Update

No frozen white bread has been et, because I broke my bad internet habit.  Since posting my resolution worked like gangbusters, I’m going to try another one.  I realize that nothing is more tedious than reading about other people’s plans for self-improvement.  But this blog has to be good for something, and if that something is forcing me to stick to my plans because I’ve declared them to my vast international readership, so be it.  So here’s another: only two drinks from now on.  Two drinks, then switch to delicious water.  It has been written.

I confess that I have been reading Julia Allison’s blog and I promise never to do it again.

Hey. Those of you who still check this moribund site may not have any idea what I’m talking about when I say, “I confess that I have been reading Julia Allison’s blog and I promise never to do it again.” And I’m sorry about that. But I’ve got to do something here.  I’ve got to do it for myself. I’ve got to do it for my time. I’ve got to do it for my work. I’ve got to do it for my brain, my soul, for all my teeth and cells. I’ve got to do it for the mitochondria in my cells.  Here goes:

I’m never going to look at this again.

What is this crazy stuff, and how did I even come to it?  I’ll chalk it up to my old job in publishing.  It’s weird: I decided I didn’t want to continue in that realm partly because I never liked the insiderey, shmoozy stuff a person has to do to succeed; didn’t like the striving and the business and the doing deals and the being cool. (Mind you, photocopying manuscripts at 7:30 pm was not “being cool,” but to gain some prominence, it was clear that you had to play along and go to some parties and know some people and talk about the same subjects that were–how odd–cropping up in various media outlets in succession.)  So anyway, yeah.  It was paradoxical that, right around the time I started to detach myself from my job out of the desire to escape that stuff, I started reading Gawker all the time. Which plunged my head into that very same insiderey media world that I referred to earlier, although, granted, allowed me to experience it at more of a remove. 

Anyway, one of the targets that they, characteristically, both mocked and glorified was this person.  Let me just quickly define her as some sort of a celebrity pundit/dating columnist hybrid.  I wanted to write “mongrel.” My awareness of her has only been a toxic force in my life.  No–that’s an exaggeration.  But, when I think about all of the embarrassingly many times I’ve clicked on her blog, I’m ashamed at all the minutes, if not hours, that I’ve wasted. I’m ashamed that I could have been doing something else–anything else.  I could have made 7,000 hard-boiled eggs, one by one, and fed them to squirrels, and still felt that my time had been better spent. I could have peed on a subway platform, gotten cited by the cops, fulfilled the requisite hours of community service, and still have spent that time better.  I could have even eaten 9,000 loaves of frozen white bread, and there’s nothing I hate more than frozen white bread.  But still, still.  It would have been better than allowing my mindspace to be occupied by Julia Allison.

So why did I even read her shit? By the way–in case it wasn’t clear–I’m writing all this as a binding promise to myself that I will never do it again.  I guess I found her to be a familiar type–irritating, false, “successful,” highly invested in “femininity” while at the same time incoherently professing some superficial, apolitical brand of feminism. I mean, I realize that I sound like a hater.  And I suppose that’s because I am.  And that’s okay, really. 

I think there’s something more meaningful to say here about fascination with celebrity as a means of avoidance and distraction, but I’ll spare you.

In conclusion: if I ever visit that blog again, I will have to eat one loaf of frozen white bread for every click.

Let’s examine this myth of the “good drunk,” shall we

Now, I’m a drinker*.  I’ve certainly been a heavier one in the past, but even in these more moderate times, I drink two or three nights a week.  I’m prefacing in this way because I want to make clear that I’m not criticizing booze or boozing.  As a matter of fact, I just enjoyed some beers this evening, and I’m sure they enhanced my darts game.   

But I want to dispel right now the myth of the “good drunk.”  I can’t tell you how many times over the course of my life I’ve heard, oh, so-and-so’s a “good drunk,” so-and-so’s a “bad drunk,” or so-and-so’s a “delightful drunk.”  I mean, I do realize that there are many incarnations of drunk–I knew a girl whose only defining characteristic when she was drunk was that she complimented people weirdly and excessively–but really, I’m here to argue, they’re all bad.  

Let me start with myself.  When I get drunk, there is a window–usually–in which I’m probably incredibly pleasant.  I smile wide.  I say things that I think are amusing that are possibly amusing to others, too.  I make audacious jokes and swear.  Sometimes I’ll grow the sack to say something I’ve felt too inhibited to express before.  But inevitably that window closes.  At best, I start to slur my words and continue to utter benign things, most likely about how hungry I am and how great falafel would be.  At worst, I say terrible things, because inside I feel terrible.   And at worst worst, I can’t say anything at all, because I’m too locked inside myself.

Which brings me to my point: alcohol is a depressant.  I mean, even if it doesn’t induce an awful dark mental state, it still depresses you, if just in the sense of slowing down your response time or lulling you into believing it’s okay to shove a bunch of deviled eggs into your mouth at a party.  

I don’t want to be too absolutist about this.  I mean, I have this great memory of returning to college after my study abroad semester and drinking with my friends on campus before classes started up again.  Not many students were around, so it felt like we had the run of the place. It was winter, and there was fresh, soft snow on the ground.  I got wasted, we roamed around, and I kept belly-flopping into the snow, screaming, inexplicably, “I ALWAYS WANTED TO BE AN ASTRONAUT!” 

That was great. 

But it was exceptional.  And most likely I fell asleep later that night with tearstains and hot wing sauce on my face, because that’s what being drunk is all about.

(*I almost wrote, “I’m no teetotaler,” but then I was like, I don’t really say that word aloud–not that it’s so obscure or anything, just kind of conspicuous–so why would I write it? It’s like the other day when I ran into someone on the street, a girl from college whom I like very much, and she asked me where I was going, and I told her the restaurant I was headed to, and she said she’d been there, and I asked her how it was, and she said, “oh you know something something something neophyte something something.”  I thought to myself, why must we do this?, then made some joke about Burger King and went on my way.)