A Perfectly Rational Adjustment

British psychiatrist, R.D. Laing said:  "Insanity - a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world."  So snarky, yeah?  Umami says:  "Beer - a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world."  That's a much healthier world view.  So it's a healthy thing for Umami to be cruising the beer aisle, after a grind of a day, in search of a cold one.  And, boy, did we find something interesting.  Tucked up on the highest shelf, towards the end of the cooler, next to the St. Pauli Girl N.A. (which we also picked up), was this little gem of an item.  Read it with Umami . . . "Budweiser and Clamato."  Again, slowly and with feeling . . . "Bud-wei-ser and Cla-ma-to."  Or is it "Clam-a-to?"
You have to wonder, though, "What were they thinking?"  Even if this tastes good, how exactly do you market this?  To Budweiser fans?  To Clamato drinkers (all eleven of them)?  To attention starved food bloggers??  Okay, maybe they have something there!  Heck, I'd want one of these for my collection of "What-the-Hell?" food, right next to the Spam Macadamia Nuts!

So anyway Umami breaks out a 24 oz beer glass that he keeps around just for this purpose and opens up the can.  He's immediately intrigued by grapefruit juice-like appearance of the drink and tomato-y fragrance of the beverage.  In fact, it basically smells like a Bloody Mary.  And, indeed, it basically tastes like a Bloody Mary . . . like slightly salty tomato juice with very little "beer" flavor.  It doesn't have the thickness or richness of real Bloody Mary and it's not as spicy as, say, Buzz's Bloody.  But it's fairly tasty . . . call it a Bloody Mary light and also call it surprisingly drinkable!  It's still hard to see what the market for this is, so maybe I should just grab a couple of cans as curios, or for use as gag Secret Santa gifts. 


A sidebar, though, on the Laing quote.  It appears that Laing might not have actually said that.  Oh, if you Google it, plenty of quote cites will pop and say that he did, but if you push and dig, it turns out that none can give can cite where it appears.  (Or, at least none that Umami saw.  You want to check 96,000+ sites, you go right ahead!)

So what are we to say about a world that attributes words to someone who maybe never said them and proliferates the misunderstanding like a meme through cyberspace?  What are we to make of a world in which someone thinks Budweiser and Clamato is a salable combination?  Maybe that drinking the latter helps with the former and that doing so is a rational adjustment to an insane world!