Inflation is fucking all of our shit up right now. The cost of rent, groceries and tons of other stuff has skyrocketed lately. And all you brokees aren’t the only ones feeling the squeeze. Even The Classy Alcoholic has had to downsize and start visiting the Monday thru Wednesday lunchtime strippers every week as opposed to his favorite Friday & Saturday night regulars. I even had to get a second job as a janitor at a bank so I could surreptitiously turn off the cameras at night so my Cousin Chico could rob the joint the next morning. You’d think that would’ve scored me a nice chunk of change but my dumbass Cousin was too hungover to show up for the job and his entire crew got gunned down in the street by some overzealous hillbilly who was open carrying and was really excited to shoot a bunch of Mexicans.

Anyhoozle, even though we’ve all made a ton of sacrifices I strongly believe that heavy drinking should not be one of those things we give up. And because The Classy Alcoholic is a man of the people I’m here to show you how to stay as drunk as possible, as cheaply as possible, during this dark period in which some of y’all may have to work two or three jobs just to make ends meet. Let’s go through the typical day of a working class person.

BREAKFAST: BOOZY CEREAL

Look, I get it. Eggs are scarce, bacon is pricey, and milk is pretty much just cow cum. That’s why I don’t usually start my days with breakfast either. I used to just wake up at the crack of noon, pour some coffee, gingerly poke the naked, smoking hot babe who passed out in my bed the night before to make sure she’s still alive, then head out to the bar to start my day. But none of us have that luxury anymore. Now we all have to make sure we clock in early at the factory for our 19 hour shifts and if we talk to any co-workers about unionizing we’re dragged out to the back and get shot in the fucking leg.

But just because our days are miserable doesn’t mean we can’t numb ourselves to them as early as possible. That’s why I’ve been waking up with a bowl of bourbon-spiked cereal every morning. A gallon of milk at the grocery store is $2.89 and these little individual cereal bowls are $2.49. But if you want to save even more money here is a tip: walk into your local upscale hotel like a Marriot or even a Holiday Inn where no one has found a dead body in the pool yet and carry yourself like you belong there. These places usually have a continental breakfast and if you can muster up enough confidence to crash the breakfast bar you’ll be eating all kinds of bananas for free. And you can swipe a few of these little cereal bowls with you as long as you wear pants baggy enough to hide them away discreetly.

Pour yourself a little bourbon into the milk and let the boozy bitterness blend with the milky, sugary sweetness. Let the nostalgia of eating cereal as a child before school wash over you and let the alcohol remind you that your childhood is gone, that both your parents are dead, and that the only joy you have left in your life is that you can almost afford to pay the electric bill since you saved so much money after stealing all that breakfast food from the lobby of the nearby Radisson.

LUNCH: BLOODY MARY SOPITA

Have you ever been to college? Either because you really wanted to get a degree or because you wanted to go undercover to get revenge on that piece of shit economics professor who fired his Mexican maid and almost got her deported after she rejected his sexual advances and also that Mexican maid was your mom? Either way, if you went to college for any period of time you probably remember doing it while broke.

(Note to anyone reading this who went to college and wasn’t broke: eat shit and die you little rich fucks.)

And the most prominent college student food group was cans of tomato soup that you watered down to make them last a couple of days. Now that Jack in the Box tacos are no longer two for 99 cents and instead cost a fucking DOLLAR SEVENTY NINE we’re all living like those broke little college kids again. But I’m here to tell you that you can take your poverty and still make it into a pover-party. First off, don’t buy regular degular tomato soup cans. Buy these little $1 packets of tomato-based Mexican sopita. These shits at least have some seasoning (otherwise known as white people’s kryptonite) and they have little estrellitas and coditos which give you some extra carbs. This is a wholeass meal in a bag.

And what kind of booze goes well with tomatoes? That’s right: motherfucken vodka! Pour that shit in, add some lime, Worcestershire, tabasco and a celery stick and you’ve got yourself a Bloody Mary that you can eat on your lunch break. Your boss will have no idea that you’re getting hammered on the job and if you wrap a bandage around your leg you can blame crashing the warehouse forklift into a pallet of paint cans on the tumble you took off your bike the night before. Plus bloody marys are good for hangovers so this will help you after coming down from that boozy cereal you had in the morning.

DINNER: TEQUILA RAMEN

I used to take such lavish vacations back when I could afford it. Did you know I went to Tokyo like six years ago? It was such an amazing experience. Then last week my Japanese neighbor stabbed me when he caught me siphoning gas out of his 2002 Ford Escort in the middle of the night. That’s as close as I’ll get to fighting the Yakuza again for a long, long time. The days of being able to traverse the globe on first class flights are a thing of the past. Now I only take trips to the southside of Tucson to gradually dig the tunnel that Cousin Chico will use to bust out of jail after they caught him for putting together that whole dead bank crew.

But I’m nothing if not an optimist despite how much I always kinda wanna die. So I bide my time for when I can get back overseas and I sit here in my flooded apartment trying to brace the door to keep the meth neighbors out while boiling a packet of a meal that kinda reminds me of my precious time in Tokyo: a 39 cent packet of ramen noodles.

If I had any real money I’d be spiking this with a bit of sake but unfortunately sake is expensive and I blew all my cash on a claw machine at the grocery store trying to catch a little teddy bear stuffie so that I can stuff it full of heroin and shove it back down the tunnel I dug so my Cousin Chico can stay in charge in that prison for a while until he can escape. So I decided to spike it with something I always have on hand: cheap tequila.

