Fallow staggered his way slowly towards the market. Less of a stagger, more like a slightly hung-over sway. He had found over six Philips on the floor of the bar, and along with the dustpan money that Eustace had given him, his belt purse was almost overflowing with coinage (it was a small coin purse though, so take that as you may.) Any time a man is able to stagger down the street with coinage in his pocket and a task at hand he will at least stagger happily, and with his head a little higher. 10 Phillips equals roughly, in the standard trading and bartering system, as one dustpan and a half of sandwich, or two dustpans or three sandwiches or one hell of a large pitcher of beer. The very thought of dustpans were suddenly expelled from Fallow’s mind as he sauntered past the Action Reaction Bar, Alehouse, Beergarden and Roofing supply depot.
The simple fact that having a beer entered into Fallow’s mind could only mean one of two things. He was slowly dying, and his body was numbing its way towards death, or his hangover was fading fast. Fallow hoped it was the latter, as dying would certainly crimp his training regimen for the beerlympics.
As he passed the door to the Action Reaction, Fallow noticed that the windows were quite littered with magically glowing signs for bar beverages and roofing supplies. Each magically infused strip of colored light blinked its way in a steady siren call for imbibing a tasty brew, that would surely lead to a happier life of swimming and kayaking and hanging out with a bevy of beautiful people that never actually seemed to sample any of the beverages that they advertised. These signs showed a better life of drinking ahead of the drinker, or they showed you getting a solid start on your summer roofing project.
Fallow pondered the flashing array of bar signs and realized with no sense of apparent guilt that the fastest way to completely rid his body of the effects of last night’s drinking was to drink himself one of the brightly advertised Headsplitter Lagers.
Fine Headsplitter Lager, while providing slight advertising revenue for the research that has gone into this work of fine literature in no way, has any say over how their delectable frosty beverage is spoken of or displayed in this unaffiliated tome. And I should add, is renowned far and wide for its rapid intoxication inducing and hair restorative properties. The current advertising jingle for the beverage, used to go a little something like this:
If you need to get real sick real quick;
Get a heaaaadsplitter.
If you need to get drunk real quick;
Get a heeeeeadsplitter,
If you don’t want to have a great tiiiii-me
Get something else ya jerkoff!
The ad campaign worked wonders for the image of the company, seeing as how you can read the lyrics off of many an under aged teenager’s t-shirt. It seems that no matter who the target market is for any advertising campaign, you can’t judge it as successful, unless scores of punk teens are walking around with your ad slogan printed onto a plain white t-shirt that the teenagers bought from some cheap t-shirt store at the shore.
This ad campaign worked surprisingly well as it cut straight to the chase. Under its massive movement of malted beverage sales, statistics of alcohol abuse actually fell after the beverage started being served in many local establishments. A company spokesgnome said at a recent press conference that it was “probaby cause, normally, some drunk fool would spend all night out carousing and doing steady damage to their livers. Where as with the headsplitter brand beverage, with patented malt o flavor crystals, that same drunk would be home right quick with the wife in bed. Most people could only handle one or two before they felt a surprising need to leave the bar. This could be noted as to why sales amoung the beverage are most popular with the married females aged 23 – 45 demographic.
