Good Reason to Kill #25: Bought the Wrong Kind of Beer

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I was going to say that alcohol was obviously involved in this incident, but I guess under the circumstances maybe it was a lack of alcohol.

According to The Morning Call, a 19-year-old man pleaded guilty in Pennsylvania on Monday to one count of simple assault for punching a 21-year-old man at a house party. The defendant admitted he had given the older man $15 to buy beer for him but then became angry when he screwed up the order. Words and then blows were exchanged, and the hapless beer courier ended up going down and hitting his head on the street, fracturing his skull.

"What type of beer did he buy?" the judge asked.

"He bought Yuengling," replied the public defender. "He was supposed to buy light beer."

Yuengling LightOne of the many unanswered questions about this incident is whether this means the victim bought Yuengling instead of Yuengling Light, or whether he was supposed to buy a different kind of beer altogether.  Perhaps the defendant, who probably is not very smart, thought "Yuengling" was some kind of despicable foreign beer made by foreigners, when in fact D. G. Yuengling & Son is, according to it, the oldest operating brewing company in the United States, established in 1829.  Although, "Yuengling" is said to be a Anglicized version of Jüngling, the name of its founder, who was a foreigner until 1823 and so maybe that's what the guy was upset about. But probably not, because according to Wikipedia, Yuengling Traditional Lager is sufficiently popular in Pennsylvania (where the company is based) that "it can be ordered by simply asking for a 'lager.'" Maybe the defendant did that but the victim came back with Yuengling Light Lager. "How dare you perform this illegal task for me improperly," the defendant may have said, "let alone imply that I am overweight by returning with low-calorie beer?" Violence followed.

The defendant would probably be in a better position had the victim come back with something abhorrent like Black Label, a Canadian liquid labeled as "beer" that to this day is the only beer I have ever rejected because of its taste. (This is coming from someone who used to happily buy generic beer at the local supermarket, a beer that was sold in white cans bearing the single word "BEER.") I assume this is the reason the judge asked "what type of beer did he buy?" Since the defendant could be sentenced to up to two years in jail, the answer to that question could turn out to be fairly important.