a case of beer."
Sammy: "Why?"
Brian: "It's the last class."
Sammy: "When I was a grad student, one professor would always bring a case of beer to share with us during seminar.  Maybe I should have brought one, but I'm sure there's rules about drinking in the lecture halls."
Me: "Well, we could just move the lecture..."

...and that's how I convinced my Spectroscopy professor to move class to Louis' for Dollar Draft.  It was pretty awesome.  Not everyone drank, but there was food.  Those of us who did drink, well and those of us who don't, had a good laugh at Eddie, who was well liquored. 

It went surprisingly well.  It was noisy, so we had to strain to listen; it was casual and I think we learned more after the lecture than we did during the lecture. 

Sammy went into stories about his habits as a grad student....they sound surprisingly familiar.  They'd saunter in at noon, do some research until about 8 or 9, go to the bar for a few drinks, meet up with their advisors at the bar, then go back around midnight and do some more work until about 2 or 3 and start all over again the next day at noon.  Sounds like a habit I can get into, I just need a partner in crime.  I think Eddie's halfway there.  He had some lab work to finish after "class", and felt kind of sheepish about how his habits are so close to Sammy's. 
Sammy also mentioned that some of the best thinkers that he was around were also consequential alcoholics.  Honestly, I think I can relate.  Idiot students will drive anyone to drinking.  A "good" day is a "1 beer day".  An "OK" day is a "2 beer day".  A "Shit, leave me the hell alone" day is a "Guinness followed by a beer" kind of day. 
Yeah, I'm sure I understand why brilliant people are drunks.  I think it was Hemingway who said "Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know", and he also coined the phrase "An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools".  

I'm no English Lit or History expert, but I'm pretty sure Hemingway was a drunk, a brilliant drunk.  I wonder if he ever convinced his teachers to have lecture at the campus bar.  :D