The Far Out There Christmas Parade – page 7
Now THIS is a momentous occasion! Frank first appeared way back and has been really bratty ever since. BUT, aside from the duckfaced bodyguards, we never saw anybody else from this supposed cult… UNTIL NOW! Yes, due to popular demand, here are the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Most Important People in The Universe!
I must confess, however, I briefly contemplated starting with the Fifth, deliberately skipping over Fourth solely because that was the one the one that was specifically requested and YOU CAN’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO! …then I remembered that I’m not a total jerk and didn’t do it.
And it’s true, by the way. Nobody wants a Can of Beard.
(Historical Notes: I’ve always been a bit surprised at how much people have been interested in the OTHER Most Important People in the Universe. Not that I disagree, mind you. If anything, the surprising thing is when I’m NOT the only one who finds this kind of secondary character world building interesting. I’m lookin’ at you, literally anything involving Vashti’s musical career. Jamilla in particular turned out to be an Ensemble Dark Horse, as evidenced by her being the only one of the characters introduced here to get her own unique tag.)
hey can of beard! i remember writing out a super long guess of different ideas of what can of beard could possibly me way back.
And years later…we still have no idea what it really is! 🙂
If it were real life, the most likely (and boring) answer would probably be that it’s just an imitation Beer product, that, like Kelloggs “Froot” Loops, changed its name to a similar-but-not-exactly-the-same-sounding word to avoid legal issues of misrepresentation, as it’s actually made with bioengineered plants called “Barely” and “Hawpps” and has “Elcohol” added to it, so therefore totally legal to give your kids for breakfast! …because Lawyers.
i can’t remember my reasoning but i remember one of my ideas was full body ingrown hairs. i was probably leaning in some madscience direction. honestly i think some future version of Rogaine is the most likely, pop a can and grow a beard
That could be. It doesn’t seem to be very popular, though – it seems almost nobody we see has a beard. They probably manage to stay in business mostly because the Interplanetary Santa Corporation buys enormous amounts of the stuff in bulk every year.
The problem with your “most likely” option is twofold. First, anything that can get anyone drunk would be more restricted than alcohol. If “Elcohol”, “Barely” and/or “Hawpps” doesn’t make you at least woozy, if not outright starts deactivating your inhibitions unit temporarily, then it isn’t an imitation-beer.
First of all, the synthetic alcohol-replacement would not have the protections alcohol enjoys stemming from “this has been a staple of a significant portion of human culture for centuries to millennia” (that significant portion being European & Asian culture). As such, it would be more likely to suffer lasting bans. Especially if there isn’t solid evidence that it doesn’t actually cause lasting damage.
Secondly, the Alcohol Industry would ABSOLUTELY fight any type of pseudo-alcohol. Particularly a fully synthetic one. Non-Alcoholic Beverages that are supposed to taste like Alcohol? Those are fine, they make those themselves in the hope of having those who are moving away from alcohol to keep buying their products. But something that’s basically promoting itself as almost-alcohol but not, and thus better for you? They will bring every part of their collective power to crush that in it’s infancy.
Nope, the Alcohol industry has no objection whatsoever, since they’re the ones who developed this product and are selling it, in order to expand their market share to people who don’t consume the original. They’re absolutely thrilled about it!
As to what intoxicating effect it has, it’s not possible to say specifically, as people have fiddled with their genes so much the effect of either the substitute or the original alcohol varies completely by what planet they’re marketing to – there’s probably planets where the people get drunk off milk or OJ or distilled water and alcohol does not intoxicate at all (but it’s still bad for you). Likely the formula is tweaked based on each planet’s genes, culture, and laws to produce the best sales locally. In any case, the whole point of introducing a substitute for a perceived harmful substance is that it has not been proven harmful *yet*, and even if the new thing is actually harmful somehow it takes years, decades, or even centuries for testing and retesting and studies and studies refuting the studies, and lawsuits questioning the validity of the studies refuting the other studies restrictions on it to work its way through the intricate bureaucracies of thousands of different planets and confederations of planets and galactic empires political systems during which you can sell away – this being the advantage over the original substance whose negatives have been known for a million years already – and if, eventually, after a few hundred years, some restrictions start to be placed, you just tweak the chemical formula a bit to make it a new substance and start the whole process over again!