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.

Drunk on St. Patty's with Boyfriend, and trying to not let his parents see how inebriated we are... Good times!



UPDATE: I just went upstairs to take off my shoes and one of my layers of shirts. I couldn't find the light switch, so I used my cell phone as a flash light. When I left our guest bedroom (home for this week) I decided I knew it well enough that I didn't need no stinkin' light. On the top step was Boyfriend's long haired family cat, Jack. My first thought was not 'Oh, cat sitting on the top stair in the dark.' it was "Holy shit! DEMOOOON!!!!!"



UPDATE 2: I told Boyfriend this and he only laughed. Then we decided we are definitely not cut out to be alcoholics, cause being drunk for almost 12 hours straight is not so fun after about 8. Especially when you're trying to fake sober for your parents (which is counterproductive for me, cause mine totally read this, but whatev.) But I guess my mom will be happy to know that I don't actually aspire to alcoholism. I don't think it would really help my career, as I can't conjure words of more than three syllables when I'm three sheets.

Today has been a strange day. Not so much bad, just not great. Or productive. I feel kind of emotionally hung over. Not really physically hung over in an 'I need lots of water, coffee and greasy food' kind of way. More like an, 'I need a hug and to be told I'm pretty even though my eyes are nearly swollen shut and my nose is three times its normal size.'

I simultaneously felt tired and restless, and didn't feel motivated to do much at all. Which, I'm sure, is entirely due to the emotional reeming I accidentally put Boyfriend and myself through. Remember how I mentioned in one of my earliest blogs that I have a tendency to bottle all of my insecurities? All my emotional jiggly bits? They all kind of came flooding out. Thanks, Sailor Jerry. You bastard.

So today I hung out in my pajamas - all day. And had Girl Scout Thin Mint ice cream for breakfast. Hell. Yes.

So last night I did something which has become a bit of a tradition with my friends and I. It started a few years ago with the Gay Best Friend and I sneaking a small bottle of vodka into the Lindsey Lohan movie "I Know Who Killed Me."

Last year, the Bestest and I took my mother to see Twilight, as she couldn't wrap her mind around how terrible watching Vampires play baseball was. Also, she didn't believe how Kristen Stewart vomits up her words until she actually saw it. Needless to say, she spent a good portion of the movie trying to stifle her laughs, so not to disturb the 14 year olds who were actually enjoying the movie. I however, did not. I laughed and mocked openly.

Last night we went to see New Moon, Sailor Jerry successfully hidden in my purse. Honestly, it's the only thing that got me through that movie. Twenty minutes in, all we had seen was Deadward and Mary Sue trying desperately to have some on screen chemistry and failing. Oh, and Jacob 'I'm the only decent character in this series' Black trying to smile and flirt his way into the plot. By the time we get to Bella's birthday party, we've been reminded every thirty seconds that Bella is now 18, and therefore older than Edward. And that is bad. Cause women should be inferior to the men in their lives in every possible way, right Stephenie Meyer?

I know it's bad form for aspiring writers to publicly criticize an established writer. I guess what is keeping me safe is that Meyer is not a writer. She's some dime a dozen romance novel reader who went to school to get her MRS degree, and decided to study literature. Then, suddenly she decides to write a book after having a dirty dream about a 17 year old vampire. She doesn't even use the word 'chagrin' correctly, though it's used at least once a chapter. The only reason she got an agent and a publisher so quickly is because they realized what a gold mine they had. They could sell this piece of nonsensical fluff to tweenage girls and voila, easy money. She's the Britney Spears of the publishing industry. I could go on and on about my loathing of Stephenie Meyer, but I won't. I'll leave it to one little paragraph and walk away.

My favorite moment of the movie, however, came when the rum had just made my head start to spin. Bella encounters the werewolves, and runs to her father to warn him that it's not a bear killing hikers. In her painfully strained way of barfing out her lines, Kristen Stewart manages to put forward her most emotion to get out, "They are not bears!"

For some reason (probably alcohol induced) I found this to be the funniest part of the movie. Other than the horrible CGI. I mean, really, could they have rushed this movie any faster? I've since been running around randomly saying, "They are not bears!" and laughing like a maniac.

The Bestest and I had a great time making fun of the terrible movie, the terrible story, and the terrible acting. But we did spend a good deal of the movie talking and having entirely too much fun. At one point, she leaned over and said, "One of the many reasons I love you is because you ignore my stutter."

I responded with, "That's because you ignore mine, too!"

We both laughed and she said, "Oh, I love us! Let's touch foreheads!" And we did. And we giggled.

And to round out this horribly disjointed blog, I'll close with some of my funnier text messages, and leave out most of the part of the night where I turned into a weeping, insecure shithead and accused Boyfriend of not really loving me. (Yeah, I'm that kind of obnoxious, ridiculous drunk.)

Me: This is a 2fer. I can make fun of mormonns and shitty bampires!
BF: Bampires!? You adorable lush!

