barstoolery

Shitty beer drives the want to drink right out of oneself.

At least it does for me. I buy shitty beer when I’m especially poor, which is a good and bad idea. One shouldn’t drink at all when you can’t afford it, but when one can’t afford much of anything, shitty beer seems like the best alternative.

Well, going to a library would be better, but it’s Sunday.

Miller High Life is about the shittiest beer I can tolerate now. I have no idea where it stands on the shittiest beer in the world list, but I figure there are plenty below it. Last year sometime I had a sip of a Milwaukee’s Best Ice beer. It was so bad I could only take that one sip before just putting it on a coffee table and leaving it behind.

To think that was how I lived for so many years.

Finding out that beer can taste good was a great thing. I course, I still remember those early days of swilling down Coors Light. Why Coors? Because it was a cool beer at some point. I did grow up watching Smokey and the Bandit, for Christ’s sake…

My first forays into drinking “other” beers came in Arizona, really. I lived with a guy that brewed his own and it stuck. No, I’ve never gotten into the whole making it for myself thing, which is a shame, because I probably would have become obsessed with it at the right time. What do I mean by that? I mean, I would have gotten good at it when micro-brews started to catch on. Maybe I would have actually opened a brewery/bar. There are so many of them now, it’s a bandwagon missed.

But there I go, musing on the unobtainable. Only because it’s a past and present and future that didn’t occur. Even if you could have made it happen. I tend to do that, if you haven’t noticed. (here’s where you silently think to yourself, no shit Randy…)

But guzzling down a cold (it has to be cold) High Life reminds me of how I don’t want to be a degenerate drunk who drinks swill. If I’ve got to go down that path, it’s good beer. Even if good beer to me is the Shiner Family. Which, many folk hate. It does taste a little like laundry detergent. Huh. There I go, analyzing things again. What the fuck do you mean analyzing, Randy? That was a statement of fact. Well, Emily introduced me to it again. And I only drank it for a bit. It was the only beer she would drink. Well, that and fucking Michelob Ultra. But all chicks will drink that. Even the ones who say they won’t…

But I usually forget the origins of Shiner in my palette. A good thing, no doubt. But as I’m wont to do, I remind myself.

That’s why I wish I could get Lone Star beer here. It would satisfy my obsession with Texas and deliver a buzz without a single piece of that redheaded bitch attached to it.

Redheaded bitch? Damn, Randy, have you been drinking a lot?

No, I haven’t actually. I’ve had half a beer after a stroll on the beach. I said hello to about 20 people. One chick say hi back. The same chick who always does, from her porch. Although she was with the beater guy today. It’s funny. I know these people by their behavior. I assume they do the same. “There’s that loner dude. He does seem polite, though…”

I don’t go to the beach enough. I also don’t go to the local pub enough. It’s right there. Full of other wasted opportunities and lost ambitions. But, I guess that means it’s all well and good that I don’t end up there. Or is it? I mean, I could meet a beautiful woman there. Well, most likely just a woman. But maybe one to test the “fup, fup” theory of life. However, I go into the bar with no money, it’s likely I come out of it without a buzz or a fup.

It’s times like this I wish I was still in Richmond. At least there, I had a partner in barstoolery. A word that I just had to add to the Microsoft dictionary to get it to stop changing it.

I haven’t had the urge to drink since my debacle in Raleigh. I still haven’t mustered up the courage to just ask what I said. Yep, big pussy. Or more like the Fast Times version -- Big Hairy Pussy. Of course, Phoebe Cates never walks in on me when I’m beating off.

The smell of garbage just wafted in from outside. The bar across the street must have served some food yesterday. The dumpster is overfilled and sending whatever rotting carcass smell into the air that it wants. Great, that means flies will be in abundance tomorrow. No opening up the doors to get a breeze.

Speaking of no air conditioning. Woke up today, it was 76 degrees inside my house. I was freakin’ chilly. Greatness, that is.