Tuesday

Yeah, so I've managed to acquire a bar globe. Nothing fancy, I didn't buy it airdrunk from Skymall or the Westerfield estate but it will serve in the beginning. Numerous early ideas about painting it like Unicron or the Death Star were bounced around. Like so much else, we just cut through the shit and accepted the status quo so as to get drinking "right damn now."



Not a particularly expensive or complex model, nonetheless the damn thing was lying in the motherfucking weeds and jumped up to wage hateful war against the group this last weekend! Much like Atlas and Mackey's dual kegerators that came before it the bourbon and vodka contained therein prosecuted our livers effectively. I am not confident of victory.

I rail at thee, mix-n-match six pack

For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.-- Kipling

Indulge me for just a moment. Yes, the reader may wonder what I have against the seemingly innocent practice of mix and matching one's six pack...but I say now that this practice is godless, deceitful, and most likely communist. Soviet even.

I was at the local food jobber over the weekend. Being a man, I of course went to the beer section where I notice a patron with the bland white cardboard container indicative of this egalitarian practice. Now this place for years posted signs imploring us citizens to refrain from the college era prank/rookage of repackaging Newcastles into a Miller Lite six packs which could save the crafty ( if morally flexible) student upwards of five bucks. This is a young man's game, and should be abandoned upon getting a decent occupation. I note with irony the fact that said grocery store now encourages their state sanctioned mixing...complete with a nice surcharge(ie fucking) for the shopper.

Back to the patron. I scowled at his effete purchase...wondering if he was getting some Tiger Lagers from Singapore, or perhaps some Abita. Instead, this asshole had two Miller Chills and what appeared to be some Hefe Weizen trash, plus two malt piss from Smirnoff.

Juno's cunt, have you lost your mind sir?

This is part of the problem...anyone weak enough with a pathological need to sample some beers should man up and buy a six pack of the brew. You don't like Stella Artois after one bottle? Tough shit fairy, drink the other five now and learn your lesson. That's not to say one can't go into a proper bar and try new beers or drinks...but that is the time and place for proper

experimentation, not sitting on your well explored sofa nancing about which low carb trash you want to drink next. Hell, I would have had more respect had this consumer loaded up his custom six pack with heavy hitters like Red Hook, Duck-Rabbit, or any of the fifty Sam Adams that gets thrust on the American public. Bud Lime/Chill? Awful.

To take single beers and turn them into some sort of heterogeneous experiment is wrong. You rob the beer of its strength when you remove it from its fellows...and cheapen your buzz in the process. To sum up: if purchasing a single beer is your goal, find a nice 40(they like it
with the word 'dawg' because it makes them feel like they're friends with the product) and proceed to the gutter...otherwise, purchase your beer as prominent thinkers always have: six, twelve, eighteen, twenty-four, pony keg, keg in that order.

Save that douchebag crap for the Smirnoff Ice drinkers.

A great swell of pity

Lately, I have had a few conversations with Tag and Mackey about finding a beer that is your number one...you know, the single beer you could take with you anywhere you go and drink anytime. Think of the tired example of being marooned...what one person, one book, etc would you want?

For the three of us, it happens to be IPA. Not just any IPA, but the one that currently sits in Mackey's well-explored kegerator.

How many of you see people in their prime adult life slide into a bar where fine drafts are available, kitschy bottled beers, superbeers, barley wines or somesuch only to watch said adults lamely get a Bud Light or Miller Lite? Awful. I mean, I am not talking about college kids or recent grads that are still trying to find their niche in the beerswilling world, but job or career holding assholes that simply haven't branched out from the tired and blue rather than tried and true.

When I was in my early 20's if you wanted anything other than macrobrew American lagers or pilsners, you pretty much had to get a Killians or a Sam. Slowly, you could see Shiners make their way into rotation. It's been a slow ride to get to my beloved IPA, but definitely worth the wait. Plenty of those strong assed bastards left to crush. Along the way I've lived the High Life, knocked back Pabst Blue Ribbon, and recently welcomed back Lowenbrau into the fold. Not bad, but compared to IPA, or even an Alt or Brown Ale there is no choice. Thousand times out of a thousand it will be microbrewed booze.

His lordship counts himself fortunate to have had this catharsis relatively early on...what a pisser it would be to discover "the beer of one's life" with a mere handful of years left. Very Hobbesian. In fact...nasty, brutish, and short seems an apt description for most macrobrewed sheisse.