My phone has a qwerty keyboard, which I'm still trying to get used to, even though I've had this phone for almost a year. And it makes for some mighty funny drunk typos. My mother, the Bestest and I were discussing the sort of murder Stephenie Meyer deserves to have acted upon her. We decided exsanguination would only be appropriate. And my mother came up with the brilliant idea that it should be by paper cut. One paper cut per page that she's had published.

Me: My teeth are numb, usy can we still stop be by suffer.
Me: One page by paper cut.
BF: What? I have no idea what those mean.
Me: I cant read englisjh!!!!

The other day, Boyfriend posted a link to a comic on my facebook. He just sent it to me because we both enjoy webcomics, but the website had a most serendipitous update between when he sent it and when I read it. It turned out to be an e-card marriage proposal. When I asked Boyfriend if he sent it as a humorous way to tell me he loved me, or if he was actually proposing, (We've discussed the 'somedays' of getting married and raising kids and being old together) he said the comic hadn't updated when he sent it to me, but he was very glad it had. That made me smile.

The closer I get to leaving the nest, the more I'm freaking out. I suppose it's natural, as this is a big step, not only for me as a person, but for our relationship. And we're ridiculously happy now, but we had to travel a very bumpy road to get here. Last night was a drunken flood of insecurities, and he weathered it like a champ (though, as the Bestest said last night, with everything he's put me through in the past, he's got a few years of putting up with me being an insecure bitch before we're close to breaking even.) Still, I don't like being a whiner, and I was a bit mean to him. However, after almost two hours on the phone with him, we sent a few goodnight texts back and forth. Primarily mushy stuff, but this one is funny. Mostly because of the Seussical ring it has to it.

Me: Also... I'm still drunk so drunk i will say, i want you to real propose someday. No comics. With a ring. Not an expensive one. Like, $15 sterling silver one.
BF: Trust me, I'll do something better than a comic.
Me: =) you've no idea that how happy makes me!!!!
BF: I plan on devoting a whole lot of my future to that end!

Good job, Darling, Gold Star.

This is modesty.

Looking at the crowd made me think of that old 'Guess Who?' game I played as a kid. Everyone had one or two distinct details, but for the most part they all looked the same. I saw a stand up comic on TV a while back (long enough that I can't remember his name) talking about playing 'Guess Who?'. He mentioned how terrible it was if you drew one of the black people as your person of interest, since there were usually only three black people on the little flippy cards. You were pretty much screwed if the person you were playing against asked about race. Tonight was no different. In a crowd of about fifty people, only four were not white. I sent a text to my boyfriend telling him I wanted to take a picture of everyone in the room, and turn it into 'Guess Who?'

And it totally would have worked, too. I can just imagine how a game of Hipster Guess Who? would've sounded. For this example, I'll use Abbi, because she and I are quite funny when in close proximity;
Abbi- "Is your subject male?"
Me- "Uh..."
Abbi- "Well?"
Me- "I can't really tell if it's male or female."
Abbi- "Um...."
Me- "I'm gonna go off the name. I think it's a dude."
Abbi- "It's not a lesbian name?"
Me- "Are you crazy? Lesbians aren't hipsters! All hipsters want to bang dudes."
Abbi- "True."
Me- "Does yours have dreadlocks?"
Abbi- "Yes. Does yours have stereotypical, pseudo-intellectual, narrow, black frame glasses that are supposed to convey how superior your hipster's personality, acumen and fashion sense are?" Me- "...yes. (blink, blink) Does yours?"
Abbi- "No. Has your hipster used half a pound of hair wax to carefully sculpt his hair in an unkempt manner?"
Me- "I don't like this game any more."
Abbi- "Does that mean yes?"
Me- "....yes."
Abbi- "It's Darius!"
Me- "Damn it!"

Darius, the tentative albino rhino.

Josh was the first friend to show, and he kept me company for the better part of an hour until Abbi, Laura and Nina got there, bringing the total of non-whites in the building to six. There was still plenty of time to burn before it was my turn (twelve people, ten minutes each... do the math) so I got another cup of coffee and everyone else grabbed a drink and a snack. I was far too nervous to eat anything.

While we were sitting through the other musicians (some were good, some were not), the man sitting next to me started up a conversation. He was probably the oldest person that played, and during our conversation mentioned that he had spent time in Vietnam. He was eccentric to say the very least. He was dressed rather nicely, but in a way that made him blend in with the rest of the crowd. He was wearing an old fedora with a torn piece of a patriotic bandanna safety pinned to the front. He smelled like melted butter and spoke so softly I couldn't hear his crazy ramblings half the time. He introduced himself to me three separate times... pretty much every time I tried to politely ignore him and spend time with my friends. His name is John, and he was playing tenth. When he found out I was playing thirteenth, he stopped talking for a moment and looked at me, sizing me up. Then simply said, "You're brave."

"Thank you," I said.

He elaborated, "Getting up in front of all these people, you're brave." It wasn't anything I hadn't done before, but it had been a while, and I would be alone. I thanked him again, and tried not to let his assessment of my bravery make my stage fright worse. "I'm going to stay around and listen to you," he added. I thanked him a third time.

When it was finally time for me to get up, the manager asked me if I had played there before. "I've played open mics before, just not here."

