Par-TAY!

The Mother of All Beer Blasts has, alas, been thwarted.

Cases of beer left at landfill too hard to resist
By Associated Press, April 15, 2010

Two Columbia, Mo., sanitation workers who apparently couldn't stand by and let beer go down the drain allegedly took dozens of cases of expired brew from the city landfill.

Police and city supervisors are trying to determine if the salvage was a crime - theft of city property - or just a policy violation.

"If we determine it's a police matter, we will take some action," said Officer Jessie Haden, a Columbia police spokeswoman.

A Columbia distributor, Scheppers Distributing Co., sent 1,500 cases of expired beer to the landfill on April 1 in two shipments. The first shipment was destroyed immediately, but the second, containing about 700 cases of Budweiser and Michelob Ultra, was not.

Margrace Buckler, the city's human resource director, said two Solid Waste Division workers, who haven't been identified, brought a city pickup truck to the landfill and hauled off about 50 cases of the beer.

Given the circumstances, how utterly delightful it is that the human resource director shares a last name with a brand of non-alcoholic beer.

Scheppers President Joe Priesmeyer said the expired beer would not be a health concern, although it might have lost some of its taste.

No problem there. It was Bud and Michelob, which means it had no taste to begin with.