Collecting? That is what this month's edition of the Session is about:

As host of Session #52, I’ve decided not to focus on the substance of beer, but the material that plays a supporting role. Bottles, coasters, cans, labels, ads, tap handles, church keys, hats, t-shirts, tip trays, glassware and signs have been collected by fanatics ever since beer has been sold. These objects constitute the world of breweriana, a term that surfaced in 1972 to define any item displaying a brewery or brand name.

Breweriana implies collection but I like to think of it as really the flotsam and jetsam of the life of a beer world. The things others reject or throw out there for nerds to pick up or get stuck with. We have glasses and empties and mats and t-shirts and fridge magnets and all sorts of crap piling up. Breweriana focuses on brewery sourced crap but that's just the half of the crap out there. There's beeriania, too: all the crap that people think up around beer not connected to breweries foisted upon us all. It is all crap that fills the basements and the cupboards and the attics of beer nerds. It is all crap but for all the crap whether branded or not that is out there, there has never been anything like... the bottle buddy.

Reviewed back in 2005, I wrote "I tried to use it as directed in the write up by placing the cat's head opening so that I opened the beer with my paw over the top of it...well...it was painful in the way that scraping your knee as a kid is painful." A ring with a bottle opener built in, it crushed your knuckle, skinned your finger and never quite opened a bottle correctly. I found it in the drawer the other day after half a decade. I will put it back there now and wish it good luck. Crap thing.