Stinky Beer

Stinky Beer

Well, all is quiet at the Tiki bar this week. The Grand Pooh-Bah is off on a working vacation down south somewhere and won’t be back until Friday. A few members and I gave him a bit of a send off on Monday night. We toasted him and wished him well on his trip. We complained that other local members have been noticeably absent quite a bit. Markus, our resident carpenter, has skipped more than a few meetings and has been sorely missed. He came by for ten minutes, about a week ago. He stayed long enough for a beer and to drop off some of the materials to finish the roof.

The roof is the last major obstacle in finishing the Tiki bar. I stretched a couple of pieces a piece of canvas and a shower curtain over the skeleton of the roof to give us a little shade and to give us some cover from summer storms. It works o.k. The sun shines in your eyes late in the day and you have to sit at certain spots to avoid the rain. It was a pretty good temporary fix, but it is getting a little ragged. I’ve had to retack it three times.

The Monday night gathering was another great impromptu party. We laughed, and snacked on the standard Tiki bar fare, salted peanuts in the shell. The Grand Pooh-Bah always keeps a large stock of peanuts around for just such occasions. The salty snacks were good and helped to make the cold drinks disappear.

“Well, this is the last one. You want to split it?” asked the Grand Pooh-Bah.

I felt honored that I was considered worthy to share a beer with our illustrious Leader. The beer foamed and frothed and slopped all over the bar. By the time the bubbles settled, there were two sips left. It was one minute past eleven and any of the local places that sell beer had just closed. It was getting close to bedtime but no one wanted to call it a night.

Christopher chimed in,” I got some beer over at my house.”

What great news! A reserve we didn’t know we had. “You’ll have to help me carry the cooler over,” Christopher said slyly.

“Wait a minute, is this the beer that has been in the cooler, in the sun for a week?” I asked.

“C’mon,” he said quietly. We carried the cooler over to the Tiki bar and threw back the lid.

“One of the fruity frou-frou drinks spilled in the cooler but the beer is fine.” Christopher said, trying to reassure us.

The smell that rolled out of the cooler reeked of cat sick! Never in my life have I smelled something that smelled exactly like vomit and was not vomit. Roadkill on a hot August day would have smelled better. Maggots would have gagged. It would have knocked a buzzard off a shit wagon!

It smelled BAD!

I heard grunts and gagging noises from the ladies who were sitting ten feet away.

Christopher and I washed and scrubbed the cans in the sink. I poured two into glasses (I wasn’t going to risk being poisoned by whatever may have been living on the cans) and took them out to the bar. Franklin had gotten a large bowl and filled it with ice, while Christopher and I were fetching the cooler, with the idea that we could chill the beer in it while we drank the first ones. After opening the cooler, no one wanted those cans anywhere near them. The Coors Lights were the first to go.

I like Coors but I have a strong objection to light beer of any kind. What most people don’t seem to know is that it is just water that makes it a light beer. Coors Light is watered down Coors. Bud Light is watered down Budweiser. Etc. It costs the same amount of money as regular beer, but with less actual beer per container. If you want to drink light beer, buy the regular and add ice cubes. It will go farther and be that much colder, without paying for water. Why pay the taxes they put on beer when you are getting nothing more than what you can get at the tap in your own kitchen? If you are drinking light beer because you are concerned about your caloric intake, then maybe you should just skip the meal that you normally would have had before drinking your beer. Breakfast, for example. You will be missing all the salt, fat, preservatives, calories, colorings, additives, and chemicals your body doesn’t need, as well as enjoying your beer to the fullest. The beer you drink on an empty stomach will go straight to your head, instead of your thighs, and you will probably throw it up anyway. It is a win-win situation!

Now, this brings me to the title of this article. Stinky Beer. You have read the tale of the stinky beer and hopefully have gleaned a lesson. Let me impart to you a few others I have learned since joining the Tiki bar.

One. Don’t let Christopher drink Rum. Most all of us at the Tiki bar are beer drinkers. Christopher is not. The girls usually drink fruity frou-frou drinks, but the guys drink beer. This is in no way to suggest that if you are a guy and come to the Tiki bar and order a “Tropical Fruit Passion” on the rocks, that we will make fun of you.

We won’t.

Not until you leave.

Christopher is a rum drinker and, from what I gather, not much of a drinker. His drink of choice seems to be the high quality, but low priced, Paramount Rum, the same thing you can find in most any grocery store. This tends to lead a normally stable man to do things he would not normally do. Case in point: The night he played Sasquatch by wandering off, by himself, and then, in a blind drunken fury, charging at us, snorting and bellowing, through the Grand Pooh-Bah’s prize flowerbed, only because he found himself lost, 12 feet from the Tiki bar.

Two. Christopher was once a paid member of the Boy Scouts. I do not want, in any way, to belittle the Boy Scouts. They are a fine organization and do a lot of great work for their community, not to mention that this author was once a Scout himself, but, at no time is it appropriate to show up to the Tiki bar in full regalia, merit badges, epaulets and all, drunk. This taints the Scouting Creed. Shame!

Three. He buys light beer. Enough said.

Four. He is a card-carrying member of the right wing, conservative, Republican Party. They recruit people like this. People like this have been running our country for some time now. It is a surprise to us all that he has been included into the Tiki bar. We are, for the most part, Democrats, Socialists, and Anarchists, in that order, but we do not discriminate. We can only hope that we can be of some useful influence on him and to steer him from his godless ways.

Five. He is a pyromaniac. No combustible is safe when he is around. The cans of bug spray, which a very expensive I might add, that we keep around, are routinely spent in making a large flame shoot across the yard as he sprays them over the Tiki torches. Even worse is that Grumblington has taken notice and is always wasting our bug spray to recreate the oilfields of Kuwait after Dessert Storm.

Six. He is more than willing to serve stinky beer to his friends. No amount of money could convince me to serve the stinky beer that he served to us, his friends. I would have washed my hair with it first!

Please, Dear and Gentle Reader, don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. Christopher is a great guy. A likable guy. A fun-loving guy! But even the one Anarchist at the bar seems to think you have gone too far. For further information, consult our one and only Anarchist, the Grand Pooh-Bah Himself, for suggestions!

Authors Note: Do not, in any way, construe this as an insult, slight, or attack on your character Christopher. It is not. I was only trying to be funny.

Doc