The OLCC’s going high tech: They launched a blog this week.

This has the potential to be a great blog, especially if the OLCC starts posting the nitty gritty allegations at troubled clubs (like the agency’s notes on Greek Cusina).

For now, though, it’s a little wonky, delving into OLCC policies like the prohibition on self-serve alcohol.

The perspectives on self-serve are derived from years of study into public safety and the positive effects of human interaction during alcohol purchases. Recently, a new product, the Enomatic Wine Preservation System has appeared in the Northwest. The machine provides a longer shelf-life and a measured pour, reducing waste and saving money. An extra feature is the Enomatic Wine Card, which allows a patron to purchase a pre-paid card then self-serve their wine at the machine.

Every Oregon business that serves alcohol is required by Oregon statute to have a person with a valid service permit sell, mix and dispense alcoholic beverages. As long as a valid service permit holder dispenses the wine, the Enomatic Wine Preservation System is legally compliant. Several machines are currently being used in Oregon, but they are behind the bar and are operated legally by servers with valid permits.

Might I suggest a weekly blog-column, OLCC? I want to know what the commissioners‘ favorite drinks are.

9 replies on “OLCC Launches a Blog”

  1. Sir:

    The OLCC starting a blog is especially good news for the average Mercury blogger, and bad news for the Mercury now that the illiteratti have a more suitable venue for what passes for wit and wisdom.

    I imagine an electronic stampede of sots and simpletons leaving the mercury blog and joining a blog where ignorance, poor grammar and spelling and humor-less comments will reign. Hopefully, this will include the editorial staff.

    “I want to know what the commissioners’ favorite drinks are.”

    “Ha, ha,” sayeth I. The author certainly must have been up nights working up that cherry pit. How do you live with yourself? How has Hollywood missed your brilliance? Have you thought of moving there?

    I remain your humble servant,

    Jacomus

  2. I wasn’t trying to be funny, Jacomus. I literally want to know what Phillip D. Lang drinks. He seems like a scotch on the rocks kind of guy. Or a teetotaler.

  3. Sir:

    What a bureaucrat imbibes is of little interest to anyone of taste. At best Mr. Lang attended some second or third tier school, took a job with state government because private industry had little or no interest in his skills and abilities, he likely has a little under the table financial action going, and is counting the days until he can retire at the expense of the taxpayer.

    He can drink turpentine for all it matters.

    Why concern yourself?

    Any real story is where Mr. Lang obtains his funds for that vacation home in Aspen and the gasoline to drive his SUV there and back on weekends.

    I remain your humble servant,

    Jacomus

  4. Mz. Ruiz,

    Let me put it another way.

    1. To be effective either in journalism or in parody, one must be cynical to the point of paranoia.

    2. To be effective either in journalism or in parody, one must understand there are only two reasons a person does anything: He or she wants something, usually money, or, is afraid of losing something, usually money, or a combination of both. Maslov’s theories on motivation were intended to sell books and make his reputation, hence his grandiose theory that merely obfuscates the obvious.

    3. All politics, all bureaucratic posturing, all corporate public relations are based on smoke and mirrors designed to misdirect the audience’s attention in the same way a magician misdirects attention away from the trick. It is all smoke and mirrors designed to draw the eye away from that they wish to hide.

    Any journalist or parodist of merit knows this, so immediately looks beyond the distraction to what the magician is trying to hide. By parroting back press release you are helping hide what is going on in the background, to hide that which you, especially, are paid to expose.

    Why does a state agency need a blog? How does a blog help the agency do its job? Aren’t there better uses for this money and staff time elsewhere? Who stands to gain from this action? What, to be blunt, is in it for them? Remember, people only do things for one of two reasons — they want something, usually money, or they are afraid of losing something, usually money, or some combination of the two.

    Now, rumor has it that the Mercury is a humor rag and not a newspaper of record such as the Oregonian, Willamette Week or the (shudder) Portland Tribune.

    From experience, the staff of a humor rag will take the self-serving public pronouncements of a bureaucrat such as “isn’t it cool, we’ve set up a blog” and “hang the bastard on his own petard.”

    My first reaction upon reading your piece was to ask, why the hell is some two-bit petty bureaucrat spending my tax money on something so asinine, and why the hell aren’t you, the parodist, running his furry ass up the mainmast where it belongs?

    This, I am afraid, is the main flaw of the Mercury. It neither fish, nor fowl. In a way, it is only foul.

    Other than one smart-ass columnist, one decent cartoonist and a sex-addict in print, there is nothing to the Mercury more than pablum for padding and advertising. I have read this paper from week one, and find little to recommend it.

    There is a great tradition of publications for the Mercury to emulate. The Harvard Lampoon and its spinoff, The National Lampoon, though sadly now defunct. The Onion. The first newspaper in Oregon, circa 1843, was a satirical publication named the Flumgugeon Gazette, and it poked and prodded the early power brokers, making fun of them all. The Gazette predates the Oregonian by a good decade.

    To start with, your staff needs to decide where it stands. If straight journalism is your goal, then pursue it, by all means, and stop publishing press releases without vetting them. Find out what the bastards are up to and go after them.

    If parody and humor is your goal, then for God’s sake, pursue this worthwhile goal as if you are care about it and not for them. Are you afraid of them? Do they have something on you you’re afraid they’ll disclose? Are they holding your children hostage? No? Then prick their God-damned bubbles and show them for the flawed human beings they are. And it pisses them off then maybe they won’t make the same dumb-assed move again. That is the purpose of satire and parody, after all.

    But you cannot do both, for by trying to do so, you do neither.

    As far as Mr. Lang and his blog are concerned, I’d like to know why the OLCC needs such a thing. For the life of me, I see no practical purpose for such a waste of resources. And if they’re not hiding something, then they are simply stupid, and, this, too, needs be exposed.

    To be good at humor, you must be a cynic and with a mean need for exposing people’s pretensions. You can’t be nice and funny, they are contradictions in terms.

    To be good at journalism, as a professor at Columbia J School once said, you must have a fire in your belly and a massive distrust of what you are told and an unquenchable thirst for the simple truth no matter who it hurts. Or, destroys.

    If all you do is reprint press releases, you must ask yourself if you have the fire either to be a journalist or a parodist.

    Please excuse my excessive zeal and passion. These are matters my author cares deeply about.

    I remain your humble servant,

    Jacomus

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