A Word About Light Beer

First, let's mollify a few people. Fancy a popsicle?

Delicious. Everybody else, try a bite of this penis. I mean sausage.

Now that we're all comfortably settled with our Freudian slippers on, let me get out the ol' soapbox.

I'm all for the idea of session beers. They make perfect sense to me, as best exemplified by Moon Under Water where the pub is a buzzing social hub, rather than the place where everybody forgets your name because they're on their eighth IPA. Being able to pop in for a weekday pint without worrying overmuch about the residual effects of dissolving a large portion of your frontal cortex come next morning is a delight.

But good session beers are not supposed as thin and characterless and forgettable as Paris Hilton. They're supposed to be rich and tan and have around a 4% alcohol-by-volume content. Like Paris Hilton.

Here's my quantum theory of lite: "Whereas any product is available in regular or light formats, be it determined that the descriptor 'light' is interchangeable with 'crappy'."

Thus, mayonnaise-type dressing is an affront to mankind, diet soft-drinks taste like pH balancer for the hot-tub, and "light-beer" is the biggest oxymoron since "BC Liberals". I find the cutesy "lite" appellation particularly offensive, as though cartoonizing the spelling makes it any less galling to swallow preservative-laden, artificially-engineered, hyper-chemical pseudo-food.

It's kind of like what McDonald's has done with their oatmeal; it should just be oats, milk and fruit, and somehow they've managed to create the worst oats-related thing since "Private Eyes".

Drink better. Drink less. Run More.

Penance. Volume 2

There are 244 steps here. I know. I counted them.

So here's the painful truth about beer: it's probably the quickest way to make yourself fat. Given the carb content, the (my) inability to stop at just one, and the nature of alcohol metabolism (primarily converted to acetate immediately), beer is definitely an important part of the Dr. Nick Riviera diet for dangerously underweight individuals.

However, seeing as I haven't brought my mumu with me, there's still a way to have your cake-in-a-can and drink it too. See, there's no such thing as a beer belly. While excessive beer consumption may result in swapping your six-pack for a keg, you can simply balance it out with a little light exercise. Based on how much I consume, "light" exercise won't cut the dijonnaise.

Today's excursion was a 5 km hike in air of such high humidity, we were practically breathing water. In fact, I'm pretty sure I just saw Kevin Costner swim past the window. The reward was not a spectacular view, nor a rippling physique (although bits of me do ripple in the breeze), but the satisfaction that I earned my libation this eve.

Bit of a slog, though.