Love is the seventh blog.

It seems like a day for levity, an opportunity to take my hair down and relax. What should I talk about today?

Like a clean carbonated wave the answer comes flowing into my brain, like a rich mouthful of roasted grain I can almost taste on my tongue, like a sack of whole cone hops emptied over my head so that the green dust covers my pores and sticks between my fingers.

I should talk about BEER.

My guest and good friend Bill M. taught me a concept that I am going to pass on to you. If you have ever cleaned up your apartment the morning after a party, or if you fell asleep on your couch last night with a bottle of beer somehow balanced perfectly upright on your knee (how do I do that, when I can spill a cup of coffee just by looking at it?) then you are already halfway there. You have created a thudder.

Your thudder is the last beer you drank last night, the one you left on the counter with three or four swallows still in it. What should you do in the morning, when you wake up and find it waiting in its place, looking at you, accusing you of waste, inattention, and wussness?

Drink it, of course. Immediately. Do not pour your thudder into a cold glass. Do not wrap it in a wet paper towel and place it in the icebox for five minutes. Doing so changes its essential nature. Thudders are drunk at room temperature. Thudders are drunk in one long draught, without coming up for air.

The next time you wake up and find a thudder hiding in the corner of your kitchen, try it for yourself and be amazed.