Yes, I Know That I Just Said

that I wanted to be in Hawaii, but I didn't mean it. What I really meant was that I want to live somewhere with miserable weather. Of course, when I say miserable, I don't mean either International Falls, MN miserable goddamn cold or Death Valley miserable goddamn hot, although if somebody held a gun to my head and forced me to choose between those two I suppose that I would have to go with Minnesota. What I mean when I say miserable weather is the sort of weather that you wake up in the morning and you throw open the curtains and you look outside and you say, today would be a perfectly good day to kill somebody, as it is fitting and proper for the misery of death to occur on a thoroughly miserable day.

Yep, just like Shirley Manson, I'm only happy when it rains. Thank god that God can't get his shit straight here in Iowa. Instead of it being the end of December and snowing, it is the end of December and raining.

My brother recently went to Ireland on his honeymoon. He was supposed to go to Mexico, but a hurricane destroyed the resort that they had reserved, so he said
- Fuck it, I shall go to the Motherland. (The Motherland being either Ireland or Friesland, depending upon the day of the week and the weather associated with the day)

When he came back from the Motherland he said,
- I have met God's daughter, and her name is Guinness. I stayed in her house. She has a gypsy and watches the Simpsons. But gloomy weather is not my pint of beer. I thought it was, but it isn't. Lead me to where the palm trees grow and the sunshine is bright and sunshiney, oh my Lord of creation and of all things that are created in Heaven and on Earth and in that other place. By the way, here's a liter bottle of Jameson. I couldn't think of anything else to buy in Ireland, so I bought you something that you can buy here in the states. But this bottle is from Ireland, see, it doesn't say Imported anywhere on it.

I tried to keep the bottle, as I thought that it should perhaps have a sort of sentimental value, being a gift from the otherwhere and all, but it kept begging me to be drunk. Which I shortly was. And it was. There are drinks that taste different, depending upon where a person buys them. I have heard it said that Heineken is such a drink. For some reason those importers have decided to put the American version in green bottles, thinking perhaps that this gives it a unique look, which it does. As unique as the bottle might be, I have always thought that Heineken was a skunky beer, and have never had a good bottle of Heineken and have never understood how some people swear by the stuff. But then I never understood how some people could label a beer made out of rice "the King of Beers." I refuse to drink a beer made out of rice, unless the beer comes from somewhere in the orient where there are no proper hops to make beer from. Anyway, I recently heard that green bottles are bad for beer, that it allows the wrong sort of light into the brew, and turns it into a urinal mint. Justification! I thought to myself, I have been justified! I knew that I wasn't crazy. That is, not when it comes to beer, and whether or not it tastes like a skunk took a shit in it.

So there are drinks that taste different, depending upon where one buys the drink, and Heineken is such a drink as they don't use green bottles in the Netherlands, or so I have heard. Jameson is not such a drink. It is the same no matter where you buy it, I can now say with some officiality.

First, my father moved to Florida. He refused to explain himself. I think that it might have something to do with sunshine and palm trees. And then my brother came back from Ireland preaching the counter-virtue of melancholy drizzle and clouds. When I heard this I said,
- Why don't you just get it over with. Wear your ass as a hat and move to Florida, you geriatric traitor, you Benedict Arnold. So strike your flag you monkey and turn into the wind. As for me, I may sink but I'll be damned if I'll strike! I have not yet begun to fight, you surrendering baboon. Why don't you just move to France while you're at it? That's where the dissipation's at, and sunshine too, there on the Mediterranean. Why am I even talking to you? Florida's already got you, doesn't it? You've heard the siren's call, that's what you have. Idiot never read the Odyssey, all you had to do was ask me and I would have told you to plug your ears with wax and tie yourself to the mast, but no you didn't ask and now you want to jump into the ocean with those dinosaurs of fishes the sharks, a person would think that as many times as you've seen Jurassic Park you would know better than to swim about with dinosaurs. But then, baboons don't think like that, do they? They have trouble putting two and two together, being monkeys and all, and therefore incapable of things like logic.

ps - Goddammit all to hell, I have just been informed by somebody that supposedly knows such things that Heineken over in the Dutch-lands is in green bottles as well. That's the problem with hearsay, I guess. Saint Clement of Rome learned that when he wrote about a phoenix, thereby assuring his not being included in the bible.