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The Daily Raider is brought to you by the Project for an Unamerican Century and the Ronnie Gardocki Beard Preservation Society. The Daily Raider accepts donations, but we will only use them for liquor, cocaine and South American prostitutes.
Mr. Beam, I presume
by Doom
My observations on drinking Hobo Joe's #2 on the Hobo Joe Best of 2006 list
All other images are graven.
Homeless people drink wine because they do not know how to do anything else. Homeless people drink whiskey and scotch because they do not know how to do anything else. Therein lies their wisdom. In the grand scheme of things, nothing matters and so one must turn to the intoxicant to end all intoxicants, bum liquor. Some people will claim Thunderbird to be the be all and end all of drinking as the impoverished of America, but under close analysis I have received the knowledge of Jim Beam and it is good. Thunderbird is more fun, while Jim Beam has more to say. If you don't believe bourbon is capable of expressing thoughts and insights surpassing human knowledge, I suggest you stop reading the article now because it is rife with theoretical bullshit about liquor and its supernatural powers. I don't believe in the real supernatural, no, but then again I no longer believe in the real either. This is not some hippie declaration about "how do we know what's real" and staring at huge hands for an hour. But Jim Beam, the reason Kentucky became a state, is an inexplicable substance in ways.
Jim Beam is so terrible even a little shot of it packs the punch of twenty very desperate Afghani men who've seen their first virgin in years. This is due to two factors which prudent alcoholics must note at every juncture of intake of substance: its high proof (80; 40% alcohol content) and just the inherent evil of Jim Beam. Before I move on, I must define what evil means as it concerns Jim Beam. Picture the drink as a tempter, a seducer, and that will give you understanding of what I mean. I do not know if you will understand me and my statements prior because I'm on Jim Beam now and maybe it only makes sense to me, but fuck you. I drank 50 mL of Jim Beam and I was drunk by the time I smelled the booze. Very few liquors instill intoxication through the olfactory, and Jim Beam is one of them. (The others: Thunderbird, Night Train, antifreeze.)
It's hard to pin down exactly how straight whiskey/Kentucky Bourbon ages. Entire civilizations rise and collapse within the aging of a little bottle of Jim Beam. You can't really say it ages well, but you can feel it when you've just drunk a very old little bottle of Jim Beam, like I just did during the Physics class in which I am writing this. If there's anything that needs booze to take the edge off, it's a Physics class taught by some fucking Indian who's half Yakov Smirnoff and half capillary explosion. He makes no sense before bourbon and he makes no sense during or after bourbon, but at least in bourbon stage your feeling to follow what he says ebbs away and you see him for what he is: the product of the filthy democracy of India, a shithole so compartmentalized the educated need to seek menial jobs in America just to exercise their minds. I know in my mind this man, this Indian Yakov, is intelligent. But because of detritus India instilled in him, the Manifest Destiny of mediocrity, he languishes in the physics department of a shitty school in the Midwest only the unambitious and the idiotic attend. Jim Beam teaches you to understand and pity those who you normally scorn. Through its foul taste, you become aware of a connection to the rest of the world only naively recognized in normal thought.
Now I am in nature, communing as only one can when in the concrete, bootleg version of nature, squirrels on sidewalk, trees nestled at the ends of parking lots. Mr. Beam differs from a lot of liquor in that it sharpens one instead of dulling. Meaning, the world appears sharper, in better focus, than when you drink a shitload of anything else and shit becomes blurry and confusing. I liken it to DXM in that respect. I got better vision now, which is very strange considering my natural vision is terrible. The breeze feels calming and I am at peace with my existence. What is there to be angry about when Jim Beam offers such a warm feeling? I don't have to be the violent, angry, antisocial Stalinist I normally am when the intoxication from this bourbon gives no reason to hate the people who share the planet with me. The culture is dead, a festering corpse, but larger forces not identified with any one person are the cause of mainstream human culture becoming a commodity obsessed cesspool. Perhaps pacification of the public is needed through Jim Beam. They certainly would be more amenable on it. But people don't want the gift of Jim. They want their cell phones and pollution and bloody wars. At the end of history it will be, Jim Beam and the cockroaches.
With Jim Beam you really can experience what it is like to be within the mind of a homeless person (or as I always call them, hobo). Shakiness, unease, that shit. Sure, those things happen to a person if they drink any alcohol (provided an equivalent amount is taken). But there's something about Jim Beam that I've found in no other alcohol before. I don't know how to describe it; it feels transcendental, like an entire landscape of the American experience is trying to kill your liver. You become a little manic, a little depressive, contemplative, weary, confused, prideful. Homeless people are the true salt of the earth. Fuck those rust belt assholes; they're bigoted fuckheads. A reason to salt the earth, not the salt of the earth. They have true freedom whereas we are all in bondage with occupational expectations, families, taxes, bills, 'friends'. They are bereft of the modern culture soaking our brains in perfidy. I envy the fucking homeless. They're much better people than we are.
In my physics discussion section I see a Serbian chick actually from Serbia originally. Should I try to approach her, ask her out? I don't know. I'm fairly handsome, I wash, my coat does not stink of booze I do not think. I have redeeming qualities, or at least the quality of being able to fool people into thinking I am more than a worthless piece of shit. This should be easy. Comment on attractiveness, ask for a shared recreative experience at some point in the future. Who could respond in the negative to such a simple question? After class ends I will try.
Failure. She already has a boyfriend. Yet she only recently emigrated from Serbia, I presume. I am so off my game I can't even get the foreign girl with an imprecise mastery over English. Goddamnit. What the fuck kind of Mickey Mouse operation fumbles on that shit? The mystique of the Jim Beam has worn off in a short few hours. Damn you, Jim Beam! You devil in disguise, you bamboozled me into believing in capabilities beyond my means. The manic energy gives way to humiliation, having asked her out in a hallway of witnesses. I must return to my lair and regroup my existence. Now 9/11 finally has an emotional meaning to me: it is the day Jim Beam defrauded me. Fuck you, Jim Beam. I'm gonna go and drink some Canadian whiskey now. Your betrayal forces me to worship another affordable alcoholic pseudo-commodity.