Brews You Can Use
What does a reprobate do when he's hungover?
He smokes weed. It doesn't cure his symptoms, but it does a great job of masking them and, let's face it, when you're really hung over, you don't care if the pain is mitigated, masked, or tricked into thinking it can have sex with 20 virgins if would only leave you alone. It doesn't matter. You just want relief, and the anecdotal evidence indicates relief is just one joint away. Of course, the rest of your day will probably be shot to hell because you got stoned and are now brain dead, but if you're really hungover, the day was probably shot to hell already.
I gotta admit: I'm not "above" such things. Heck, I've occasionally been so throttled by hangovers that I've begged and prayed for relief. I've also curled up on my side and whimpered loudly, which was a peculiar site for the people walking past me on the sidewalk where I had woken up earlier that morning.
But I gotta wonder: If you drink this beer, do your prayers for relief get enhanced treatment? The beer is brewed by The Nazareth Beer Brewery in Israel. It's actually located in Nazareth (6122 St, Nazareth, Israel, according to the Google Machine). At first, I thought maybe it was blasphemous and I was a little bummed out, but the Brewery is owned by Christians, so I'm assuming their logo is meant with respect ("hop leaves replace the crown of thorns that was placed on Jesus' head in the crucifixion, and his beard has become an upside-down hop flower").
Nazareth is now overwhelmingly Muslim, with Christians comprising only 30% of the population. Another apostatizing region of the world with a growing Muslim population, Scotland, is beginning to pay for its sins in a big way: Scotland's whisky industry may be left without its most vital component because of tight restrictions aimed at preserving precious peat bogs. Sustainability, bitch!
Scotland deserves it. The country that gave us David Hume and Adam Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment (the only decent Enlightenment of that benighted era), and William F'ing Wallace!, is now the Land of Welfare, Subservience, and Drunks. They voted overwhelmingly to stay in the EU, preferring to suffocate slowly but securely under their fat welfare mother's teat rather than sobering up and getting to work. I weep for the decline of Scottish whiskey, but like I said, they asked for it.
And as long as we're talking about sustainability, we might as well admit that it has infiltrated the alcohol industry. It even infiltrated the Super Bowl, which isn't surprising, since everything debased infiltrates that vapid pool of pop culture. Anheuser Busch rolled out another “farmer” beer commercial. This time it introduced their Michelob Ultra Pure Gold organic beer. This was “beer in its organic form” the high-priced celebrity voice told us. But the hype didn't stop there. The rest of the message was that if you drank a 6-pack of this beer you would be saving a farmer – or at least their farm – 6 square feet at a time. The intent was simple. Help farmers transition to organic practices – a perceived better way of farming – by drinking our “organic” beer. Make me vomit.
Happy Valentine's Day, everybody. Get your gal drunk and show your love and respect by resisting your inner-Harvey Weinstein.
