Beer coming back to the Old Rainier Brewery

I was watching the local news tonight and a story about the Old Rainier Brewery came on. Brandon has been raving about the Washington Brewers Festival (June 18-20) for a long time.

The new brewery coming into the Old Rainier Brewery is called Emerald City Brewing Co. and their flagship beer is called Dottie's Seattle Lager. The batch will be ready for the Festival.

The truth behind Brandon in Portland

Brandon is currently in Portland, Oregon.

So, I will use this time to explain to you the real reasons why he is there. He claims it's for a wedding, but we know the truth. Don't we?

1. Roses?!?! Brandon loves any city named after that flower.

2. He's a sucker for emo chicks. He finds them scary, yet intriguing.

3. Cheap beer is his friend. Nowhere is cheaper than the Shanghai bar with $1 Rainiers.

4. He wanted to get in a fight with a Timbers fan. "Sounders till I die!" he'll be chanting.

5. He enjoys chatting with hippies. Portland is full of them and their Subarus.

6. Pie.

7. He also enjoys hanging out with vagabonds. Portland is also full of those.

8. Outside of Seattle, there are more coffee shops per area than people. Brandon loves his caffeine.

9. Even though he doesn't know how to read, he wanted to check out Powell's. World renown for its books.

10. He wanted to swim in the Willamette River because he heard it was even dirtier than the Spokane River.

Brief Casey: Let it all hang out

Outdoor sports can sometimes be taken to the extreme. Whether it be the off-road unicyclist, the dirt track skate boarder or the naked hiker in the back country. Eventually every sport that is done under the sun will....wait...did you just say "naked hiker?"

Why yes I did. And since we're on the topic allow me to explain. Mountain hikers in the Swiss canton of Appenzell-Innerrhoden will now be fined 200 Swiss francs, or $170, if they are caught wandering through the Fields of Music in the buff.

Apparently this is becoming a huge, growing (no pun intended) problem in the area. Yes, naked hiking.

I found it hard to believe. I mean, try wandering nude around here in the mountains and your family jewels would be covered in mosquito bites faster than you could pull your pants back up. Although if I'm ever in that area, with an extra $170, I might have to give it a go.

It seems a lot of people do. I found tons of blogs talking about how "invigorating" and "natural" and even "free" it felt.

I do a lot of camping, backpacking and kayaking. And I must say, if I ever ran into someone backpacking in the middle of the woods stark naked, I would be surprised.


Speaking of being surprised, a woman in Salt Lake City stopped a criminal by giving him a headlock and a wedgie. No joke.

Yvonne Morris, a technician at the Brickyard Animal Hospital, said she chased a man who broke into a co-worker's car, but he kept squirming away from her.

She finally caught him, grabbed onto his boxers and gave them a yank. See kids, that is why you don't wear those stupid pants that let your underwear hangout. You'll get caught by them.


And since we're on the topic of underwear, the city of Philadelphia may want some to cover their butthead move.

From March 6 through the 15, the city will be hosting the Philly Beer Week. This is a festival which celebrates local breweries and taverns.

To help prevent drinking and driving, the City Transit System decided to sell discount passes for those attending the event. The passes were printed up and being looked over when it finally dawned on someone the problem.

Instead of a skyline of part of Philadelphia (the city hosting the event) the passes show part of the New York City skyline. Nice work people.

Anyway it goes, that's it. Case Closed.

Dying to Diet

I didn't know that this was an actual diet, but apparently this was something I should have engaged in to cut down on the food bill.

The idea of forgoing food in favor of alcohol isn't new. Dieters everywhere cower in fear of carbs; but alcohol, gram for gram, has even more calories than carbohydrates do. For many people, this creates a dilemma: If you want to restrict calories, you have to cut back on either food or booze. For a college student or 20-something who wants to party and have a good time yet still have a bikini body, the choice is obvious.

The result is a trend among young people, particularly young women, called drunkorexia—restricting food calories to make room for drink calories. The practice is widespread: 30 percent of women between 18 and 23 diet so they can drink, according to one study.

People haven't you heard of light beer? That's really the key to everything. That, and drinking so much that you throw up whatever you had for dinner. It's perfect! You don't even need to stop eating because it really doesn't stay down anyways.

Okay, so that was a bit mean, but I did like the mention in the article about the "coffee, water, alcohol and cigarettes diet" which makes me laugh because roughly 95 percent of journalists are already on that diet anyway. They just throw in the occasional BK Quad.

Beer Me

Thanks to my wonderful addiction to the History Channel, I discovered a few facts about beer, which no doubt will lead me to drink more.

Beer Anthropologist is a real job -- Thanks Eastern Washington University for not having that major when I was in school. Apparently you go around the world studying the history of beer. So does that mean you're doing "studying" when you go to the bar and therefore can you do it during work hours?

Beer was a cleaner and safer alternative as a drink in the Middle Ages -- So basically civilization in Europe relied on its existence.

Monks drank a crapload of beer -- The church actually controlled the brewing and disbursement of beer, meaning that the monks and other religious were quite involved in the drinking scene.

In 1814, a storage vat burst in London, causing a 25-foot wave of beer to go crashing down a street, killing eight -- If there's one way to go, it's drowning in beer.