A Motherfucking List Because I'm Sorry

I literally cannot get my shit together, you guys.  It’s like I’ve spent the past four to eight years being Girl With Her Shit Together and then BAM - over the course of three short summer months, all of my shit inexplicably fell apart to the point where I wouldn’t know how to reassemble myself even if someone were shouting step by step instructions at me through a bullhorn.  I’m like a blind person with a new IKEA bed frame - I’ve got all of these little pieces but no idea how to build them back into a working bed (i.e. functional person), and every time I try, I only create a strange, uneven metal rhombus thing that would never actually support a mattress (i.e. a functional life).  And that metaphor really sucks a hot one, but I don’t know how else to describe how all over the place I’ve become, and come on, a blind person fiddling around with a crate of IKEA bed frame knick knacks is kind of a good visual (pun intended).

My life, sans the heavenly glow.

  Of course, this is all really unsettling, particularly if you’ve spent the majority of your life being on top of everything like I thought I had, but LISTEN . . . I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking lately and I’ve come to the conclusion that worrying extensively about not having my shit together really isn’t going to change the fact that nearly everything about my life right now is fucked up.  Like, laying in my bed all day obsessing over not having any “career path” and whether or not anyone will ever love me again and the fact that I accidentally ripped my diploma and how I can barely hold a conversation with another person without saying something completely awkward and I still haven’t done my laundry regardless of the fact that I ran out of underwear like, a week ago – worrying about this shit all of the time is honestly not going to accomplish anything other than make me fat out of refusal to get out of bed and depressed out of over-concern for my future.  So I decided I’m just not going to do that anymore.  Instead of spending every second of every day filled with guilt, dread, and gloom, I’ve come to the conclusion that everything about the shattered remains of my life right now is okay, not because it actually is, but because it has to be.  I’m Vick.  I’m 22, single, getting paid hourly to work as a hostess/office bitch, living at home with my mother, and all of this has got to be fine or else I’ll suffocate myself with useless self-loathing.

What’s been adding to my general dumpiness (which by now you know has been going on since I first mentioned it in April, even though I’ve had a few moments of clarity since then) is the fact that I’ve blatantly ignored writing in this blog.  It’s not that I haven’t tried either – I’VE FUCKING TRIED, but it usually goes a little something like this: I’ll say to myself, “Hey Vick, why don’t you just try to write a little post?  Maybe you’ll feel better?  Maybe then you’ll get some of the gunk in your brain cleared out, unleash some of the anger you have over life’s small annoyances to create space for some new, positive stuff to thrive in your head?” and I would open up a New Post and I’d start to type and I’d get three sentences in and then stop.  I’d re-read what I had done, delete it, and try again.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  By the seventh or eighth repeat, I’d exit out of everything, slam my laptop shut, and be left off in even worse condition than I was before – my internal monologue would be all “Great going Vick, you have one thing in your life that you’re supposedly good at and you can’t even get yourself together enough to write something worth reading.  I bet you don’t even fucking recycle, you piece of shit.  Oh that’s really great, go ahead, just shovel the Nutella into your mouth, that will solve everything.  You are the worst, and that’s why your pre-school boyfriend Jeremy wanted nothing to do with you when you guys moved on to kindergarten.  Loser.”

Actual photo of Jeremy and I in Preschool (he's to my right and I'm dressed like a sister wife).  I don't understand why he wouldn't want me when I am so clearly on his level in terms of being fucking hot, but I guess Ian Curtis was right - LOVE WILL TEAR US APART DUDE.

BUT NO, OKAY?  NOT TODAY.  You know why?  Because my internal monologue is a douchefuck who needs to sit down and shut up and let me be.  And for the moment, she’s sitting quietly, so I’ve been able to make the following list of Things That Are Slowly Ruining My Life.  I hope to god it comes out good.

