Yeah it’s I case of “may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb”, I guess?
It’s actually from Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe. In his play Doctor Faustus, the original “Make a Deal with the Devil” guy, who trades his soul for 24 years of power. In the course of this he meets Helen of TRoy, and learns that she is as beautiful as advertised, leading to these lines spoken by him:
As far as I know, the phrase “topless towers”, referring to Troy, don’t appear in the Classical World, or anywhere else before Marlowe. But the phrase has become fastened to Troy and the Trojan War. This is also where we got “the face that launched a thousand ships” – also originated by Marlowe, not Homer.
And “Sweet Helen” was used as the title of a 1969 science fiction story by Charles W. Runyon, who obviously expected his readers to fill in the rest of the quotation – “make me immortal with a kiss”, because the story shows the potentially awful results of such a kiss.
But–why couldn’t he just settle for a cup of tea?
/s 
I told my mother about this story, and she immediately said, without missing a beat:
“Pics, or it didn’t happen.”
The guy would have been drug tested as soon as some authority figure interrupted his work day. So there will at least be documentary evidence of whether the cocaine was real. And what his BAC was at that time, which can be sorta extrapolated backwards in time. Plus any credit card charges anywhere during his time down there.
I’ve never personally seen wild shit on layovers quite that wild. But I’ve seen some wild shit over the years. Some people live to party and somehow they have pretty good party-radar for finding like-minded people of the appropriate age & gender.
a.k.a “tonsil hockey”
That’s what gets me about this. With those two Southwest pilots, the one caught on a hot mike complaining about working with “gays, grannies, and grandes” and the other one ranting about liberals and rolling coal, at least those two dumbasses thought they were having private conversations. This idiot doesn’t even have that flimsy fig leaf.
I find your mother’s ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to her newsletter.
Cocaine is a helluva drug.
You’ve clearly never read the Harry Potter books.
You’re right I haven’t. Fiction holds no interest for me; the real world is endlessly fascinating on its own.
My wife’s niece is a senior captain for an American airline. She was in town last night and we were talking about this incident. She confirmed what you’ve said here. At one point she had shoulder surgery and was grounded by it. She had to be drug-free before resuming duties.
Thanks to everyone who’s filled in my half-remembered memory of the rules that apply to air crew re drugs and alcohol. Interesting thread.