FT: Free Darkness ISO: Creative writing

Up for grabs is a 2010 OR 2011 Darkness. I know we have lots of talented people on Ratebeer--I’d like to see what kind of creative writing talent we’ve got.

Who can participate?
This is a contest for members:
1) In the US, lower 48
2) With a premium membership OR 5 RB trades with all positive feedback
3) Who don’t live in MN
4) What haven’t rated or don’t currently have a bottle of Darkness

Contest rules
Write a story that somehow incorporates beer. Okay, not a full story, just the beginning of a story, using the character limit in one Ratebeer post. It doesn’t have to be about beer--just incorporate it somehow.

Short, long, funny, dramatic--doesn’t matter. The entry that most makes me want to keep reading wins the Darkness--you pick the vintage.

One entry per person, cutoff for entries 7pm CST on Friday. I’ll announce the winner that night.

Thanks to my favorite online community...you all are the best!

So, I says to Mabel I says...

gordita.

So I was waiting in line at this Kate the Great release, and I says to myself.... "looks like the Darklord release" they must taste the same. And I left.

Once upon a time there was is a great an sage elder. This wise and learned man, (a dead ringer for Rodney Dangerfield) welles known throughout the land as King foe. The good King foe, now in his 40’s still loves running with the pups. A couple years ago a brewer threw a little swaray for a few of their most devoted fans. So this nice quiet gathering (we’ll call it Dark Lord Day) gets going and Kingfoe starts enjoying the libations which are flowing like free boxes on the beer websites (we’ll call it Ratebeer) free beer week. Our beloved Kingfoe has only 1 problem. He is a BMC guy and is drinking beers such as Footbig, Kreat the Gate, and many other other high abv beers. The quickly intoxicated King grows sleepy and passes out in a lawn chair. Fortunately for the King his loyal subjects would never do anything to embarrass him such as duck taping him to his chair. It was clear the King should not be mocked as he was adorning a shirt reading "Beer Advocate". As his humble servants we felt the Kings public image was in need of some aid. A group of his advisors determined that the good king would be loved and seen as a benevolent leader if only he was seen as more of a man of the people. Thus in the time honored tradition of Weekend at Bernie’s we put a pair of sunglasses and a hat on him and allow passers by to take funny & semi lude pictures with the good King. When he awoke from his slumber and discovered he had been duct taped to a chair and been the object of his subjects love and devotion he was very pleased. Jocularity ensured and everyone lived happily ever after.

This story is clearly a work of fiction and did not take place at DarkLord Day in 2010...

I wrote a two-part critique of two of 2pac’s reviews a few months back in honor of Ten Years of 2pac. They are as follows:

Kilkenny
2pac: shitty beer. too fucken thick and cummy.(2.7)

This is perhaps 2pac’s most affecting work, hitting the reader squarely in the abdomen with its visceral intensity. While the sordid language smacks of Ginsberg or any of his Beat contemporaries, the juvenility and slang bring to mind Salinger’s iconic Caulfield. (Indeed, if Holden and 2pac were to ever share a beer, I’m sure they would discover a mutual dissatisfaction for the ’phony’, ’thick’ and ’cummy’ nature of so many mass-market beers.) But 2pac doesn’t limit his literary influences to the 1950s as he fashions a tight, lean prose in the style of Hemingway. And, with a nod to the postmodern and a solitary middle finger directed at the world, 2pac eschews grammatical norms, opting instead for a syntax all his own.

Coopers Birell Premium
2pac: this beers pretty fucken fucked. you can buy it from woolies. (0.5)

Mr. 2pac’s enticing alliteration suggests a poetic playfulness heretofore unseen in the bulk of his oeuvre. It is also interesting to consider the author’s invocation of the Woolworths supermarket chain. Those familiar with 2pac’s work would surprise at any useful information therein (e.g. that one could purchase this beer at Woolworths), so we must instead surmise an alternate meaning. Perhaps 2pac strives to associate ’woolies’ with the vile, the profane, the ’fucken fucked’. While many shoppers have had happy experiences at Woolworths - what with the loyalty schemes and everyday rewards - perhaps 2pac has been wronged by the corporate giant and here he seeks to air, ever so subtly, his grievances with the chain.

I suppose it isn’t really a ’story’, but I did make it up.

There once was a beer from Nantucket…

Using a well crafted and well rehearsed combination of Charm, Alcohol, and begging, Suttree made his move...

And there I was, blowing off work, hitting the refresh button over and over again, and nothing, just nothing. I had stayed up all night, with re-runs of Three’s Company repeating on nick at Night for the last 4 hours, just trying to win a free beer. And why? Was it because I couldn’t get the beer through a trade? No. Was it because it was my favorite beer of all time? No, heck, I hadn’t even ever tired it. Was it because I was broke and down to my last dollar? Not at all. So what was this sense of urgency and desperation that kept me up all night?

You see, for some reason I can’t explain, the free beer week was consuming my livelihood; I stopped eating, bathing, and even updating my facebook status. It had only been 4 days since free beer week started, but it felt like eons ago. KISS Songs, Iron Maiden songs, guess my third cousins’ best friends middle child’s first dog’s last name, it was never ending, and I was never right. I felt like a smaller, fatter, less brave Frodo Baggins make a journey through citra hop farms and barley fields with no end in sight. But it was too late; I had invested too much time and too many google searches to go back. And it was at that moment I realized what I had been doing wrong. It was……