Is it wrong that the only thing bringing me solace right now is the fact that I will eventually find a job, and the class of 2009 will fill my shoes as the suburban loaf-about?

Today I had a snap back to reality. Perhaps it was that ER ended their ten-year run, and I remembered when it started, making me feel ridiculously old, or perhaps it was overhearing my oldest brother talk about how much he hates “Cubicle City.” Or further still, that my parents called my brother and I townies after we went to a local pub for some libations last night. In any case, I have lit yet another fire, hopefully this time the tiniest drop of naysayer won’t squash it out.

I don’t think I let myself realize it until lately, but since I’ve been home, I’ve become much more scared of my future than excited. That bothers me, and I’m glad to have realized it. Part of the reason, but not the entire reason, I’m scared is because I’ve become accustomed to living at home with Larry and Sheila (parents, and roommates extraordinaire). I’ve so easily fallen into the trap I accidentally set for myself by ever moving back to my hometown after interning on the other side of the country. And now I just need to make a break for it. I don’t know where that will lead me, but I know that no matter the amount of time I’ve been home, it’s too much.

As spring sprouts (though Chicago winter still has a stronghold here), I’ve given myself a self-imposed deadline. If I don’t have a full-time position in a month (a week and a half has already passed), then I’m either applying to graduate school, moving abroad to teach English as a second language, or just plain moving. I’ll keep you posted. So, “with this song, I’ll be gone. Fare thee well.”

So I never joined a sorority. Greek life just never got me. My parents wanted me to rush, so I did informal freshman year for about a week—two events, something meager. For a while after graduation I thought perhaps I’d made the wrong decision because I didn’t have a national network of older individuals to help me land a job.

But recent events, involving my twin younger brothers, who attend the University of Illinois, have brought me back down to reality. See, I’m not saying this is every person involved in the Kappa, Gamma, Sigma, Pi, Beta, Theta bullshit, but a large portion of Fraternity Brothers and Sorority Sisters really are terrible people. They’re people that want to blend in, be cool and have that network to fall back on when they need it. The thing is though, that network is pathetic. It’s made up of people without a backbone, so even if you have 120 Pi Phi blah blah blahs, together in a room, it’s like a plethora of Jello, easy to break through and slurp right up.

Out of the six kids my parents raised, only two of us pledged: My oldest brother at Indiana University and my youngest brother at Champaign-Urbana; my other two older siblings played sports in college, so had no time, and my other younger brother had no desire to pledge, but ended up pledging the same frat as his twin because of the huge Greek group at U of I. He’s since dropped out, and the other one is still in. It was easy for me to neglect life as a sorority lady at Iowa, as only about 11 percent of students are in the system. But even as my siblings find their way through college, looking for friends, looking for a place to belong, I’m reminded that a network of people is important. While Greek life might not have been my choice, I do understand the appeal. But then again, it’s just an appeal. The backstabbing thoughtlessness and unending drama of the immature “he said, she said” fraternity/sorority movement continues well past graduation. You’re brothers or sisters for life, right? Except not, because in the end they’re not your brothers, you aren’t sisters, you’re just people, people that know each other. And I wouldn’t count on those people being with you at the end of the day, helping you get a job, being there when you need a friend, or anything.

Forgive the sorry lack of updates. Seems as though, as will happen, people get too entrenched in the disatisfaction or, maybe, too busy with our time-killers to blog merrily about them. We’ve had a few writers drop out for strange and emotive reasons, and thus, regularity is in jepoardy.

But no worries! We’ll be back soon and re-tooled. If you wish to participate in the re-up, please please too. For now, it’s all in the game.