1.  People that insist on talking to you when you are wearing headphones.  This specifically goes out to all guys riding solo on any/all forms of public transportation who see a girl similarly riding solo but blatantly listening to music, and somehow manage to reason that striking up a conversation is an acceptable thing to do in this scenario.  I was under the impression that wearing headphones is the visual equivalent to hanging a “Do Not Disturb” sign around one’s neck, but apparently I have been grossly mislead for the entirety of my youth because people (namely Guy On Public Transit) think that it’s okay to begin discussing things like where I am going, where I am from, my mother’s maiden name, my credit card information, how I feel about gas prices, etc. when I’m just cresting over into the chorus of Kanye’s heartwarming ballad “No Mercy”.   

For real though – what part of me sitting silently with headphones in is giving you the secret signal that you should immediately begin playing 20 Questions with me?  And yeah, okay, you caught me – ninety percent of the time that I’m wearing headphones, I’m not listening to jack shit.  I’m eavesdropping on what the people around me are saying, and becoming personally invested in their conversations, and like, how am I going to find out why Christine and Mark broke up and what the backlash has been within the family if you’re moseying over to talk to me about random crap that I don’t care about?  Sure, I concede: doing this headphone/eavesdrop-fake-out thing makes me a creep, but it makes me a passive creep, whereas you coming over and trying to talk to me when I’m clearly really busy makes you an active creep, and that’s a very large difference.  And for the record, this line of reasoning also applies to reading - like the amount of times I've had this conversation in my life is unreal:

Me: *Reading with fervor*

Other Person:  “Hey what are you reading?”

Me: “Well I WAS reading A Scanner Darkly.”

Other Person:  “Oh cool, what’s it about?” 

Me:  (two options) a.) “I don’t fucking know because I’m trying to read it and you’re talking to me.”  OR b.) “It’s a list of instructions on how to gut a human being and harvest their organs for sacrifice to the dark Lord Satan.”

I don’t know how to make it more clear that I don’t have any interest in talking to people when I’m doing something else, especially something reflective like listening to music or reading a book (or throwing a virgin sacrifice).  Let's just say that if I were to run for president, part of my platform would include a swift death by firing squad for anyone who attempts to intrude on another person's Quiet Hobby Time.  Bye.


2.   Taxes.  Listen, I’m not trying to get political here whatsoever.  I know taxes are necessary and everyone has to pay them and people get all pissy and heated and Republican over everything to do with taxes constantly, and if I even utter the word within a five mile radius of my house then my father pulls out handwritten charts of how pissed he is about having to pay them and how the Democrats are fucking him in the asshole with social programs and the country is in the shitter and WHATEVER.  I DON’T FUCKING CARE.  I just want to take a brief moment to talk about how taxes blow a dick outside of a political context because I really think that this is a subject we can all bond together over.  

Obligatory pro-America picture to dispel any soon-to-be burgeoning rumors that I'm a Communist.

 My reasons for hating taxes are apolitical and purely selfish, and they revolve around this: over the summer I work a lot, and my weekly paycheck is supposed to be something like $1,000.  In fact, when I get my paycheck, and it shows me the amount of money the check SHOULD have, before the soul-sucking tax deductions, I feel my heart leap with joy because fuck, a grand a week is drug-dealer status kind of money (or like, regular people with a middle class income status money, but hey, we all have different ideas of cool).  That leap of the heart quickly turns into a leap off of the highest surface available in an act of rage when I see that no, my check isn’t made out for $1,000 but made out for a mere $750 (give or take; mostly take).  I know this is a total white girl problem and that that’s still a substantial amount of money but what the actual fuck dude?  I don’t work 65-70 hours a week for my own health, so why break me down like that?  At least hide the amount I could have been making before taxes – showing me all the money I could have had is like a putting Olivia Wilde’s vagina in a room full of guys with boners and then telling them no, sorry, you can’t go in there because there’s an Olivia Wilde vagina tax and it’s that you have to cut off your dick.

Sorry dude.

I’m not saying that my paycheck is Olivia Wilde’s vagina, nor that I currently have a boner (I’m supposed to be a girl), but the point I’m trying to make is that the government should fuck off of my paycheck and that everyone should throw money at me all of the time so I can buy my fancy hair care products and afford to shop at Urban.  IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK.


