Drank #4

4. "Death Tastes Like Licorice, and Vice-Versa" Location: NYC. Date: Summer 2006

Nobody, and I mean nobody, likes the black jellybeans. It's always the last one in the jar and I can only assume that they are eventually either incinerated or shipped off to a 3rd world country to be used as a building material. So what assclown decided it would be a good idea to make a drink that tastes exactly like it? I'm talking about Sambuca, obviously, and it's probably my least favorite liquor.

The interesting thing about Sambuca is that you never buy it yourself and it allllways comes your way uberlate in the night. This happened to me in an especially bad way last summer. I was out with a bunch of people from work that I really didn't know at the time and we were out at some weird bar. I'm not really too drunk but my stomach had too much to drink, if you know what I'm saying. So I'm sitting there and all of a sudden a bucket-sized shot of Sambuca appears out of nowhere. I throw it back and then have to summon every ounce of chi and concentration I can muster to prevent from throwing up. This would've been devastating to my budding friendships and reputation. My life was almost wrecked by liquor(ish).

Drank #3

I apologise (yes, I'm in a British mood) for delaying the continuation of this series of "My Top 5 Worst of All Time Ever Drinks Ever." Let us recall #3, again in no particular order...

3. "Irrational Exuberance, Russia Style" Location: Somewhere in PA. Date: July 2002.
This story originates on a summer evening right before my friends and I were off to college. After eating at a local "Eat N Park" (aka Eat N Puke, Park N Eat) about 5 or so of us were chilling in the parking lot. One of us said, "You know, I have a bunch of alcohol left in my room and I can't leave it behind for my parents to find." You've got to remember that in high school booze is a highly valuable commodity that isn't easily obtained. It's hard to just throw stuff out. Given that we had only a few days left before school, we needed a drastic solution. Some Einstein suggested we drink during the day. Us other Einsteins thought this was a capital idea. We planned to meet at a friend's house around noon, get hammered, and somehow sober up and return back to our homes. Turns out all but 4 of us bitch out. Whatever, pass me the bottle.

A quick aside- It seems that high schoolers like their hard alcohol. I believe there are two reasons for this. One, it's easy to conceal. When you're underage stealth is key. Two, beer and whatnot is an acquired taste. I remember hating beer as a freshman in college. However, at these random parties all they had was natty light kegs- pretty much the ND staple. I remember just forcing it down and eventually I began to like it. Back to the story.

I think we had a bunch of booze at their place but all I remember having is Smirnoff vodka. Standard issue 80 proof. We sat down at their table and I began to throw back shots chased with Sprite like it was my job. I wasn't getting paid by the hour, I was getting paid by the ounce. And this rapid-fire, almost continuous inbibation is why I am classifying this experience as a "drink." After a while I start to feel really good. From a pure physical standpoint it was perhaps better than I've ever felt while drinking. I said "This is awesome. Why the fuck haven't we done this a million times before!" Well, young self, you will shortly find out.

Within 30 minutes I start to feel really shitty. I get these debilitating stomach cramps. They force me to sit on the couch and lean forward with my chest against my legs. This lessens the pain.

Let me give you an idea of how drunk I was and how much pain I was in. My one drunk friend, Pippet, for some crazy reason decided to take handfuls of ketchup and slap my back. I didn't even really care. All I cared about was keeping the cramps at bay and riding it out. So Pippet is just there sitting next to me and rubbing condiments on to my white shirt like a madwoman. All I could really muster was a faint "wtf, please stop" or two. Pippet just ignored me and refused to relent.

The fact that this all occurred in the middle of a weekday makes the whole scenario even more ridiculous. Through the grace of God Himself I recover from the cramps somewhat but am still feeling quite crappy. We eventually called our high school and left a voicemail which was the collective chanting of "we love lesbians!" This exemplifies the randomness of the day and the devastation of drink #3.

Picture Time

I uploaded some pics I took on my phone.

Here our deck that I climbed on to. This pic gives you a better idea what I was up against.

Here is Sadam. He's still alive, apparently.

St. Wasted's Day

I went home to PA on Friday. Here be the occurances:

• On Friday P-Diddy and I met our friend David Vogel at a bar named The Fox and the Hound. There were a couple chicks that came and sat right next to us and wanted to chat it up. We were pretty rude and didn't even bother to humor them for a minute. P-Diddy and I did, however, challenge Vogel to spit some game at the girls when he claimed that he had "mad game." Mockingly I dubbed him Milton Bradley because he has so much game.
  

