Merry Christmas boys and girls! If you were a good boy or girl this year, we have whatever you may wish for at Casa Verde - as long as you wish for beer, booze, and burgers. If you want reliable electricity, steaming hot water, and a mint on your pillowcase - BAH RUMBUG!!! There are less fortunate people (on Wall Street) that would be perfectly happy with our 3Bs. Don’t get greedy now. Santa is still watching, you little grinch you! He might even be surfing, but he still sees you.

This blog, like most others I’m sure, receives a lot of spam - and not the tasty canned kind. I didn’t think there was anything interesting about spam until this occurred to me today… the first few words of consecutive spam messages sounds an awful lot like an e.e. cummings poem. For those that don’t know, Mr. Cummings was an early to mid 1900s poet who was highly experimental with form, syntax, and punctuation usage, making him known for a markedly idiosyncratic style. Nevertheless, he is one of the U.S.’s most influential though lesser known poets because he played second fiddle to Robert Frost. If you haven’t heard of Frost, go back to middle or high school and stay awake during English. Anyhoo, what follows are a few first lines of spam we received strung together to sounds mildly poetic. Keep in mind, Valentine’s day is on the distant horizon, so you can steal this bologna and used it on your significant other after a few cocktails. Your other probably won’t get it at all, which is your opportunity to vaguely explain “your poem” and sound dark and mysterious i.e. more savvy in the sack - your welcome ahead of time bro. If he or she claims he/she likes the poem and “gets” what your saying, you are dating an idiot. Congratulations. Enjoy the as yet untitled “poem.”

Jeremy and worried for
archives does more queries:
move those combines
earth! they amon dip-
fourth shift; made sense
ship confiscate the, dreamers
steam kissed precisely that
morning was overrun.

Yes, it exists, and it makes you/me ill. That’s why we don’t sell it here, and that’s why we/I don’t drink it when we/I get off work (anymore).

Time to share some frequently asked questions we hear at The Verde often enough to share for the common good. Included for your reading pleasure are the 100% true answers (TA) as well as our smart-ass answers (SAA) that we try to keep bottled up in our steamy little brains. Remember, there aren’t any stupid questions - just stupid people, which leads me to our first FA Q.
1) How can you say that? Didn’t you used to be a teacher?
TA - Yes.
SAA - Yes. And?
2) Yo, you got any waters up in here dog?
TA - Yes. We sell gallons of water for $1.50 and smaller bottles for $1.
SAA - Yeah homey, for real, we has the dopest H20s up in this piece, yo. How firsty is you, dog?!
3) How much is a Medalla?
TA - $1.50, kind sir.
3a) I have $.87. Can I get a Medalla?
TA - No.
SAA - No, but for free you can go to the library and spend the day reading The Complete Idiots Guide to Free Market Economics or “Buying Stuff” for Dummies until you have this whole point-of-sale thing figured out. Hint: Basically, you need the value of the money in your pocket to be equal to OR greater than the number on the price tag. Good luck.
4) Which way is it to the beach from here?
TA - Right down this road out here, about 75 yards.
SAA - Well, let’s see… this direction over here goes up a steep hill with tons of palm trees everywhere. At the top of the hill, where you just came from, there’s more trees and valleys. And over heeeeere, there’s a distinct line of palms with nothing beyond them but that salty breeze that’s blowing in this direction. I’d try back up at the top of the hill. Don’t forget your surf board.
5) What’s does “no tabs” mean?
TA - It means you have to pay for everything when you want it, not the next day or week or month.
5a) Oh. Okay. Can I get a pack of cigarettes, and I’ll pay you tomorrow? I promise.
SAA - Sure! And hey, don’t worry about paying until someone invents a Delorian that actually travels through time. When they do, borrow it, or better yet, “buy one” and finance it for zero money down at signing (you’ll love that), travel back to this moment in time and then pay me on time! Then I could borrow your time traveling wheels and go back to three minutes ago and lock the door as you approached, so I’d have never had to deal with your idiocy.