3.   Flourescent lighting.  I’m sure there are many uses for fluorescent lighting in this world, and there is probably a tremendous backstory behind it’s invention involving a small orphan boy who went from rags to riches and now is a multi-millionaire but never forgot his poor child roots, and while these things are Nice, I still feel obligated to dole out a giant middle finger to fluorescent lighting.  Is it any surprise though?  Think about it – fluorescent lighting is used in all of the worst fucking places: school, hospitals, horror movies, make-up stores with 50+ mirrors canvassing the sales floor (fuck you, Sephora).  Is it really my fault I can’t stand fluorescent lighting when I’ve been conditioned my entire life to associate it with misery and low self esteem?  And why are there always dead bugs in the light fixtures?  It’s a literal insect cemetery, and since this is a developed nation, I don't have the patience for that.  Also, all of the flickering gives me a migraine, which I’ve never actually had before in my life but I'd imagine hanging around fluorescent lighting when you easily get migraines is probably a shitty time.  And like, I can totally empathize with migraine sufferers because one time I sucked back a snow cone in less than a minute and a half and I got a headache, so.

4.   When your chip breaks off into the dip.  This is an ode to all of my chips that break off in my dip.  Let me start by saying that chips and dip have a weird significance to me in that if they didn’t exist I would go on a killing spree.  There’s something the mix of salty, ruffled potato chips and smooth, sweet dip that really waters my garden (both non-sexually and sexually; also, what?).  Basically I just take a lot of comfort in knowing that at any given moment, I can retreat into a chips and dip oasis and drown out the harsh realities of life/the outside world – and I literally mean drown them out, because eating chips makes you Inside The Head Deaf to the point where Teresa Giudice’s shrill faux-Italian screeches can no longer penetrate your eardrums as you try to watch the train wreck that is RHONJ whilst snacking.   

lol gurl ware's ur forehead

Because of the importance of chips and dip to my daily functioning as a human being, I experience a swelling of rage whenever something goes awry in the process of eating them, and the most common problem is when my fucking chip decides it wants to break off into my motherfucking dip.  Come on, chips, I spend hours (seconds) selecting the perfect chip candidate, calculating in my head a flawless chip to dip ratio, and when I go to finally execute the plan, you fucking bail?  Everyone knows that the only time it's okay to back out on your team (WHICH IS WHAT WE ARE, CHIP.  YOU, ME, AND THE DIP, A FUCKING TEAM BRO) is when you are our Lord and Savior Beyonce and your team is Destiny's Child.  Guess what?  You're not Beyonce.  You are a mere chip, and there is an entire family size bag full of chips just like you.  I could have picked any of them, but I chose you, and this is how you fucking repay me, you ungrateful sack of shit?

And you know what?  Maybe it's my fault.  Maybe I put too much pressure on you as a chip.  Maybe the dip was simply too much to handle, and you couldn't stand up to the task of scooping out such an enormous glob of creamy goodness (I'm not going to bother rewording that).  If that's the case then I guess I can forgive you - I'll just use another chip to excavate your remains from the dip and move on, and you'll soon be forgotten and the world will keep turning and I'll keep staying on track with giving myself diabetes.  No harm, no foul.  But so help me Beyonce, chip, if I come to find out, in the afterlife or wherever else my spirit might go when my body rots away, that your chip breaking ways were intended maliciously, I will go full Liam Neeson on your salty little ass.

It won't be hard to do because you are located in neatly numbered/labelled aisles in grocery stores across America.

As a closing note on the whole matter, and on this list in general, I feel it necessary (for therapeutic reasons) to mention a particularly heinous chip/dip experience that happened to me not too long ago.  I'm referring to The Great Chip Fake-Out of August 2012, a hour of my life so horrific that reliving it rattles the very core of my being.  Instead of rehashing that nightmarish evening in words, I'll let my tweets during that time speak for themselves.

That's all I got.

Being Drunk

Hi.  Sorry.  It’s summer.  I’m busy.  With what, you ask?  Well, primarily with my job and with carrying around my severe emotional baggage (did you know I told a lost 8 year old kid who was already crying to begin with that I would hide him where no one could find him if he tried to raise his voice ((he wasn’t raising his voice)) to me one more time the other day?  I’m not bringing this up because I feel bad about it, I’m just letting you know that I have become completely devoid of human compassion altogether.  Woops.) BUT, aside from those two things, I’ve been majorly preoccupied with the soma* of the human race: drinking alcohol.

