BEER

     One of the things the reader might notice as he or she wends through this mass of dubious philosophical patter is that I'm a bit of a cultural misanthrope. For instance, I don't like beer. In some circles this is similar to not liking to breathe, for others it might call my heterosexuality into question, if not my sanity.

        This lack of an alcoholic calling does have an effect on my sanity. Try going through your life saying no to questions like "how 'bout a cold one?", "can I buy you a beer?", "what say we go get a six?", and other such lagerly camaraderie. The utterance of such a question has an interesting clinical effect; it immediately renders the speaker deaf. So there you are, standing in front of a "cold one", horrified at the thought of actually drinking it and feeling rude if you don't. "How 'bout another one?" The beer drinking public, which is almost like saying the whole of masculinity, does not find the rejection of a beer a possible state of mind. It just doesn't register.

     My solution to this was to stop going to bars. This solved one problem but created another. Doubtful as my sexual preference might now be, there is still something about a girl that makes life worth living. Unfortunately for types like me, there seems to be a strong correlation between places with lots of beer and dense concentrations of girls. If you were to believe the images created by the beer industry (henceforth known as "Big Beer" in these pages), there is no sex without beer and no ugly girls anywhere near beer. Ergo, if your agenda includes the use of a stiffened member, your agenda must also include beer.

     "Big Beer" is a very powerful force in our society. For example, have you ever wondered why that baseball player you've never heard of, the one sitting eternally in the dugout spitting tobacco juice on his cleats, is making more money in one season than you will ever make in a lifetime? 

     "Big Beer".

     The suds industry, armed with the clout of its advertising dollars, is the power behind the throne in the world of mega-bucks sports. Without "Big Beer" there'd be no big sports and no big salaries. There'd only be an Ivy League character-building thing rooted in such sniffly, tweedy endeavors as school ties, and ". but how you played the game". There'd be no hockey fights, no Deion dancing or television timeouts. In other words, the world would be a better place. But would we sell enough beer?

     "Big Beer" is big. I live in a place where there is now "Spring Break". This was not always so. About four years ago, my town found itself buried under an avalanche of middle class kids whose adolescence was being unduly extended while supposedly getting an education. This tragedy, unlike many of the other things it is responsible for, was not the fault of our Municipality. This sneak attack was launched by "Big Beer", whose agents of doom spread the word throughout the world of panty raids and dad's credit card, and voila! . "Spring Break", which is just a euphemism for drinking lots of beer in a warmer place, shows up. "Big Beer's" covert-overt sponsorship of this phenomenon is somewhat light on sincerity being that almost all this mass of hormonal anxiety is under drinking age. 

     So much for "Big Beer's" concern for responsible drinking.

     So now there is a big debate raging as to whether this thing should be encouraged. With the admission that I have no formal evidence to back it up, I would say the average citizen would shed nary a tear if "Spring Break" were to take its barfing bullshit somewhere else. But now that the scent of blood has been sniffed, it has found some strong proponents amongst certain rapacious politico-business spheres of the community. I was recently talking to a guy who drives a beer truck; guess what he and his boss think. There are some big saloons in town with a lot of beer belly weight to throw around. The fast-food Big Mac-pizza guys, the thousands of cheaper hotel rooms . get the picture?

     The power of beer is as unrelenting and persistent as the rise and fall of the tides. One drinks it when one is happy, one drinks it when one is sad, like that " 'ol man river", it just keeps keepin' on.

Relevant Material:  The classic country tune, "I Like Beer", by Tom T. Hall.