Just scratching the surface here. Don’t worry, I’ll FA Q again soon.

We do have wireless internet available at Casa Verde. Sometimes. Just like we have cable TV reception but not always. We do not have computers for rent, and if your laptop doesn’t automatically log-in to available networks, I don’t think we know our password. So feel free to come on down and check your email, MyFace, YourBook, eharmony - or change your flight so you can stay longer. You know you want to.

Our live-in sommelier, Franc, just restocked our wine cellar (located right across from our beer fridge). New to the racks are some full bodied red varietal blends, some crisp, not-too-woodsy, chilled Chardonnays (chill not actually provided), and lighter-than-morning-dew Pinot Grigios. Franc also went the extra mile and contacted the vintners at the site of his original sommeliership, Boone’s Farm, and managed to obtain for us and for you a few precious and highly sought after bottles of Strawberry Hill flavored, screw-top swill. That’s right, the brand backed by Kid Rock is now available at Casa Verde. If you still doubt this varietal’s street-cred, just check out the song Strawberry Wine by country sanger Deanna Carter. If you aren’t familiar with this love ballad, it’s about a vivacious teenage country girl who cavorts with her grandfather’s hunky farm hand (who, by the way, was old enough to vote - call the law!). This older lad, in much more poetic terms of course, gets Little-What’s-Her-Face buzzed on strawberry wine and takes her for an incredibly meaningful (or meaningless, depending who you ask) roll in the hay. So you know it works!

Note: If you think Thunderbird, Mad Dog, or Night Train might see some rack-time in our store anytime soon and that you can save a few bucks on the Boone’s, you are mistaken and should stay out in the gutter where you belong, you low-brow troglodyte!

I know what you’re thinking. Something like, “Holy crap! Michael Felps pre-gamed at your mini-mart two weeks ago and you haven’t written about it until now?!” Truth is, we’re not sweatin’ it. So THE Puerto Rican Michael Felps came by and refreshed his gold medal collection with our Medallas. No biggie. You should see the guy rock swim though. And you thought he was fast in the water. Before he went on his way he mentioned that he’s really happy for the Filis of Filadelfia, but he’s not threatened by their championship status. Quoth Felps, “If they all wanna hang with me they need to win eight World Series in two weeks, and that ain’t gonna happen. Go me!!!”

The season is nearly upon us. We have been seeing more faces of strangers as well as stranger faces. A couple flocks of hottie touristas have already been sighted too, which reminds me, it’s time to dust of my VCR and my 8 Minute Abs video. I gotta get tuned up and shed my layer of summer blubber because chicks love six-packs, which is why it’s so great to work at Casa Verde where we have like infiniti six-packs of beer for sale. We also just got our new bev-fridge. It keeps our beers, in the words of that Bobby Brown Ghostbusters song, almost, “too cold to hold.” Also, the sliding doors on the fridge are still pretty stiff so you get a killer chest work out every time you go for a YooHoo. So come on down for a cold beer. If you don’t know me, I’ll be the guy with man-boobs doing laundry on my stomach.

All our tasty ice cream treats are $1. Oh, what to do? Eat cheap ice cream or surf?

As if you needed another reason to visit our mini-mart besides our vast assortment of beer, wine, over-the-counter drugs, munchies, and party balloons - we now have an automated air freshener. It’s like something the Jetson’s would have if they were still alive. The spray can says “Orange Sun” scent, but really it smells like Fruit Loops, which we don’t sell. So I get to spend all day huffing Orange Sun and craving Fruit Loops when all I have to snack on is chardonnay and Advil PM. Damn you Tucan Sam!
In other news, yesterday you all missed the truly awesome double rainbow that spanned the sky - I almost went after the Lucky Charms. Conspiracy theorists think these “coincidences” mark Sandy Beach as the site of a future turf war between Kellogg’s and General Mills mascots. Until then, come enjoy our freshened air. Seriously, it smells like Fruit Loops. Now I’m going to find out if it tastes like ‘em…