Trekkychick

for a limited time only, more available than your average man

But a good beer is comparatively easy to find, especially if you live in Portland, which boasts more breweries per capita than any other city in the United States. So while you may not find the perfect man, the perfect craft beer may still be within reach.

If you’re wondering what makes a craft beer crafty, let me assure you that it has nothing to do with arts and crafts, which is quite a relief for someone such as myself whose 7th-grade arts & crafts teacher told the class my self-portrait looked like an alien (I thought it was a compliment—-I love science fiction—-until she flunked me), nor is a craft beer the kind of beer you drink to get over the trauma of being called an alien by your 7th grade arts & crafts teacher. Rather, a craft brewer is small (producing less than 2 million barrels of beer annually) and independent. And while 2 million barrels may not sound small to the last person who tried drinking 2 million barrels of beer, it is nonetheless relatively small when compared to a craftless beer corporation such as Anheuser-Busch, whose production well exceeds 100 million barrels annually. Most importantly, craft beers can be absolutely delicious, whereas I bet you’ve never heard someone say, while sipping on an Anheuser-Busch creation, “Oh, this Bud Light is absolutely delicious!” unless he was in a Superbowl commercial.

If you’ve yet to try it, my first suggestion is Sierra Nevada’s Summerfest lager. For those of you not familiar with Sierra Nevada’s beers, their most popular standard brew is probably their pale ale, and their winter offering, Celebration Ale, is definitely worth the celebration. Even their stout is far and away the best stout in a bottle I’ve yet to try. Their Summerfest lager is light (5.0 ABV) and hoppy without being overpoweringly so. I’m not typically a huge lager fan (I’ve heard they cut down trees), but this is a lager that appeals even to environmentally-friendly darker beer lovers such as myself.

If clearing forests isn’t your style, another craft beer to write home about (for me, I guess that would be the alien home planet from which my arts & crafts teacher thinks I sprouted) is Deschutes brewery’s 2010 Once a Decade Ale, which is more like Nine Times a Decade Ale for me when I add up the number of bottles I’ve purchased over the last few months. Vaguely reminiscent of a barleywine-style ale but without that sickeningly sweet finish, the Once a Decade Ale (also known as Jubel 2010) is 10% ABV, aged in oak pinot barrels, and is my favorite craft find of the year. And much like finding a good boyfriend, you won’t find another beer quite like it for at least a decade, so stock up on a few before they’re gone for good and break one open every couple of years to temper the dry spell. Speaking of opening your beer, the biggest trick to the Once a Decade Ale is its wax-dipped cap, which can be troublesome to open. I began with more conventional methods such as using a standard bottle opener. But when mainstream methods failed me, I panicked and resorted to biting, clawing, stabbing, and coaxing, while my roommate finally found success melting down the wax with a lighter. However, I’ve since seen effortless cap removals with your tried and true average bottle opener, so perhaps it was just me. It usually is.

So while choosing the right boy may be challenging, choosing the right craft beer is entirely possible—-if you’re fortunate enough to call Portland home.

–Troi out

So, this is how you do it. First, it rings. You don’t really have any part in this. It either rings or it doesn’t. Well, you can force somebody to call you. But then it takes away the whole surprise element of receiving the call in the first place, plus, you will seem pretty uncool. So back to my instructions. The phone rings. You pick up the receiver. My grandparents found this very difficult. They thought phones without a cord had an appearance akin to a walkie-talkie, and they answered it accordingly (HA HA, a-CORD-ingly, as in telephone cords, those things telephones had in my grandparents’ day before the dawn of cell phones). In other words they held the section that should be next to your ear as if it were the mouthpiece and talked into it. Nobody ever talked back. Don’t make this mistake; ensure you answer the phone in such a manner that some section of the phone lies in the vicinity of your ear. This will enhance your communicative success rate by at least 75%. After you place the phone in its proper place on the side of your head so that you can speak and listen, and so that it meets ergonomic requirements for head and neck comfort, you should produce a verbal utterance. “Hello” is commonly accepted. “Goodbye” is funnier. It’s also the standard usage according to Philip K. Dick’s science-fiction universe in “Counter-Clock World.” After saying hello, you may notice you like the sound of your voice and continue to talk. This is not proper phone etiquette. You instead wait for the caller to respond and express his or her justification for his or her call. Listen skeptically and judgmentally. There is usually some fault you can find with his or her answer. For example, if a “friend” is “just calling to say hello,” it is standard to follow with an accusation such as, “Well, you already said that!! Why are you still on the line?!” Then slam the phone down. But remember proper phone etiquette; make sure to say “goodbye” first. (Or “Hello,” if you like Philip K. Dick.) Another phone call excuse that should instantly put you on suspicious guard is a caller who is in any way friendly. A friendly caller is called a “solicitor.” He or she is not your friend. If your caller sounds friendly, slam the phone down as suggested above. Then change your number, change your name, and move to another city, preferably another state, and just to be safe, maybe another country. You might also want to change your haircolor. You may choose a brand that covers gray.