~Paul

A Chronicle of Alcohol Use and Abuse in the Post-Collegiate World

Beer, more than any other drink, is the drink of the little-d democrat. The choices are nearly limitless; indeed the beer drinker is truly only bound by the availability of certain brews. Price, unlike with bottles of wine or hard liquor, never strays all that far from ten greenbacks a sixer.
Yet, if beer is truly the drink of the common man, the worker, why such a heated debate surrounding its image? Why do we raise these qualitative qualms concerning our brews of choice? If your preference lies with a finely crafted, brown ale from the British Isles or with a robust lager from Milwaukee, what does it matter?
Swill: Because we’ve lost our way, that’s why! We’ve been perfectly happy for generations with Budweiser and Pabst, what has changed so drastically?
Swell: Because God damn it, pilsner is not everything! Standards must be made, and standards must be kept.
Swill: Beer has never been, nor will it ever be wine. It’s meant to refresh, to unwind after a long day, and not collect dust in some basement.
Swell: Beer appreciation is not about lording knowledge over the “less educated,” but enjoying the myriad possibilities that the combination of hops and barley can provide. It is not about elitism, but about giving your taste buds a well-deserved foam in your mouth.
Swill: Bud has a head just like Bell’s. What are the qualitative rewards we reap from these “myriad” hop and barley possibilities? A cool beer after a long day—whether crunching numbers or cracking concrete—restores humanity. After sacrificing your soul for eight hours and a pittance, there’s nothing like the crisp, carbonated flavor of a good beer. When you can hardly stand to contemplate the beer list, who wants to try to digest an imperial stout? Give me some of that great taste that’s a bit less filling, which still gets the endorphins and blood rushing and creates that warm spot just behind my eyes.
Swell: The merits of good beer over the lesser are many. I will grant you the pure, visceral nature of swill. On the other hand, swell retains that same quality, if ordered properly. Clearly, a Budweiser meshes better with a hard day’s work than the aforementioned stout. But does Budweiser even stand a chance against a high quality Wit beer? The price difference is marginal, but the quality and taste difference is significant. Perhaps most importantly, the higher quality ingredients ensure that no matter how much one drinks of the good stuff, the drunkard never crosses the wicked-hangover Rubicon.
Many may argue that the image of beer is one of its most appealing qualities. True beer aficionados, however, know that taste and quality is more important than the ethos a can of PBR can ever provide. Indeed, without its ethos—and we should not deny it this particular characteristic, as it is both real and worthy—PBR and its ilk are little more than signals of a poor economic situation.
Swill: PBR and its ilk are signals of a tradition that originates in the earliest distillations. Beer has never been elegant, it has served one purpose and one purpose only: it’ll get you drunk. Beer was never about the taste—information suggests that the earliest brews probably tasted more like mold and feet soaked in battery acid—but about it’s intoxicating properties. Finding enjoyment in things beyond simple catharsis and release is fine, but to perch on a bar stool and decry the baseness of Miller is missing the point of beer. It’s like saying sex without love isn’t as good—that may be the case, but you’re missing the point of sex…shit’s biological
(Oh and Wit Beer, do you want me to get cavities? If I want sweet, I’ll get a Tootsie-Pop.)
Swell: Not to go all Clarence Darrow on this, but humanity, like all other animals, evolves. Our first tastes may not have been much—and, truthfully, we have no real way of exactly knowing just why beer was invented—but, dear God, put down that bloody Keystone or I will slap you upside the head and taunt you a second time. Wasting your money, time, and drunkenness on such a vile substance is worthy of incarceration.
Swill: No one but Ben Stein is denying evolution, but let’s remember that some of the best things in life are primal—need I remind you of sex? When it comes to release, we don’t find it in Goddard or Ayler, we find it in AC/DC and MGD. Our primal nature is what keeps US Magizine in the hands of Ph.D students and Grain Belt in the fridges of accountants. The bouquet and complex flavours of a Goose Island Bourbon County Stout are something to behold, but what of utility? It’s nearly impossible to drink more than one in an evening.

It’s obvious that the aesthetics of the two sides are different, but the problem is not one of aesthetics, it’s one of pride. Sometimes it’s familial (“Busch was good enough for my father, so it’s good enough for me”), sometimes it’s classist (“I won’t drink that proletarian puke”), but we’ve ultimately invested too much of ourselves into one side for the other to be anything than bitter.

