Ambrosia Realized

My father and his father grew up in Belgium. At the time,  after a hard day of spelling tests and long division,  my father would belly up to the bar and order a few Trappist ales.  Nothing was strange about a young lad sitting on a barstool relaxing after a long school day. Brewing is the heritage and definition of Belgian culinary culture.  In Chapter 48 of the Rule of Benedict it states, "for then are they monks in truth, if they live by the work of their hands." And as you know from Sunday School, it was the Trappist monks who followed the Rule of Benedict. The earliest of these chaste chasers is Orval, founded in 1132. Even today Orval is readily available. Right now. Probably just a short drive from your door. And Orval, like all Trappist brews, stands as one of the greatest beers of all time. Decorated in countless honors and received by an endless malty flow of prestige, it is a masterpiece in the art of brewing. Yet its honor pales at the feet of a beer so complex, so lustrous, so mysterious and so divine its name only exists in whispers. A beer so rare it is traded on the black market world round. One Beer to rule them all, One Beer to crown them, One Beer to best them all and in the tavern down them. Westvleteren: The Best Beer in the World.

Nestled just outside the medieval city of Ypres lies the Trappist Abbey of Saint Sixtus of Westvleteren. The monastery has stated, "we are not brewers, we are monks." Indeed. The monks of Saint Sixtus have assuredly been rewarded by the Lord for their piety. Available in three world renowned varieties: Blonde, 8 and 12, is it the 12 which holds the title. Westvleteren 12 is a Quadruple style Belgian ale. Pouring a beautiful rich dark caramel color with a thick frothy head it's armoa is a mix between a bakery and a ripe orchard.  It tastes of fresh baked  wheat bread, honey coated cinnamon, sweet cloves, sticky molasses, ripe figs, Christmas-time, your first kiss, and ascension into eternal Paradise. At 10.20% ABV it is a forced to be reckoned with and demands patience and respect.

These beers, designated only by a distinctive cap on a plain brown bottle, defy labels, marketing and even traditional business practices. True to their devotion, Westvleteren produces only enough bottles to support their abbey and various philanthropic endeavors (as if crafting the world's greatest liquid wasn't enough).

To obtain Westvleteren 12, one has only two options: either go to the brewery or the black market. Originally, St. Sixtus generously allowed ten crates of 24 bottles per visitor. Then the word got out and people went totally berserk. Receiving a crate now is akin to getting a Golden Ticket to Wonka's Chocolate Factory. 

The bes...best... beer... in the world!

The limit first dropped to five crates, then two. Finally in 2009 each visitor was limited to only one crate of Westvleteren 12. Furthermore, you have to make a reservation with the abbey for a purchase  which is limited to one per month per customer.  Open receiving God's second gift to man, you are forbidden by the monks to resell it. It is for your consumption only (presumably while you contemplate burning your worldly possessions and joining the abbey.) Usually such a pithy warning wouldn't deter resellers. Yet imagine, there you are Judas, your single crate of Westvleteren 12  and only the promise of 30 pieces of silver in return.  

Let us take a moment to evaluate the economics of this whole debacle. Here you are, blessed with the rare ability to create a good that is literally the best of its kind. You look at the demand, the hordes of thirsty heathens throwing themselves at your gates, screaming for a single drop. You limit your supply to a measly 14,000 bottles a year. At this point businessmen begin to salivate. You could charge exorbitant prices for your good. The demand is literally knocking down your door, and you're supply is only a trickle. But these are monks not Wall-Street brokers. The cost of a bottle of Westvleteren direct from the Abbey? About $2.20. But you don't have a crate, and Warren Buffet does. The average cost of a bottle on the black market? About $30. Have I paid that? Yes, many many times. I have since washed my hands.

Tomes could be filled with the lore and etiquette of Belgian beers. Until then we make note of Proverbs 31:6 "Give beer to those who are perishing, wine to those who are in anguish."