Tell me I wouldn't make a great girlfriend for a gargantuan black guy.

 

Now, I’m a huge fan of anything that completely obliterates natural human thought processes and destroys valuable brain cells, which is why it’s strange that I’ve come to the conclusion that drinking is slowly ruining my life, but let me explain via a brief bullet pointed list (which is the cheapest format I can possibly think of to write in right now).  As a reminder, it’s 2:20 am on a Tuesday morning**, I have work in four hours, and there is a cricket absolutely BEGGING me to euthanize it by playing me the song of its people directly outside of my window.  Just a few disclaimers for the shittiness to come.

Let’s start with some obvious reasons (listed in no particular order) for why drinking has come to take a negative role in my daily life:

HANGOVERS

If that orange juice doesn't have champagne in it, this bitch is doing it wrong.

 

This is probably the most critically awful and glaringly obvious aspect of drinking that fucking blows a giant cock (much like I appear to be doing in that first photo up there). Currently, I’ve reached that point in life where one is just cresting over into the realm of being an actual adult, meaning I have something called Real Responsibilities and need to work every day of my life without the option of taking off/calling in sick.  Normally this isn’t a huge deal – everyone has to do it and I don’t really care – but it becomes a fucking nightmare in the event that I have a particularly nasty hangover.  Unfortunately, the situation is expounded by the fact that I’m getting older - my body simply cannot recover from substance abuse as quickly as it once did (*pours champagne on the ground for Junior year fall semester, when a handle to the face followed by hours of illegal drug abuse were a pregame to taking finals*). ALL OF THIS COMBINED means I have to struggle especially hard to pretend I can operate at even the most fundamental level the day following an alcohol binge, which we all know is not a practical goal for anyone who has been throwing back Captain until four am.  I essentially become a full-fledged paraplegic when I'm hungover – I can barely keep my eyes open, my skin becomes a layer of pizza grease, and the single neuron I have remaining in my pulsating brain fires at random for a large amount of the day.  That’s all even AFTER I’ve completed the Holy Trinity of Hangovers (showering, drinking a gallon of water, and brushing your teeth).  Being hungover just fucking sucks.  Random sidenotes: Can we discuss the next morning bloat that follows drinking?  How you wake up smelling like a Vietnam Veteran with a dry mouth that tastes like Rottweiler's asshole?  Or how you become a human garbage disposal for foods when you're hungover, namely porkroll sandwiches and other Various Carbs?  Oh, and trying to continue the party the next night, aka the same day of your hellish hangover - how does that first shot feel then?  Like crusted vomit and bad decisions.  So not ideal.

The agony that is a hangover undoubtedly acts as a deterrant to convince even a borderline substance abuser from drinking, but for the sake of continuing this post, let’s say you are one of those people who “don’t get hungover”.  I’m going to go right ahead and call bullshit - I hope you know that all your lack of a hangover means is that you either aren’t drinking enough, that you’re still drunk and possibly an alcoholic, OR that Jesus (lol) is biding his holy little time, making your body store up all of your hangovers in a 4x4 safety deposit box, only to empty it out some random day after you’ve had literally half a sip of a wine cooler so that you become entirely bedridden and/or dead.  I do not envy you. 

COMPLETE DISREGARD FOR HYGIENE

WUT IZ U

One of the main reasons full-fledged alcoholics drink is because it helps them to escape from the harshness of reality.  Unfortunately, one aspect of reality that I find loathsome to escape is General Hygiene (looking at you, People Who Wear Stained Sweatpants In Public).  Some of the uncleanly atrocities I’ve committed while drunk have been fucking foul, and range anywhere from eating pizza out of a trash can to traipsing around barefoot through a New York bar, stepping on old lemons and ultimately discarding my underwear in a small alleyway.  I’m actually shocked that my blood test results have come back as clean as they have because I’m 95% sure that after drinking certain alcohols (see below) I would stab myself with an AIDS infested syringe as a party trick without even a second thought.  Think about it - have you ever remembered to brush your teeth before passing out face down into the shag carpet of your boss’s office?  Have you ever tried to scrape the black tar off of your feet after a day drink before crashing into your local frathouse hook-up’s bed?  DO YOU WASH YOUR HANDS AFTER USING THE BATHROOM IN A BAR?  Probably (definitely) not, which is fucking disgusting and all the result of alcohol (I hope).

