Stemware is stupid. It is a centuries-old aristocratic prank being played on civilization. I refuse to look up the origins of such a stupid idea but when you do I’m sure you’ll find that it can be traced back to some Compte de la Roche-something who molested everyone, frittered away his inheritance, and first commissioned these glasses as a joke. But now we act like stemware is some high class excellent thing when it is dumb. So very dumb.

The tallest vessel, the worst balance, the most fragile material, it is guaranteed to break no matter what you do with it. Cheers too hard, it’ll break. Wash it by hand, it’ll break and slice you open. Place it on any surface around any other living beings or the slightest breeze, it’ll break.

Stemware is an IQ test made of dangerously thin glass and we as a society have scored very low. I mean, we’re told it’s meant to hold liquid but that can’t be serious, right? What is this, a gag?

Imagine if your head was ten times larger and full of sloshing liquid and you were asked to be elegant and not fall over if anyone so much as looked at you! Are you starting to get me?

Side note: The design of stemware is dumb enough, but then we fill it with red freakin’ wine! The stainiest liquid we have! Nothing gets it out, not truly! And so we put it into glasses that are super top heavy and begging for an excuse to lose their structural integrity? What madness is this?!?

Every they’re-not-really-your-friends-but-they-live-close-by-so-we-hang-out couple you know has kids and/or a dog and they love to invite you over to their place to drink wine and talk about their latest interior decoration choices. Now even if you are interested in that subject (you’re not) you can’t give it your full attention because you are keeping at least one anxious eyeball on the kids and/or dog in the hope that you can do something (you can’t) to prevent them from knocking over one of the wine glasses.

These so-called glasses have been placed, against all logic and reason and without a goddamn care, on surfaces around the room, biding their time before the slightest bump/change in air pressure/loud noise 100 miles away sends them toppling to the floor, splooshing red wine all over whatever cream coloured rug they have (“We got it last year in Tunisia, it was hand-woven by a one-eyed dervish, we haggled for it because that’s what you do over there, and we just LOVE IT!”). This exotic and tasteful rug will of course never prevent these shitty stupid glasses from breaking into many jagged shards, including microscopic slivers hungry for your bare feet. So now we must call a halt to normal society, cordon off the crash site, restrain the now freaked out kid and/or dog, and rush around to get the following items:

• Hand broom & dustpan
• Paper towels, AKA kitchen roll depending on what kind of family you come from
• Club soda/tonic/seltzer, which starts a new line of small talk about their fancy Soda Stream (“It’s brushed aluminum, has 4 effervescence settings, comes with a bottle chiller, and we just LOVE IT!”)
• Salt
• A new piece of stemware full of red wine. Dear lord, have we learned nothing?!?

All the while one half of the host couple says stuff like “No, no, that’s fine you stay over there you only have socks on! It’s ok, we can get it out if it’s still fresh, it’s not a big deal. So anyways tell me more about your new job, that sounds really good for you!” And yeah that’s cool and everything but it was their stupid stemware AND their stupid kid and/or dog AND they just don’t care that stemware gets placed on surfaces while in the presence of kid and/or dog AND are you f**king kidding me? For a couple that obsesses so much about their interior design choices they really ought to pay more attention to the #1 threat to that interior – stemware!!!! We all knew that these glasses are designed to fall over but now whatever low level social enjoyment we were having is on pause while we check and double check to make sure there are no pieces of glass left in the rug and, oh wait yes let’s get the vacuum out that’s what this relaxing afternoon was missing. Jesus.

And I am absolutely certain that somewhere in the depths of hell, the syphilitic 16th-century French nobleman who started it all is looking up at us and laughing his ass off in between demon-administered sessions of having his entrails pulled out his ass and roasted before his eyes, which is no less than he deserves for popularizing stemware.