Here’s to you deciding,
John C. Schlotfelt
Andrew M. Swift
theweeklydrunkard@gmail.com

A Chronicle of Alcohol Use and Abuse in the Post-Collegiate World

Only bulls can afford moralism.

But in this bear economy, we are taking the words of Malcolm X to heart. In a desperate search for any port in a storm, many state legislatures are considering lifting their arcane Blue Laws—which not only restrict the sale of alcohol on Sundays, but until recently in many states, cars.

It’s no secret that Americans drink. It’s also not lost on anyone that in times of crisis we drink more. And what spells crisis better than The Great Recession?

Amidst the almost constant comparisons to The Great Depression of 1930s, it’s hard not to see yet another similarity. The repeal of prohibition came, convienently, at a time when more taxable capital was necessary. When push comes to shove, Americans do what must be done to stay afloat, even if it means we must compromise core, puritanical beliefs to do so. Among the few remaining states with dry Sundays, almost all have openly considered or already repealed them.

The American Way

It begs the question: Why in times of economic crisis do we turn to the bottle as our savior? What makes us abandon our treasured high ground and indulge in one, no two, no really this is going to be my last drink … SHOTS ON ME!

In this sinking economy, even faux-”City Upon A Hill” redux Utah is making steps to move away from its decidedly anachronistic ‘private club’ drinking law. Wait, hold on—what the fuck?

Yes, that’s right: Consuming alcohol outside of the home in Utah is only legal in card-carrying, dues-paying, social clubs. Now, the idea of membership in social clubs is somewhat interesting, and this newspaper is not entirely against this idea—but seriously, as the only places in the state to get a lil’ tight? It’s not hard to see why Mitt Romney is so out of touch.

Finally, though, the Republican (!) Governor of Utah, John Huntsman, is making a play to reverse the policy. Huntsman told a press conference, “‘We’re moving toward much greater normalisation today of our alcohol policy,” but it seems that the Governor is much more interested in the potential tourist dollars flowing over the border into Colorado—including the liberal bastion of Denver—than actually staking out a bold, modernizing position on alcohol reform. Again, we see that the recession is advancing social policy through monetary schemes.

But the move to sap further funding from alcohol consumption is not limited to bars and restaraunts. There is no respite for those moving their libations homeward—which we discouraged last week.  Both Idaho and Oregon are considering additional taxes on all alcohol sales. It’s true that these taxes (if implimented) will not only affect pocketbooks of those schlepping their six-packs home, but those bellying up to the bar; but this sort of comprehensive, across the board messure is designed to get every last cent of revenue from the last vestage of relief the American people have.

But hey, what’s a nickel or two between friends, right? If MADD can lighten up a bit and see the upshot of a few extra dollars rolling through the economy while we take the edge off these very stressfull times, what can be wrong? This isn’t some insane tax like that levied upon cigarettes, most of these proposed measures amount to a bottle deposit or a double bottle deposit.

We know additional taxation sounds so “big government,” and that makes people cringe, but if the gradual erosion of our country’s shameful attitudes towards alcohol comes with a bit of a price—literally—we’re willing to pay the price. In more ways than one, this could lead to a brighter more prosperous tomorrow.

When we finally stagger blissfully out of this recession, and stare bleary-eyed at Perkins’ Tremendous Twelve’s metaphorical American excess, we will understand that regardless of our economic situation, we’ll always find great warmth and comfort in alcohol.

Stay Strong,
John C. Schlotfelt
Andrew M. Swift
theweeklydrunkard@gmail.com

To me, it seems a subtle curse that humankind will always be driven and frustrated by dreams of great things that can never be, dreams that are not revealed as false until it is too late. I think the average Middler is particularly susceptible to these kinds of painful disappointments. Unlike the animals, our mental energies are not limited to certain ravenous physical urges (food, sex, etc.). Rather, we seek subtler, long-lasting satisfactions, the kinds that come through personal fulfillment, love, prestige, etc..

