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State of the Blog: Fall 2015

September 25, 2015 · by Oliver Gray

Dearest Readers,

Denver teems. Tens of of thousands of buzzing Great American Beer Festival attendees line up to taste the beer flowing very freely through the honeycombed halls and chambers of the Colorado Convention center.

I am not one of them.

Instead I sit at my desk at home, left elbow swollen to twice its size, struggling to type a blog post with one hand. I’m recovering from my second elbow surgery of the year: the second attempt to regain the function I lost nearly five years ago. It’s been a total pain in the ass (and arm) but for someone who literally types for a living, a necessary move to ensure less pain in the future.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t jealous of the people who do get to attend GABF this year. But as fun as it would be to revel in drunken debate over who AB-InBev will sally-up to next, I find my general frothing love for beer settling a bit. My once white hot desire kill FOMO where it stood by brewery hopping and tasting voraciously has cooled into a scholarly reverence for the science, sociology, and anthropology all swirled up in the glass.

That, or the Percocet is speaking for me.

It just so happens that GABF lines up with my anniversary. 2015 marks my sixth year of running Literature and Libation. It’s been a slow one on the blog, mostly because of the two aforementioned surgeries. Physically, they took me out for weeks at a time when I lacked use of fingers, hands, elbows. Mentally, I had to deal with the brain fog and sleepiness of a nacroctic-laced world.

Excuses, I know. But a little explanation (and apology) as to why I’ve missed weeks of blogging at a time.

And by “slow” I mean slow in terms of my writing output, not for overall readership. You readers have been steady and awesome, and I thank you dearly for it. I hope you know that sometimes, when a blogger thinks all is for naught, that comment or like or slight uptick in stats is enough to remind them that someone out there is completing the circuit, turning thing written into thing read and making this whole blogging thing worthwhile.

Instead of being in Denver, seeking yet another pour of Cigar City, I’ll spend my GABF time being a little introspective, and give a little insight into what I’ve been working on, why, and where its fate stands in the grand scheme of my writing.

Writing Outside the Blog

I don’t toot my own horn too much (Rowan Atkinson as Blackadder once said, “well you might at least let us know you have a horn”), but I’m very excited to announce that I’ve been toiling, interviewing, and researching a lot behind the scenes, and have an article about the mystique and design of tap handles coming out in the latest (print!) edition of All About Beer magazine. Writing for a nationally distributed magazine has been one of my goals for a long time, and it feels especially good to see some of my writing come to life on ink and paper, rather than just a screen.

I’m working on a few other things for AAB too, but can’t really say much until ideas are in place and accepted. Either way, I’m very happy to be writing for such a well edited and well put together magazine. It’s really, as cliche as it sounds, a writerly dream come true.

December, 1919

I have posted 12 chapters (or 16,279 words) of my serialized beer novel so far, and have another ~12 chapters written (but not edited). My original goal was to write one chapter a week, but I clearly failed at that. C’est la vie. Life lesson learned: schedules aren’t my thing, and generating creativity on the fly (especially during busy work weeks) is no simple task.

I never made it too clear, but obviously I had not written the novel ahead of time, and planned to write it “live” one chapter at a time, all mistakes and plot holes (and the fun therein) included. I felt particularly Dickensian when I put the plan together. I still plan to finish this novel on the blog, but won’t be holding myself to any specific timeline. It received a pretty solid reception for being something as niche and strange as “beer fiction,” and I’ve even met a few other aspiring beer writers through it, including Leslie Patiño, who is actively writing a beer-centric novel.

I started this project because I thought there was a dearth in beer and brewing related fiction. I still think there is. I’m also working on a list of beer’s appearances in popular media, but that concept will get its own post at some point.

Homegrew

As much passion as I have for the project, I must admit: the effort of running two blogs at the same time was a bit much for me. The creation of posts, maintenance of the sites, sharing the content, all the logistical rigmarole just proved too much. It was either sacrifice the new website or my job, so sad but obvious decisions were made.

The good news is, I actually did grow hops, barley, and capture my own yeast this year. I toiled hard in that backyard dirt and have some very fascinating results, along with several hundreds of pages of notes. I have even added to the original scope substantially, covering things a brewer may want to grow besides the big four, including fruit, spices, and peppers.

I learned a hell of a lot this Spring and Summer, but didn’t have the time (or functional arms) to turn it all into formal blog posts. Now that I’ve gotten the basics under control and better understand my limitations (the wetness of Maryland makes barley here very susceptible to disease), next year I can actually provide some content that will help like minded brewer-gardeners grow all their own beer.

