Tuesday, 20th January 2009
Beer goggles
“This is especially the case with high leverage balance sheets: that is, it is difficult to get a deal done that is not dilutive to the current debt leverage.”
Frankly, I do not know what the above means – and not only because the topic is related to balance sheets. Yet, I find it fascinating that someone could actually talk like that and hope to be understood by the shareholders of his company – some of whom would only have invested money because their financial advisors told them it was propitious to do so.
Words can mean whatever you want them to mean; but you have only yourself to blame if your listener (or reader) thinks they means something else.
For instance, Italians tend to use the expression “boq” to mean “I don’t know”... and several Maltese friends of mine have decided that they may as well use it for “I couldn’t care less” or, in a nutshell, “Fohgettaboudit”.
Another phrase the meaning of which has been transmuted is “beer goggles”. These actually exist, and are used as a part of an alcohol awareness campaign, especially where youngsters are concerned. These lenses of these modified spectacles actually look like what the Maltese call “bottom of the bottle” (qiegħ ta’ flixkun). When worn, they give the effect extant after one would have downed ten units of alcohol (a bottle of wine). They distort vision and give a feeling of disorientation. A person wearing them cannot walk along a straight line, control a battery-operated car properly, or aim accurately when asked to knock down skittles with a ball.
However, ‘beer goggles’ has now earned its urban dictionary meaning. Because, apparently, it is not only alcohol that dull the brain and leads to someone making passes at a person whom they would otherwise deem unattractive.
Researchers, in their way of researching anything, have discovered a formula that involves an equation using the number of servings of alcohol; the smokiness of the area on a scale of 0 – 10, where 0 is clear air and 10 extremely smoky; the lighting level of the area, measured in candelas per square meter (in which 150 is normal room lightning and 1 is pitch darkness); Snellen visual acuity (in which 6/6 is normal and 6/12 is the lowest limit at which someone is able to drive); the d is the distance between the observer and the observed, measured in meters.
That is why there are several more references to this type of beer goggles, than to the other, on the www. Indeed, a direct reference to a part of the above is behind the television advert for dimmer lamps - which is abysmally sexist and must therefore be pulled as soon as possible.
Briefly, a woman becomes more attractive (carbuncles on her face disappear and her clothes get progressively more revealing), with every click of the switch that dims the light. Of course, the dénouement has the man pull the switch to bright when he is about to pounce upon the now-delectable lady... at which point he sees her as the unattractive person she really is. And balks.
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“This is especially the case of beer with high leverage of drunk driving. Balance death sheets: that is, it is difficult to get a deal done that is not dilutive to the current death beverage.”