Beer, of course, is actually a depressant. But poor people will never stop hoping otherwise.
--Kurt Vonnegut

I was watching the news at lunch today as they talked about some big shake up at Annheuser-Busch. Something about one of the pretty boy rich kids stepping down to let another pretty boy rich kid do more work so the first pretty boy rich kid can sit on his but and eat lobster all day.

But that’s beside the point.

They had a stock analyst on discussing how this decision would affect the AB stocks. Oddly, she looked more like a haggard marketing manager than a stock analyst. No sharp suit. No slim pointy nose that seems to say “superior”, no smart Marlo Thomas “That Girl” haircut. Just a blobby, frumpy woman who, based on her K-Mart Jacquelyn Smith outfit and her wind blown do, I would never buy stock from. Clearly her own portfolio’s performance precludes her from being able to afford high-end clothes. Like Target.

“AB is a very untraditional stock,” she said. “It seems to defy logic. When the market is up, AB is down. When the market is down, AB is up.”

To this I say, with complete superiority, “well DUH.” AB sells beer. Beer, for one reason or another, makes people happy, or forget their sorrows. When the market is up, people are already happy. They don’t need beer. Or at least cheap beer. They can afford to buy imports and high-end microbrews.

But when the market is down, people are depressed. What do they do? Drink? It’s a time-honored tradition. Feel like crap, drink crappy beer. Suck down the brewskies and forget you even have feet, much less the fact that your wife left you, your dog has been repossessed and your secretary, with whom you had an affair, turned out to be a man. These things happen! But with our amber colored effervescent friend, anything is possible. And anyone is attractive.

Granted, you can’t get home until you sober up and by that time it’s too late. Life has come crashing back down on you. You’ve become the pathetic, balding lout with an enormous beer gut and stains, the source of which has long been forgotten, all over your shirt. You trod back to your car, a 1988 Honda held together with rust and a prayer, sucking the final remnants of wing sauce from under your fingernails.

But tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day. Tomorrow you may kill the final pesky brain cell that demands you have some modicum of self-respect. Tomorrow, just maybe, the cheap beer will finally make you “fitter, happier, more productive.” Maybe tomorrow that hoppy medicine will finally make you attractive to the ladies. You’ll be successful, important, and rich.

Of course, these are the same fantasies that workers in a varnish factory play out by the end of their careers. It’s called “delirium.”

That’s why I recommend Guinness. It’s more expensive, so you’ll drink less. You won’t feel guilty spending your grocery money on it because it contains enough calories to keep a football team going for a month. Plus, any drink you can’t see through is certainly worth its weight in beer nuts.

But, most of all, you’ll look successful. “Oh, he drinks an import.” You’ll be beating off the barflies like a horse on the trail. Well, you’ll be beating off something.

But you’ll have self-respect. And in the end, isn’t that all you wanted in the first place?

Of course not. You bought Busch. You wanted to get hammered.

Moral of the story: When in a recession, buy stock in liquor companies. No matter how far down the toilet the economy gets, people will surely be sticking their heads further down that toilet while saying, “No, I’m fine. Don’t worry about it.”