Every time I leave Corvallis I’m always kinda bummed, for myriad reasons probably, but mostly because, well, I never see any beavers. I have a solution for that, for helping the Oregon State community be more beaver. The beaver is a darn fine mascot – underrated on many fronts – and it’s about time he transitions from his two-dimensional depiction on t-shirts and koozies to a role more in keeping with a rodent of his stature.
We’ve always called it the toilet paper cigar – affectionately. When you get to know a cigar you can talk about it irreverently. Over the past twenty years, I’ve smoked over 1,000 of them. It’s a cigar you can depend on, a cigar of substance that delivers consistent satisfaction. It’s an everyday friend and every cigar smoker needs at least one of those.
Used to be that living off the grid meant living off the power grid … Stickin’ it to the man by avoiding taxes and power bills, living off the land and sucking off of the government’s energy instead of paying for your own. Today, living off the grid essentially means living without the Internet or a smartphone. I’m not saying that would be easy, but it sure does make us all sound like a bunch of pussies. So if the grid is now synonymous with the Internet, then living on the grid is kind of pathetic, codependent and mindless and living off the grid would be a reactionary course correction, unrealistic and probably unsafe. So I’ve resolved to live next to the grid. Maybe you’ll try living there with me, or maybe you’ll just flip me the bird from your pod on the grid and say that I don’t get it.