Thursday, March 24, 2011

Hangovers, unalienable proof of the law of physics that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.


CAST OF REGULAR CHARACTERS CONTAINED IN THIS POST

Recently I gave up drinking.

Something I decided about drinking was that the fun I enjoyed was hardly worth the pain I went through. More importantly, they were about equal. You see for every action in life there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Sober weekend
Friday night

Friday night involves being stuck at a bad party, totally sober whilst talking to someone about their tattoo. It’s in a foreign language because culture is so like totally cool and like being like open minded is like totally like their thing. Then someone spills a drink on you (or as happened to me a few weeks ago, vomits on you). You’re driving because your not drinking so you find yourself patiently waiting for your anonymous friend to whom you are intending to give a lift home. First, she must finish making out with the ugly guy she’s picked up.
This situation equals pain rating of about 3 out of 5 hairy spiders or fun rating of about -3 out of 5 lollypops.

Saturday morning
You jump out of bed at 9:00am, well rested and ready for a big day.

A quick room tidy is followed by reading the paper over a cup of carefully crafted coffee. The day progresses by hitting the gym, a late brunch with a friend, a quick bit of shopping during which you find some awesome tights in your size on sale, a phone call to a friend who is going through a bad breakup, then sorting through all your reading required for next week’s politics tute. The evening consists of heading out for a dinner date and then meeting friends at a new bar and a late night dumplings session.

This situation mixes productivity and a bit of socialising with an aggregate fun rating of 3 out of 5 lollypops.

Ok so now let’s replay this situation when drinking is involved.

Friday night

You have pre-drinks at a girlfriend’s house and borrow a hot dress so you are feeling fine.  At the party you are talking to someone about their totally awesome tattoo when the buzz from vodka kicks in so even though it’s a bit rude you pawn this boring person off to a recently acquired friend who you met a few hours earlier when you split a cab. You make your way over to the best looking guy at the party and just when he mentions his girlfriend (who does med and washes dying babies when she’s not attending to her Miss Australia duties) someone throws up on you. Perfect excuse to leave the conversation... From nowhere a total hottie (who you didn’t notice before) who is half God, half an exercise is the perfection of Latin genetics appears, helps you clean up in bathroom whilst complementing your great dress. Then he invites you to another party and because your friend is making out with some ugly guy you agree to go with. Turns out the other party was hosted by professional skateboarder who has a massive place including pool and heaps of free drinks.
After a game of twister with three professional athletes who were all shirtless for some mysterious reason and an impromptu salsa class with your Latin love interest, you gorge on two minute noodles and crash in a huge double bed upstairs.
Fun rating for the evening was about 5 out of 5 lollypops.

Saturday morning
You wake up and you can taste every single thing that you eaten and drunk in the past four days because the residue has remained on your tongue and fermented into distinctive fuzz, a new life-form named Gerald.  Whilst you are wondering where the tiny homeless man who slept in your mouth has gone, you roll over and smell your hair which has absorbed all the aromas of the past evening, cigarettes, latin sweat and vomit. Suddenly you remember that the previous night someone did in fact vomit on you and the remains of that vomit are probably still there because you did a half arse clean up job because you were trashed. You look down at your friend’s dress which you now have to wear home with massive heels and realise that it’s going to cost about $20 to get it dry-cleaned so that it doesn’t smell like sin. Money you don’t have because you spent it all last night keeping the cap driving population of Melbourne alive and well. Creeping out of the house induces waves of vomit (your own this time). They roll up and down your throat, contained only by the pounding of your brain that seems to keep everything down... in particular your spirits and self-esteem.

The 20 minute walk home give you time to complete your daily administrative tasks... you cancel brunch with a friend, delete a text message from another friend about her break-up (get over it girl, I’m dying) and bail on your dinner date because you’ve lost your voice and don’t want him to think that you’re a transvestite.
Once home you have three tasks left for the day. Shower, dress, go to supermarket for Gatorade.

