If I went to college (I did) I would have been the guy in the teen comedy who is a nerd and wears glasses. And that nerd never got to play Beer Pong.
Do teen comedies take place in college? That feels inaccurate.
Let's just say in college, I wore glasses.
That means that in addition to the star quarterback dumping my lunch tray on my head and getting stuffed into lockers, I also had run-ins with the cool stoners who just didn't give a fuck but all the girls loved them anyway. And then when I got together with my friends (the fat one, the skinny one, and the one who hangs out with us for no discernible reason) we played video games and talked about Dungeons and Dragons and never got to play Flip Cup.
I'm getting side-tracked, that's still high school movies.
The glasses: real. Also though I never really had occasion to play drinking games. I mean, none of the standards. I played like "Make a giant gin and tonic and drink it" or "split a quarter of a fifth (1/20 of a gallon for those keeping track at home) of Jack with a friend for $10" or later, "drink a bottle of Thunderbird".
All of those games lack the strong social aspect (peer pressure) that a good drinking games possesses. Drinking games - good ones - have rules. They're complicated enough to require "learning" but not so complicated that you can't remember them if you're drunk.
Drinking games also have consequences. Drinking is both the reward and the punishment, which is some kind of alco-sado-masochistic trip that I don't feel like digging any deeper into. Other than the obvious thing is that people just want to drink, whether they follow the rules (are good) or break the rules (are bad).
And it works!
A good drinking game will end up with everyone drunk whether they've flipped the thing into the party cup or balanced the thing on their nose for a full thirty seconds or whether all three throwing hatchets found their target.
Drinking to get plastered (alone) can be kind of boring so it helps to feel like you have a purpose and there's a framework in place to get you to you goal. Your goal is "too fuckin' drunk" and the framework is "do something with this red party cup" and the purpose is "don't be such a pussy, dude!"
That's the one though. It's the purpose that gets people into trouble. Drinking games must have a social component. If no one else is around then you're not taking a shot every time Marv gets technically killed in Home Alone. You're just getting drunk by yourself and thinking about how much Goddamn Christmas is on TV.
When there are people around, there are "rules". And to play the game and have the fun and get the drunk you have to adhere to the rules, otherwise you lose the game! And everyone will remember the one Friday (Tuesday) where you were totally supposed to take a shot because Harry had a toolbox fall on his balls and you totally didn't take a shot. And that's when you kind of cross a threshold.
You realize you're drinking far too much to really appreciate the labyrinthine twists and turns of Kevin's deadly machinations. Micro Machines on the floor! He'll be crippled from the waist down! You close your eyes and the room is spinning - but the situation dictates that you continue to follow the rules because otherwise, like, party foul.
Then, darkness.
It's a system, man. It all exists to get two or more people really fucking drunk. Drunk enough to do something and not even worry about it until oh my God what did I do last night and I think I pissed in the trash can and where are my pants? Better still, a lot of games have a smart-munition component, wherein someone [the girl] can be prejudicially targeted to drink so they'll [she'll] be more pliable. So in addition to the literal darkness you may experience as consciousness slips away there may be a deeper, figurative darkness lurking in your boning-decision making center that's waiting to make some terrible choices for you. Depressing!
The entire fabric of the drinking game tapestry is held together by the complex weft and warp of peer pressure. And I'm like some kind of word poet with metaphors.
All it takes is someone to say "I'm drunk enough I think - I acknowledge that Marv and Harry just drank a fatal amount of shellac (and I should technically drink twice because it's two kills) but I'm not drinking any more fucking Keystone because if I do it's all coming back up."
But then what happens? Everyone else is also too drunk and will not remember you not drinking and you can save all of your regrets for the results pages of your increasingly abstract conceptual porn searches.
But also if you're just lining up drinking games to score with the honeys (asleep, high five!) your soul may have actually died at some point and you might want to get an MRI or PET scan or whatever they use to check for the presence of humanity. Also you might be a date rapist.
had better watch out.
Showing posts with label drinking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label drinking. Show all posts
07 August 2012
19 January 2012
Work it Out: Counterpoint
I painted a rather rosy picture of the workplace recently and in the spirit of the Fairness Doctrine I think I should at least attempt to provide a balance counterpoint. As I struggled to stay on my feet this morning I was immediately struck with one very clear reason (and subsequently several less clear reasons) why Work Sucks and Is Not Cool.
No Sleeping
Some jobs allegedly encourage napping because it helps people stay creative. I think all of those jobs are Google and, accordingly, do not count. Other jobs provide you with break rooms to take power naps -- sometimes that break room looks like your car in a dark part of the parking garage. That's still just napping and it's certainly on your own time.
