In teasing this little blog entry, I mentioned that I would be presenting the results of an exhaustive 25 year plus research project into Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer. The can and bottle label have hardly changed since the award of the blue ribbon, calling it “America’s Best” at the World Columbian Expo in Chicago in 1893.

A lot of time has passed since then, and many drunkards have fallen prey to the dark malevolent powers of the amber fluid. I drink at what some of the travelling executives for Pabst Breweries once called “a shrine” to the liquid, located up here on the waterfront in Portland, Maine.

Here are a few observations of that double-decade of debauchery.

First off, the human body, particularly, the stomach, seems to have some vast repository of storage space for Pabst. The alcohol makes its way directly to the brain, and the rest is compressed throughout the body in what surely was the genius behind the idea of natural gas fracking. I’ve put away at least 7 pitchers of the stuff at a single sitting, and have no idea where it all ended up.

The alcohol going to the brain part is the confusing part of the issue for me. Not only does PBR go directly to the brain, it seems that it focuses in directly on several logic centers of the brain.

The first logic center it goes after is the part that controls the tongue. This beverage and its yeasty aftermath tend to make people shout out and mutter the dumbest, most vile shit you’ve ever heard in your life. I originally suspected that the genetic damage done to the brain is passed down through generations, and the end result is the Tea Party menace that we today are confronted with.