Mon, 14 Apr 2003 09:38:24 GMT

Where To?

People have been asking me what I plan on talking about now that the war with Iraq is over. I am mostly so boggled by that question, that I ignore it. I have a category in my email folders where I file them. If the war ever gets over, I will send them a polite update on our progress.

But I digress. Actually, there are lots of things that Baby’s Mom is interested in.

Mom has come up with an evaluation tool. This tool is somewhat like the Richter scale for measuring earthquakes.

She calls this the beer scale.¹

Like many other of Mom’s ideas, this one is still somewhat formative. In a way it is still in the process of genesis.

Before there was beer, there was nothingness.

Then there was beer. And in truth, beer was a vile liquid to Mom.² Anything that even resembled beer was totally avoided. After Mom became Born Again, beer became a sin which made it even more avoidable. But there was beer. And everything that was beer was beer.

Recently Mom had a revelation. She tasted a beer that was quite good. This was the beginning of the beer scale. Her first scale was binary. There was good beer. And there was beer. She had elevated Coeur d’Alene Huckleberry Ale. This was the end of the first phase. Into the category of beer she relegated all other beers that she had ever tasted. There were not a lot of them, but she spoke to someone of putting Rainier and Coors in that category.

He responded that both brands mentioned were ‘not-beer‘. Mom liked that idea. She immediately mentally shifted all beers other than the Huck into the not-beer category and started getting recommendations for beers to put in the Good beer one.

She has most recently decided that there might be another category. This category would be titled ‘fully realized beers’. Would it be blasphemy to find a Buddha Beer? She suspects that many of the more strident Christians out there would have an objection to a Jesus Beer, but she knows that He would not. Huck is still at the top of her beer list. She thinks that it might make the grade after she tests a few more beers.

Finally, Mom wants people to know that she has not gone overboard seeking too many beers to put into her scale. She does know that she is not able to make fine beer distinctions after she has consumed too many beers.

¹ Mom notes that Mr. Jeff has a copy write on his page and she hopes fervently that since his ‘beer scale’ pertains to movies and not to beer that her invention is a totally new and separate thing.

² While Mom never did think that beer tasted exactly like this product, she did make the same kind of face when tasting both of them.

Marie Foster: Feeding Baby