Dear Zombie,

I'll be brief. I need your help. Need your input.

Here's the gist: I have a new drink column coming out soon. It's called Dear Drink. It's an open letter to a cocktail in the South Sound I consumed during the previous week. Expect big strange wonderful compendium of curated columns, a quote generator, a recommendation engine, that sort of thing. Totally fun, thoroughly awesome, completely vainglorious in all the right ways. And I could use your help.

Could you please be my inaugural drink?

No, no, the South Sound won't be shocked and appalled. Families will not be horrified. Civilizations won't tremble. Churches will not crumble. OK, maybe.

I don't care. I don't exist in a world of secret codes, lament passes and futuristic RFID chips implanted straight into my retina allowing me instant, bar-coded access to top-floor boardrooms, Chinese tunnels and the final outcome of Boardwalk Empire. Alas.

Plus, my refinance was approved.

Besides, the Weekly Volcano without a drink column is like paving a new road without a bike lane along Ruston Way. Wait.

I'm asking you, dear Zombie, to lead off the column because I respect you. I respect your creator. I respect your Tacoma Cabana tiki bar home. I respect your bartender Jason Alexander. I respect your secret sauce.

You're an exceptionally strong drink born in the late 1930s at the hands of Donn Beach, aka formerly Ernest Raymond Beaumont-Gannt, of Hollywood's Don the Beachcomber restaurant, who after serving the drink to as a hangover remedy, the recipient claimed he felt "like the living dead." And you had your coming out at the 1939 New York World's Fair.

Any truth to the rumor Albert Einstein drank two of you at the 1939 Fair, lost his engineering notes on the Flux Capacitor and had to settle on a cosmic rays speech?

Yes, I'm on to you. Your smooth, fruity exterior shells a potent concoction of three rums, falernun, grenadine, lime juice and spices. Your falernum is from scratch. Your spices are a secret. You are the equivalent of 7.5 ounces of alcohol, which is the same as drinking three and a half cocktails. I know this. After sipping your last drop I adopted zombie characteristics, aiming my camera at Tacoma Councilman David Boe's private party at the Tacoma Cabana without the slightest thought of permission. Although, Boe was topped with a fez. Also, I now possess a shot of Nathe Lawver of the Pierce County Central Labor Council with the largest grin ever, which is nice to have on file.

So, think about it Zombie. ...

Oh, and thanks for coercing me to download the Bananarama catalog.

Hey, want to be my intern?

Your friend,

Ron Swarner

[Tacoma Cabana, 728 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, 253.222.4184]