THE FACT THAT I TURN INTO A TYPICAL DRUNK GIRL

You've seen her.  You've met her.  Fuck, you ARE her (guys included).  The drunk girl is a stereotype that plagues my existence, but while I'd love to nitpick and destroy every embarrassing aspect of this awful persona we females adopt when our bloodstream surpasses the .10 BAC level, the topic is more overdone than the chopped and screwed remix that is Joan Rivers' face.

Petrifying.

 

I’m the first to admit that I’m guilty of all of the following shit, so while reading this next part, try to imagine me as I was at 18 (ten pounds overweight, self-cut side-bangs, wardrobe styled by Forever 21 . . . ) sitting across from me as I am now (flawless), who is dishing out some tough love in an attempt to smack some sense into my past-but-still-present-in-this-time-warp-situation-self.  Just go with it.

 

1.     Walking like a baby giraffe.  This is not okay, and to repeat an old proverb that my great grandmother from Italy once uttered between bouts of ravioli making, “If you cannot handle the heel, don’t wear it to the fucking club.”  But seriously, there is nothing more tragic than a drunk Freshman girl stumbling along like a new-born deer in heels she simply cannot handle.  It’s not cute, and you’re not cute, so just cut it the fuck out.  Which segues perfectly into my next point . . . .

2.     Removing one’s heels while one is still out at a venue.  Ladies, please, for the love of Mary Magdalene and her overused biblical vagina, PLEASE do not do this.  In fact, next time you are hammered drunk and the fleeting thought passes through your head that you should remove your shoes between rounds of cocktails at a bar, I want you to take your inevitable iPhone, open the camera app, flip the screen so it’s in Selfie (read: pathetic) mode, and take a cold, hard look at yourself.  You will undoubtedly find that you already look like a slopfest, and hopefully this will act as enough incentive for you to lay a feeble grasp on whatever dignity you have hidden inside of your tiny, too-tight outfit and remain shoed until you are in the privacy of your own apartment/home/sewer ditch.

3.     Screaming.  Are you fucking kidding me?  Maybe it’s just my Asperger’s kicking in, but hearing girls scream at a party/bar makes me want to dive head first into a pool full of barbed wire.  Shut the entire fuck up.  That is all.

4.   Needing to text every ex-boyfriend.  Why are you doing this to yourself.  It doesn't help that when you are drunk, you're shady as fuck and delete all of your sent messages before Sober You has a chance to review the damage come sunrise.  Just put the phone down, for fucks sake, you're old enough to learn that nothing positive has ever come from drunk texting or calling or picture messaging or anything-ing an ex while under the influence.  This is not amateur hour anymore, get your shit together.

5.     Dancing.  Apparently it becomes entirely appropriate upon hearing the first chords of “Call Me Maybe” to instantly begin singing along (i.e. SCREAMING), holding hands with your friends, and shimmying around like Michael J. Fox without his Parkinson’s meds.  Do you want to know what you look like outside of your own drunken “I look so good right now probably” thought realm?  Here:

You were so right, that smoky eye make up was SUCH a good choice!

The list keeps going, but at this point my 18 year old self would have likely punched my present self in the throat because let’s be real, I was quite a stubborn little whore when I was 18 and I don’t think I’d be too fond of being told what to do by some ratchet ass 22 year old who thinks she knows better now that a measly four years have passed.  Moving on.