I should have suspected I’d need a practice year, but at least now I’ve got tons of pictures, research, and notes to work from, and can make Homegrew more of an tangible resource for other people to use in 2016.

Nom de Bier

My newest project is very exciting, and I’ve been reading a lot more than usual to prepare for it. I opened with a beer review by Shakespeare, and have two more (one by H.P. Lovecraft, one by Earnest Hemingway) coming soon. It’s going to take me some time to study the authors my readers suggested, so those posts will come after I’ve gotten my feet wet. This whole project requires a lot of extracurricular reading. Not that I’m complaining; I’ll just need to carve out some additional time to put eyes to text.

2016 and Beyond

I rarely admit this, but there were times this year, where (in pain and out of ideas) I thought maybe this blog had reached its natural lifespan, and should be put out to URL pasture. There’s a sort of natural ebb and flow to running and writing for something like this, but I didn’t want to go through too many spiritual rebirths trying to keep my own interest alive and in turn lose the entire identity of the blog.

I’m happy to say that my doomsaying was premature, and now, over the crest of the wave of my surgeries and physical rough spots, I feel a renewed energy to keep writing. I hope you’re still onboard to keep reading.

Cheers!

-Oliver

Two Announcements, One Blog Post

January 16, 2015 · by Oliver Gray

Resolutions. Never liked ‘um. They always seem like psychological scapegoats, faux-vagaries and promises cobbled together to atone for holiday gluttony.

So no, I won’t be making any resolutions for 2015. Instead, I want to announce my two big projects for the year. Admittedly 2014 was sort of punchy and random on the blog, partly because my neurons naturally fire punchy and random, partly because in the blur of re-adjusting my life after loss, I found it difficult to look too far into the future.

But 2015 offers a fresh twelve on the Gregorian, plenty of time to plan, and a coming spring packed to the petals with potential. I’ve always worked best within the confines of a larger tasks, knowing I’m working towards some discernible end, tackling the very large by splitting it into the very small.

Nonfiction Project: Homegrew.com

My garden embodied emotional peace for me last year, and as I was planning out what I wanted to grow this year, it struck me: why not grow my own barley? I’ve already got hops in the ground, so grain seemed like a natural progression. From there I figured I might as well reclaim my own rainwater to water said crops, and it didn’t take too many logical leaps to add wrangling my own yeast strain to the list of springtime yard-jobs.

And then, if I had all four ingredients, just sitting there all nice-like, I might as well brew some beer, right?

Thus, from the verdant loamy field of my brain, Homegrew was born. I plan to grow and malt my own barley, isolate and cultivate my own wild yeast strain, collect and filter rainwater, and pluck and dry some hops all to brew a beer completely made by my hand. Nothing store bought, ingredients wise. I will not, however, be building my own tools (he says now…).

I’ve already created the site, and will track every step of my journey via categorized posts. My goal is to turn the site into a searchable archive of how I did each step, the problems I faced, and (hopefully) how I overcame them. It’s sort of like extreme homebrewing meets extreme gardening meets extreme blogging. Sort of.

Please stop by and check out the new site at: www.homegrew.com. I already added some preseason content, but new posts will start rolling in as I do research, buy seeds, etc. I may cross-post on Literature and Libation some, but for the most part, it will be all original, new content.

Thanks to my friend Melody for the “From Seed to Sip” inspiration

Fiction Project: “December, 1919”

The last Session had Alan McLeod asking what beer books we’d like to see in the coming year. While there were many excellent suggestions, one collective desire sounded a bit louder (or a bit closer to home) for me: beer fiction. I’ve written some tangentially beer-related fiction before (here, here, and here), and many other short stories inspired by beer, but they’ve always been one-offs, standalone flashes, never anything of any real substance or scale.

In 2015, I plan to remedy that. Instead of following the traditional path of writing a whole manuscript, editing it, and sending it off to collect rejections from publishers, I figured I’d do what I (like to) do best, and blog the story. Or serialize it into 52 parts. One chapter a week, every Wednesday, for a year. Around a thousand words per chapter, give or take a plot point or two.

Without having to add a “spoiler alert” tag, the story is titled, “December, 1919” and tells the story of Matthew Cooper, a young man who unexpectedly inherits his father’s brewery (and legacy) on the cusp of Prohibition in the US.

The first chapter will go up next Wednesday, January 21. I hope you’ll stop by and read a while.

Cheers, prosit, sláinte, and thanks for all the support.