Because we combine an ignorance of real world barriers with the vitality of youth and a college-education (with some of us even still possessing a modicum of beauty), we are tantalized by visions that confuse the impossible for the possible. Being thus deluded, we embark upon a host of ill-conceived endeavors. It is only later we realize that our young, powerful imaginations—that years ago sent us on many a fool’s errand—were operating without the benefit of experience or reality. Our journeys through the world of imagination (“I’m going to be a great doctor/writer/person/etc.”) did not take into account the world itself.

After years spent making our way towards some golden city on the horizon, exhausting our money, energy and spiritual well-being, it slowly dawns upon us that the great oasis in the distance is probably a mirage and is, in any case, too far away. Our noble odyssey on the great, wide road of life is revealed to be nothing more than trackless wandering through the barren desert of mediocrity.

Of course there are some who will make it out of this wilderness and emerge as enlightened as Biblical patriarchs. But they are few in number. The great majority will remain to wander without purpose, lone pilgrims with no destination.

It is a cruel irony that in seeking something better, we come upon something far worse. An even crueler irony is that we all know this. In our most private moments, if we really think about things, about the possible and the impossible, we will admit to ourselves that our life goals have about as much bearing on the real world as The Real World and that we were only fooling ourselves. But still, we put aside these thoughts and press on, convinced that what we want is just over the next hill.

I know that those of you reading this will not listen to me (indeed, neither will I). You yourselves will need to confront the invisible barriers of the world to be convinced and even then, a kernel of faith, of unfettered imagination, will probably still persist in your aging bosoms. Embrace it. For it is that which enables us to elect a black President or exercise occasionally.

All I’m saying is, that when you realize you will not be whatever it was you wanted to be, not feel however it was you wanted to feel, not live however it was you wanted to live, remember: I told you so. For it is my dream to be right and for that, I need you to really fuck up.

I need to exercise my brain, because let’s face it, it could be a while before I have a real schedule for myself. I spent a week in Florida visiting my grandparents and trying to run away from the sun in fear of a sunburn. I read four of Sophie Kinsella’s Shopaholic novels. Quick reads. But I can’t keep doing this to myself. I can’t keep feeling content with not having a to-do list, with the major chore of the day being getting up, as the words “just be productive” merry-go-round in my mind.

So I’ve quieted my addiction to Rebecca Bloomwood’s spending habits, and I am opting for a more intense read. I feel as if I haven’t been using my brain. Like I haven’t been engaged. I suppose this is what happens after college, but pre-40-hours-per-week jobs. Mushiness. My interviews in New York were so refreshing. It was like I was coming up for fresh air. But still no definites. I figure to make this fresh air feeling linger longer I have to try to make myself be engaged in something on a regular basis. I need to make a schedule, so I don’t fall into this mushy pattern.

This is where I’m at now: Reading Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, learning the banjo, and setting up more interviews that will determine my next steps.

Since graduating from college, I have spent a great deal of time watching television–and since I cannot afford any of the good channels–watching television on my laptop. I’m also still pretty confused about the whole switchover from analog to digital, so I’m playing it safe.

I am one of those Middlers who just had to get out of the Midwest the moment after taking her last final exam. So I moved to NYC to join the internship parade. Making next to no money, and then losing my health insurance in the fall, I have grown ever more mindful of my own physiological frailty. Friends want to know, would I like to go hiking? Skating? Skiing? Yes, yes and yes, but can you wait 6 months to a year? I should have healthcare by then. Unfortunately, even my overly cautious lifestyle cannot ward off my triannual sinus infections–it seems like every time the wind changes, the DOW drops and my immune system goes with it. Needless to say, I’ve been lying a little low lately.

