Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Succession, Workspace, Foamover

The other night I dreamt the Senate appointed me as President of the United States. Bush had suffered some catastrophic but vaguely defined injury (possibly biking-related), and his replacements had been narrowed down to me and Andrew Johnson. Andrew Johnson and I sat in the hallway outside the closed doors to the Senate chamber until one of us got called in. Johnson was dressed in period garb and had really bad teeth.

I got called in first, and I was it. There was a chalkboard where the votes had been tallied up; it probably helped that the Senate was almost entirely made up of people I went to college with. (Though Denny Hastert was there too, a possibly unrealistic touch since he is, of course, a member of the House of Representatives.) My main feeling was happiness that everyone thought I was so smart, though I knew I wouldn't be able to do as good a job as they thought I would.

I figured I'd try to govern as a moderate, since that was probably easier. I had no idea how I'd try to manage the withdrawal from Iraq.

I'm not sure there's a greater meaning here. I think it's a career anxiety dream that would have made sense if I'd had it in late 2005. The only sure piece of insight is that my subconscious mind is unfamiliar with Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution.

* * * * *

The other day at work one of the editors came by my desk and asked, Do you know where the department back scratcher is? (referring to one of these.) I said, You're pulling my leg or someone is pulling yours. No, no, she said, and our managing editor backed her up, A few years ago I said we should get a department back scratcher, and your predecessor bought one and used to keep it by your desk here. Well, okay. We looked, but we couldn't find it.

We did turn up a box that contained two bottles of cheap wine, both 1996 vintage, that have evidently been aging in a storage cabinet next to my desk for a decade or so. I never looked much in there since otherwise the cabinet only contains cleaning supplies. There were also a couple of 22-ounce cans of Sapporo that I doubt have aged as well. I'm told that these were going to be taken to a cherry-blossom-observing department outing to Wooster Square that was rained out, or something, in the late 1990s.

(I didn't know we had cherry blossoms in town, even a few of them. It'll spare me a trip to DC next year, at least, and the blossoms probably won't have been pelted off the branches by the weather by the time I get over to see them, either.)

I work in a very strange department, sometimes.

* * * * *

Someone with beer knowledge, tell me: what force is it that will make every bottle in a six-pack of beer immediately foam over when you open it? I didn't shake them up, and they've been in the fridge for a week and a half. Is there something someone has done wrong? I'm stumped.

If it matters, this is a six-pack of Utica Brooklyn Summer Ale. (I've been favoring seasonal beers recently, since it's easier to confirm that the mediocre beer store on my street hasn't been keeping them on the shelf for two years.)

I've actually intended, twice, to bring this six-pack to an event, and then forgotten and left it in the fridge. Which turns out to be a blessing, since if you opened these up it'd basically be an Instant Party Foul. I still have to deal with them being an Instant Eating Dinner in the Kitchen While Watching Old Simpsons Episodes on My Laptop Foul, but that's a lesser foul and one that I can deal with.

2 Comments:

Blogger Pete said...

Well, summer doesn't really exist as a season for beer - so I think its safe to say that your Summer Ale, is generally light in body, mildly hopped, tastes best cold?

That is to say, in general "Summer" beers needn't be very carefully made, because its the time of year that more Americans that drink craft beer in the Fall and Winter switch back to lighter, macro-swill because it goes down so easy on those hot summer days. Summer seasonals are really a great time to see your favorite microbreweries seek the lowest common denominator. The lowest of such denominators being Sierra-Nevada's Summer Beer, which says proudly on its craft-brewed label "BOTTOM FERMENTED." This, of course (by definition), means "LAGER," but the good people at S-N can't bring themselves to put "LAGER" on their bottles, predicting (probably rightly, but thats besides the point) that if they call their summer beer a lager people will just buy other, cheaper, lagers (macro-swill) instead.

Which, finally, gets me to the answer to your question, Jack. I would guess that its a pretty simple matter - the beer in question is almost certainly force-carbonated into those bottles, and you probably got a batch of bottles that for whatever reason got a bit too much CO2 (These sorts of inconsitencies are still quite common in the micro-brew world (and even if they haven't been completely eliminated from the macro market's ever climbing quest for a streamlined product, no one would ever notice if a bottle of Coors overfoamed). Or, less likely, your beer is bottle conditioned, and got too much priming sugar (which I highly doubt).

8/07/2007 9:56 PM  
Blogger Pete said...

And, actually, you probably could take them to a party. Just, every time after you open one, and it foams over, just look at the person next to you and call them a jerk and to grow up and stop doing that smacking-the-top-of-my-bottle-with-the-bottom-of-your-bottle trick.

8/07/2007 9:57 PM  

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