EPTSo anyways, my sister is an English Lit major, and through her I learned of this poem: + Show Spoiler [Important Reading] +
‘TERENCE, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can’t be much amiss, ’tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make, 5
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well, the horned head:
We poor lads, ’tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow. 10
Pretty friendship ’tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time
Moping melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.’
Why, if ’tis dancing you would be, 15
There’s brisker pipes than poetry.
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse, 20
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God’s ways to man.
Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot 25
To see the world as the world’s not.
And faith, ’tis pleasant till ’tis past:
The mischief is that ’twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where, 30
And carried half way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I’ve lain, 35
Happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet, 40
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.
Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure 45
Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure,
I’d face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
’Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale
Is not so brisk a brew as ale: 50
Out of a stem that scored the hand
I wrung it in a weary land.
But take it: if the smack is sour,
The better for the embittered hour;
It should do good to heart and head 55
When your soul is in my soul’s stead;
And I will friend you, if I may,
In the dark and cloudy day.
There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast, 60
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all the springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more, 65
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat; 70
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
—I tell the tale that I heard told. 75
Mithridates, he died old.
The change occured this weekend. My parents left on vacation and, well I think this needs some more background. I've always been kind of boring... It's not that I find fun annoying or anything, it's just that a combination of introversion and a very warped sense of morality kept me from doing anything and everything. Seriously, I once complained to my mother that my friend had wanted to sit next to a girl at a movie we were going to. So I didn't really do anything at all except chill at my house all the way through high-school. Going to college didn't help either. My room mate was a more exxagerated version of myself, and so we never even left our room except 1)together to get food, or 2) going to classes. We never even really got to know the other people in the close-by dorms. I guess you could say that I was kind of sheltered, but that wouldn't be entirely accurate, because it goes further than that. I was sheltered by myself against things I didn't even know why I wanted to shelter myself from.
Then I fucked up pretty hard. I failed 2 classes and got a D in a 3rd my first semester at college. So I went home and started working at a pizza place and going to a junior college. For those of you who have never worked in an environment like that, it's very difficult to describe. Let me just explain to you a few of the people I've worked with and perhaps you'll have an inkling. "Eddy" the cook who was hired within days of the time I was hired: this kid was weird. And by my standards, that makes him pretty fucked up. The first few months we worked we were pretty cool. But then he started to, I don't know, crumble or some shit like that. It began with small changes. One day he's just pissed off for several hours and I finally ask him why, and it's because I didn't hand him the dough he was going to work on right when he got in. Then he's pissed off for an entire shift because his dad won't buy him the iPhone 5, only the 4s. Finally he starts doing things like telling me how he doesn't appreciate some shit I don't even remember while pointing the scissors at my eye. From like 2 inches away. Later that night he got in a fight with the manager on duty at the time and called the cops for no reason. Conveniently, he had already had his two-weeks in and left a few days later.
"Frank": I have no fucking clue about this guy. He seems pretty intelligent, he's pretty funny, good to be around on a personal level. But he's about 50, and all he does is work at our store. And he's a driver. And he only works like 25-30 hours a week. He's obviously depressed, despite his mediocre attempts to seem like he isn't. He's been to college, had friends that apparently went places, but ... he's still there.
There are innumerable stories that could be told about these people. "David" who is 40 and works a steady job with the AZ gov't, but has been working the weekends for the past decade and more. And then during one shift I found out that one of the other cooks was called into work drunk and everyone knew about it, the reason one of the managers goes into the bathroom several times a night for 15 minutes or more is because of her panic attacks, and that one of the drivers is severely bipolar and has had psychotic breaks. So I guess you could say that I'm no longer really sheltered.
This finally leads to the point of this blog, which in no small part is due to the fact that I have experienced beer to a respectable amount for the first time, which is itself due to one my colleagues. You see the line "Ale man, ale's the stuff to drink for fellows whom it hurts to think". It doesn't refer to idiots. No, idiots have no need to "look into the pewter pot to see the world as the world's not". No, the fellows whom it hurts to think are the intelligent ones, the ones who have fucked up or found a "comfortable" place in life, and are forced to do work that they hate.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have some amazing beer to drink, some amazing music to listen to, and some up+downs to watch. Peace yo
