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.

MY FIRST FOUR BI-WEEKLY REHAB BEERS

As you can see it is a great beginning. Stones Old Guardian barley wine. Gulden Draak from Van Steenberge in Belgium. And a couple ales from two of the seven Trappist breweries. Westmalles dubbel, and one of the worlds greatest beers, Rochefort 10. Being the fist purchased they will be the last drank, dranken, drunk, whatever the case may be. No matter how much budwieser tries to slam freshness and born on dating down your throat, truely great beers, the beers of kings (work on that one Miller) age even better than Dick Clark. Can't wait.

PIG CIRCUS PART IV, jumping thru hoops on a short leash

After leaving the court house I was following my court ordered directions to go to a company a block up the road (talk about dirty bed fellows) to get the information I need as to which flaming hoops to jump thru. A week later and I receive a letter in the mail stating that I should mail the $150.00 and then a phone interview would be scheduled. During this 35 minute inquisition my drug and alcohol history was examined, and at the end of the assessment the following summation is what I heard; Its actually a good thing that this happened to you. Your next step was to become an alcoholic. In my head I was thinking "you bloody freakin gash! I had quit using illegal drugs. I have stopped drinking hard liquor. My beer intake has been reduced and you say there is a definite pattern here. One that shows that I was soon to become an alcoholic?" She then gave me the names and numbers of agencies in WA that comply with the OR program. So I set up an intake interview for a lowly sum of $75.00 only to be asked the same questions and be told that I have an alcohol abuse disorder. So now I have been enrolled in an alcohol diversion program.

For the next six months I am required to attend weekly "treatments', ATTEND AA meetings once a week. Submit a urine sample each month for drug and alcohol screening, attend a victims panel, get a TB test (?) and go to an all day alcohol education class (maybe they think I want to be a bartender) and jump any time they say jump. All of this for the combined total of $999.00. Add the $225.00 and this stage of the circus comes to $1224.00. Plus there is the time that I will never get back.

Now, I had told my lawyer that I just wanted to plead guilty and get this over with. Cost wise, the fines would have been equal and possibly less if they gave me the minimum $1000.00. Time wise, for a first offense it would most likely have been two weeks (the way my job has been going two weeks in jail would be a nice get away), now I have six months on a short leash. The benefit is instead of a one year suspension I only have 90 days, but that is in OR. I still have my driving privileges in WA. Also, my insurance company wont find out.

At this point, and also at court, you have little option as to what road to take. If you say you don't want to do the diversion program, or you drop out of it, the court takes it as a slap in the face. They know what is best for you and if you don't follow your road will only be rougher. (Sounds like our federal govt/current administration doesn't it?) So until the end of February I will be living life high and dry. I do have a plan to get me thru this, part of which will be buying four beers every other Friday and squirreling them away until I'm done with the program. The other part is an ancient Chinese secret.

So here is my refrigerator as of today. Yes there is beer in there. Three bottle left over from three weeks ago. (If only I could control my drinking!) We'll see if its still there six months from now.

My advice to anyone who gets pulled over is LIE. The cops do, and they are accustomed to it. If you say two beers they assume six. Four beers, eight... Tell the court you are not eligible for the diversion program due to a prior that has dropped off your record. I'm not going to say don't drink and drive, but if you're drunk don't drive. There is a difference. Never trust a cop, especially a young one. And lastly, eat bacon, kill a pig. Got to go now. Big Brother is watching me.