A new study shows that drunk people were less than half as likely to see a dude in a monkey suit than sober people. In the test, people were given drinks (or not) and asked to count how many times a ball was tossed in a video of people playing a ball game. During this engaging film, someone in a monkey suit comes to the center of the screen, beats his chest and leaves. Eighteen percent of drinkers and 46 percent of sober people noticed this.

Firstly, less than half of the people noticed the monkey to start with. I’ve heard of this before. It is called “inattentional blindness” and results from focusing too much attention on a single thing, preventing one from noticing unexpected items right in front of you. The Bush Administration knows a lot about this. They might try to get us to focus on, say, flag burning, while diverting our attention from, say, everything else (the war, loss of civil liberties, the national debt). But that’s nothing new.

Secondly, who’s to say the drunks cared about a dude in a monkey suit? Did the monkey have more booze? Were the people in the film throwing around Jager bombs? The drunks were probably like, “Who’s this boring psychiatrist dude trying to make me watch this stupid movie? I bet he never gets laid.” Yeah. Drunks rule. And pirates. Yarrrr.

P.S. Pardon the lack of posting over the past week or two.  I was in Cocoa Beach, FL and I saw the (1st ever 4th of July) shuttle launch from there!  It was awesome.  I will post pictures once I manage to extract them from my not-so-awesome camera phone.