I'm talking about full on, down for the count paid-for-it sleeping. There's only a few jobs I can think of that actively pay you to sleep:
If none of these is your job then you aren't being paid to sleep. The fact that this inequality exists should be flimsy evidence enough that jobs are bullshit.
No Drinking
This doesn't apply to people in the alcoholic beverage industry. I think they *have* to drink to make sure the rye bourbon something something barrels.
I'm talking about the crystal decanter full of brown liquor elective drinking, as seen in the wildly popular documentary Mad Men. It's on PBS you should check it out.
Unless you're the Captain in a police procedural you can't even hide it in your desk. You just have to not drink.
Sneaking in vodka in your water bottle seems (and is) deceitful. I'm saying, they should just let you bust out the brandy at the end of a good meeting and bust out the scotch in the middle of a shitty, soulsucking meeting. But you can't, and that's awful.
Yes Expectations
People ask you for stuff. Help, questions, advice, service: these are all things you may be expected to provide at a job. Customers be all, "Excuse me sir, can you help me find [product]?" and you're all "Yes, it looks like we don't have it in stock at the moment, would you like me to special order it for you?"
Bullshit, says I. If I wanted to spend all day talking to and helping people I would've been a nurse. But I think they have to deal with poop sometimes (?) so maybe not a nurse but definitely someone else who helps people. I was placed in my job to do a number of things, but answering questions from co-workers, customers or superiors was not one of them. It was my understanding that I would be left alone with absolutely no oversight or accountability to sleep the day away, stopping occasionally to pour myself a double scotch on the rocks.
In failing to fulfill any of these three categories, these jobs have left us with no choice but to shove them.
Bonus Joke!
I really hate to see this one go to waste. I missed the setup by not explicitly saying "I hate working eight hours a day". Now that that's out of the way, here's the joke:
"If I wanted to do something I hated for eight hours a day, I'd buy a dental dam and give your mom a call."
Zing!
No Sleeping
Some jobs allegedly encourage napping because it helps people stay creative. I think all of those jobs are Google and, accordingly, do not count. Other jobs provide you with break rooms to take power naps -- sometimes that break room looks like your car in a dark part of the parking garage. That's still just napping and it's certainly on your own time.
I'm talking about full on, down for the count paid-for-it sleeping. There's only a few jobs I can think of that actively pay you to sleep:
- Mattress Tester (maybe?)
- Sleep Study Participant
- Long Haul Trucker (as long as you can do it while driving)
- Drunk Dad (easier after a big meal)
- Rip Van Winkle
If none of these is your job then you aren't being paid to sleep. The fact that this inequality exists should be flimsy evidence enough that jobs are bullshit.
No Drinking
This doesn't apply to people in the alcoholic beverage industry. I think they *have* to drink to make sure the rye bourbon something something barrels.
I'm talking about the crystal decanter full of brown liquor elective drinking, as seen in the wildly popular documentary Mad Men. It's on PBS you should check it out.
Unless you're the Captain in a police procedural you can't even hide it in your desk. You just have to not drink.
Sneaking in vodka in your water bottle seems (and is) deceitful. I'm saying, they should just let you bust out the brandy at the end of a good meeting and bust out the scotch in the middle of a shitty, soulsucking meeting. But you can't, and that's awful.
Yes Expectations
People ask you for stuff. Help, questions, advice, service: these are all things you may be expected to provide at a job. Customers be all, "Excuse me sir, can you help me find [product]?" and you're all "Yes, it looks like we don't have it in stock at the moment, would you like me to special order it for you?"
Bullshit, says I. If I wanted to spend all day talking to and helping people I would've been a nurse. But I think they have to deal with poop sometimes (?) so maybe not a nurse but definitely someone else who helps people. I was placed in my job to do a number of things, but answering questions from co-workers, customers or superiors was not one of them. It was my understanding that I would be left alone with absolutely no oversight or accountability to sleep the day away, stopping occasionally to pour myself a double scotch on the rocks.
In failing to fulfill any of these three categories, these jobs have left us with no choice but to shove them.
Bonus Joke!
I really hate to see this one go to waste. I missed the setup by not explicitly saying "I hate working eight hours a day". Now that that's out of the way, here's the joke:
"If I wanted to do something I hated for eight hours a day, I'd buy a dental dam and give your mom a call."
Zing!
17 August 2011
Op/Ed: Emesis As A Cure For Crappy Stories
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.
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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