The 10 Personalities that make Group Projects Unbearable

December 12, 2011 · by Oliver Gray

You’ve been there. In class or at work, minding your own business trying not to get noticed, when your teacher/boss announces that it’s time for a group project. The fear sits in the back of your throat like a wad of old gum. You know what a group project means. You’ve seen this hell too closely and too frequently.

It means late nights, miscommunications, unfair work share, and really dumb group mates with poor hygiene. You promise yourself you’ll delegate work, and won’t let it all fall on your head at the last minute like last time. But you’re naive and stupid. Group projects are built to destroy rational people, mainly because of the antics of the following types of irrational people:

1. Mr. Micromanager

This guy loves to use the word “enunciate.” He’ll dominate most of the group time explaining really obvious things that everyone already understands, or by repeating one section of the instructions over and over again. Despite clear, rational logic that might dictate otherwise, he will not deviate from the instructions at all. He might even cry if he finds out you did behind his back. Then he’ll get angry and send a petty, whiny email to your teacher/boss.

Mr. Micromanager will spend more time sending you elaborate step-by-step instructions about your role in the project, than actually working on the project. He will complain that you are working too slowly, even if he has not completed any of his own section. To add to this, he will call and email you constantly asking for status updates, making it impossible to get any work done. He’ll ask you to call him at times when normal people are on their third pint.

This guy is a jerk, who thinks he knows best because he’s told everyone he knows best. If you give into him, he’ll only do 5% of the work, but take 100% of the credit.

2. The Lone Wolf

You have a bad feeling about this one from the start. She doesn’t say much and always scowls at everyone else, like they are hyenas trying to eat her newborn children. She dresses badly, smells like pistachios, and has a seriously dated hair style.

If she shows up to a group meeting, she’ll be late, and angry about it. If you ask her why her work isn’t done, she’ll make up an unquestionable excuse, usually involving serious illness or family death. None of her work is ever on time, and she never adds to group discussions. You can email her if you want, but she’ll never email you back. The phone number she gave you is for a Papa John’s in Iowa.

After a while, you have to just abandon her and do the project with your other group members. On the day the assignment is due, you’ll be CC’d on an email that contains a finished – but completely different – version of the project. The Lone Wolf did it by herself, and it’s a piece of shit. You are then forced to explain to the teacher why there are two versions of the assignment being handed it, and why The Lone Wolf is a bitch. The final presentation is disjointed and awkward, because she has no idea what the rest of your group is talking about.

3. The Annoying Overachiever

At the start of the project, you hand out assignments for each person. This girl wants triple the assignments anyone else has. She promises she can handle it, because she “works well under pressure.”

She’ll start sending emails at all hours of the morning, showing the rest of the group how much work she’s done. After a few days, you start to feel guilty, because she’s finished 3 times the amount you have. Then you realize it doesn’t matter, because the project isn’t due for weeks. You assume the girl does loads and loads of cocaine.

After a few more days, you’ll start to get emails from the girl, asking for your sections. Even if you carefully explain that you’re not done (or haven’t started) because of conflicting priorities, she’ll lose her shit. She’ll claim she’ll get fired, or fail the class. She’ll tell you that her mother would disown her and she’d lose her awesome studio apartment. You wish she’d shut up and leave you alone.

When you finally do provide your content, she’ll scrutinize it like it’s going to land on the desk of the President. Her feedback is unnecessarily brutal, so you ignore most of it. By the time the assignment is due, she’s completely burnt out and has some horrible sickness. The entire group stands on the opposite side of the room from her.

4. The Dude

This guy, for all intents and purposes, is nice. He’s amiable and loquacious, even funny at times. When you form the group, he makes the instructions into jokes, and everyone in the group seems to like him.

At your first meeting, he shows up an hour late, wearing sunglasses indoors, reeking of cheap booze. He falls asleep twice during the meeting, and apologizes that he’s “sick.” He leaves the meeting early, presumably to vomit.

When asked for his share of the work, he’ll respond with canned phrases like, “Aww, dude, I forgot!” or “Shit! I knew there was something I didn’t do.” He never shows anyone any of the work he’s doing, but assures them very energetically that it will be done soon.

On the day before the assignment is due, he calls you, freaking out. He explains that he hasn’t done any of his portion, offering 442 different, weak, unbelievable excuses as to why. Fortunately, you knew he was a flake, and had already done most of his section anyway. You stay up late to finish everything. During the presentation, he makes a joke about beer and everyone laughs.

