PATRICK MCVAY

I’ve decided to make use of props at my job to keep my co-workers off balance. If I show up now and again with, say, a stethoscope slung around my neck, they might assume I’m a doctor on the side and rethink their opinion of me.

Not that I worry about their opinion of me. Heh heh. They all love me, my co-workers: the way I arrive for work via helicopter and parachute; the way I use my office to hang my damp clothes (“better for the environment”); the way I adopt stray cats and build play areas for them beside my executive suite conference table.

The Board of Directors doesn’t know what to make of me, because sometimes I come to board meetings dressed in a lab coat. I’m always sure to have a few test tubes in my lab coat pocket, sealed off at the top so I can shake one every now and again and eye it over my glasses, saying “Very interesting” as my co-board members look upon me with a mixture of admiration and bemusement. I’ll get food coloring too, so that all the test tubes glow.

Instead of going to meetings like I usually do, I’ll be purposely late, arriving with a level, carpenter’s square, and some kind of wall-mounting task ahead. “Someone told me to install this floating shelf in here. Please, go ahead with your meeting, don’t bother with me.” Occasionally, I’ll chime into the conversation, as I was invited to the meeting anyway and am only hanging the floating shelf to play a part. The part of the guy hanging the floating shelf during the meeting. Like, what, there is no other time to hang the floating shelf? Give me a break.

I don’t know what I’m talking about.

Except, wouldn’t it be cool to have an acetylene torch and welding mask on hand when you attend your next meeting about your company’s finances? What, like you can’t comment on finances if you’re donning a welding mask and have an acetelene torch in one hand? That’s weak!

Lots to think about when it comes to how to dress for work.

How is it that it’s 2019 and I’m just hearing about the Mountain Goats? You’d think this essential information would have been in one of the email loops I’m included in. “Maybe you missed it in a debriefing.”

OK, first of all my debriefings have been a little thin on content lately. Sorry to have to air that dirty laundry in such a widely-read forum as this blog, but eventually you get fed up with not being told about things, like really clever rock bands you probably should see, such as the Mountain Goats, or the nuclear launch codes. What if the Mountain Goats came to town, or someone said launch the nukes? How could I know to see the show and/or destroy the planet?

I shouldn’t have to rely on WMBR’s Breakfast of Champions for all my rock and roll information. Shouldn’t my government have a Rock Czar? And for that matter, why should I have to contact the Russians to find out what numbers to punch in such that we can finally have our long awaited Armageddeon?

From my informal survey of people around me, I’ve come to learn that others in my midst have not been adequately informed about the Mountain Goats either. Seems to be an epidemic of poor communication.

From what I can gather (via their tour schedule), it's clear to me that hey have something against Massachusetts. On the other hand, I'll bet they're going to Georgia.

What did Monday ever do to deserve the negative press it routinely gets? You’d think it insulted someone’s mother the way people denigrate it. Like Tuesday is so much better! Well guess what Tuesday: you’re no Friday!

Of course, Saturday laughs at the way Friday thinks it’s so cool. “Dude, most of your day is spent at work!”. Friday slinks away with a little squiggly line over its head, like a fuming comic book character. Friday is thinking, yeah, but that first beer of the weekend is the best beer of the weekend, and it happens on Friday. How ya like me now!

But don’t give Saturday that B.S. It’s well-aware that it enjoys favorite child status, with the most recent workweek firmly in the rearview mirror and the next one two days ahead.

Sunday likes to claim it owns the top spot in terms of popularity, but it fails to mention that a large portion of the world’s population wants to sleep in on Sunday but instead must drag their tired butts out of bed in order to stick them into church pews. “Rejoice!” the priests say, “For this is the day the Lord has made!” But frankly, these priests would prefer to be sleeping off their hangovers as well.

Thursdays elbow their way in with frothy tankards of ale, belching out claims that, in the 21^st century, most weekends begin the day before Friday during Thursday’s Happy Hour. True, but given that you still must go to a job on Friday, all Thursday is doing is peddling headaches at work.

Not that anyone asked, but my thinking on the matter is rather conventional: Saturday is the best, followed by Friday, then Sunday, then Thursday, and from there backward until you get to Monday.

Planning to gather data to ascertain which day of the week has most global cloud cover to substantiate my assertion that God takes pleasure in raining on our Saturdays.

Nine months ago – maybe more like 10 – I was a gainful beer brewer, extracting sugars from malted barley like a champ, boiling down the resulting wort with some Belgian candi sugar and mild hops, crashing the sweet liquid’s temperature down to what is tolerable to a hungry, awakening yeast cell, and then pitching the yeast like a fireballer in the ninth.

Do you know how many brewing awards I won? None. That was part of my art: to win no awards while brewing award-caliber beer.

Then I decided to stop brewing for a bit to put an addition onto my house, and it’s as if the whole beer industry fell apart. I come back from my brewing hiatus to learn that Boston Homebrew Supply has shut down. Zounds! How is a fellow supposed to surreptitiously brew a beer while his wife, who doesn’t read this blog (I think), is in Chicago doing who-knows-what with people from work? “In a conference.” Ha! Probably brewing beer with the gals, secretly, as we all know that women are poised to take over everything, including beer brewing.

But anyway… where was I? Oh yeah, Boston Homebrew Supply and its proprietor, Tom Casey, are no longer. Well, Tom himself still likely exists, but his venture and its website are now history.

Alas, I am made to go to the Modern Homebrew Emporium in Cambridge, or get my grains delivered in the mail, thus burning more fossil fuels and foreshortening the survival of our species by some fraction of a day. But at least we’ll have beer as we lurch forward toward the abyss.