Synthetic Memories

I am of the Chemical Generation. In 1998 you could wake up and pour nearly luminous pink syrup onto frozen waffles. You could squirt blue and green ketchup all over your processed pork logs.

 At school I would gleefully plop down at lunchtime, tear open my hermetically sealed sustenance package, and squeeze room temperature meat-paste out of a tube onto mini-tortillas. 

*Purple-Nerds are part of a balanced diet.

At my pee-wee soccer games we would re-fuel with Sunny-Delight, a liquid so saturated with chemicals, that spilling it is akin to toxic dumping. 


During art class I drew camels that smelled like chocolate and licorice. 

I remember when Thomas was sent to the nurse's office after returning from a bathroom break looking like a bloody jowled  hyena, but smelling like a cherry limeade. After school I would watch shows wherein the contestants were doused in neon green sludge as it spewed out of a steel pipe like some sort of Soviet-era industrial accident. After which we all giggled and rolled around like noodles on the carpet. 

We used to play with electric ovens that smelted molten hot plastic into centipedes and scorpions. In almost unbearable anticipation, Peter and I would scrunch our little faces up to the vent and breath in the fumes as we re-wrote the book of Genesis with our creations. 

As a country we became so adept at microwavable insta-cuisine, that baking things would take less time to delicately nuke than they would to cool. 

And when all us Chemo-kids die of either Poptart cancer or chronic Gogurt Syndrome, don't worry, you're burial and embalming will be cheap, because inside you're already a chemical éclair.

A Mouthful

Do you remember the first time you had coffee? Of course you do! Your tastebuds caterwauled in agony and asked your snout why something so sweet smelling tasted like a mouthful of piping hot soil. Do you remember the first time you heard death metal? Probably not. But you might recall the horrible cacophony of pots and pans banging together and the endless steel rain of a blitzkrieg of guitars that assaulted your ears while you envisioned a sweaty meat fisted man grunting and squealing what was most assuredly the praise of Satan and the occult into a microphone while a riptide of greasy bodies swayed in sync with thumping double bass tremblings tearing the wood floors apart of the local music hall that those nice Amish people built back in the 80's.

Well you drank that coffee when you grew up to be big and strong, and to be important enough to tie your shoes correctly. You might've eased in slurping a Latte or with a pouring of sugar and cream. You probably cheated though with your iced Largo black Puerto Rican, while mom and dad wiped the rock slides from their slumber rings and slogged down coffee black as scary closet spiders.

Well you might also like the heavier bits of your mellow album. You might like it when they scream on the radio a bit, and you even enjoyed hearing your brother's hard rock when Andy stood you up because your forehead was furled and fuming. It fit the mood. It fits the mood like a Triple Tall Red Eye fits finals week. It gets your body out of the ethereal mayonnaise of a TGI Friday's American lifestyle. Well so does death metal. It's a progression. It's a realization that core noises and tempos get you living in a Neolithic way. Its animalistic and pure like dirty hands and camp fires. It can and cannot be whatever you want. It can be dark and foreboding, but it can be about your sweet- potato-cream-pie girl that your sweetin' on. It can even be about worshiping God with a double capital G. I challenge anyone who has ever been bored at a concert. Who has ever asked, "Why is no one grooving?" Who thought a concert was worth it because they used smoke and mirrors. I challenge them to run off the edge of a stage and backflip into a crowd of people who are ready for your every action. To get lost in a moshpit full of friendly crowd goers who know how to use those meat staffs you call legs. To actually be able to shake the performer's hand at the end of the show and tell them it was just dandy.

Opera and classical music is arguably timeless. It transcends total absorption and demands savoring and contemplation. Like a fine roast. Like a fine Swedish Deathcore album.  "Well I can't understand what they are going on about!" Yeah well neither can most of people listening to Opera. I spent 10,000 years in the Fatherland studying High German and I can barely get 20% on Wagner's Götterdämmerung. Metal follows the same principles. I am listening to albums I bought five years ago discovering nuances while on my way to class. (*Side note: the novelty of everyday activities performed to a backdrop of death metal is infinite like the love of a She Wolf.)  Meanwhile, you have to steal the music you like because you chew through it like a little-league team at Pizza Hut.