5. Mr. or Mrs. Question Mark

You’re very apprehensive to work with this person, but you had no other option. You can’t focus on the assignment because you can’t decide if this person is male or female. He (or she) has an androgynous name, and you can’t tell if those are boobs or just fat.

This person lacks most social graces, often snorting or gyrating most inappropriately. She (?) will reference odd things like specific episodes of obscure Japanese Anime, and be confused when no one gets what he’s (?) talking about. Every time you get an email from this person, you cringe, hoping they don’t want to meet in person…again.

Their work is satisfactory, but they always manage to tack on something – like a quote from a death metal album – that makes it creepy. You spend an above average amount of time working them out of the presentation, secretly hoping that they’ll be too caught up in some ritualistic auto-erotic asphyxiation to show up.

They show up wearing a purple shirt with unicorns on it or a Metallica themed tie. They’ve grown a mustache since you last saw them, but it still doesn’t help you identify what they are. During the presentation, they reference sexual torture. Everyone in the rooms wants to leave/die.

6. The Self-Flagellator

This girl is nervous at all times. Her hair is a frazzled mess, and she’d likely jump and scream if you said something to her without making eye contact first. She offers to be in your group, and she’s a better option than Mr. (?) Question Mark.

You start receiving emails from this girl almost immediately. They ask for your feedback, and more importantly, your approval. If you say anything negative, you’ll receive 6 more emails apologizing for her terrible work, even if you didn’t even kind of say it was terrible. She’ll continue this trend with everything you send her, until you finally just tell her “it looks great!” in response to any question she asks.

During meetings, she’ll constantly look at the door, and chew on her pen until it falls apart. She offers to let you review a document on her laptop, but you can’t see anything through the 3 privacy screen covers she’s got on it. She’ll often ask you to watch her as she walks to her car, just in case you need to call the police for her.

Come presentation time, she’ll show up, do a good job, and sit in the corner clutching her laptop, waiting for everyone else to leave before she does.

7. The Fearless and Clueless Leader

This guy (sometimes a girl) is more than happy to lead the project team to submission glory. He’s strong headed and confident, which he is clear to point out when he does an impromptu “vote” where he somehow becomes the de facto leader of the group.

He’ll organize meetings, conference calls, even suggest alternatives if the group can’t meet up. He’s ready to tackle any problem the group might have, except for the assignment itself. When you ask him about the assignment, it becomes very apparent that he has no idea what anyone in the group is supposed to do, and is making up his own plan which is based in a reality very far detached from the recognizable.

After a week or so of listening to the captain’s order, the group starts to secretly communicate and meet behind his back. They let him hold the illusion of leadership, because explaining why he is wrong would be pissing on an inferno. The project gets finished, and someone in the group is forced to trick the leader into thinking it’s exactly what he planned. During the presentation, he reminds the class that without him, this project would have “totally sucked.”

8. The Lump

You’re not sure how or why this girl got into school/is employed. She has the personality of a rotting grapefruit. Her eyes are dead and lifeless, like a shark.

She was defaulted into your group but doesn’t have strong opinions about anything. She never actually agrees to any of the work she’s assigned, but instead casually dismisses it by saying, “yea…” or “whatever.” You think at times she’s trying to be funny, but her humor is so strange that you’re not sure if laughing would be offensive.

She responds to emails with unpunctuated, not-capitalized one-liners. She never has any feedback, and everything she reviews is “ok i guess”. She does her work, but it’s bad and not completely finished.

When she doesn’t show up for the presentation, you ask your teacher/boss if they can send an ambulance to her apartment.

9. Mr. I’ve got better places to be

This guy is awesome. Or so he wants you to believe. He’ll tell you his golf handicap, and complain he’s already spent too much time on something so trivial.

If you manage to get a hold of him, it sounds like he’s in a dance club, even if it’s only 2:30 P.M. All of his emails say, “Sent from my iPhone”, suggesting he’s never in one place long enough to have a computer. He does his best to contextualize all the work you’re doing, reminding you that “he does stuff 10 times this difficult every day.”

He never sends in any work, so you and your other group mates do it for him. He doesn’t show up on the day of the presentation, so you’re forced to show your boss/teacher the Facebook photos of him on the beach that he uploaded 38 seconds ago.

10. You

Here you are, stuck in the middle of this nightmare. You’re probably pretty normal, and just want to do a good job/get a good grade. You’ve also probably about to have a shitty week or two.

I suggest you figure out who is the dead weight, drop them quickly, grab a beer, and do the whole damn thing yourself. It sucks, but it’s pretty much the only solution.

Good luck!