An “Un-beer-able” Edition

Hello friends! I thought it only appropriate to answer this question, given the similar nature of the previous question regarding bears:

Dear Ally (the magnanimous)

Which beer is best?

~Emily, from Ottawa

* * *

My dearest Emily,

Ah beer. The sweet, delicious nectar of various rotten grains. Liquefied bread. That heady combination of nausea and testosterone that drives me crazy. Mmm.

Seriously, though, I love beer. It’s some good fun. And though I’m certainly no where near qualified enough to pass judgement on which beer ever made could be considered best, I can certainly tell you which of the beers I have drank often enough to remember their names (strange foreign beers with elephants on the bottle are thus excluded) is best. But what shall I base this decision on? Taste? Texture? Colour? Price? Availability? Pretty labels? Advertising campaigns? The force of the hangover? Puke-o-meter? No.

You see, Emily from Ottawa, when I think of beer, I think of beauty queens. I think it is because I tend to associate beer with girls I see going out on a Saturday night wearing more make-up than a drag queen, larger eyelashes than a Muppet, bigger hair than an Amy Winehouse, and less fabric than the Veterinarian Barbie I had when I was four. And, naturally, I associate beauty queens with more make-up than a drag queen, larger eyelashes than a Muppet, bigger hair than Amy Winehouse, and less clothing than good ol’ VetBarbie. So, through a logical mental association, in my mind BEER + BEAUTY QUEENS = LOVE 4 EVA.

And so, using much the same method of judgement by which I so recently decided which bear was best, I shall now endeavour to choose that beer which will from this day carry the distinction of being…

** Miss Beer-ly a Beauty 2009! **

*Gasp!* Shock! Awe! Originality! I know, I know. You can all praise my genius later, though. Now it is time to get down to business and introduce our fantastic contestants:

A belly, belly good day to you all!

Back in October of 2004, I received an interesting e-mail in my inbox. As I read on, I found a smile on my face. It got bigger and bigger with each passing line. It was an e-mail that has stuck with me through good times and bad, through hard times and easy livin’, and most importantly, through thick and thin.

I would like to share the contents of that e-mail with you now, friends (the potential 6 of you that aren’t my close friends IRL who I e-mailed this to last night, or my Facebook friends who I tagged in a note containing this information early this morning). And so, without further ado:

I hereby declare October 5, 2009, to be the 5th annual celebration of…

BELLY APPRECIATION DAY!

Happy Belly Day, friends!

Linguistic Musings: On the non-word “koob”

In the course of clearing out my e-mail folders from the e-mail address I used as a teenager, my old adolescent hotmail account, I found myself confronted with a number of tear-jerking memories. Oh, my teenaged-self. The e-mail address itself speaks volumes: I’ve deliberately included an incorrect year of my birth not, as I might now do, to throw off potential identity theft wannabes, but rather to make myself seem older to friends, co-workers, and potential sweethearts of the messenger variety.

I also found an immensely strange e-mail that I wrote to friends of mine in a regional subset of a leadership group that was, at the time, known as the Hugh O’Brien Youth Leadership Association, or HOBY for short. I loved this group. I wish I were still involved (though it now goes by another name). I am frequently attacked by bouts of nostalgia for those simpler days, and for the amazing friendships I formed there. Never was I so cool (and, as anyone who was in said group could tell you, that is saying something truly depressing about my current state of coolness), or so accepted.

But I digress: this e-mail. What exactly prompted it I cannot not fathom, but I saved it in the dregs of my inbox for some reason, surely anticipating the joy my future self would enjoy upon re-discovering it. And I thought, with some small amendments, I might post it here to enlighten and enrich the lives of my readers worldwide… all 7 of them:

“Hey all!

So how awesome was that deck party? Like totally amazing. However, having left early, I believe that I missed this marvellous “koob” bitty. Clearly, koob is book backwards. Would you like a further explanation? Of course you would. Settle down in your sleeping bags kidlets, this is going to be a long night…

An Open Letter to the Arseholes Living Across the Way…

To the individuals currently living across from me,

You will excuse me, I hope, if I come across as rude. You see, you have kept me awake for TWELVE CONSECUTIVE NIGHTS with your drunken inanity and a distinct lack of sleep has made me somewhat short of temper. Indeed, I fear that another drunken shriek may push me over the edge into the realm of the downright cantankerous.

Ah, you must be the fellow who threw a kegger in the flat directly across from my building last night.

I have racked my brains for a way to get through to you: super-soakers, oversized banners with suspect spelling hung from the window, passive aggressive Morse code communiques, axe murder, the “Rants and Raves” section of the Edinburgh Craigslist, in-between a posting of love for Susan Boyle and a warning about the doom facing our children which I strongly suspect carries a heavy xenophobic bent.

However, as per usual, this is the channel through which I shall express myself, fully aware that in the next 30 days not one of you shall have read it, and you all shall have continued in your aggressive acts of disrespect, while I will long since have taken refuge in my newest recreational hobby of day-dreaming about smashing your personal belongings.