Substance abuse at the keyboard. Edit: perhaps not abuse, laudanum was a popular treatment for diarrhea at one stage and the article has plenty traces of that.
Funny thing is I actually have tincture of opium but I don't have any sweet sherry to mix the bitter stuff with as Carroll would have. No fucking sherry at all in Colombia. You don't miss a thing until you can't have it.
Hey @Overnight do you like Tom Robbins? "The minute you land in New Orleans, something wet and dark leaps on you and starts humping you like a swamp dog in heat, and the only way to get that aspect of New Orleans off you is to eat it off. That means beignets and crayfish bisque and jambalaya, it means shrimp remoulade, pecan pie, and red beans with rice, it means elegant pompano au papillote, funky file z'herbes, and raw oysters by the dozen, it means grillades for breakfast, a po' boy with chowchow at bedtime, and tubs of gumbo in between. It is not unusual for a visitor to the city to gain fifteen pounds in a week--yet the alternative is a whole lot worse. If you don't eat day and night, if you don't constantly funnel the indigenous flavors into your bloodstream, then the mystery beast will go right on humping you, and you will feel its sordid presence rubbing against you long after you have left town. In fact, like any sex offender, it can leave permanent psychological scars."
The title of the article is probably a play on words inspired by the novel A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.
Never read the man. And if that is the jist of his writing, then I am neutral on him. At least he does not use fake words.