If there's one thing Barney Gumble loves more than beer, he hasn't discovered it yet.
And not for want of trying. Hard liquor, sterno, cough syrup, turpentine, he's tried them all. Once, in a fit of desperation, he drank some non-alcoholic champagne, with near-fatal consequences. But beer! Wonderful beer! Barney would kill his own brain for a beer.
He's drunk beer out of ashtrays, sucked beer out of bar rags, licked windows made of old beer bottles, and, realizing a dream come true, drunk straight from the tap until his heart stopped. As he's said more than once, 'If Moe's Tavern didn't close, I'd never leave.'
When not entertaining the rest of the barflies with his lip-rippling belches, Barney seeks semi- occasional employment. He has worked as a sneeze-guard tester, handed out pamphlets dressed in a diaper for Lullabuy$ Baby Shop, appeared as a float in a temperance parade, and made regular donations to the Springfield Sperm Bank.
However, he has also been given the key to the city for his snowplow heroics as the Plow King, and won a Grammy as tenor singer for the Be Sharps, a barbershop quartet comprised of Homer, Apu, Skinner, and Barney.
His romantic life, also semi- occasional, has ranged from Linda Ronstadt and Japanese conceptual artist Kako to Selma Bouvier and the lady in front of the drugstore who's always yelling things.
Being the swinging single that he is, Barney's apartment is decorated in an early 70's style - replete with cable spool table, Farrah Fawcett poster, and empty pizza-box motif. A style guaranteed to keep Barney a swinging single forever.
For this fundamentally existential lifestyle, Barney owes Homer Simpson thanks. They have been friends since high school and it was Homer who, on the eve of the all-important SAT test, introduced Barney to his first beer, sparing him the shame of an Ivy League education and the burden of steady employment.
