bear

OLD BOY ALE—A calming brew for when there’s a killer in the house

My Fellow Inebriates,

As a generality, animals that are predators have forward-facing eyes—all the better for chasing other animals. Animals that are prey have side-mounted eyes—all the better for scoping out the periphery.

Eyes in front, likes to hunt.

Eyes on the side, likes to hide.

Thus—and this argument is often advanced by those who believe vegetarianism is unnatural for humans—animals with eyes in front (lions, tigers, wolves) are usually carnivores. Wall-eyed animals (bunnies, sheep, squirrels) tend to be herbivores.

Take this duck, for example.

duck

Okay, so ducks are kind of in the middle. They’re omnivores—they eat insects, weeds, small fish, and whatever you chuck at them in the park.

Now take this duck. No really, please take this duck.Minolta DSC

Carnivorous Duck is the most amoral animal at LBHQ. In fact, he’s the only animal who’s ever attempted to eat the kids.

He’s been off my radar recently, confined like Hannibal Lecter to the spare toybox. And let’s face it, if one of my brain cells forgets to remind the other of hazards such as Carnivorous Duck, the threat of predation gets falsely diminished.

I only thought of him because of this pic from 2006.

Scary, me, Glen Bear, and Carnivorous Duck, late 2006. Only Glen was happy about the snow.

Scary, me, Glen Bear, and Carnivorous Duck, late 2006. Only Glen was happy about the snow.

As placid as it is, as comfortingly wintry, I felt unsettled after yesterday’s post. That’s when I realized, CD has been loose in the house for a while. Then when Emily asked about him, it all flashed at me malevolently—Carnivorous Duck is at large, and Glen Bear is missing.

Would CD be ambitious enough to eat a polar bear? I mean…a bear?

He always said he wouldn’t eat me or Scary because we were rancid. But then he’d kind of laugh, and his eyes would narrow. Carnivorously.

The key is not to think about it. Fortunately my dad bought more Parallel 49 beer—OLD BOY ALE, a classic pub-style ale ringing in at 5% ABV and 25 IBU.

old_boy_bottlesWhen you’re terrified of predation and worried you might find a polar bear carcass somewhere in the basement with little beak marks on it, a rich, mellow brown ale with slight off-white foam and minimal lacing is a good reminder that the world is generally a good place. Yes, there are monsters, and some of them live at LBHQ, but how can you dwell on them while inhaling caramel-coffee-toffee-malt with well-behaved fruitiness hanging politely in the background? On the palate OLD BOY ALE bursts with mild nuttiness, bakery notes, earthy hops, riding along with moderate carbonation, a semi-creamy mouthfeel, and the quintessential pub-ale aftertaste. It tastes like another. And another. If I saw this on tap at a bar, I’d get under the tap.

Although it’s characterized as a bitter, OLD BOY ALE is more of a gentle brown ale. Definitely a good winter beer—a soothing, reassuring beer without too much bite but still supplying lots of interesting flavors. Paws up for sure.

You know what it’s like when you’re all alone and you feel like you’re being watched? Well…it feels like something is watching us right now. With forward-pointing eyes. But it can’t have any OLD BOY ALE, because we finished it. Let’s hope Glen isn’t finished as well.

Glennnn! 

The randomness of Facebook friending

My Fellow Inebriates,

It may surprise you to know that there are a lot of bears on Facebook. Here’s the breakdown of my FB friend list:

The bears are usually the teddy variety, with a few wild bears here and there. Most don’t do much on FB; their humans have opened an account for them and seemingly been satisfied to leave it at that. Several are very active, and lots of them send me pics of themselves drinking, which I like. But for the most part FB friends come and go as in a slow-motion Twitter account. I don’t pay attention to the total number, but I do notice when a bear-friend’s account gets zucked, as happened to Boo Bear a couple of years ago. (He came back within a day, still wearing his coolest shades.)

I get tagged in photos like this.

I live in perpetual terror of being zucked. Facebook policy forbids bears from having accounts, and The Facebook Effect author David Kirkpatrick repeatedly ascribes much of Facebook’s success to its insistence on verifiably authentic member names. But with 500M+ members, FB can only police its ursine underbelly so well. And honestly, some bears contribute more to social networking than some humans. Like Boo.

My parents’ FB friend lists are comparatively boring. Here’s my mum’s breakdown, for example:

You won’t find Corporal James Shittington or Archie Candypants. Almost everyone is a human and an actual personal acquaintance. Her deviant complement is about half of mine, and would be lower if we didn’t count the ultra-religious right as part of that pie slice.

And this one from a monkey friend…

The actual numbers, too, are lower. Unlike yours truly, my parents don’t get random friend requests from entities such as “Bill’s Toaster Oven” and “Shite Sheep.” Nor would they click “Accept,” which I do. So they have about a tenth the friends I do, but arguably their friendships are somewhat more meaningful.

For instance, when a friend drops from my friend list, the reason is usually random:

  • Facebook did another animal purge.
  • The friend, who’d had an impulse to create a teddy bear page under the impression it was a totally original idea, immediately started getting legions of teddybear friend requests and realized that not only is the idea not original; this whole teddybear-Facebook thing is huge. They got weirded out renamed the page, then dropped any bear-friends.
  • The friend correctly decided I was an idiot and unfriended me.

My parents’ lists are therefore a bit more stable. Their friends don’t ordinarily get purged. They don’t rename themselves unless they get married or divorced. But occasionally they do decide my parents are idiots and hit the “unfriend” button.

This happened to my dad when one of his “friends” posted a gay-bashing status. When my dad challenged it, he was promptly unfriended for his intolerance.

As for my mum, she gets dumped here and there simply because she hardly ever checks in. Friends spring-clean their lists, ask themselves when they last talked, and she gets jettisoned. She could avoid this by posting a cat picture once a week, which sort of sums up the FB experience.

For some people, Facebook is a way of connecting with people they wouldn’t otherwise contact—a way of maintaining dormant relationships. For others, Facebook is a reflection of active relationships—if they’re friends with you on FB, chances are they also call you, email you, walk in the park with you. Which sounds exhausting.

Cheers, Dad(s)

My Fellow Inebriates,

Presumably I once had a bear dad—i.e., a dad with 74 chromosomes, not 46 like my human dad. Although I can’t remember anything before coming to awareness at the liquor store, I was probably lucky to escape the dodgy life of a wild Kodiak bear. Hell, my bear dad probably would have eaten me in the wild, since that’s what male Kodiak bears tend to do.

My human dad has never tried to eat me. He’s never even tried to eat his human kids. The worst thing he ever does is take mysterious business trips without me. But even that has its upside.

For instance, he got back from Vegas yesterday. I’d assumed he would have wrecked himself at the casinos and bars, sticking coins in slots and bills into g-strings, but instead he got off the plane looking reasonably well rested and bearing a duty-free bottle. Ahhhh!

Cheers, Dad.