http://slyoyster.com

A special pimp bus for the special little pimps inside.  Seriously.  The only thing this bad boy needs are some 22 inch rims and some hydraulics.  Honestly, who puts a spoiler on the short bus?  That person wins.

[Note: I'm hoping this becomes a regular column that could be half the stuff I find and half of the best readers on the web, otherwise known as ya'll, sending funny stuff our way!]

Charlie Papazian of the Examinor has a look at Oregon’s proposed 1,900% increase on the beer tax.  With many states deep in dept, raising odd taxes like this seem to be a golden way to reduce depts.  But often times the unintended consequences of this aren’t fully understood.

Do legislators understand the economics of food and beverage distribution?  I don’t think so.   Let’s take this example:  If the tax on a case of beer is increased by $1 the headlines emphasize “$1 a case increase.”  But that is a misrepresented conclusion.

The system of distribution and retail pricing significantly increase the cost to the beer drinker.   If $1 a case is paid at the brewery, the distributor will typically add 30% (30 cents) and the retail store will typically add another 30% on top of that.   So that’s really $1.69 a case increase to the beer buyer.  That’s still not the entire story.

The estimates are saying that a $0.15 tax increase per pint, which is what Oregon is attempting, would equate to an increase of anywhere from $1-1.50 per pint.  That means that people stop drinking the dank microbrews the state is known for and start drinking PBRs or not going to bars at all.

The tax increase has disaster written all over it.

[ed. note: We're happy to welcome Jacob Jata, aka The Wine Guy, back into the fold.? He's been away for a bit but recently he got? a great job working for a wine distributor and he's had more time to drink some wines.? That's good news for us because that means he's sharing them with us!? We're hoping for more of these quick recommendations.? And with that we'll let him take it away]

2007 King Estate Pinot Gris (Eugene, Oregon)

So?just after I thought my senses were dulled from a night of serious drinking, I opened? bottle of the 2007 King Estate Pinot Gris from Eugene, Oregon.

It was like biting into a Granny Smith apple, Bartlett pear & ripe honeydew melon all at the same time.? Awakening my senses, the flavors persisted enough to give me my second wind.

Thanks, King Estate, for making my night out longer than it was shaping up to be.? The estimated retail price is around $16 a bottle.

Food suggestions: Crab cakes, sea bass, halibut, swordfish, mussels, lobster, chicken carbonara, tilapia, shrimp scampi

2005 Martin Codax Tempranillo (Rioja, Spain)

While most tempranillos seem to be super ripe, over extracted or extremely earthy, this one is smooth, soft and very pleasant initially.

As the wine progresses on the palate, flavors of black cherry, tobacco and leather come through with a medium body.

Aged in French & American oak for eight months this wine has taken on some vanilla, spice and cedar notes as well.

This retails for about $12 a bottle.

Food suggestions smoked meats, game, lamb, stews, pork and ham

Makes me proud to call Oregon home.  I can’t believe people fall for it, but what’s startling is that the scam was custom tailored to her. I would say it’s time to switch to Gmail or some program with spam filters built it.

SWEET HOME, Ore. – Janella Spears doesn’t think she’s a sucker or an easy mark.

Besides her work as a registered nurse, Spears – no relation to the well-known pop star – also teaches CPR and is a reverend who has married many couples. She also communicates with lightning-fast sign language with her hearing-impaired husband.

So how did this otherwise lucid, intelligent woman end up sending nearly half a million dollars to a bunch of con artists running what has to be one of the best-known Internet scams in the world?

Spears fell victim to the “Nigerian scam,” which is familiar to almost anyone who has ever had an e-mail account.

The e-mail pitch is familiar to most people by now: a long-lost relative or desperate government official in a war-torn country needs to shuffle some funds around, say $10 million or $20 million, and if you could just help them out for a bit, you get to keep 10 (or 20 or 30) percent for your trouble.

All you need to do is send X-amount of dollars to pay some fees and all that cash will suddenly land in your checking account, putting you on Easy Street. By the way, please send the funds though an untraceable wire service.

By this time, not many people will fall for such an outrageous pitch, and the scam is very well-known. But it persists, and for a reason: every now and then, it works.

For Spears, it started, as it almost always does, with an e-mail. It promised $20 million and in this case, the money was supposedly left behind by her grandfather (J.B. Spears), with whom the family had lost contact over the years.

“So that’s what got me to believe it,” she said. [...]

She wiped out her husband’s retirement account, mortgaged the house and took a lien out on the family car. Both were already paid for.

For more than two years, Spears sent tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Everyone she knew, including law enforcement officials, her family and bank officials, told her to stop, that it was all a scam. She persisted.

Spears said she kept sending money because the scammers kept telling her that the next payment would be the last one, that the big money was inbound. Spears said she became obsessed with getting paid.

It’s going to take her and her husband two years to dig themselves out of the debt from this scam. A shame really. Also, I love that the writer of this story had to clarify that she is not related to Britney Spears and that this somehow got past the copydesk.  Well played sir, well played.