• My friend Mack P had people over his house on Saturday. I brought over some Keystone and Guinness and we started drinking early (~5). We played pong throughout the night. My teams (including the infamous Team Hardcore- Me, P-Diddy, and the aptly named Cups) were 9-0. The last game was a pain. Our ghetto setup got changed somehow and moved from 9ft to ~10.5ft. I like 9ft the best because I feel like it fits my natural stroke. I'm fine with playing longer distances but the problem with the setup was the the ceiling was too low. Because I have a high release and put a lot of arc on the ball, I hit the ceiling multiple times and was forced to laser it. I somehow managed to hit a redemption shot and we won it in OT.
  
• Reading the above makes me wonder if I take pong too seriously. Wait, there's no such thing.
• Some random peeps from high school showed up. They brought 40s. I grabbed an OE and it was all downhill from there.
  
• We went to Tom's Diner really late. I for some reason ordered a ton of food- the "country breakfast," and 2 orders of bacon and 2 orders of eggs. That's like 6 eggs plus a bunch of other stuff. I didn't mean to order this much. There was some confusion in the loudness/dunkedness. The waitress was being a bitch and claimed that I would never eat all of that. This pissed me off and I started to pump myself up so I could eat it all. I mean, seriously, what kind of waitress mocks you for ordering a lot? Doesn't that help her? Good Lord. When the food comes I realize in 3 bites that I have no chance of finishing. My friends help me out and I still can't finish it. All of the booze and this huge egg sandwich that Mack P made me was just way too much. All of that food did sober me up pretty well, however.
  
• When we get back to Mack's everyone is gone and the door to the other half of the door is locked. I break in with a credit card to get my jacket. I learned later that it was locked because someone was in there with their lady friend. Luckily my timing was good.
• P-Diddy was semi-macking on this one girl that showed up. However he was cockblocked by one of our old schoolmates. He was not happy.
• I went on facebook and went nuts. I may have called one of my old college friends a "dumb bitch" on her fb wall. This was not good. Facebook should require a breathalyzer.
• Somebody stole Mack P's stove's knobs. This was not cool.
• Late in the night Vogel was sitting in a chair. I went nuts and started to kick out the posts below the seat that held the chair together until it collapsed beneath him.
• I woke up with so many scratches on me. My elbow was all scraped because I fell up the stairs. I also had scratches all over my forearm and hands because I was playing with "Balls", which is one of Mack P's rabbits. Yes, I was playing with Balls.
• While we are out at Tom's I was in one of my belligerent smack-talking modes. I kept calling people proletariats or "proles".
• Also, fireworks were set off randomly.
• Team Dynasty is 8-0 (5-0).
  

Rekord Keapin

• Friday my coworker Kimbo had a charity drink-a-thon. $25 for 3 hours. Naturally, many of us became over-served.
• When I walked Big Red out to a cab I was carrying a half-gallon of milk. So picture me chillin at a street corner chugging a large container of milk at 4 am. Ridiculous.
• 4/5 in beer pong. However, we were 4/4 in games remembered.
• We had a 3-person dance party in front of the TV way late at night for absolutely no reason other than that we were drunk and immature. P-diddy danced so hard that he ripped his pants. Now that is intense. The rip was seriously over a foot long on the inside of his leg.
• The loudness of our party somewhat angered D. He came down at one point in the night and said, "I'll save you 2 hours. Big Red is gonna scream 'whoooo!', P-diddy is gonna say that his pants have a hole, and JD is gonna be doing the robot and poppin' and lockin'." The sad thing is that he was completely correct.
• I determined a new way of living and decision making- WWHBD. I.e., what would Humphrey Bogart do? More than likely he would bogart that shit.
• Went to Jack's on Halsted on Saturday. Was awesome.
• ND got fuckin screwed today with the shitty NCAA tourney draw.
• I created a linear equation for evaluating females. I'm not going to post it but if you inquire I may be able to explain and/or show it to you.

Mr. Jones

I recently found out Mike Jones is coming out with a movie. Let me guess the plot: At the beginning hoes didn't want him. As the movie progresses he becomes hot. The conclusion is hoes are all up on him.

The names have been changed but the problems are real

Just as a note, I'm beginning to change the names of the people in all of my stories regardless of how devatasting I deem the entry. I've generally done this but haven't been consistent. In basically all cases you can ask me and tell you who it was. Also, the names will change from story to story. Just FYI.

