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In This Issue

• Life After Graduation? You're Kidding!
• Touched By Tom Brokaw
• Mr. McLaughlin's Culturally Confusing Neighborhood
• Livejournal: Hardcore Gateway(TM) Drug
• Columbia Decompiled
• Looking Back At Evolutionary Monkey Business
• How Right You Are!
• The Fed Kidz Page
• Veganism Sucks
• iPod Shuffle Advisory
• The Great Debate: Tune In or Pass Out?
• Weapons of Ass Destruction
• Letters to the Feditor
• THEY WATCH
• The Blue And White

M. Teddy Baby the H.

"I pounded a case of PBR, and then I finally understood what that modal jazz guy was talking about."

Teddy Baby Rockafeller

While PBR gets you drunk enough to have a good time, the next morning leaves you wishing you were listening to NPR instead. And so the battle continues...

When I was a young, carefree bundle of snot (rapidly evolving into the angst-ridden hormonally-charged bundle of snot all of us eventually became in junior high), my folks would drive me to school with the radio on. But instead of listening to classic rock hits or seventies garbage that "they used to hear when they were kids" (lies), I was exposed to some of the most pretentious nonsense ever to spew forth from a stereo system. Yes, I was one of those kids who grew up on National Public Radio, better known as NPR.

Now, mind you, there's nothing wrong with the news being read on the radio or what-have-you. But when NPR switches over to its more "artistic" side, it makes Radiohead look like Kenny Loggins. Various godforsaken critics blather on for ten minutes about their championed lost cause of the week before reminding you to send in money to hear more of this garbage. It's one big, ugly, pretentious payphone.

And then there are the call-in shows. Where to begin? It's bad enough to hear the octogenarian Daniel Shore speculate about the number of babies Dick Cheney has eaten this week. But when callers from "all over the world" decide to take personal offense every time someone says "bless you" in response to a sneeze on the Senate floor, it makes you want to take a spoon to your own skull and dig right in.

It was in my friend's brother's apartment this summer that I was introduced to a rival acronymic creature: PBR, otherwise known as Pabst Blue Ribbon. For those of you who are unaware, for many decades Pabst Blue Ribbon has provided young students with cheap beer in recreational can-sized cans. In many ways, it was everything NPR wasn't. It was a down-home, feel-good-with-your-buddies drink. You could throw ‘em back while listening to some old-time rock'n'roll while playing Halo late into the night in an apartment you weren't legally occupying.

A while back, at our weekly Federalist shindig (a black-tie affair, I assure you), someone brought up these two acronynymous forces. It set the wheels turning in my head: in the battle of down-home cheap beer versus namby-pamby radio, who would win? I've done the work for you, and have devised this beautiful rubric.

HERITAGE:
NPR: According to their website, NPR was founded in 1970, which was the year the Beatles broke up. Losing the Beatles was a bad thing. Therefore, NPR is also a bad thing. It is also from Washington, D.C., our nation's capital, and we all know from watching C-SPAN that nothing good comes out of Washington, D.C.
PBR: According to their website, Pabst Blue Ribbon was first brewed in Milwaukee in 1844, when it was originally called "Select" - but when they started tying a blue silk ribbon to the bottles, so many people asked for "that blue ribbon" beer that by 1895, Pabst officially added the "blue-ribbon" label. It was also the first beer to be canned rather than bottled, so you have PBR to thank for crushed beer cans and dented foreheads everywhere!
ADVANTAGE: PBR.

HIGH POINTS:
NPR: Garrison Keillor. He's some crazy Lutheran guy from Minnesota with a silky voice who tells crazy stories and has bizarre Americana musicians on his show. It's like being transported back to the thirties, where you had to be quiet while your father was listening to the radio, or he'd give you the back of his hand!
PBR: The realization that you don't need fancy (and expensive) drugs like cocaine or Rohypnol to catch the fancy of those fickle freshmen you live with.
ADVANTAGE: Well...  it has to go to NPR. Garrison Keillor doesn't usually induce vomiting.

LOW POINTS:
NPR: Remember the fundraisers? Two hours of hopeless local talent trying to get your money with ploys such as a dozen red roses for a hundred dollar donation. For two hours. For a kid driving into school with his parents, this was a death sentence. My folks would turn it off and interrogate me about my homework, which I didn't do through most of grade school.
PBR: Waking up about five pounds heavier with a dry mouth despite only achieving a mild buzz.
ADVANTAGE: PBR. I can lose those five pounds. Those interrogations were sweaty-palmed moments that probably resulted in my current dependency on cheap beer to begin with.

So who wins? It's a tough call, and as the only card-carrying Republican of that gangrenous entourage that drops in on the lofty Fed offices, declaring war on NPR might lead to me being shot with the equally lofty Fed rifle. But handing PBR a loss might result in the powerful Brewer's Lobby kicking my face in. So I'm gonna go ahead and give the edge to MMR, or Measles, Mumps and Rubella-because everyone needs a little bioterrorism once in a while.