August 2019 Wallpaper: Black Ops Brewery
Shaenon: For this month’s wallpaper, I’m not sure why I decided to design a bunch of craft beer labels, but here we are. I’m so pleased with these.
As usual, if you make a donation in any amount to the Skin Horse Tip Jar, or contribute any amount to our Patreon, we’ll give you a link to this wallpaper, designed for two computer desktop sizes and cell phones. Patreon contributors will continue to receive new wallpaper for the length of their contribution.
As a bonus, you’ll get this second summer wallpaper from the archives:
Channing: Man, I don’t even like beer all that much and these still look delicious. You are objectively correct to be pleased.
Shouldn’t “blonde” be “blond,” even if it’s Tip?
It’s not “blond” – as in a man with blond hair. It’s “Blonde Ale” – as in another name for “Golden Ale”, one of the more popular American craft beers. It is indeed spelled with an “e” on the end.
The ale is feminine?
Don’t ask me. I didn’t invent the stuff. Maybe they just figured that most people would enjoy drinking something female rather than male. I mean, I’ve only ever tried one craft beer, and I chose it because the name was “Amber”.
English doesn’t have grammatical gender, so which one gets used tends to be arbitrary. For people, “blonde” vs “blond” tends to follow semantic gender; otherwise, according to an article at dictionary.com, “blond” tends to be the default in the US and “blonde” in the UK — no idea about the rest of the anglophone world. On Google, “blonde ale” shows about 1.5M hits, “blond ale” about a third of that.
Again, English doesn’t have grammatical gender.
“English isn’t a language. It’s three languages standing on each other’s shoulders, wearing a trenchcoat.”
It’s the only example in English I can think of.
“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”
Regardless of the number of hits on Google, three of the main craft beer websites – CraftBeer.com, Beer Advocate, and Brew Wiki – all spell it “Blonde Ale”, and that’s good enough for me.
Re: awgiedawgie: it wouldn’t be the first time someone’s slapped something grammatically incorrect or grotesquely spelled on their product.
Sadly, you are quite right. I recently saw an advertisement from the 1950s for some product with the word “Kwik” in its name.
Wallpaper shmallpaper; who wants versions you can print on sticker paper and actually stick on bottles? Sort of DIY Shaenon merch, sorta…
Hell, I want to see these on actual beers, and I don’t even *drink* beer!
This. I’m rerminded of the time I kept buying my sister all the Discworld beers (AFAIK no longer on sale) because I had to buy them for someone.
Channing: “Man, I don’t even like beer all that much and these still look delicious.”
Frankly, they look like they would kill you, but you would enjoy them so much you wouldn’t care.
I would think Unity would be more of a Black and Tan!
Unity would be one of those high-ABV beers that sweeps your legs out from under you.
Sweetheart should be a Coffee Stout. Maybe with a little extra kick.
Or a bock beer. “Bock! Bock!” 😀
After all those coffee dates Unity had with Bubbles? She is definitely a Coffee brew.
I would figure Sweetheart for a Cream Ale.
True, but a Black and Tan ought to be mixed at the pumps – bottling it pre-mixed would be cereological heresy.
Now, which character would be a Mild and Bitter?
Unity and Sweetheart, respectively.
Black Ops brewery: we’d tell you about our special ingredients, but then we’d have to kill you.
I assume one of them is black hops.
I want pin ups of these labels.