Squeeze some lime into it but don’t worry about the salt. Your tears will take care of that. You’ve got yourself some Mexican tequila ramen, a cross cultural meal that will help heal the divide between you and any Japanese neighbors you may have offended. Think of it as a spicy margarita in a bowl with noodles added in instead of ice or dignity. After dinner you can go to bed knowing that no matter what life throws at you, no matter how much you have to struggle, you will never let the challenges you face force you into sobriety. There’s always a way, y’all.

Stay strong and stay drunk.

Overview

Over the weekend I came across a stupid looking bottle of booze that I hadn’t encountered before. It was a kettle corn whiskey called “Knucklenoggin.” I asked my Instagram followers via poll if I should try it and only 39% of them had the good sense to try and dissuade me from putting this poison into myself. But the other 61% were more than happy to watch me destroy my liver for their entertainment. And apart from not having much of a sense of self-preservation when it comes to what I put in my body The Classy Alcoholic is a man of the people. If the fans want it then Classy delivers; self-respect and my family’s desire to see me grow old be damned!

BOTTLE REVIEW

First off, this thing looks really fucken stupid. Most things on the label are intentionally upside down for reasons I can’t even imagine. But hey, what do I know? The only graphic design I ever did was spray-painting the words DIE PIG on the sides of cop cars back in high school after smoking some weird shit out of a bong shaped like Shrek’s dick. (It was long, green and full of swamp water, before you ask.)

The website will tell you that knucklenoggin means, “A humble person who has excelled into a wonderful life by chance and hard work” but I don’t believe for a second that that word doesn’t have racist origins. Call your black co-worker a knucklenoggin and see how fast you end up on the floor of the break room with a boot coming down on your back. Plus I’m pretty sure that weird design of a skull with a fist for a head is how you say “No Mexicans allowed” in hieroglyphics.  

The final red flag is the little note on the side that says “shake well” because I’ve never had a bottle of whiskey that I’ve had to fucking activate.

Bottle rating – 2/5

VISUAL REVIEW

I dunno, it looks like regular degular ass whiskey I guess?

Visual rating – 3/5

AROMA REVIEW

This is where things get really weird because this shit smells EXACTLY like kettle corn popcorn. And I know you’re thinking, “Well duh Classy why wouldn’t it smell like that lmao?” But don’t forget, dear reader, that I’ve shoved my nose into many strange, foul-smelling things that I felt obligated to drink. But enough about your mom (POW!!!!!!)

Usually the gimmicky flavored liquor bottles molest you in the nostrils with a paint thinner-adjacent fume that has only the slightest semblance of something fruity or sweet buried in the blend. But this thing somehow has the perfect balance of sweet, buttery and even saltiness on the nose. They say smell is the sense that’s most attached to memory. And this thing instantly transported me back to my childhood and to that time my dad lost me in the county fair because he was too distracted trying to cheat on my mom with the carny girl. He eventually found me napping on a giant bed of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle stuffies with a bunch of kettle corn dust on my OshKosh B’Gosh overalls.

Aroma rating – 4/5

Daddy Issues rating – 1/5

FLAVOR REVIEW

The nose is a bit incongruous with the actual taste of the whiskey but the latter is more in line with what I expected. There’s an acidic burn that would be better suited as a strong, delicious finish to a smooth sip of Irish whiskey. But here it’s all just a confusing mixture of too many flavors that barely speak to each other, much less blend harmoniously. While the sweetness is very prominent you can’t just do shit like this to traditional whiskey without creating a tragic concoction that doesn’t have a soul and somehow learned to beg for death. The subtle notes and thoughtful blends of spices, fruit, oak and herbs that you get from tasting real whiskey have been contorted into a shapeless, wet mass of pain and despair that crawls aimlessly in the dark before you beat it to death with a crowbar in what you tearfully tell yourself is an act of mercy. “Kill me! KILL ME!” it roars through the deformed mass of tissue that barely shaped itself into vocal cords, “I shouldn’t be ALIIIIIIIIVE!!!!!”

Honestly tho, I’ve tasted worse.

Flavor rating – 3/5

MIXABILITY REVIEW

After drinking, like, half a bottle of this bullshit while writing this article I realized it was really dumb to just drink it straight. If I were smarter and less drunk I would’ve realized sooner that this is basically a fucking cocktail mix. What goddamn moron would just drink this diabetes in a glass as is? So I decided to pour it into a cup of coffee to at least give myself a fighting chance of waking up and being a functional adult tomorrow. The thing paired really well with coffee, actually! I could see this being used in something like a white Russian to give it an added layer of deliciousness. If you try this please try it with something else to cut through the concentrated sugar bomb.

Mixability rating – 4/5

FINAL THOUGHTS

As a man who loves whiskey I can’t exactly recommend this weird concoction. But based on what’s happened before it’s only a matter of time before the racists at Knucklenoggin, LLC or whatever start paying TikTok influencers and Instagram meme accounts to showcase the stuff on their social media accounts. So get ready to see this everywhere in a predictable attempt to astroturf this into popularity with a bunch of dead-eyed frat kids online. When that happens just remember that it was The Motherfucking Classy Alcoholic who did it first.

Final rating – 2/5 normally but 3.5/5 if you don’t have people in your life who care about you.