He smiled mischievously and said into the mic, "We have another Gypsy virgin!" and everyone applauded. At least I was the fourth person that he did that to. I was nervous enough as it was, but then the bad jokes came out.

Once I got situated on the stool in front of the microphone, I said, "I haven't done this in a few years, so be kind.... and if this was a more private situation I'd say the same thing. Either way it'll be over in ten minutes." And crickets. That was probably the most taxing part of being in front of fifty people I didn't know. "Aw, that was a bad joke. I'll just sing now."

During the first song I only flubbed one chord, which is pretty effin awesome, considering how badly my hands were shaking. Remember that little two year old that was running back and forth? Her weather resistant hippie mother had let her carry the tall glass tumbler their chocolate milk had been in. I'll give you three guesses as to how this ends.

Needless to say, though Josh was recording me, the video probably won't be posted. Josh and Nina told me it was all screaming toddler, shattering glass, and then people sweeping it up. Good thing I'm going again next Tuesday.

When I sat back down John the melted butter man congratulated me on performing, and told me that he liked my little set. He then asked if I'd be interested in maybe collaborating. Me singing and strumming up front, him playing lead behind me. As I'm painfully polite, I used the excuse of moving two thousand miles away two weeks from now to decline. And not the fact that he was a slightly creepy, but probably harmless, crazy mumbler.

I don't remember exactly what he asked me next, as this was about the time I was coming down from my adrenaline high, but whatever he asked, and whatever my answer, he ended up smiling serenely at me and saying, "You just exude courage and intelligence. I can tell just by looking at you. And you seem so calm and composed. That's why you have so many friends." He motioned towards the little group of four in front of me, and I tried to use this as an opportunity to get out of the conversation.

You would never guess it, but I'm actually painfully shy. I hate talking to people I don't know. It surprises me to no end that I have as many friends as I do. Most of the time I feel like I don't deserve them because I'm terrible at socializing. Both in person and from a distance.

My little ploy didn't work, and a moment later, Butterman was tapping me on the shoulder. "I'm sorry to keep bothering you, but can I ask you a question?" He looked like he struggling with the nerve to ask it. And by that, I mean it looked like he might burp at any moment. Instead, words came out, "Are you a Christian?"

I should have known. It's Oklahoma, after all. I paused for a moment, but answered, "Yes. Though I don't go to church. I can't find a church that isn't full of hypocrites."

He smiled at this and said, "There isn't one. But I knew you were a Christian. He told me to ask you. I said, 'It's none of my business' but He insisted." He gestured towards his own head at this point, so I don't know if he can hear God, or if his hat talks to him a la Harry Potter. Whoever it was telling him to ask me questions, Butterman listens to him. That's a little unnerving. He continued to talk for a little bit, but for the most part, I don't remember. Honestly, I was texting the boyfriend and was only nodding politely whenever there was a lull in Butterman's mumbling. It was also rather difficult to hear over the 'music'. Do you remember the screeching toddler's dad with the carefully disheveled appearance? He was playing, and though all he had was an acoustic guitar to accompany him, his singing sounded like a cross between Tiny Tim and this cat. Then Butterman pointed to Josh and asked, "Is this your boyfriend?"

"No," I said. "My boyfriend lives in Seattle. This is my boyfriend." I pointed to my phone. The man nodded.

"That's why you're moving." I nodded. "Is your boyfriend a Christian, too?"

"No," I said. I decided to spare the old man's nerves, and told him Stu was an Atheist. He appraised me for a moment, just nodding slightly the whole time, as if agreeing to something someone was saying. It was probably his hat. "He likes you because you calm him down. Compassion just radiates from your eyes. That's why he likes you." I thanked him again, but he continued. "Someday you'll lead him to Jesus, don't worry. Someday you'll lead a lot of people to Jesus."

They are my source of power.

I thanked him one more time, and then pretended that Abbi had said something to me, so that I could find a way to get out of the Jesus speak. I wouldn't have found the conversation memorable, except that this John-that-smells-like-Butter man is the second person to tell me I was going to 'lead a lot of people to Jesus.' The same freaking words.

Maybe someday I will start my own brand of tequila and call it 'Jesus'. And I'll be in charge of marketing, too, as well as the President of 'Jesus Tequila, inc.' And it'll have a slogan like, "Jesus Tequila; Get a taste of Salvation!" or "Jesus Tequila; Tests your faith more than dinosaurs."

That settles it. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna start my own brand of tequila. And I will have Jesus and dinosaurs on the label. It'll be amazing.

If I master this, I will soon master the Universe.

Well, at least the talk of bacon cheeseburgers and strawberry milkshakes has made me realize I haven't eaten in 15 hours. Maybe I'll grab a sweater and wander upstairs into the house. Grab some coffee with kahlua, because it's not yet noon, and I always like to get a head start. Also, because if I learned anything from Hannah Barbera cartoons, it's that if you're freezing to death, drink the alcohol from the barrel around the dog's neck. Apparently, alcohol has magical warming properties. I can look out the window at the snow and see if I can push shower sex thoughts out of my head long enough to remember what I was going to say about the friggin' snow earlier. Oh well.

Heh heh.