Weekend

Just for record keeping purposes:

• Friday one of my coworkers held a house warming party. It was a lot of fun. We chilled at her apartment then went out to a Karaoke bar near where I used to live. One of my friends was a little tipsy and people kept giving her drinks. P-diddy (one of my friend's nick name) and I took the initiative of taking her drinks and drinking them. The problem with this was that a.) I ended up drinking some weird girly drinks and b.) I got drunker than I wanted to. I wanted to limit my intake b/c I had a "hot date" at noon on Saturday and needed to have my ish together.
• At the bar P-diddy did the whole "hit the beer bottle to make it overflow" thing to our friend Mark. Mark thought that, for some reason, if he put his thumb on top of the bottle that it would prevent any from coming out. However, he learnt quickly that the pressure was too much to handle and a stream of beer flew 8 feet in the air and doused some girl at the bar. It was devastating and I quickly ran from the scene. The scene was reminiscent of the part in Super Troopers where Farva gets wasted and sprays beer all over the place while screaming "Farva's number one!" repeatedly. We made sure to tell Mark he's number one.
• My one friend kinda-sorta almost got in a fight with a bouncer. That would have been interesting.
• S Dot came over on Saturday. The usual hilarity ensued. We drank a bunch of OE and played pong. We then went over to Mike's house to a party. Since I started drinking at like 3, I was hurting pretty bad and had to hold off drinking for a while. I felt like clowning it up that night so I was dancing quite a bit. Quite ridiculous.
  

Placeholder

This is reminding myself to write an entry on HPT. Don't have time now.

I would just like to express that I am down with that street vernacular, yo.

Don't be all insolent and shit up in my countenance, or I will bust a cap in your person. Pursuant to said policy, all haters will have to chill thier roll.

Even the blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes...

...and sometimes, out of pure dumb luck, he finds two.

Interesting Night

After work I went out with some work peeps and I almost busted a devastating joke. It went like the following. Female person who shall remain nameless: "I think I'm going to take the L home today. I'm not used to riding the train." I was about to say, "Yeah, you're used to a train being run on you!" Had I said the above, it would've been disastrous. And amazingly hilarious. Everyone there would've gone home and told their friends about it. Damn you tact.

Early Adopters

My friends and I were all about ghost riding before ghost riding was cool. Remember that.

Nanner

Today I replaced my friend/coworker's phone handset with a banana when he was out. I then called him as soon as he entered his cube.


I was going to buy a shirt with the above on the front but a.) it's somewhat insensitive (I'm not that immature these days) b.) I don't look good in black shirts, and c.)19/20 people wouldn't get it. However, it's very fucking humorous.


Gallent from Highlights is a smug bastard.


I thought of the worst. alarm clock. ever. On weekdays, it awakens its victim by playing a "Cha-Cha Slide" lyric. Specifically- "Go to work." Not only does it play a part of one of all time's worst songs, it commands and mocks you by telling you that you need to go to the office. You're gauranteed to shoot youself.


Since when did the word "nasty," as in "good at something," appear in the common vernacular? I missed the memo. Damn PC Load Letter. I would appreciate comment on this.

Sudoku

What's the obsession with Sudoku? I completed a "grid" or whatever on an airplane once and it sucked. It's effectively executing an algorithm over and over in your head until all squares are filled. I found it extremely mechanical. I'm pretty sure I could write a C++ program in under an hour that could solve these things.

I have a funny story regarding Sudoku matrices. I was on a crowded train one morning at there was this 22ish year-old girl sitting down doing a Sudoku puzzle. Sitting next to her is this really shading-looking guy who's blatantly looking over her shoulder. He's staring at the puzzle for a good 5 minute then whispers loudly "the middle is 5." She finds herself in a conundrum. She can a.) write in the 5 and motivate the weirdo to continue feeding her answers as well as concede that this screwball figures something out before you, or b.) not write it and come across as either stubborn or an asshole. It was a no win situation and I felt bad for her. She made the right call by waiting 45 seconds or so and then wrote it in. T'was quite awkward and amusing.

ConvenientTruth

OH MY FUCKING GOD IT'S GLOBAL FUCKING WARMING! WE'RE ALL FUCKED IN OUR ASSES BECAUSE IT'S GETTING SO HOT AND THE ICE CAPS ARE GONNA MELT AND WE'RE ALL GONNA HAVE TO EVOLVE WATERWOLD STYLE. AL GORE WAS RIGHT, WE'RE ALL GONNA BURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRN!

(btw that pic says negative 20 something windchill if you can't read it)

You know it's cold when... (btw, these are all things I have personally observed)

...it hurts to breathe.
...your head gets so cold that it feels like "brain freeze" when you eat ice cream too fast.
...your clothes are cold for 3 minutes after going inside.
...train signals don't work. (!)
...condensation from your breath on your glasses freezes.
...you get excited to see that temps are set to rise to the mid twenties.
...you see people sprinting to get inside a la The Day After Tomorrow.

