21

No I'm not talking about blackjack. Of course I am referring to the drinking age. I would like to introduce you to a friend of mine who turned twenty one this year, Thomas Hardy. Obviously I am not speaking of the writer, but rather a beer named after him, Thomas Hardy's Ale. My latest beer purchase is a 1988 bottle of the said ale, still dusty from a cellar in Ireland. So far the oldest beer I have had was 11 years, a J. W. Lees Harvest Ale. By the time Febrewary rolls around this bottle will be 22 and the first that I drink.

Bi Weekly, Buy Beer, By God I do have a problem

During my six months of abstinence I decided that evey other week I would pick up four beers and stash them until the end of February. I have been going out to West Richland beer and wine to make my purchases. They have a good selection of beer as well as six taps. It is very easy to get sucked into buying, talking and drinking beer. Today I had a wee bit of a brake down. Instead of the usual four I wound up leaving with the eleven you see below.

Four Trappist ales; the Rochefort 10, Westmalle Dubbel and Tripel, and Orval. Along with those are Brother Thelonius, a Belgain style from North Coast Brewing. A four pack of Double Dog Double Pale Ale by Flying Dog Brewing. The last are two that I never had before. Both from Southern Tier Brewing Company out of Lakewood NY. One iscalled Hoppe, an Imperial Extra Pale Ale, and the other is a Barley Wine called Back Burner. I'm not usually too impressed by east coast breweries, but I hope they have learned something from their westerly brethren. I'll let you know in about six onths.

AA-CLU

Only nine months into it and I can say that this is the worst year I've had. Its not just getting set up and knocked down for a dui, but the trickle down effect. Having to go six months without beer is a pain in the ass, and I also consider it to be unconstitutional. How can it be legal for a court to prohibit some one from doing what is legal? Oh well, I'm doing it just for the satisfaction of being able to say "go back to your pen, piss off and roll in it".

Another thing that the ACLU might find interesting is court mandated AA meeting attendance. Yeah, its everything you thought it would be and then some. When ever some one talks they say "My name is ________, and I am an alcoholic". "Hi _________".
"There are some new people here today. Would you please introduce yourselves?"
"My names Free and I'm not an alcoholic".
Pause.
"Hi Free"
So then it is an hour of hearing about the gun in the mouth. The lost job, house, wife, money, etc... Drinking lysol and listerine, talking about how their god has guided their every step. Alright, I can empathize. Then came the end of the meeting. Everyone stands and, freak out of freak outs, holds hands. There is some sort of Gregorian chant about sobriety that segues into....drum roll please.....rat ta tat tat...the our father! So the secular judicial athorities order me to go to meetings that closes with the most popular prayer in Christendom. No matter my beliefs, church and state have just had a trist. Side tracking for a moment. It is funny how this prayer is uttered by rote. In the bible Jesus points out to people not to say the same words over and over for they become empty of meaning. What has become a recitation of "the lords prayer" was actually a guide line, a model if you will, of apprpriate heart felt matters.

In closing, I am told to not do something legal while church (under the guise of a non sectarian organization) and state, is tossed in a blender and served as a mixed drink. So any of you ACLU people or other pc mother roop scoops fighting for the "minorities" or illegal imigrants, why don't you do something for the most disregarded minority, 25-45 single white males. The same group that is mosy likely to go out and commit acts of domestic terrorism and mass murder. Could it be because there is no Organization for the Support of Single Prime of Life White Men? The same people who spent the last several centuries building this country into the great country that it once was. What really sucks is that now you have those in the younger part of that group that speak of dis and dat. How the mighty have fallen. Welcome to ghetto America. Talk about gray matter.

Enough pissing and moaning. I think I'll go to liquidsolutions.biz and do a little beer shopping.

MY TATTOO IDEA (the good, the bad, and the ugly)

I know, how could some one that is opposed to the tattoo notion nation be coming up with such an idea? Well just a few minutes ago I was sitting in my alcohol and other drug information school preparing to spend eight hours having some body tell me what I spent decades learning on my own. While watching the roop scoops file in I noticed that the majority, an easy 75% had tattoos. Mostly the common "tribal band" which loosely translates to "what fraternity do you belong to?" and the Kanji symbol that doesn't mean what they think it does. I do have to admit that there are times that tattoos are a worthy idea. For instance, the fat man that has the flag tattooed on his butt and ask if it brings tears to your eyes to see old glory waving in the breeze, then promptly drops his drawers and farts and says "Now don't that get you all choked up?" On a whole...well read on.

So my ideal tattoo would be a mural across my back showing an old shack with a tattoo parlor sign pearched at the edge of a canyon/cliff. There is a line of people waiting to get in, and coming out the back is a trail of lemmings falling into the chasm. This being said, I do have friends with tattoos and some of the work is not only good, but clever also. Take Falbo for example. On one forearm he has the word BITTER tattooed, and on the other, no not sweet, BITTER in Italian! (You can see him and part of it in the Feb 12 post WHAT JUST HAPPENED)
My point is if you cant express yourself with your mind the ink isn't going to fare you well either.

So the good, bad, and ugly? Well ugly was the tattooed lemmings, the bad was an eight hour dredgery of drug schooling. The good? My counseler sticking his head in and telling me I could skip it and go home.

My Bi-Weekly Beer Buying Binge

This weeks trip to the beer store was a bit odd. Not only is my van suffering from some sort of electical problem, but I also had to attend a victims impact panel this a.m. So I hopped on my bike and rode out to the community college. Then I headed out to the beer store. The final leg was the trek home. A loop of about twenty miles I guess. All in all it wasn't too bad until I had a thorn puncture my front tire a couple miles from home. I hope the heat didn't harm the beer. So here they are; Damnation Golden Ale from Russian River Brewing in Santa Rosa, Saint Bernardus Wit from Belgium,Judgement Day ale from The Lost Abbey brewery in San Marcos, and another bottle of Rochefort 10. I'll buy one of those as long as they have it in stock. By the way, these beers were purchased at West Richland Beer and Wine, a store that has only been open for three months. A business worthy of supporting. They have a small inventory at this time, but what they have is good, and they are willing to take special request.