Basket o' booze!

New York supermarkets are not allowed to sell hard liquor. So imagine my surprise to see this near the checkout line:

"Oh, how nice! They put Mommy's Little Helper there as an impulse buy. Get out of the cart, Jason; Mommy needs to load up on vodka."

But don't let the "Family Size" label fool you; no, these plastic vodka bottles are actually filled with hand sanitizer. Several outlets have been reporting that distillers have switched gears during the Chinese Death Virus crisis and are making "Top-Shelf Hand Sanitizer," as the Daily Beast put it.  Good Spirits Distilling of Olathe, Kansas, is responsible for this lovely clutch of bottles, to help clean our hands in this time of viral trial. It cost ten bucks, but I think that's fair; a 10-oz. bottle of hand sanitizer is close to three bucks, and I think these are liter bottles, or 33.8 oz.

I applaud the GSD guys and others for it, but there are three small problems with using their product. One, there's no hand pump, standard for hand sanitizers -- but of course you could use it to refill your empty Purell bottle. Two, drunks could mistake it for booze and actually drink it, which could get them loaded and also dead. Three, and the reason I didn't buy one, is that the buyer bringing this home could have a spouse accuse them of going over the top. "A few weeks in the house with the family and you're taking up guzzling hard likker, is that it?" No one ever gives you a problem for bringing home a bottle of Germ-X.

So you know what that means: Sneak your booze into the house in Germ-X bottles. No! It means if you want hand sanitizer, and you want to support the distillers who have altered operations with a great deal of trouble, and you don't live with someone who will freak out with what looks like a bottle of cheap vodka, then buy one of these kinds of products. It may make your hands smell like a cocktail lounge, but admit it -- you've smelled worse.