cult

Brownies vs Xenu vs Scotch

My Fellow Inebriates,

It was “friend night” at Brownies, and Miss P got an invitation from her BFF. She was so excited that she ran all the way to the meeting. When it was over, she begged to join.

This confirms a household suspicion about Brownies: it is a cult. Think—what other sorts of events lure you in via the buddy system? An already-brainwashed friend invites you along…

  • Timeshares
  • Anthony Robbins–style self-help seminars
  • Scientology
comics.feedtacoma.com

comics.feedtacoma.com

Good grief—if only AA meetings were as compelling as any of these. They leave you feeling abject—like something’s missing from your life that only that special group of special people can supply. Without it you’re empty, bereft. Seriously, you could attend an AA meeting and walk out of it with a shrug (how good is cake without kirsch, anyway?) but Brownies? OMG, P is rabid to join Brownies.

Yesterday fairies, sprites, and pixies were the stuff of books she’s not that keen to read anyway. Today Miss P would yank out another tooth for the privilege of dancing around a toadstool, selling Dad overpriced cookies, and earning badges for such accomplishments as putting her underwear in the hamper or breathing air. Holy crap, it looks like Brownies is in our future.

How much does Brownies cost? Like the web page is gonna tell you. L. Ron Hubbard wouldn’t tell you up front. The info is nowhere to be seen on the website. As with scientology, we’re going to endure some face time with entities such as Snowy Owl, Purple Owl, and Horny Owl getting the sales pitch on what essential skills P now lacks that cannot be gleaned anywhere else.

Desperate to know how much money we’ll need to divert from liquor to Brownies, I queried another source. Apparently Brownies costs more per year than a very good bottle of Scotch, and they hit you up for $2 every time you attend. Never mind the multiple cases of cookies we’ll end up buying when my parents are too busy/lazy to trot P around the neighborhood pleading with people to pony up $5 a box.

So this is all very dire. Let’s hope it makes P happy.

brownies

MOLSON CANADIAN—Drink if you’re hot, thirsty, or wearing a mullet

My Fellow Inebriates,

Ever since an old derelict outside Superstore tried to bless the kids and then damned the whole family to hell when my mum wouldn’t let him, the Langley township itself has been on her shitlist, as though its very geography is a magnet for religious mania, something she suspects abounds at the local elementary school.

So when Miss V’s teacher started waving packets of Kool-Aid around this morning, my mother wasn’t impressed. She didn’t have the energy to thwart a Canadian Jonestown so early in the morning, nor did she want her stupid-looking hair to end up on TV.

But before you could say “Hallelujah,” Miss V’s teacher was mixing that Kool-Aid (not even cherry, but lemon) into a batch of homemade play dough. Yes indeed, if you’re tired of shelling out for actual Play-Doh, you can make your own with just a few ingredients:

KOOL-AID PLAYDOUGH

    • 1 cup flour
    • ½ cup salt
    • 2 tsp cream of tartar
    • 1 package unsweetened Kool-Aid, any flavor
    • 1 tbsp cooking oil
    • 1 cup boiling water

Combine dry ingredients. Add oil and boiling water. Mix with a spoon. As soon as the mixture is cool enough, knead together with your non-furry, opposably thumbed hands. Store in airtight container.

Fifteen minutes later the kids were sculpting lemon-scented masterpieces, including this handsome sculpture of yours truly.

OMG, what the hell is that little piece over there supposed to be?

Not content with mere verisimilitude, Miss V insisted on adding a long braid to the bear. She was thinking Rapunzel, although you might think mullet.

If she’d meant mullet she would have been reading my mind, because while she and Mum were sculpting, I was waking to memories of MOLSON CANADIAN.

The MOLSON CANADIAN bottle had come from next door (not the next-door neighbors who hate us, but the normal people on the other side). They don’t wear mullets, but last night they were going to wall-mount some speakers with the wires dangling visibly down the wall, which is pretty much the same thing. When they tried to borrow a tool from my dad, he rushed over to help them hide their unsightly wires and returned with a MOLSON CANADIAN.

The neighbors hadn’t asked for my dad’s help, but he is obsessive about visible wires in other people’s houses. (Our own house, which is festooned with wires and littered with teeny tiny bolts/screws/unidentifiables, is another matter and does not fall within my dad’s OCD radar.) Having recently shut down his home theater business, which had involved a lot of hands-on installation, my dad must have been itching to make holes in the neighbors’ wall, because he practically bounded next door to help. And lucky for him, they were breaking out the MOLSON CANADIAN.

This is a lager that reminds me of hockey and parking lots and camping. It’s a nostalgic brew for a lot of Canadians who started drinking beer before macrobreweries came into force. Wan and straw-colored with a quickly dissipating head, CANADIAN gives off a signature macro-brew graininess—corn, white bread, no-name toaster waffles and minimal malt. The first taste is crisp, thin, and refreshingly fizzy if cold, but the beer grows less charming as it warms.

The clock is a real enemy to MOLSON CANADIAN; with each half-degree the beer rises, it becomes less palatable and more metallic. But—importantly—this beer is inoffensive when cold. If you’re really thirsty, a CANADIAN from an ice-filled cooler is like liquid manna in the dessert, replete with the requisite breadiness. My dad didn’t turn it down after he’d finished fixing up the neighbors’ system, and he didn’t bitch about it either.

And needless to say, MOLSON CANADIAN beats the crap out of lemon Kool-Aid.