Beeeeeeeer

Dreams make the impossible possible, if only for a few imagined moments while we sleep. Case in point... this morning. Just before waking up I had a dream that I was at a brewery for some sort of tasting. I was at the St. Paul Brewery. It turns out that there are a number of microbreweries in the Twin City area, but none with the name St. Paul Brewery. I give my Imagination a B+ on the name. The logo was not too spectacular, a dark brown background (or maybe green, my colorblindedness follows me in my dreams) with "St. Paul Brewery - Minnesota" written in darker brown block letters around a picture of some guy drinking beer... I'm guessing he was none other than St. Paul. Imagination gets a D- on the logo, which is disappointing since my waking self would spend a ridiculous amount of time making a good logo... ahh, me and my lazy subconscious. There was no real plot to this dream, just a few revelations here and there. I was upstairs on a deck. I had two beers in bottles (not quite appropriate for the beer-tasting theme... so Imagination gets a C- for realism and continuity). They both tasted pretty good, though the one in the slightly larger bottle really tasted good - like you'd actually want to drink it.

Back to reality for a moment. Beer does not taste good. Anyone that tells you otherwise is lying. Light Beer, dark beer, pilsner, lager, ale, foreign, domestic, macrobrew, microbrew, with a lime, with a lemon, with a lymon... they all taste bad. Liking a beer is relative. I like Newcastle. It tastes good in relation to all other beers, but it, in and of itself, does not taste good. A beer tastes good at the end of the day because its the end of the day, not because it tastes good. It tastes good when you're with friends because you're with friends, not because it tastes good. Drink the first beer fast enough and you'll get just enough buzz not to care that it tastes of swill and bilge water with a hint of cat pee. If beer actually had a nice taste, true beer drinkers would also be huge consumers of non-alcoholic brews when a situation makes alcohol unacceptable. Not happening. Beer tastes bad. Some beers taste better than others... but ranked on a scale of bad to worse.

Return to dream analysis. So this mythical beer in my dream actually... tastes... good. That's how I knew it was a dream. There are always a few clues in dreamland that tip you off to the fact that you're asleep: you're flying but somehow land on your feet... everyone from high school is gathered together for some event and they all know your name... you walk around with no pants on, but no one seems to think it odd... it's the last week of school and you still don't know your locker number or combination.... those sorts of things. Or the kicker, when all those events combine... and then you have a beer that tastes good. Back to this morning's dream. I'm finishing up my good tasting beer and walking downstairs to meet up with the rest of my family, who were all there. What happened next changed me in a profound way, even out into the waking world that now surrounds me. My brother and I were discussing the beers, then somehow moved onto other bottled alcoholic beverages, agreeing that they were as valid, if not more so, than beer. I said (and I quote) "You know, I like lemonade. It tastes good... and if I can drink that and get a little buzz along the way... that's pretty cool." Confidently and without the socially enforced shame that would be required in the real world, he replied "You know, you're right."

It was only a dream.
It was only a dream.
It was only a dream.