If your ’00s were as antic-filled as the cast party following the wrap of MTV’s “Jersey Shore” during which the Associated Press reported “fans [of the show] deluged a New Jersey nightclub, forcing the closure of a thoroughfare and leading to the arrests of four people,” you might be thinking that 2010 is a good year to turn a new leaf.
Maybe your New Year’s resolution is to pull a Beastie Boys-like rally cry and “fight for your right to PARTY!” Students in Falkenberg, Sweden would certainly have your back on that tip. UPI press maintains that students from Chalmers University occupied Carlsberg Brewery in protest against the brewery’s inactivity in building a beer pipeline to campus. Quoth UPI further, “The students said Tuesday’s occupation … was part of an only partially-serious tradition stretching back to 1959, when the student union purchased a single share in the company that owned the brewery until 2000, The Local reported Wednesday.”
One share? One share?!?!?!
That’s like me storming Apple’s campus in Cupertino, demanding that I have a right to their most expensive laptop because I own one $202 share (AAPL). That is some arrogant bargaining on the part of the Falkenberg students.
But then, imagine if Skorton ever promised us an Ithaca beer pipeline into Willard Straight just because some schmuck bought a single share when the brewery opened in 1997 — people would be clamoring for beer as if it were a God-given, American right to have such ambrosia in every water fountain on campus!
Ah well, one can dream.
Carlsburg Brewery says they will begin new construction on a one-meter addition to the already-installed six-foot pipe. At the conclusion of the project, the pipe should stretch 62 miles from the brewery to campus.
(Remind me to buy a share when Ith Brew goes public.)
Then again, maybe your resolution is to cut back on the drinking because not only did you get arrested in your fervor for Snooki’s weave, but now you’ve also got some inner tubes around your waist that you need to “deflate.”
You might find dieting hard, but at least you won’t find it as humiliatingly hilarious as a few Swedes now do. On Jan. 14, the universe served up some cosmic irony to members of a Vaxjo, Sweden Weight Watchers clinic: the floor collapsed underneath a group of “about 20 dieters participating in a weighing event.” Even worse? This was the clients’ first weigh-in after beginning the diet.
One dieter said of the event, “We suddenly heard a huge thud; we almost thought it was an earthquake and everything flew up in the air. The floor collapsed in one corner of the room and along the walls.” Additionally, “the smell of sewage spread throughout the area.” However smelly, the valiant (and uninjured) dieters remained undeterred, and finished the weighing in a hallway.
Weight Watchers still does not know the exact cause of the
collapse.
But maybe weight and figure is no worry to you, and you instead resolve to spend 2010 making your palate more discriminating because 2009 was a bit bland to your taste (I wouldn’t blame you; see ya later, worst decade ever). You could celebrate your new gustatory pleasure by buying the most expensive ham in the world, at $2,940 for a fifteen-pound leg. In southern Spain, they treat their ham-pigs right, feeding them only the finest acorns and roots available. So naturally you should spend the price-equivalent of three 13-inch MacBooks for the best.
Andrew Cavanna, buyer for British market, Selfridge’s, defends the ham by saying, “Connoisseurs will appreciate the melt-in-the-mouth texture of this truly amazing Spanish ham. The leg may seem to have a large price tag but when you think about the amount of care taken from breeding right through to the curing, it is actually amazing value.” And in case you worry about getting ripped off, the leg comes with a DNA certificate as proof of authenticity (because we all understand DNA coding for pig leg).
Two hundred dollars for one pound? That’s chump change in comparison to what you might pay for the most expensive cheese in the world: $500/pound for Domesticated Moose Cheese from Sweden. (Really.)
So just remember: no matter how you say “out with the old, in with the new” in 2010, be sure to do it with bombast and a dash of humor. Look at the cast of “Jersey Shore”: just because they branded their guido style with their tongues in their cheeks, they’re “famous” — with rabid, incarcerated fans to prove it!
Original Author: Lauren Herget