To subscribe to my free* pamphlet, “Answering the Phone Only Looks Easy,” please send your check or money order in the mail. And please send it to me. Not a solicitor. Solicitors are not your friends. But I am.

*Nothing is free in life. Get used to it.

–Troi out

Dear Readers,

These days, it’s not enough to have preferences, or to express them verbally. No, these days you don’t actually own your predilections until you’ve publicly proclaimed your preference via our society’s newest communicative modality, facebook. This phenomenon is reflected in the following conversation that has surely not been embellished as my readers have come to expect my fact-driven journalistic integrity as a cornerstone of my posts:

Me: Hey Ricardo, would you like my newest blog post, please?

Ricardo: Um, I do like it. I like it, Troi, it’s good.

Me: No, I mean “like” it. Click the “like” button. It’ll show up on facebook, and other people will “like” it too.

Ricardo: I don’t understand why I have to press a button to prove that I like your post.

Me: JUST DO IT, IT’S NOT REAL UNLESS IT’S WITNESSED BY FACEBOOK!!

The idea, I explained to Ricardo once I’d taken my medication and restored my sense of calm, is simple. People like to operate under the misconception that we’re unique beings. We create our very own unique facebook page, which looks uncannily like everybody else’s unique facebook page, and then we further establish our autonomy by identifying our unique sets of interests, which we demonstrate by liking those interests on our public facebook forum. We are disconcerted as we notice 5,357,922 other people, 5,357,921 of which are our facebook friends, share these same interests, so we keep clicking, sure that nobody else likes “losing their balance and falling over, but then getting back up again and looking around to make sure nobody noticed, and nobody did notice, so, like, cool!” but it turns out, damn it, that everybody has fallen over and nobody likes to be caught falling over, and maybe we should create a page about not falling over, and we can be the first to stand up straight and like it, too.

Ricardo: That doesn’t sound simple at all. Also, you talk too fast.

Let me put this another way. My old church pastor, Friedrich Nietzsche, used to preach about the idea of the herd mentality. The herd mentality comes from the root word “herd,” meaning, “Dude, I herd you were doing this, I like, totally want to do it too!” and the root word “mental,” as in, “Alright, man, but we’re, like, totally mental for trying this–it’s SO crazy, dude!” The herd mentality refers, then, to the idea that no matter how crazy a particular activity seems, people can be persuaded to participate in it if there are enough people already doing it. Ergo, (Yes! Cross off “using the word ‘ergo’ in a blog post” from my bucket list!) if one member of the human herd likes one of my previously undesirable blog posts, it follows that other humans will experience a higher likelihood of similarly tolerating the post.

Ricardo: Wait—-I don’t think Nietzsche was your church pastor—-

I didn’t hear Ricardo say this during our conversation, of course, as he said it over the phone and didn’t post it as a status update, our socially-accepted medium for stating one’s spontaneous thoughts, opinions, and rebuttals.

Since Ricardo has not yet liked my post, I arrive at the inevitable conclusion that he, and perhaps many of you, have not become fully acquainted with the practice of liking things, having previously engaged in the formerly acceptable practice of expressing your opinions in the form of a verbal comment. While I have not personally engaged in the practice of liking (I find it to be dull and derivative, whereas I find writing entire blog posts about it to be refreshing and fun!), I have witnessed others who are bonified experts at liking all sorts of things and can offer you a step-by-step guide of the process.

STEP 1: Find something you like.

STEP 2: Don’t say you like it! This is a classic newbie mistake. Instead, search for a small tab with an “F” near the thing that you like. This is the Facebook “like” button. This is what you use to convey your preference to others.

STEP 3: Place your hand, palm down, onto your mouse, move the pointer onto the facebook tab, and click so that you can show all of your friends what you like.

A typical question I get asked when I am traveling the globe, from NE Portland all the way to SW Portland, to train herd members in perfecting their facebook preferences, is what one should do when one likes something that does not have the designated preference-expressing facebook button available.

“I really like my piano,” one naive student said to me the other day, “How do I show that I like it?”

“No you don’t,” I explained. “Remember, if it’s not on facebook, it doesn’t exist.”

“But I really like my piano,” she insisted, “I feel strongly that I should be able to let people know I like it!”

I gave her an “F” —-and that doesn’t stand for “Facebook.” Some people just aren’t ready to embrace the communicative restrictions placed on us by technological advances.

So, Readers, I hope that you have appreciated your lesson, and if you have, don’t forget to show it by liking this post.

–Troi out

*My apologies to my good friend Ricardo, for having grossly altered our conversational exchange without obtaining his prior permission. If Ricardo would like to express any qualms regarding this matter, it is requested that he do so using established societal norms by writing of his displeasure on my wall.

Dear Readers,

“Excuse me Mister, in which aisle can I find the drinks that will simultaneously induce kidney, liver, and heart failure?”