This in mind, I believe the most accurate way to illustrate my middleness experience is to list the television series (both classic and new) that I have either watched or re-watched during the past year. These are the shows I have streamed, encouraged to buffer, and subsequently screened on my overheated laptop, often while consuming a now familiar dish—a little something I like to call My One Roommate’s Eggs Scrambled Over My Other Roommate’s Hot Sauce:

May: The Mary Tyler Moore Show

June: The Office (UK)

July: Perfect Strangers

August: The Kids in the Hall

September: Curb Your Enthusiasm

October: Doctor Who

November: Keeping Up Appearances

December: It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

January: Northern Exposure

February: Arrested Development

March: Taxi

While there is a nice arc, I wish there were a more diagnosable pattern to be found here: Optimism to realism? Upward mobility to public transportation? I suppose my viewing choices indicate nothing profound about my current transitional state—whatever television programs I’ve been watching are simply stand-ins until The Wonder Years comes out on DVD anyway. For the moment, though, I find myself appropriately devoted to LOST. And there is absolutely nothing middling about that.

The long and winding road that leads... to other long and winding roads

This is the gateway, the essential hazing brought upon God’s fratboys to welcome us into Middleness: Graduation. The voices you read on this site won’t hit all of these stages except this one. We all (literally or figuratively) donned that cap and launched into so-called “real life.” Lacking an undergraduate seminar on what exactly reality was supposed to bring, we were ultimately directionless — even if we tricked ourselves into “totally knowing” what we want to do.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. This post focuses on the intense push and pull of the want to escape and the overwhelming truth that, well, we still have a lot of work to do. I had a friend tell me recently that she was going to stop hanging out with me if I asked what she was doing after graduation again — but I’m just following what was implanted upon me. That question is an adult haunt since at least junior year, if not from the day high school was declared done.

And certainly it’s been on my mind for years. I happily graduated at the edge of the top 1/3 of my high school class, yet made enough odd alliances to be selected to give the graduation speech. As self-indulgent as quoting your old self may be, I think my sentiments there might have preemptively doomed me to Middleness:

“All the preparation for this ceremony is valid because this is what most view as the point of high school. We were to live our grade school lives in order to pass high school, in order to get accepted into a good college. All our classes and grades and experiences were supposedly used specifically in preparation for this ceremony, this diploma. And from here, we will enter college or business training, meant to prepare us for a job. Then, at our jobs we are supposed to gain money to prepare us for retirement.”

I went on to say that retirement prepares one for death – which may very well be true – but it caused an uncomfortable laughter amongst the older relative crowd and I had to apologize.  Old Paul spoke: “If all I am in here for is to fulfill my duty; to be educated, to work, to raise a family, and to retire and then to die and leave my children to continue the same…I do not want it.” And I didn’t. I still don’t. To continue briefly:

An attitude of honesty is impossible to totally achieve, difficult to partially achieve, and easy to not achieve. The pressures of this goal-driven world scare us from ourselves, covering our own desires with those we think the world wants us to have. The easy, trite way to approach this subject is to say that society is to blame, to say that we live in a shallow society that just wants us to make money. I could say that we are all victims of “the man” or “white guys in suits.” But that’s a lie; no one has such control over us that we lose all strength of individuality.

I went on to quote Thoreau and Dylan Thomas in the same sentence. And talked about Chuck E. Cheese. Seems my past self also had a penchant for both romantic hyperbole and childish amusement.  But I spend this time here because, in some ways, I was more right then about where I wanted to end up after college than I was last year with graduation on the horizon. Or at least knew the result.

By the time I hit my senior year of college, I wanted to get out of Iowa City, into “THE WORLD!” and do that whole bit. I looked for jobs outside weekend driving distance — sought to travel to Denver, Seattle, Chicago, applied for pro-bono teaching programs and scantily paid entry level writing positions that would take me there. After rejections (on my part and theirs), a few brief identity crises and desperate emails to professors, I finally settled on a once-in-a-lifetime TV internship in Los Angeles.