HOOKING UP

The other night I drank a pint of Captain Morgan as a pregame for the bar, and, having consumed a mere grain of rice as my caloric sustenance for the day, I was borderline black out by the time we got in.  I subsequently made a direct beeline for the food area, clothes-lining any dumb bitches that dared to cross my heated path, and upon arriving, ordered a gigantic plate of steaming hot cheese fries.  I ate them.  I ate all of them.  And while that's gross and not okay, that's not even the point of what I'm saying here.  The point is that I not only ate the cheese fries, but for some reason flirted with the bespectacled food server guy who had sold me the cheese fries, FOR TWO ENTIRE HOURS.  We ultimately exchanged numbers and he now wants to take me out on a date.  Too bad I have no idea what he even looks like because I was so shitfaced, not to mention too bad I don't go on dates with random people that sell me CHEESE FRIES at a BAR.  His name was saved in my phone as "Condor".   Like, what?

Such a turn on.

Thankfully, Condor and I never actually made physical contact (ew), but the truth of the general matter at hand remains the same - whenever people get drunk, they want to touch each other.  They want to find someone they think is remotely attractive and grab all their stuff and make out with their face, and then take them home and fuck them on their pull out couch.  People love that shit, and while it's happening, it's definitely a great time.  But you guys, THE NEXT MORNING.  The next morning is a dumbbell of regret just resting upon your shoulders - why, why, WHY did you hook up with that fat girl, that boy with the gigantic mole, that she-male with a lisp you thought was sexy under the single bulb of the bar's storage closet?

Unfortunately, no one has the answer.  Being drunk rewires your brain, making it respond to every decision with "Hey, why the fuck not?" and while this carefree attitude might serve some people well in sober, daily life, during a drinking session it's usually what leads to a drunken hook up that both parties mutually regret and cringe to look back on.  

THE NEXT DAY STORY TELLING SESSION THAT NO ONE CARES ABOUT UNLESS THEY WERE PERSONALLY INVOLVED IN THE DRUNKFEST AND WHICH GENERALLY INCLUDES GROSS EXAGGERATIONS BOTH ABOUT THE AMOUNT OF ALCOHOL THAT WAS ACTUALLY INGESTED AND ABOUT THE SUPPOSED INSANITY OF THE NIGHT.

I am painfully aware that I just did this exact thing a second ago with my unfunny cheese fries anecdote, but as always, slutever.

I'm over this list.  Switching gears, let's take a look at some of the alcohol choices available to the general public, and their usual effects when imbibed in large quantities.

Beer  

There is a reason beer is a favorite among all age groups - I'm sure of it. but the thing is, I don't have the slightest fucking clue what it could be.  I personally hate beer (unless it's a Bud Light Lime because I have a vagina and that's one of the requirements listed in the Vagina Owner's Manual) - beer makes you bloated; you have to drink like, sixteen of them to get drunk; and it smells like Uncle Lester's late night visits (okay, that was fucked up, I'm sorry).  I guess people like beer because it's a reliable drink - refreshing on a hot summer's day, comforting in a post-work stupor, intriguing when shotgunned with the key to your Camry in the garage of your grandparent's house.  Beer usually leads to a mellow time with probably ten or less people sitting around chatting, with the possible involvement of a campfire or two (obvious exception: Frat parties, but overruled).

Vodka 

Here's to that handle of Smirnoff that just ass fucked you, Mr. Hasslehoff.

Vodka to me is a catch all.  If you don't know what you're doing or where you're going that night, there is nothing safer than bringing along a nice solid handle of Burnett's as a measure of insurance.  It comes in a wide array of flavors (of which everyone has at least one that they cannot drink because of some unfortunate alcohol poisoning experience . . . Mine is Raspberry), it tastes like fresh nail polish remover, and it's more of a sure thing in terms of a drunken good time than the girl with obvious daddy issues wavering ever so slightly back and forth near the keg.  Shots of vodka are forever associated in my mind with pregaming and Sorority girls, and it's usually a great way to start off one of those generic Tuesday through Saturday night shitshows.

Rum 

My main bitch.

