No one likes listening to your (our, collective) drinking stories. It's not because drinking isn't great and interesting -- it is.
It's because no matter how well you tell your story, or how in awe you sound of the amount of alcohol you kept down; you will never convey exactly how fully and sublimely drunk you got. When you tell a tale of drunken excess, you're the only one who really gets it. Usually, that's because no one else gets how awesome it was to feel the cool of the linoleum pressed against your face as you spun away to unconsciousness.
You could hire a poet for the sole purpose of getting drunk and passing out and then writing a poem about it, and still no one would fully appreciate the kaleidoscopic delight of being so fucking wasted the other night. You can be Andrew W.K., write a kickass party song called "Party 'Til You Puke," and still only manage to convey like 80% of how great a time you had.
For the adventurous drinker, it's a hard row to hoe. How can you express, in no uncertain terms, how much of a good time you had when you remembered you had a fifth of Kentucky Deluxe and half a two-liter of flat RC Cola?
Next time, let someone know you're having a good time the night before by throwing up.
Throw it all up, plus most of your late night Wendy's run and the shot of Canadian Club you took when you were really too drunk to be doing shots.
Was the drinking story you just finished telling a funny story? Probably not. But I bet it ran long.
Is puking hilarious? Puking is always hilarious -- and to the spectator -- never runs long.
Does your listener not "get" it? Are they failing to experience the whirling, screaming sense of being that you felt that night, getting totally faced? If they saw you puke, they would experience total engagement of all five senses.
If you count disgust as a sense, they would experience total engagement of all six senses.
Did you spend ten or fifteen minutes detailing exactly what you drank, in what order and why that special combination made for such a wonderful, mostly forgotten evening? That's boring, and a waste of time.
You can accomplish the same thing by producing a visual timeline of your consumption, in reverse, all over the listener's shoes. In seconds!
Did you specialize in something colorful like blue Curaçao, Midori or Jell-O shots?
Don't tell me - show me!
Stop wasting time telling people boring stories, blow the dust off that Cutty Sark and start creating audiovisual sensory adventures.
I can't remember any but the most recent drinking story I've heard and I can't remember any I myself have told, but I remember nearly all the times I replaced that story with dry-heaves and amazing technicolor vomit the night before.
Bonus Points
Points awarded to me, for not including a shit-ton of pictures of people throwing up at parties. Lord knows there's plenty of them out there.
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