My trip was set in stone two weeks before graduation — with pipe dreams in hand, this transition was supposedly already a success. I had a path; I wasn’t taking “a year off” to figure out what I really wanted to do. That would have been too easy…

If all worked out, I wouldn’t be writing this. Perhaps I’d be wearing a suit in LaLa land, pouring coffee in the lap of some tempermental TV exec. Perhaps I’d be teaching kids phonics through hip-hop. Perhaps I would have found that place, those people, that stability that would render me happily planted within a community with no full stop. But maybe that’s another thing us middlers share — we’re all so terribly unsure. To those yet-to-be-graduated, take heed? Or maybe – dive right out there. The path of middleness is long and winding. Myriad stages await.

A Chronicle of Alcohol Use and Abuse in the Post-Collegiate World

The barrage of media coverage had to harsh our buzz at some point.  How could we maintain any kind of high while being inundated with all this “shovel-ready” talk and discussion of astronomically depressing job losses?  And even more disconcerting to those of us looking at the job market for the first time: the almost complete lack of new jobs. What the hell happened to all those baby-boomers who were supposed to retire?

But maybe most depressing of all is gradual waning of one of the last strongholds of physical human socialization: the bar.  We’ve sat around for years and listened to the movie industry bemoan the continually more introverted habits of film-goers (Netflix, anyone?).  Then the internet and its lack of any actual contact or real human interface.  The list goes on.  We have a larger network of people, but we have fewer and fewer close confidants. 

A recent story on NPR cited statistics showing “sales of alcohol in bars and restaurants were down a bit last year, but liquor store sales were slightly up.”  The formerly expansive and outgoing American populace has taken to having their movies sent to them in the mail, getting to know their “friends” through questionnaires, and drinking at home (as offensive and barbaric as it was, doesn’t any one remember Manifest Destiny and taming the west?).

The madness has to end, and it ends right here.

We aren’t going to join Paramount Pictures and decry your cloistered screening habits—who is really all that social in a movie theater anyway?—nor will we denounce your “25 Things List,” but the bar is one of the last universal social settings.

There’s a reason alcohol is called social lubrication.

By taking your drinking home—even if your beer is of a higher order—you effectively eliminate any chance of encountering anything remotely controversial or contrary to your world view. We reach across digital waves to communicate with people around the globe on the merits of Big Black, the prospect of Gilad Shalit’s safe return to Israel, or South Asian Cricket, yes. But without direct human contact, we don’t have to truly defend our views and posit them with others – the true essence of communication. Instead, we have created a society of cliques.

As we (individually and culturally) become more specialized and more exclusive, we lose touch with the spontaneous. Granted, your choice of drinking establishment will always bare a certain aesthetic, of which you are bound to share with many of said establishment’s patrons. But an over-arching aesthetic symmetry doesn’t guarantee instant fellowship. Just look to the origin of the Guinness Book of World Records, which had the original intent of settling arguments, and potential fist fights, at the bar

Having drinks at home, even with friends and loved ones, does not typically yield these contentious happenings. We have cherry-picked these individuals. While these souls may be the same ones we roll into the tavern with, there will almost assuredly be others there who do not share your world view.  But if you’re never forced to encounter, defend, or—dare we say—alter your altar, then how can you ever expect to actually exist in reality?

Humans are ever-changing, despite our almost constant resistance, and without welcoming actors and actions into our lives we never find new friends, old friends, lovers, allies, and adversaries. If that Franziskaner Hefe-Weizen is all that’s keeping you in doors because the local lounge doesn’t have it in the fridge, dull those tastes buds a bit, friend, and open up that pocket book just a pinch. Some of the most significant meetings and discussions in life have happened over utter swill.  And the experiences we’ve had are more than worth the $3 beer and another buck for tip, and especially more valuable than the times we would have had, had we made better acquaintances with our couches and an obscure (yet tasty) micro-brew.

Cheers,
John C. Schlotfelt
Andrew M. Swift 
theweeklydrunkard@gmail.com