Life Education has launched a fundraising event for the month of October where people at home and in the workplace forego alcohol for the month. Go ‘sober’ in October. Get it? As well as raising cash for Life Education, the participants will feel better and have the support of their employer -according to the website.
Now you all know my feelings about beer. I like a beer. I don’t go overboard and get shirt-faced and I don’t pull up sore the next day and try to operate heavy machinery. I don’t go to venues designed to hold 7,000 people, drink myself silly on alcopops and then go outside and bash tourists.
You may also know that I am more than a bit cynical about the global push to name every single day of the calendar year and use them all to raise awareness, cash or my hackles at every opportunity. I have no problem with legitimate local, regional or national public holidays, religious festivals like Hanukah, Greek Easter, Good Friday and, of course, Oktoberfest. But I think that things are getting a little silly when I see that the last Wednesday in April is Secretaries Day. And I feel even more frustrated when I see that Captain Correctness has stuck his do-gooding wand in to the business and changed its name to Administrative Professionals Day. Seriously.
Other ‘observances’ like International Be Nice To People With Red Hair Day or World Turn Off A Light Globe And Save The Whales Day or Global Day To Recognise The Rights Of People Who Want To Impose Stupid Views On The Rest Of Us By Naming Stupid Days Day are just stupid.
So do I oppose ‘OcSober’? No. Not per se. I admire greatly the work done by Life Education which, for the uneducated, is Australia’s largest non government provider of drug and health education and does more to provide real life information for school age kids than any other medium by speaking to around 700,000 children each year. Top job.
So do I oppose the whole concept of giving up alcohol for a whole month? No. not per se. I guess that I think it’s just a bit sad that we have come to a point where someone deems it necessary to encourage good honest beer respecting folk to forsake a legal and enjoyable part of their normal lifestyle to raise money to ensure that today’s kids wont grow up to be beer disrespecting dickheads like the ones we have today and who won’t benefit from programs like Life Education and who would never participate in a program like OcSober. But need to do it more than others.
I see nothing wrong with people raising money to support programs like Life Education. I would happily dig into my own kick to help out. I don’t really want to make such a drastic statement – on principle – as giving up a normal, regulated and sensibly executed segment of my life. And not because I couldn’t, wouldn’t or shouldn’t but because I have this little Jimminy Cricket with a beer in his hand on my shoulder telling me that it is just letting the bastards win. And not that the good guys are the bastards, it‘s the dickheads who are the bastards. And they are winning.
You see, we do very little as a government and a as a community to discourage dickheads from being dickheads. Not because we don’t care but because we have had our hands tied behind our backs by the bloody do-gooders and civil libertarians who tell us that everybody has the right to be a dickhead and that welfare handouts and social engineering will either fix the problem or mask it and it’s a bad thing to punish people who are being dickheads. No, it’s not. Punish them! They are clearly not learning anything the ‘nice’ way.
But why can’t we have a month where people who already drink beer responsibly buy, say, one special beer and then donate the cost of that beer to a worthy charity? And every special beer that they buy in that month meant a bigger donation? Because the do-gooders would stamp their little feet and get all bent out of shape and say that it just encourages people to drink beer. And I say; “WHAT’S WRONG WITH THAT YOU DUMB FLOG!?!”
So, I support the sorts of programs that teach kids to behave responsibly when it comes to grog and drugs and all sorts of other social problems, but I don’t like that we have to make such punitive attempts at education and make people feel guilty for indulging in something that, in many cases, is a product that a good bloke has taken care and love to craft so that you might just enjoy this life a little more. And for those who have joined this blog in the last year but may not be aware of our quest to make the world a better place one beer at a time, good news.
As we did last year, again this year we will conduct our own fundraising effort. It is totally self-driven and no one is forced to participate. You just make a donation to your own chosen cause. But there is a catch. You have to drink some beer.
I’m sure you have all heard of Movember where blokes everywhere grow a moustache during November and get their mates to sponsor them and the cash goes to research into the kinds of disease that cause doctors to have to put their fingers up blokes bums. Worthy. Very worthy. Well, the Beer Blokes made a bit of an impact last year when we launched the first ever ‘Mo-Vem-Beer’ where blokes who can’t or won’t grow a mo just do their best to drink beer that has ‘MO’ somewhere in or around their name, brand or style during the month of November.
