as god is my witness

Oh fer Chrissake, not  the good book again.  I try to get you guys going on something cool like math or Objective Reality and you are all meh, and the next thing I know we are in bible study again.

It's not the word of god because there is no god.  It's not what your Christian in the street, since you won't find him on the next barstool, believes, because he believes what his local preacher tells him.  It's a big damn waste of time, like talking about how the Kardashians are doing these days, which, by the way, is not to be confused with Nicki Manaj's fake butt, which is of course a metaphor for our troubled times, but which neither Dog is interested in either,  Maybe the subject of did Salome wear a fake butt would pique their interest.

I do like very early Christianity, before they got all the rules nailed down, but that is pre new testament, and I don't think those guys did much with the old because that was old Jewish stuff to them and they were brand spanking new Christians.  The other history of Christianity that I like is the protestant reformation.  The bible is big in that.  

I always thought that if I was in the garden I would eat of that apple, who wouldn't want to know stuff?  But it was Augustine who made the case of original sin out of it, to give Jesus a reason to die on the cross for us, and for us all to feel guilty about for the rest of eternity.  It was also he who gave rise to predestination, and the reformation, because he didn't feel like man could save himself, only god could do that.  I'm pretty sure the Lutherans never trucked with predestination but  I will let Old Dog speak on that.  By the time of the Methodists the reformation had cooled off and I lose my interest, but I believe it was their theory that man was capable of saving himself that led to their break with the church of England, which moved to and fro between Catholicism and gentile Calvinism depending on who was in power.

Now let me close the door on bible study and tiptoe from 53rd Street to 55th Street where I know I will find a bar.  I agree with Old Dog that the schooner was like a goblet, all fancy thick glass which you at first think is pretty cool until you realized everywhere that there was glass there was no beer.

I do like those fancy Samuel Adams pint  glasses.  At the Ten Cat they mix them up with the regular pint  glasses so every now and then I get one.  The regular pint glass is fine functionally, but it's boring like International Style architecture.  I would like a glass designed by Louis Sullivan.  He certainly drank enough though I expect he was a whiskey man.

Somewhere between 1984 and 1995 the pint glass completely obliterated the 12 oz pilsner glass, much as the Cro Magnon displaced the Neanderthal.  It is still undecided whether or not the two lived together for a spell.  Lately they have decided that there was some interbreeding, but that's not necessarily living together.  My travels took me from Champaign to Texas to Chicago during that time, so I was unaware of changes, but I suspect Old Dog was probably drinking at the same, or at any rate similar, bars, and it seems like he might know if there was a time when you ordered a beer and had to specify if you wanted a 12 oz or a 16 oz.  I still plan to make that survey at Friday's seminar and the temps look to be agreeable.

The growler is the new sanitized version of the bucket of beer that your mom fetched for your grampa back in the day.  I guess it's okay if you are going to have some social gathering, but if it's just you, it's a lot to drink at one setting and when you put the cap back on and put it back in the fridge it's not going to be that fresh the next day.

Quarts still exist, and I loved the heft and feel, but I don't imagine the beer is any better than in a tall boy or a stubby.

When I was finally at a point in my career when I was making better than minimum wage I climbed to a high place and declared, like Scarlett O'Hara, "As God is my witness, I will never drink Wisconsin's Best again."  There are no laws in America about what you can call your beer.  You can call it a lager, a pilsner, an ale, whatever you think would look snappy on the can.  Beer snobs refer to yellow beer as American Lager.  I like Miller's clear bottle, but all yellow beer tastes alike to me,.

Back in the day a blue car was blue and a green car was green, nowadays everything is some shade of grey, it's a crying shame.  Once again, like money, they have taken something potentially exciting and made it boring.