Demon Rum (Vodka/Gin)

W/all due respect to the Ad Council, which does some fine work (actually, the first page of google results don't show the version of this ad campaign that appears in my neighborhood, and I didn't want to look harder than that, but it's better than this billboard), I haven't been really drunk in maybe a couple of years, despite being buzzed on a handful of occasions. Where I'm personally defining buzzed as "I can definitely feel that I've been drinking, I'm aware of its effects on me, and my tongue and emotions are...lubricated." And where I'm defining drunk as "I see two of things when I try to focus on them."

So anyway, not having been really truly drunk for maybe a couple of years, I'd forgotten that things get weird, like "after spending a few minutes across the street summoning my wilting dignity for one final push, I walked steadily through the lobby of my building, got in an elevator, struggled to get the key in the door, and then spent the remainder of the evening apparently flailing around on the bathroom floor attempting to induce sobriety before I went to sleep from 9PM-1AM. Also the whole seeing double thing, I'd forgotten about that." After being away for a while from that kind of state, it was strange to go through it all again while thinking: "what the fuck am I doing?" Also, after I finish this post I'm going to have to eat something, which will screw up what so far was a reasonably successful attempt at weekend sleep-schedule normalcy.

On the other hand, I think I was fairly successful in my lower level goals at my ex-coworker's July 4th party, these goals being something like:

(1) Be sociable and spend a few minutes talking to people I don't know.
(2) Don't get drunk, but if I get drunk, get the hell out of there before I start stumbling.
(3) Don't get weirdly competitive around [another former coworker's] husband.

Regarding #3, in addition to that former coworker being on the long list of "girls I sort of had a crush on for a period of five days to seventeen weeks that nothing ever happened with," her husband is a more or less professional comedian (and, having seen his act once, a decent one!), and very personally funny, which I think I usually handle well but am always internally afraid of overreacting to. Officially Funny people make me sort of twitchy because if I'm honest one thing I've gotten pleasantly used to in the last ten years or so is people thinking I'm pretty funny (maybe they're just being nice!) in my own peculiar way, and then I really want to make Officially Funny people laugh to prove that I am, in fact, a funny guy. Which to the extent that I might be a funny guy runs mostly counter to the nature and thrust of my funniness because I can't force it with great success, since I'm not that great at telling jokes and would probably be a bad standup comedian. Actually, I know exactly what I'd be like as a standup comedian: unfunny and rageful.