Jelly-Belly's, British Lit., Jane Austen, and Beer

Because of my seemingly never ending trail of diseases, last summer I decided I was going to eat healthier in the hope that that would boost my immune system. No candy, no ice cream, no soda, no desserts. It was painful. Anyway. I did the no sugar diet until Worlds and after my race I delved back into the world of sugary delights. It's been grand. But I will soon have to give them up again because I am staring training up in the near future. You probably want to know where all this is going, huh? I'm getting to it. You see, a hugely enormous bin of Jelly-Belly's mysteriously appeared in my parents room the other day and I've become addicted to going in there and taking them by the handful, multiple times a day. They are so good...Sour Red Apple? yum! Berry Smoothie? yum yummy! Blue Raspberry? yummiest! All 3 together? Pure heavenly delight! My mouth is watering just writing about them. In fact, wait a minute...*goes downstairs, gets some, and returns*...back now. Where was I? Ah yes, they are the best! And its going to be so hard to give them up. Maybe I should just start training when the bin only has Black Licorice and Buttered Popcorn left....I think that's what I'll do.


I'm taking a British Lit. course this year and was super excited to start it because when I think Brit Lit. I think Austen, Bronte, Dickens, Doyle, Tolkien, and Lewis etc. And I love those authors. But as it turns out its mostly medieval stuff: ballads and epics that are so outlandishly written, it almost seems like you're reading a different language. Not so good. Not to say its been awful, it just hasn't lived up to my expectation of it. Right now I'm reading A Midsummer Night's Dream, and although its fine when performed on stage, its a pretty painful read--I sometimes feel like I'm reading a supped-up bedtime story/fairytale. I wonder what Shakespeare was on while he was writing it. On the other hand, I just finished Henry the V, and it was more than decent; it was quite good actually.

British Lit. brings me to Jane Austen. I really like her books. Call me girly. I don't care. I like to think its sophisticated of me. Anyway. Today I found one of her quotes that made me love her even more: "It is you, however, in this instance, that have the little children, and I that have the great cask, for we are brewing spruce beer again." It is from a letter she wrote to one of her sisters. Apparently she was a lover of both making and drinking beer. I thought that was really funny. In all her portraits, she looked like a dainty girly-girl. And I think most people imagine her personally to be similar to the nicer and more decent characters in her books. I'm not saying that she wasn't both nice and decent, but raise your hand if you had ever imagined her brewing and guzzling down beer by the keg. Yeah. Didn't think so.

Judging from these facts I have come up with the universal formula for becoming as good and successful a novelist as Austen.

1. Time travel to early 19th century England.
2. Don't get married or have any kids.
3. Have a beautifully personable and insightful writing style.
4. Make and drink beer by the keg.

Because you never got married, marriage and romance is all you can think of; you have a beautiful and insightful writing style, so you write beautifully written and insightful romantic novels...lots of them. And, if writers block ever sets in, the beer brewing and drinking will take care of that in a jiffy. There you go, the formula for the making of the next Jane Austen...You're welcome. =P

And continuing on our theme....here is the lady herself.



....Yeah, totally seeing beer brewer and drinker, lol.

-Thomas