Now you all know my feelings about beer. I like a beer. I don’t go overboard and get shirt-faced and I don’t pull up sore the next day and try to operate heavy machinery. I don’t go to venues designed to hold 7,000 people, drink myself silly on alcopops and then go outside and bash tourists.
You may also know that I am more than a bit cynical about the global push to name every single day of the calendar year and use them all to raise awareness, cash or my hackles at every opportunity. I have no problem with legitimate local, regional or national public holidays, religious festivals like Hanukah, Greek Easter, Good Friday and, of course, Oktoberfest. But I think that things are getting a little silly when I see that the last Wednesday in April is Secretaries Day. And I feel even more frustrated when I see that Captain Correctness has stuck his do-gooding wand in to the business and changed its name to Administrative Professionals Day. Seriously.
Other ‘observances’ like International Be Nice To People With Red Hair Day or World Turn Off A Light Globe And Save The Whales Day or Global Day To Recognise The Rights Of People Who Want To Impose Stupid Views On The Rest Of Us By Naming Stupid Days Day are just stupid.
So do I oppose ‘OcSober’? No. Not per se. I admire greatly the work done by Life Education which, for the uneducated, is Australia’s largest non government provider of drug and health education and does more to provide real life information for school age kids than any other medium by speaking to around 700,000 children each year. Top job.
So do I oppose the whole concept of giving up alcohol for a whole month? No. not per se. I guess that I think it’s just a bit sad that we have come to a point where someone deems it necessary to encourage good honest beer respecting folk to forsake a legal and enjoyable part of their normal lifestyle to raise money to ensure that today’s kids wont grow up to be beer disrespecting dickheads like the ones we have today and who won’t benefit from programs like Life Education and who would never participate in a program like OcSober. But need to do it more than others.
I see nothing wrong with people raising money to support programs like Life Education. I would happily dig into my own kick to help out. I don’t really want to make such a drastic statement – on principle – as giving up a normal, regulated and sensibly executed segment of my life. And not because I couldn’t, wouldn’t or shouldn’t but because I have this little Jimminy Cricket with a beer in his hand on my shoulder telling me that it is just letting the bastards win. And not that the good guys are the bastards, it‘s the dickheads who are the bastards. And they are winning.
You see, we do very little as a government and a as a community to discourage dickheads from being dickheads. Not because we don’t care but because we have had our hands tied behind our backs by the bloody do-gooders and civil libertarians who tell us that everybody has the right to be a dickhead and that welfare handouts and social engineering will either fix the problem or mask it and it’s a bad thing to punish people who are being dickheads. No, it’s not. Punish them! They are clearly not learning anything the ‘nice’ way.
But why can’t we have a month where people who already drink beer responsibly buy, say, one special beer and then donate the cost of that beer to a worthy charity? And every special beer that they buy in that month meant a bigger donation? Because the do-gooders would stamp their little feet and get all bent out of shape and say that it just encourages people to drink beer. And I say; “WHAT’S WRONG WITH THAT YOU DUMB FLOG!?!”
So, I support the sorts of programs that teach kids to behave responsibly when it comes to grog and drugs and all sorts of other social problems, but I don’t like that we have to make such punitive attempts at education and make people feel guilty for indulging in something that, in many cases, is a product that a good bloke has taken care and love to craft so that you might just enjoy this life a little more. And for those who have joined this blog in the last year but may not be aware of our quest to make the world a better place one beer at a time, good news.
As we did last year, again this year we will conduct our own fundraising effort. It is totally self-driven and no one is forced to participate. You just make a donation to your own chosen cause. But there is a catch. You have to drink some beer.
I’m sure you have all heard of Movember where blokes everywhere grow a moustache during November and get their mates to sponsor them and the cash goes to research into the kinds of disease that cause doctors to have to put their fingers up blokes bums. Worthy. Very worthy. Well, the Beer Blokes made a bit of an impact last year when we launched the first ever ‘Mo-Vem-Beer’ where blokes who can’t or won’t grow a mo just do their best to drink beer that has ‘MO’ somewhere in or around their name, brand or style during the month of November.
In the next week I will post the results of last year’s Mo-Vembeer and list all the beers that I managed to squeeze into the criteria. I hope you will all join us again this year as we seek to raise awareness of men’s health issues, seek to raise money to find cures for those issues and seek to make the letters M and O fit into nearly every single beer we drink. You can do it. I did it last year. It’s fun.
Cheers,
Prof. Pilsner
