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October 25, 2006
reasons to quit part II
so i've recently come to yet another conclusion about myself. since buying the house back in june and going through the process of re-acclimating myself to scenic chattanooga i have developed a nasty habit of imbibing more beer than you could shake a stick at. it started harmlessly enough at a little place called hoppy's last resort just down the road from my manse where the food is spectacular, the staff is friendly, and the beer is reasonably priced. for a while i was just popping in once a week to eat dinner but that quickly turned into two or three nights a week which quickly turned into every night that the doors were opened. there were alot of reasons for this - work related stress - house related stress - and the general malaise of loneliness being back in a city that is home to a million memories that are no longer possible. but now i'm just being melodramatic.
along the way i managed to befriend the aforementioned friendly staff so it was a place to go to just hang out for a few ours and have some human contact. since my job centers around me having a lot of time by myself sometimes just a friendly conversation with a complete stranger can make your day. of course not all the encounters have been intoxicating and/or meaningful - but that's the price you pay when a dive bar becomes your second home.
i'm rambling - but i had my epiphany sunday nite as i sat on a bar stool drinking my second beer of the evening and i realized i had gotten to the point that i didn't really care for the beer i was drinking and maybe i no longer cared for beer at all. and this may have something to do with the whole familiarity breeding contempt thing - or it could be because i don't generally drink yummy beer because yummy beer can be pricy - and also as a very vain man it doesn't help matters that i'm tipping the scales at an obscene 205 lbs these days. 3 - 5 pints a nite will do that to a person. seriously, i'm as big as a house - not my house mind you, because it's super enormous but a moderately sized house nonetheless...and here's the funny thing:
there was a time in my life when i didn't drink at all. i didn't have my first taste of alcohol of any kind until i was 22 years of age - well...unless you count that one time with the communion wine when i was 6 but it was such a small amount and i got such a beating i like to forget about that any chance i get - and even after my first beer i wasn't eager to get back to it. because it was expensive and most of it tasted badly and at that time in my life i had a really really good thing going with soft drinks and i didn't want to do anything to mess that up.
but somewhere along the way (read college) beer found it's way into my heart and while i don't regret that, i am prepared to take a break from beer for awhile and see other beverages. i hear they are doing wonderful things with flavoured waters these days. and what kind of advances have they made with juice boxes in the past decade? i have no idea, but i'm dying to find out! my goal is to refrain from the hops through the end of the year - then we'll sit down and talk and well, i guess we'll see.
Posted by young_christopher at 6:11 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
October 20, 2006
My Shrine at the High Places
Urban Outfitters is the devil, and we should shun the devil and all its bubble skirt, skinny pant, legging, generally 
unacceptable trend perpetuating, pseudo-edgy, overpriced ways. I wish I had that strength. Today I found myself browsing the knits and lo and behold there was a Sonic Youth printed t-shirt for an outrageous $32. Now, whenever I enter that den of iniquity, I feel as though I easily have five years on the oldest customer (aside from the occasional lost elderly tourist that wanders in), and as I recall, Sonic Youth got popular – but not so much on the radio - around the same time as Smashing Pumpkins, so that puts me in junior high/early high school and these other kids in elementary school. I can see maybe a couple of the young music dorks being knowledgeable about this band, but not your average UO girl. To whom are they trying to market this shirt? If it goes on sale for $10 or less I might buy it - because sometimes the devil wins little battles in life – but surely I’m not the target consumer for this product. I’m too old!
Urban Outfitter’s “vintage tees" consistently outrage me, usually for reasons similar to my recent experience, and the overall idea of the store makes me cringe, but I keep going back against my better judgment. I want to scoff and scorn and refuse to allow my earnings to keep such a travesty thriving, but then I see something there that I must own, and well…it’s a cycle of downfall is what it is – like the Israelites in the Old Testament.
Posted by heidi at 2:39 PM | TrackBack