I don't even drink beer, Bobert. I can't stand it. You could have a beer or two with me if you wanted, but I'd probably just have some tea with lemon in it.

I attempted to develop a taste for beer for about 10 years, during my 20s, because all my young friends seemed to think it was the thing to do. Yes, I tried. I almost got to sort of like it for awhile there....but I never could really generate much enthusiasm for the not-very-good-tasting carbonated piss that is found in a beer bottle. By the time I was 35 or 40, I'd stopped worrying about what was the "thing to do" any longer and gave up on beer entirely. Now I just drink stuff I actually like the taste of. That would be tea, fruit juices, water, rice milk, and wine (but very little of the wine).

Pretty unhip, eh? ;-) I also have no TV and I don't smoke. Not even pot! Geez, gettin' more unhip by the moment! I don't drive an American car, and I can't picture Christina Aguillera.

I've never watched the Superbowl, and I couldn't care less about it.

I think people who say "I could care less" when they actually mean "I couldn't care less" have a problem with comprehending the English language.

Now, Chongo...he's hip. Yessiree. He drinks heavily, smokes heavily, boasts mightily, flirts heroically, dates classy chicks, has a lot of nerve, takes to violence like a duck to water, can disassemble, clean, and reassemble any firearm as fast as a cat with its arse on fire can run through a barbed wire fence.

I have no hope of ever even approaching Chongo's degree of hipness. He gets calls from Clint Eastwood, Hillary Clinton, and Don Cherry. I get calls from telemarketers. He runs for president. I run for the toilet. He fights pro boxers in the ring. I fight an expanding waistline and a thinning hairline.

Chongo is an inspiration, there's no doubt about it. I hope to be like him in some future lifetime, but it ain't gonna happen in this one.