The thought occurs that I never actually posted part 1 of the Magic Beer Chronicles here. A few people have asked for it, so I’ve reproduced it below. This one was written around the time Microsoft were attempting to generate media hype for their soon-to-be-launched XBox console, and after I had a rather disappointing experience attending a pre-launch event; of course, the story below has nothing to do with that experience, at all, and is simply a work of fiction. Yes.

The Magic Beer Chronicles, part 1

Imagine there’s a brewery who have created an amazing new type of magic beer. They think it’s the best type of magic beer ever made, and they have lots of impressive numbers and statistics to show that it’s at least 1000% more magic and beery than any other magic beer on the market. However, being a clever brewery, they know not everyone in the world believes numbers and therefore decide to put on a special magic beer tasting to show to let people make their own minds up.

They put adverts in the specialist magic beer press advertising the tasting. The adverts tell people to go to the brewery’s website and register for it, and if they do, they will be sent a special golden ticket which will allow them entry to this exclusive tasting. Many people sign up for this, because they’re quite excited to find out what this impressive sounding magic beer is really like.

However, when they turn up to the tasting with their magic golden tickets, they are told the golden tickets are no longer valid, and that in fact anyone can come in, not just people who are really interested and read the specialist magic beer press. However, if they wanted to go in now, they should have told the people on the door three hours ago. If they still want to taste the magic beer, though, they can leave their names on the door and come back in three hours. Some of the public foolishly did so, in the belief that the magic beer would taste so good it would be worth it.

Slightly under three hours later, after buying and reading most of a book in Waterstones, the people with the now worthless golden tickets return at their designated time, to be told that their party’s tasting has already started, but if they hurry up they might catch the end of the tasting.

They rush inside, through a bizarre maze of tunnels all illuminated with lights the same colour as the magic beer’s packaging, and end up in a big dark room with lots of flat screens, onto which is being projected a video telling people how good the magic beer is, and showing people some of the magic the beer is capable of. The problem is, this video has been showing on the TV and internet for the last three months, and doesn’t tell anyone anything new.

Finally, they get shown into a piddly small room with three beer dispensing terminals. The people in the tasting party outnumber the beer dispensers 4 to 1, and so only about 1 in 4 people actually get to try the magic beer. But that’s hardly a problem, because the beer is dispensed in tiny thimbles with really big handles anyway, and there’s nothing like enough there for them to see how magic it is. Once those people have tried the beer, everyone is ushered out, and given a load of crisps and sweets which have nothing to do with the beer except that their packaging is the same colour as the magic beer’s packaging. They then find themselves, 5 minutes after they went in, standing on the street wondering vaguely if there was any fucking point at all in wasting the last three hours of their life in a futile attempt to be marketed at.

And then they get given a hat.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 20th, 2004 at 10:27 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.