Lead Presidents

What Does Brewing Your Own Beer Say About You?

Scabies is not an adventure. It's Ostracization-Lite. It doesn't make you special, however unique you may seem sitting by yourself.

To those of you unscathed by the tiny little creepy crawlies, it can be a frightening prospect. Intense itching; ugly welts; worrying that you may have contracted a disease far more serious, more permanent, more STD-ey. You may even get to call the participants in your sexual history to remind them that "I am a dirty whore who has mites that have taken up residence in my skin" AND warn them that "You too may have become an unwitting host to this microscopic arachnid. All because you impulsively (see drunkenly [see 9-beers-in]) wanted to fuck me." Let them know that however good it felt, and however much they must have associated you with passion and desire before, that they must now relate to your festering, ugly, cunt.


Your friends and associates may all move away from you and awkwardly avoid a proffered handshake here and there.

But take heart. Remember, you yourself are not a parasite. And with enough ointments and creams the mites will eventually leave or die. (Not like your coworker with the nostrils. Nostrils that are like an unsolicited anatomy lesson, protruding nose hairs and all.) At that point, you can fondly look back on the ones who were unfazed by this brief buggy encounter. Surprisingly unfazed. Remember that guy? The one who heard you had mites and was still interested when he mistakenly thought you said you'd be leaving your boyfriend.

You can ride off into the sunset with him, on his motorcycle, to live in his mom's basement and help him brew his homemade beer. Or live with the wife and two children he never told you about.

APHOTHUS, A Kind of Revolution, page 99

The Constitution became even more acceptable to the public at large after the first Congress, responding to criticism, passed a series of amendments known as the Bill of Rights. These amendments seemed to make the new government a guardian of people's liberties: to speak, to publish, to worship, to petition, to assemble, to be tried fairly, to be secure at home against official intrusion. It was, therefore, perfectly designed to build popular backing for the new government. What was not made clear–it was a time when the language of freedom was new and its reality untested–was the shakiness of anyone's liberty when entrusted to a government of the rich and powerful.

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