Beer

There is something about beer that is special. At this juncture I should point out that I am not a paid employee, contractor or otherwise in a position to gain from the promotion of beer.

 I like beer. It tases good and makes you feel good (in the right doses). It is not a cure-all, or the secret to life, but it is good. Damn good.

Beer gets a lot of bad press, not the least of which is the promotion of false promises. Things like "never again" come to mind. These are heartfelt statements when they are made – but they are lies nonetheless. Very few people who make the "never again" promise actually abstain from beer for the rest of their lives. A select few do, and feel remarkable good as a result.

I am not one of them.

I brew my own beer. Some of it is very good, no doubt just as the manufacturer intended. Some of it is not so good. Foretunately I am not like a certain uncle of mine who is too cheap to throw out a brew no matter how bad it is. I am, however, getting better at making beer. The last one I made was very good quality – a Coopers Lager that tastes like, well, Coopers Lager. I had the good fortune to be given a box of half a dozen cans of Coopers Lager brew mix. After wasting a couple of them trying in vain to make a really nice honey beer, I saw the error of my ways, reverted to following the instructions and have been enjoying a Coopers three or four nights per week every since.

I am lucky because my darling supports my brewing – she actually bought me the brewing kit as a gift and encourages me to enjoy it. I loved her before this, but this hasn't helped. Last week she bought me a mix for making a Toohey's Dark Ale. Mmmmmmmmmm….Dark Ale. I'm looking forward to that one. I bottled the most recent incarnation of the Lager on March 19 (a Sunday) and it takes about three weeks to fizz up nicely. An additional three weeks, however, and it does wonders for the taste, so I wil try to be patient and not drink too much of it before it is really good.

One thing i haven't done a lot of is sharing the brews, and I guess that is because the people within close enough range to offer samples to all tried my early brews, which were not really very good. Oh well, more for me!

If anyone else out there is interested in brewing, I would love to exchange tips and suggestions.

Drink up!

Blame

I blame the Government.

It’s not that they have done (or failed to do) anything in particular, but it just seems to roll so easily off the tongue that I cannot resist saying it. I blame the Government for that too by the way. Blaming the government is healthy and normal (a little like masturbation but more acceptable in public). I recommend it to anyone who wants to feel better about whatever is going wrong in their lives.

Then again, they could just get of their arses and do something about it, but then most people don’t think of that.

What people have little concept of is the realm of the possible. There are so many things that get swamped and crushed before they are started, for no better reason than someone (usually the Government) pops up to say they cannot be done.

Screw them.

 

And the Government!

I wonder if……….

The most difficult times of my life are when I’m just sitting and thinking. Do you ever get disturbed about the direction of your own thoughts? And dreams are worse….they happen when you have almost no capacity to turn them off. I dreamt again last night (a fairly rare thing for me) but the theme was much the same as always (not really all that nice). I try not to interpret them, there’s no point really because they don’t seem to have anything to do with my waking world.

Then there’s random thoughts, like those that go with this image. I mean, does this fellow think as slowly as he moves, or is he incapable of moving as fast as he thinks. I know plenty of people who don’t plan as far ahead as this bloke does if he wants to be in the right place at feeding time.