I don't know what it is about this summer, but it seems that I've suddenly been hit by a massive and infinite craving for rum.  The thought of any other alcohol entering my body disgusts me, which is weird because I've never been much of a rum kind of girl.  Of course, Sailor Jerry's (tip of the hat, always) isn't the only kind of rum in existence, but all types generally lead to the same atmosphere - that warm, Kelvin filter on Instagram kind of drunkeness (which might be a personal bias since it's the summer and this is all that my blood stream is made of at this point, and also I just got an iPhone and really wanted to reference something iPhone-y so that people know I'm now part of the popular crowd).  I have nothing bad to say about rum, other than the fact that if you drink it and then break even the slightest sweat the next day, it comes oozing out of your pores and you smell Homeless Chic for the rest of the day and your boss gives you disdainful looks and everyone can tell that you were out drinking the night before and that you aren't nearly as responsible a person as you chalk yourself up to be.

Wine 

Are you having sexy times with your boyfriend?  Are you tasting various expensive cheeses?  Are you surrounded by a gaggle of girls in pajamas during a slumber party about to watch The Notebook while braiding each other's hair and discussing how you never really wanted to get married anyway?  If you find yourself answering all of these questions with "No", then put down the glass of wine because you're doing it wrong.  The thing that both rules and sucks about wine is it's small party atmosphere - while it's an awesome additive when you're actually at a small fucking party, wine loses it's charm if brought outside into any other sphere of night (or day) life.  In fact, I think it even makes most situations kind of sad: Say you're spending the night in, obsessively refreshing Facebook and watching Real Housewives in your room alone in the basement of your mother's house after you just graduated college.  Now add an entire bottle of wine to that situation and tell me people don't think you have a drinking problem.  Wine has other obvious drawbacks - red wine makes your teeth gray, the amount of sugar in it is enough to take down Paula Deen, and let us not forget the unholy wrath of the wine hangover, when there is not enough Vicodin in the entire world to put you out of your headache misery.  I'm all for a good glass of wine every once and again, but my overall rating of this alcohol is a 5 out of 10 based on the sloppiness it causes and it's basic aura of pretentiousness.  Oh and slapping the bag?  Shame on you.  Sorry.

Four Loko 

Four Loko Ono, or what really broke apart The Beatles.

This shit is solely for 18 year old girls and the 22 year old frat bros who are trying to fuck them.  I can't even look at that picture without throwing up in my mouth, and that's got nothing to do with the fact that John Lennon is naked posing in the fetal position.  I've listed the suicide prevention hotline number below***, because if you're drinking Four Loko, you clearly have a death wish.  Unacceptable.  Always.

Tequila 

I have a friend who fucking loves tequila (hey Sam!) and I have to commend her because honestly, I cannot get tequila down my throat without multiple gagging sessions which means you have to be a completely crazy bitch (the good kind) to crown it the drink of your choice.  Tequila is the sort of thing that starts a night off aggressively, develops the evening into a series of rash decisions, and ultimately wraps the whole thing up at around 2:30 am when your face is resting peacefully on a toilet bowl.   It makes people fucking angry, and I don't really have a set image in my head of the type of night that would call for shots of tequila, which is perhaps what makes it all the more enticing to some people.  However, if the law of moderation simply MUST apply itself to any situation, I say it's this:  Any night has the potential to be a tequila night, but not every night should be a tequila night.

Exactly my point.

All bullshit and rambling aside, do I honestly believe that these negative aspects to drinking are enough to make me cut alcohol out of my existence altogether?  Absolutely not, but my relationship with being drunk just seems too prone to vacillation, too bipolar to be counted as a positive influence on my life.  It seems that alcohol either makes the night substantially better, or completely wrecks it to the point of disrepair.  I'm just not into the drama of hangovers, the embarrassing hook-ups, the typicality of the drunk persona.  Plus, let's face it - drinking was insanely more fun when it was still illegal for us all to do.  Now that I can stop diving into my parent's liquor cabinet at every possible chance and am able to procure my own alcohol, I'm sort of over the novelty of the whole thing.  It's lost some of it's charm, and maybe that's what becoming an adult is like for some people - gradually discovering an honest disinterest in everything you once found amusing.  And that's kind of a fucking sucky thing to have to realize, you know?  So, on an anticlimactic note, that's essentially why being drunk is slowly ruining my life.

*Please understand this reference.  Please.

**That's when I first started writing this.  It's taken forever.  So lazy.
***No, I haven't.  Look it up on your own time.