It's Friday.

I'm on vacation.

I've been drinking.

I'm not fall down drunk. I'm not even time warp drunk. I'm "comment on obscure friend's and relatives' facebook pages" drunk. And apparently, that includes blogging drunk.

So I just commented on a friend's blog. I really like this blog. She was one of the first people to follow me that wasn't related by blood or marriage, and she's doing almost exactly what I'm doing, though hers is a few countries away instead of a few states. I completely admire her bravery, and the fact that she's willing to risk everything, and trade all familiarity, for love. Good for her! What I'm doing is far easier (I don't have to learn a new language), but sometimes when I miss my family, or my friends, or completely feel like a drunken little fish out of water, I check my blogger dashboard to see if she's posted something. She posts nearly every day, which simultaneously makes me feel like an inferior blogger, and makes me ridiculously happy. I love getting little insights on her life by reading her blog. I literally stood up and danced around in a circle when I found out her Boyfriend had become her Husband; I was so happy for her. I feel like if I met her dog, he would jump up on me and smother me in gooey doggy kisses. Such is the world of blogging, I suppose. Making friends around the world that you will never meet.

I'm off on a tangent, however. The point of this blog is not how much I love Sara in Le Petit Village, but how difficult it is to comment on her blog after a couple of beers.

Boyfriend and I are going through the same thing, right now. The reason we are both having so much difficulty/fun doing these things, is because there is simulated inebriation to go with the actual deed. He is trying to play Grand Theft Auto 4 while drunk, while I am trying to be social, via Blogger. It's much the same. Simulated, computer generated drunkeness... processed through actual human drunkeness. Because it's Friday, so why not?

He has taken his character out to socialize with an Irishman (so he took him to a bar), and I have commented on a favorite blog of mine. Why is my activity the same as fictionalized drinking with an Irishman? His is straight forward. Mine is subtly malicious.

I bet you can't do it. I bet you were going about your business, reading your Lori-blog, when you were side-swiped by this strange and unexpected challenge to your theoretical manhood. So go ahead, I'll give you time to look over the materials and chug a few drinks, and then be thwarted by the difficulty. I know I was. I was like, "La-dee-da... I'm, catching up on blogs and commenting on funny things" and then, POW! My friend's blog side-swiped me with a Captcha.

I don't know if you know what a Captcha is, but it's from the Devil. Straight from his horny little red desk. Imagine taking this:


And turning it into this:


It may not seem so daunting sober, but... Holy shit. When you've had three or four beers on a Friday night... yikes. It's undulating and wavey. You're trying to focus on it and, BAM! it's moving. Not only is it hard to read sober, but give it a try with a few in you. I dare you.

It's a normal, every day word (or pair of every day words) distorted far past every terrible imagining. It's some simple vocabulary word skewed until it is no longer recognizable. Sober! Imagine taking a comfortable High School vocabulary word like "intermittent" or "perfunctory" and letting the Devil twist it around until it looks like it's being sucked into a wormhole.

And then imagine trying to make drunk people do it. Take a normal looking word, and put it through your Photoshop's Drunk Filter. I was staring at Sara's captcha, trying to make the words hold still long enough to type them. I remember a 'p', and an 'h' afterwards... but for some inexplicable reason I became hungry for pizza right after that, and everything's been a blur.

Captchas are supposed to stop bots from trolling through the internet universe and dropping ads and stealing precious personal information. Since Blogger has Captchas, all it tells me is that robots are roaming wild throughout our blogs, and that captchas are their only kryptonite. These little word traps, these curvy, tripsy little traps are preventing bots from flooding our blog comments with Viagra selling sites.

Cause, you know, that's the worst the internet has to offer.