The thing about being hungover for me is that it is painfully upsetting for me to make decisions. And being hungover means many decisions. Firstly, to purge the contents of your stomach or not. The thing is that you MUST brush you teeth soon or you will kill small children and the elderly with your gaseous bad breath. The problem lies in that it’s the most efficient use of your time to brush after vomiting so the decision becomes, SPEW NOW OR FOREVER HOLD YOUR SPEW. The problem is that when it comes to forever holding my spew, well that’s just not a guarantee that I can make my friends. The spew train is a ride that I often take multiple times in a day.

After 45 minutes I’ve resolved this issue somehow and attempted to erase the memory from my brain. After another hour trying to remove my now fossilised eye make-up I must dress myself. OH WHY! WHY MUST WE WEAR CLOTHES? WHY DO SOCIAL MORES DESPISE NUDITY? OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.

Finally I put together an outfit and accept the consequences of its woeful existence.
Forgive me father, for I have sinned. I’ve broken so many of the fashion commandments that I’ve lost count. I have brought ugliness onto the suburb of Glen Iris and shame upon myself.
Now you are in the supermarket. It turns out that the supermarket is the mothership of choice, the epicentre of decisive action where the indifferent come to be tortured by the market mechanism with its product differentiation, discounts and labyrinth style aisles containing gratuitous choice at every turn.
You are lost. An internal dialogue commences. RICE! I don’t need RICE! I need caffeine and a brain transplant. WHY AM I LOOKING AT RICE? Brown rice, long grain rice, risotto rice, instant rice, sushi rice. WHO KEEPS INVENTING RICE?? THIS PERSON MUST DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Finally you flee and are long last in the appropriate place to be bombarded with the million billion choices of liquids. Coke (close but alas it’s not the powdery kind), 85 different varieties of juice, granny smith apple juice, pink lady apple juice, nudie juice. OH I SEE HOW IT IS... THE JUICE CAN BE NUDE! HOW IS THAT FAIR?

Here you are yelling and the Powerade and the Gatorade. YOU ARE THE SAME DRINK! WHY DO YOU HAVE DIFFERENT NAMES? GET INTO THE SAME BOTTLE NOW! I’M GOING TO COUNT TO THREE. ONE... TWO... DON’T MAKE ME COME IN THERE. THR... Then you bump into your primary school teacher from year 5 who gives you a look like “Oh dear, you had such a bright future and now you’ve become a deranged homeless woman who yells in the aisles of the supermarket.” You splutter something about too much choice, economics and politics, Melbourne university... poverty alleviation... terrorism.

Tragedy. In your efforts to try and redeem your teacher’s respect for you you realise that your explanation of your double degree in Arts/Commerce with politics and economics majors with a particular interest in poverty alleviation and terrorism looks like a crazed conspiracy theory in which you intend to carry out a terrorist attack on Melbourne University because you can clearly no longer contain your hatred of market freedom and your hypothesis that your poverty is something to be blamed on various state-sponsored institutions. She scurries away, probably to contact the authorities.

And now you weep. You weep for what you have lost. Your beloved sanity, your grip on reality, your self worth and adult coping mechanisms.
OK so for the Saturday we’re going for a fun rating of a -5 out of 5 lollypops.

Quick summary table. Information is more fun when it’s tabular.

Thus my point is (yes there is one, shame on you for doubting me), for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. It is impossible to have fun without experiencing the consequences. This is how it is and it’s awfully unfair but it’s OK because Shelley is OK (the laws of physics don’t apply to her, like all laws she is above them).

Elle xx
P.S. I have a facebook page now, please 'like' Shelley so that the 9 other people who have don't feel so lonely.

5 comments:

  1. I reckon Powerade and Gatorade taste different. Gatorade tastes like medicine.

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  2. I see that someone isn't as indecisive as me! Good to hear. To me Gatorade IS medicine because I'm taking it the day after the night before rather than because I'm an elite athlete. Which, like, I totally could be.

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  3. YOU GOT VOMITED ON?

    Great post, I laughed a lot. Pretty jealous of the unicorn pants.

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  4. Yeah I was vomited on at a Melbourne Uni thing, just a bit on my legs and feet.

    I hang with some pretty classy people!

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  5. I'm sure you rocked the midriff top and crown pretty well!

    ReplyDelete

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