Beer Me! is a YouTube series where a couple hipsters from BC drink half a dozen of a certain kind of beer (they claim in an hour) rating each on things like artwork, taste, reliability, etc. while getting progressively more wasted. (They also occasionally do a bottle of hard stuff.)
There have been some funny episodes but my favourite is where they tie into a Beer Advent Calendar which has 24 beers instead of their usual 12 plus Advent Beer Calendars tend to have a lot of higher alcohol winter beers – stouts and porters and strong ales.
(I can’t remember if I had this particular one – none of the names ring a bell – but I do I know I’ve had a couple Advent Beer Calendars over the years. But this video also reminds me why I don’t buy them anymore. I don’t mind the odd 6.7%+ beer but for 24 days in a row with only one or two lighter beers for relief? That’s too much!)
So you may have heard that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had an “embarrassing” video of her dancing in a college video (which, in turn was a remake of an earlier mash-up) highlighted recently but that it didn’t go as well as the anonymous right-wing troll who tweeted it had hoped.
As always, Metafilter has lots of great insight and commentary including a new-to-me term (neme or “nuclear meme” which a meme that backfires), why AOC resonates with millennials and why older conservatives don’t get it, the role of mash-up culture in the meme wars and the use of anonymous trolling in politics in general.
I realised that our social calendars this holiday season were as full as they’ve been in years due to a little miracle called “Pace Gets His Home Alone & Babysitting Certification”.
So compared to other years where we had the hassle and expense of lining up babysitters if we wanted to go out, this year, we had a built-in babysitter that meant we got to (almost) every party we were invited to – from early December to New Year’s Eve, whether they were kid-friendly or not.
I had a few memorable conversations and recurring themes during the various parties that I wanted to capture:
What makes someone successful? Their job title? Their salary? The size of their house? How many countries they’ve been to? If they enjoy their work? If they enjoy their family? If they have a successful marriage? If they have a kid? Kids? Professional accomplishments? Public profile? Some combination of all of the above? Some of the above? Or does it depend on the person???
Related topic that came up, especially at parties with people I knew from high school and university – now that we’re all basically middle-aged, where we are in our lives – who ended up where you expected, who ended up somewhere completely different, who became (conventionally) successful, who struggled for whatever reason, who surprised us.
The peripheral trauma experienced by people who work in certain professions – directly in mental health most obviously to healthcare more generally to law to education and yes, librarianship as well.
Unsurprisingly, knowing Shea and I, we engaged in a wide range of political conversations with everything from some the most radical (er, meaning “cool”) people we know to outright climate change deniers. Fun times.
This video from earlier this week is a prime example – before the Internet and the advent of online video, when would I have ever been able to sit in my living room in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, and watch an amazing fireworks display from half a world away (which was uploaded by a newspaper in England?)