So you might be on the precipice, but take a swig from the mug. As Mindless Self Indulgence once put it, "I like my coffee black, just like my metal." 

I grew up in Childhood

As a child I had a beard. It would sop up my milk during snack time. I sprained my ankle 43,653 times playing hopscotch. I lost the spelling bee because I failed to spell squirrel correctly. As fate would have it I would later spell Eichhörnchen (squirrel) winning the 1994 Internationalbuchstabierwettbewerb in Berlin. I always got the turkey and swiss because it came with mustard. I would save the packets and twist them up into little landmines, burying them beneath the gravel, so kids playing tag would detonate them all over their teal windbreakers. I was sent to the principal's office during PE in 4th grade, because I gave a kid a scruff burn when I broke the line in Red-Rover. When Pokemon came around all I had were Magic cards. I was swiftly sent to the school counselor when a kid showed me a:

and I offered a:

When yo-yo's twirled their way onto our playgrounds, everyone wanted a Silver Bullet. Like the hairy moon creature I was, silver bullets would penetrate deep into my flesh. All I ever had was a soccer ball yo-yo I got at the Fall Carnival from throwing some bean bags into a pumpkin's eye-holes. Whoever thought it would be a good idea to reward first graders with Petco feeder fish which had the life-expectancy of a hot-pocket at a LAN party was a sadistic child feasting mongrel. I signed all my homeworks like this:

The PTA thought I was trying to start this:

I brought my camera to show and tell one day and took this picture:

They put me in GT. 

"For here am I sipping from a tin can..."

When dorm life proves to be the musty monotonous grind that it is, I like to pretend I am aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

 Closing the UV protective plates, I isolate myself from all outwardly distractions. Darkened by the infinite majesty of space , my room is a research cell sprinkled with blinking electronics provided by Japanese researchers. The loud *ca-chonk* of my air-conditioning device is a patented NASA air purifier, providing me with the essential mix of oxygen, nitrogen and space dust. I consume an aqueous diet of energy rich supplements and carbohydrate  enriched water.  Leaving my cabin, a host of international cosmonauts greet me. Aboard the ISS our restrooms are communal and water is limited, so bathing is optional. The exterior hatches are security sealed, and only those with special access keys are allowed to provide third party docking permissions. Once a rookie cosmonaut opened the exterior pod bay doors for a prolonged period of time during a shipment of organic material and the alarms sounded.

Research projects aboard the ISS are diverse. I am primarily testing human stress levels when exposed to highly concentrated doses of social media.  A few researchers were conducting a clandestine botany experiment (causing them to float in the most peculiar way), but were shut-down and then jettisoned from the craft after they failed to meet ISS rules and regulations.  Rather recently the station experienced a large build up of intergalactic ice and all research was halted. In response, resident astronauts were encouraged to  consume a heightened level of hydroxyls to deal with the cabin's lowered internal temperatures.

Since arriving in mid January, the effects of both zero gravity and project Late Night have taken a toll on my physical health. My once pristine body has slowly been modified to a amorphous space amoeba. What was once a small step for man, has become a giant leap for my kind. Ground control warns me if this deterioration continues I will be forced to use a Safe-Ride escape pod to board the U.S.S. HYPR for physical therapy.

I am scheduled to return to Earth in mid May, and while previous station visits proved to be rather tedious, I recently gained clearance to make space walks across the station's Dickson platform. So until then this has been astronaut Silas Moon, over and out. 

Swinging from the Gallows' Pole

Against my best judgement, the advice from society's figureheads, and select religious prophecies, I have decided to write a humor blog. This is a hobbyist attempt at both creative and comedic writing. Being a hobbyist dental assistant wasn't working out. So for better or worse, I will be swinging from the gallows' pole.