"Is This Gonna Affect the Price of Beer?"

"Hey, Mr. Peterson, what's up?"
"The warranty on my liver."

I have to admit, sometimes being an Albertan has it's advantages. Take for instance the recent tax levy on liquor sold in the province. A case of beer went up nearly $5.00 in April, and the same for a 26oz of liquor. Hell yes I was as pissed off as the next citizen - "To Arms!" i said, "The people united will never be...", or something rousing and wholly jargonistic like that.

But now Premier Stelmach is taking it back, saying "it was something that I had a hard time agreeing with; it's been bothering me all that time."

Wha...? This in the face of Alberta's first deficit in 10+ years, and a global financial crisis? It's beer you're worried about?

Here's some things that have been bothering me: the lack of low-income housing, homelessness, ludicrous rent increases (with a sister set of regulations that is laughable at best), child welfare, knife attacks, gang-related crime, insane property tax increases (OK, so this is municipal, but fuck it, i'm adding it), our over-burdened infrastructure, increasingly frightening privatization of medicare and public resources, the Oilers not making the playoffs for 3 years running (not to mention nearly giving away Cogs, Smid & Penner)...

But regardless, I'll surely raise my glass to a decrease in the price of alcohol. Oh, and scraping the bottom of the barrel for votes too, I guess.

Have you ever heard of anything more quintessentially Canadian? Of course, raising the prices in the first place was near sacrilege, but i digress...