The Fact Is: It's All About The Beer. And The Brain.
/USER'S NOTE: I still can't figure out how to create a note jump on this platform. So I'm trying a clunky but utile alternative to my usual "dumping all the numbered notes at the end, which necessitates, for some of you, scrolling up and down).
I put the note directly below its relevant text. And set it off to the right. Easy! (Note to self: Doh.)
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The fact is: about the only thing I'm interested in these days is beer and I don't mean drinking it (although I do and am). NOTE
NOTE: Not quite the only thing. I'm reading all of Ruth Rendell's Wexford novels in the order in which she wrote them. I was astounded to learn that book one came out in 1964. Or maybe '65. Anyway. Jeez!
What I mean is: Thinking about beer's "culture," craft and otherwise; the industry; its technological/media/literary infrastructure.
And about:
Technology. The passage of time and its meaning. What does "capitalism" mean or do? And does that matter more than other things?
Can I know myself as a consumer? What is a community? Why do so many people talk about community? Is that new? Have we all chattered SO MUCH about ways to make community? [NOTE]
NOTE: That, I suspect, is what truly drove the creation of the internet/browser/software seed that flowered in the 1970s: a bunch of really smart people wanted to talk to each other about what interested them and they didn't all live in the same place. And they decided that was a technological problem, one easily, in their minds, solved. And bonus for them: solving that problem created so much intellectual nutrition! Seeded the terrain so well, in fact, that now we've got weeds. Apps that will, I gather, "yo" for you by pressing a key. Something like that. I wasn't interested enough to know more.
When I think about beer, I'm thinking about all of that.
This moment, now, summer 2014, beer's my go-to brainsled. With every sip, dear reader, one imbibes a startling, lively swash of social, economic, and political creativity.
Anyway. Beer.
While I'm here: More stuff about which I'm thinking:
Cities.
The sad waste of human energy on bullshit, such as inane apps and religious squabbles, when we could be spending that energy on imagining making a perfect world. Here. Now. NOTE
NOTE: Or, if you prefer, to thinking like a species that may have to scramble for survival. Not doing THAT is what irritates the shit out of me. Go back to pulling weeds by hand? Buster, I got WAY more important things to do right now. Like thinking about how to ensure weeds to pull.
And: what would YOU want that world look like? Since it's not yet made, well --- you can make it as much as I can, right? Imagine away! Costs nothing.
But, hey. Think twice about how you spend your money and your emotional and intellectual energy.
I suspect that's why I'm not interested in meat politics/meat culture. Or, more accurately, I'm not interested enough to trudge through the noise level generated by that dull "debate."
Not sure anyone involved has had a new idea in at least a half century. But who knows? I could outfit myself with earplugs and poke around for a frontier that's more intellectually lively and less freighted in self-rightousness unpleasantry.
Until then, I'll ride my beer brainsled as I TRY TRY TRY to think.
Honestly? I'm afraid if I don't keep writing books, my brain will fold. Well, it's already folded. Collapse. I'm afraid it'll collapse. We'll see.
So that's that.
Look ma! No footnotes!