By Jason Fierstein
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Poet Charles Bukowski once said that poetry was like a "good, hot beer shit." Along those lines of analogy, maybe Bukowski went so far as to say that a really great tasting and inexpensive beer precedes great poetry, given that poetry is analogous to bowel movements.
Ahh, the art of a really delicious and cheap working-man's beer! Too often, you all mock me and satirize me when I show up at parties lugging a 12-pack of my favorite suds Ä such as Pabst Ice, Pabst Genuine Draft or Milwaukee's Best. You stand there and savor your Samuel Adams or your Guinness Stout and full well know that you pay for what you get. Contraire, mon frere! The fact is, you worship my low-budget American beer and secretly admire the fact that I shove aside personal pride to put myself up on trial against you and your arsenal of microbrewery bottles and cans.
A way of life is bred from being born-again into the obscure subculture of beers like Busch Light or Schaefer. Commitment to crossing over to our side proves results. You will explore your individuality and romanticism. You will get to try new and exotic beers from the four corners of the globe (well, at least from Canada and the U.S.) and you will roll naked in the cash that you will save.
You want proof positive? Say, hypothetically, that you buy one 12-pack of our beer (pick the poison) every Friday and Saturday night for the entire academic year. Roughly four weeks comprise a month and nine months are in a school year. Then subtract three weeks for Winter Break, one for Spring Break and two after finals end in May. At eight drinking nights per month, times nine months, subtracting the 12 drinking nights for vacation weeks not at school, you come up with 60 cumulative nights inebriated. At a cost of three 12-packs for $10 (sale brands at Osco or Safeway), a grand total of approximately $204 will be dished out for the more "premium" beer like Pabst Ice. For those nonbelievers and drinkers of the Antichrists of the brewing process Coors, Miller and Bud , a 12er costs about $10 each. Annually, drinking will cost those non born-again about $600 per academic year.
But hey, what's $400 savings to the average college student anyway? Testimony lies in the elixir, my friends. Salvation is only a cold, white-trash beer away.
"Take it . or Leave It" is an arts opinion, or creative writing, or in this case stream of consciousness column that appears in every Thursday's alterNation.