Here is a reason to brave the surveillance state (my current excuse for wearing pajamas all day) and leave your home: As mentioned earlier, Portland Beer Week starts today!

There are roughly a million events, so check out the calendar and make up your own mind about where to go. Or if you're hyperventilating from too many options, just take my advice for the weekend:

Tonight, there are a ton of beers on at the kick-off party at Lucky Lab NW, many of which sound delicious. But also, IPA UPSIDE DOWN CAKE ICE CREAM. And also Bretta fermented pears and fudge ice cream. There are six different Salt and Straw collaborations with local brewers. Can you get drunk on ice cream? Find out tonight.

If all the variety at the Lucky Lab party turns you off because you're stuck in Portland's IPA heyday (god bless you), head to Saraveza's Oakshire event. Four IPA's including a firkin of something "special."

Then tomorrow, you got a beery strip club tour with Brewvana and New School. It comes with a pretzel necklace, so if you're a prude, you can tell people you just did it for the necklace.

Before that, though, you want to head to Belmont Station for the release party of the official PDX Beer Week Beer, an "India Wild Ale" from Breakside and Gigantic. This 100% brettanomyces wild IPA is likely to be the vanguard of a new(ish) movement in Oregon beer, so be there for the inception.

Saturday, check out the Fruit Beer Fest, over at Burnside Brewing, which promises to be a slightly less drunk festival this year, as organizers say they're focusing more on the sessionable, patio-friendly beers - including a delicious rhubarb apple cider from 2 Towns in Corvallis (they used two and a half tons of rhubarb in this batch of cider!) and a perfectly drinkable pomegranate Berliner weisse from Widmer. You're going to want to go for the VIP package here ($28), as it allows you to get in early, at 10:00am for some special tappings.

Getting in and out early at the Fruit Beer Fest will also allow you some extra time to make it to Beermongers for a tap takeover and meet-the-brewers event with previously mentioned De Garde Brewing from Tillamook. These cats are already bringing a Double India Wild Ale (with Chenin Blanc grapes and aged in gin barrels, no less) to a week officially represented by an India Wild Ale. What did I tell you about this style? (It was something "Something vanguard something.")

Sunday you should head to The Hop & Vine for a Widmer tap takeover and to try the new Hop & Vine/Coalition collaboration, a Calypso-single-hop pale ale. (Full disclosure: I am a Hop & Vine employee and helped brew that beer. So if you don't like it, blame me.) Then somehow safely make your way to SE Hawthorne for Bazi's Mussels From Brussels, in which four local brewers pair mussels with a beer and a brewer-made secret sauce. In attendance: The Commons, Lompoc, Pfriem, and Upright. Do not miss this.

Okay, that's all I can get through without having a rage stroke over being out of town this weekend. Now get dressed and drunk!