For every five hundred reasonable coffee drinkers out there, there exists a hater who professes not to partake of this sweet caffeinated nectar. Of these outliers, some claim to appreciate the taste of tea, a pallid beverage made from soaking twigs or pine needles or whatever in hot water. While they appreciate the goodness of caffeine, tea drinkers are not to be entirely trusted. They have been known to exhibit suspicious behaviors such as drinking out of a miniature cup, raising their pinky daintily as they sip their anemic elixir, and consuming microscopic scones and miniature triangular-shaped egg salad sandwich wedges. One can only wonder what these tea drinkers are hiding behind that raised little finger.

While these tea drinkers are unusual, they are generally considered safe. Typically, tea drinkers make good friends. They demonstrate a remarkable ability to sit or stand in one spot without twitching for extended periods of time, they use a standard speech rate that doesn’t sound like a recording played in fast-forward mode, and best of all, they fall asleep at night, thus contributing to their pleasant demeanors.

While you need not fear the tea drinkers, Readers, you need to be aware of the dangers of those persons who drink neither our decadent staple known as coffee nor its diluted alternative known as tea. These persons belong to a third caffeinated category. They are known only by the name of energy drinkers.

Energy drinkers are a superhuman species that have evolved as their bodies have adapted to previously toxic levels of blood caffeine content (a 16 oz can of Red Bull contains 160 mg of caffeine) as well as the energizing and athletic-enhancing addition of the nonessential amino acid taurine. Energy drinkers are the rock stars of any party, outlasting even the most hard-core coffee drinkers. Due to their amped up nature, however, energy drinkers can be real monsters when crossed, and they’ll fully throttle you if you give them any red bull sh**.

While an energy drink is generally considered safe in limited quantities, some research indicates its blend of caffeine and taurine puts energy drinkers at risk for potentially harmful side effects related to changes in heart rate and blood pressure. For this reason, energy drinkers are encouraged to limit their intake to one drink a day. Combining their energy drink with alcohol (such as the ever popular red bull & vodka or the “jager bomb” –rock star energy drink mixed with jagermeister–) is also a poor idea, as it can lead to cardiovascular risk and shortness of breath, among other risks.

Remember, Readers, whether you’re a coffee, tea, or energy drinker, your pursuit of good caffeine is admirable. And don’t forget that regardless of which beverage you choose, you’re wrong, unless you choose coffee.

–Troi out

Dear Readers,

As you know, a morning without coffee is really no morning at all. There is no way to get to lunch, and the subsequent afternoon, and finally that favorite time of day I like to call time to get off work, without having begun the day with a small* mug of delicious local brew with my good buddies Batdorf & Bronson (also known as Dancing Goats), the coffee roasters.

*Small like a 7-11 Big Gulp is small.

Sometimes Batdorf and Bronson’s prices are through the roof —- which means that I have to climb onto my roof and sell each individual shingle in order to afford a 12 ounce bag—-but spending the extra roof shingle for a company like this is well worth the price. Batdorf & Bronson’s coffee is fair-trade certified, which means that in exchange for a super-size morning cup of coffee, my colleagues and clients are presented with a tolerable Troi who is both awake and amiable in general demeaner, which is a pretty fair trade if you ask me. Fair-trade coffee also supports a better life for farmers by adhering to strict criteria regarding price, environmental sustainability, fair labor conditions, and trade, among others. A fair price, particularly, ensures small coffee farmers are earning wages that exceed the cost of production, eliminating the cycle of poverty and debt.

Batdorf & Bronson’s coffee beans are also shade grown, meaning that their beans have been protected from sunlight, reducing their risk of melanoma. Maverick beans that sneak out of their shade grown home in their quest for a good suntan are required to wear a good-quality UVA/UVB sunscreen of at least SPF 30. In addition to having good skin, shade grown beans are grown, as their name suggests, in the shade of trees. These nitrogen-fixing trees enhance the soil and the growth of plant life as well as provide a natural habitat for birds that is not readily available in more recent hybrid coffee bean varieties that grow in direct sunlight. Birds in shade-grown coffee environments offer natural insect control by way of frequent foraging, reducing or entirely eliminating the need for chemical fertilizers, pesticides, or herbicides.

In contrast to shade-grown beans, the newer, sun-friendly hybrids require chemical fertilizers and pesticides, resulting in soil erosion, water runoff, and soil depletion and necessitating the need to clear rainforest for new planting soil. Not only is this an unsustainable practice, but many bird populations have been declining as a consequence of the shedding of shade-growing practices.

My good friends Batdorf & Bronson have also been purchasing 100% of their electricity from renewable resources since 2000. I much prefer my energy unrenewable (I hoard coal, oil, gas, and nuclear power whenever I can get my hands on them, for no reason in particular), however, Batdorf & Bronson seem to think they’re doing the environment a favor, and any company that produces such tasty coffee can’t be completely wrong about its energy practices.

If you’re likeminded in your search for coffee that you can feel good about drinking, click here to see some fair-trade certified coffee options. If you’re a fan of Peet’s Coffee, try their fair trade blend.

Happy Coffee Drinking!

–Troi out