This is what happens when temps are close to neg 10 with wind chill up to neg 35. This has been ridiculous. And when you spend at least 20% of your 45+ minute commute outside, this sucks brutally. It just plain can't get any colder at this latitude. I'm convinced this has been a 5, maybe 6, sigma event.

Posting for the sake of posting

My friend Kim organized a firm-wide happy hour with all the different branches and divisions. The turnout was pretty good. About 30-50 people were there. When we showed up there was this group of people at a table we thought we had reserved. At first we were like "whatever" but once more people arrived we tried to get them to move. They acted like they worked for our company but eventually we proved they didn't and we called the bouncers. The perps were acting like a bunch of juvenile hardasses and we almost got in a fight. Anyhow, crisis averted. I didn't really "mingle" with my fellow coworkers a whole lot because I wasn't in the mood. I did, for once, meet a girl that wasn't taken/annoying/unattractive. I'm surprised these girls exist any more with my luck. We'll see where that goes. Also of note, for the first time that I could remember, I had a white American cab driver. It was amazing. Very little else of note occurred yesterday.

Alcohol => Awesome Judgement

Here's the story. Tonight I went out drinking with some peeps. Dave wasn't feeling well and Pace was out of town so it just me. I drink a few drinks and whatnot. I took it somewhat easy. Anyhow, I come back and I realize I don't have my keys. I ring the doorbell and Dave for some reason isn't answering. Fine, I'll use the garage door. I use the code and roll up to the door that separates me from the ole homestead. Of course it is locked. I make a frowny face. I try the doorbell and banging on the garage door to no avail. I weigh my options:

• Sleep in Dave's car. This was probably my smartest option. However, this would not be terribly fun and I'm not even sure if his car is unlocked. Given Dave's apparent affinity toward locking things this option might not have even been possible.
• Call my good friend who I was out with and see if I can crash at her place. This was a reasonable and smart option. I would've felt bad asking to stay over and she was still out. Also, I would've had to make the trek to her place and back in the morning.
• Quit being a bitch and somehow climb up onto our deck-like thing and hopefully gain entry though the sliding glass door.

Guess which one I chose! If you guessed the dumb choice, then you are correct. Let us go through the sequence of events. At first I thought option 3 was very reasonable because I knew we had this step ladder type thing in the garage. So I find that thing and set it up underneath our deckish thing. Let me give you a quick idea of our deck so you can understand the circumstances I faced. Our deck protrudes roughly 5 feet above the road and is 10-11 feet above the ground. It is a lot higher than it looks.

So there I am drunk and ready to tackle this monstrosity. Even if I do conquer this beast the door might not even be unlocked. Then I would be really fucked. But it's cool because I has gots this ladder. I set up the step ladder and the Goddamn thing is seriously 3 feet off the ground at the maximum. My spirit is broken. I can get my paws on the bottom rung of the deck but that's it. The task of getting up there was quite daunting and I was appropriately scared of falling and hurting myself. For the next 5 minutes I waffle between trying to wake Dave up and seeing if I have a chance to make it up on the deck. In a wondrous stroke of brilliance and gall (read: irrational exuberance due to intoxication) I hype myself up and decide to really try to get up there. I get my hands on the bottom part of the I-beam that supports the deck and then reach up to grab the vertical metal bars of the deck. At this point my feet are completely removed from the ladder and I am past the point of no return. I make my way up the structure inch by inch by alternately sliding up each hand up the rails. Eventually I get high enough to where I can put my knee inside the I-beam and use that as a leverage point. Game over. I pull myself up, exhale and put my hand on the sliding glass door handle. If I can't get in I'm screwed. Getting down might actually be more dangerous than getting up. As expected the door is open and I gain entry. I was ridiculously pumped that I was able to get inside after being stuck in the cold and seemingly without a prayer of getting in. I then performed, truly by reaction, an NFL touchdownesque celebration. I recall ripping off my jacket, slamming it on the floor, and doing other ridiculous motions.

You need to understand, my veins were running with adrenaline and testosterone. They needed to be in order to do get up on this deck. A calm, rational person would not and could not do this. Of course, as soon as I get upstairs to my computer Dave comes out of his room. Nice timing Dave.

PSA

I think I found my calling. I'm going to travel around to high schools and such to talk to kids about alcohol. I'm not going to tell them not to drink or to drink moderately, but to handle their biz. The gist of my message: "Little Johnny had too much to drink one night, drove home, and ran over an orphanage. Johnny, I don't care if you had 20 drinks. Quit being a bitch and handle your shit, son!"