Drunk-dialed

OK, which one of you 3.5 billion women on the planet drunk-dialed me last night?

In uncharacteristic fashion, I was firmly ensconced in the fart sack by about 10 pm (give or take, I wasn't checking my watch). This is early for me, on a Friday night. This is due to dinner consisting of two (or maybe more) bottles of wine, and nothing solid.

I only discovered the drunk-dial (two in a row, actually) when checking my phone this morning.

The number was blocked in both instances. The calls were a minute apart.

No message was left at all on the first voicemail. On the second, it wasn't a direct, slurred, mumbling, gibberish message TO me. It was some drunken, slurry, rambling bar talk going on between two or more women ... not aimed at me. It was a woman though. This much I could ascertain.

Couldn't quite place the voice, but I have a suspicion ...

So of the 3.5 billion females on the planet who may have made the call, we can remove a large portion of that number for many obvious reasons (women old enough to operate a cell phone [no babies], women in a country where they can afford/have a cell, women who know my number, and women in all likelihood who don't live here in New Zealand, or more specifically, here in Wellington).

It may have been someone from Canada or the USA, but, that's a low probability.

So my drunk-dialer was someone here in Welly.

For most guys, being drunk-dialed by a woman we know (who we think is hot) is 2nd only to having an appealing and drunken woman you know show up at your door at midnight (aka "booty call").

The mysterious "Who the fuck WAS that?" drunk dial is a distant 3rd down the list for being appealing. It's still pretty good though ... a compliment, but a sneaky one. One that makes you think. Who could it have been?

A blocked number means a few things ... it's someone I know, but for some reason she had the wherewithal to block her number before dialing me. Does that mean she hoped to get me in person, to see if it was OK to drop by? Or at least, to have 'drunken fun happy chat'? But otherwise ... blocking her number means she didn't want me to call HER back today to see if she was into a hung-over booty call?

The call came at about 11:20 pm. Not late by Friday night standards ... except, here in Wellington, many people bolt straight out from work and go immediately to a pub to start drinking (so between 5 and 5.30 is when the first drink gets hoovered). Given this behavior, a call from a woman at 11.20 pm means she'd been drinking for a good solid 6 hours.

This also means said woman can hold her liquor fairly well, and, she can take the pace of a good night of marathon drinking. Which is impressive.

Based on this sleuthing and conjecture, I have compiled a short list of 3 suspects.

Any of the 3 can drop by today to apologize.

Bring wine.

And don't wear anything complicated.

Strange mumbles in the night

Lately I'm reminded that we're getting older. Yep, every last stinking one of us.

Certainly I'm handling it better than most, if you disregard the various bits that have been chopped off of me over the last year or so. Didn't need that leg, or that toe, anyway ...

What's worrying me though (and in retro-examination, needlessly) is the concept that I'm not communicating clearly any more.

The villain in this story seems to be technology. 

And also, friends who are ageing badly, or who attempt to cadge advice from me while being three sheets to the wind, rat-arsed drunk, or stoned out of their trees.

Here's the rumpus.

I seem to have become "Google" for a few people ... the go-to guy when my friends can't remember, or don't feel like Googling their questions themselves. 

The queries usually come at panic pace, either by email or by IM ... "HELP! Something has gone awry, or at the very least, I can't be bothered to think about it myself ... "

Moments later when engaged over IM as "Online Helpdesk Guy",  it becomes apparent my friends are also fairly shitfaced.

And so I gird my loins for a session of repetative "not listening", "skipping steps",  "drunkenly wandering away to go get more booze when I'm in mid-help", and best of all, "not answering my simple questions" so I can figure out what in the FUCK it is they are doing. Or trying to do.

This usually starts out in the middle of a drunken train of thought from their end – the outpouring of an emotional or hate-filled diatribe, involving something about the gizmo in the widget isn't doing what they want, because they just did this one thing and then this happened. OR didn't happen. As the case may be.

I then have to deftly steer them back to the beginning.  What is it you're attempting to do, and what program are you using? What kind of wine is that, and HOW MANY bowls have you smoked?

Then the benchmarking questions: what version is this, and did you do it the way I told you to do it the last 9 times you asked me about this? Did you put in the right password? Oh, you don't remember your password, because you use a different password for everything, but you don't write them down, and trying to remember passwords after 7 huge buckets of wine/vodka is a silly thing to try and do? 

Do I remember your password? Ha ha. 

And on it goes. 

At various points during my typewritten IM instructions, I find myself scrolling back up to see if I typed some gibberish, or something wrong. Nope, there it is, plain as day and clear as a bell, in language a 6 year old could understand (providing of course said child hadn't snorkeled down two bottles of wine, or half a litre of vodka ... or smoked 5 bowls of Alabama Ditch Weed).

It's all good fun, because I exact my revenge in sneaky, underhanded ways ... as we attempt to fix the problem, I subtley and deftly encourage my pals to continue consuming their alcohol/drugs at alarming and increasing speed (and volume).

So that by the time we're finished, they're REALLY finished ... blithering, twitching messes who have melted into the sofa. Or have fallen on the floor.

Of course I too am imbibing, because where's the fun in encouraging the destruction of someone else if you don't at least keep pace enough to enjoy it too?

Anyway, it's good to know I haven't become an unintelligible, babbling, mumbling mess, incapable of getting my points across. 

I just need more sober friends.

Ahhh, who am I kidding! 

Sober people are no fun.

(In extreme cases, or when really pressed for time, I have taken to making a video screen capture "how to" video, which decreases the insensible "not paying attention/skipping steps" portion of the game ...)

A man needs a base to operate from

Hola amigos.

It's been a while –  and I was reminded of my hiatus when I happened to mistakenly click on this Blogger thing, and noticed it had been a while. It's a vicious circle, doing deals with yourself to agree to babble away on a blog, then slacking off.

And so, the title of this one ... some random neuron firings the other day reminded me of a trip back from Vancouver's famous Wreck Beach, in the passenger seat of a monstrous old '67 sedan driven by a friend of mine.

We'd imbibed heavily that day, rapidly ingesting myriad samples of Wreck's cornucopia of mind-altering delights.

In retrospect, letting my friend drive (or even getting in the car with him) was a bad idea. Especially considering how the circumstances of the divvying-up of the last mushroom-laced chocolate went.

We uncharacteristically decided to share one of these chocolate delights, instead of each purchasing and gobbling one. We knew they packed a punch, and we'd already rendered ourselves fairly inoperative with everything else we'd consumed. In retrospect (again), this seemed oddly not like us, exercising responsible ingesting of hallucinogenics ...

What we didn't take into account was, your average hop-head who makes a stab at baking up mushroom-laced desserts to sell at a nude beach might not always take care to ensure the Psilocybin is equally distributed throughout each chocolate.

My pal got the lion's share, if not all, of the 'shrooms. And as he settled in to take command of the helm of his gigantic car, it all hit him at once. He announced he was far more blazed that he thought he should be ... I responded with a bit of disappointment, that I wasn't anywhere near as blasted.

As we drove down the "back road" from the UBC peninsula to the city, he uttered the titular line.

He then mumbled something about the very existence of the planet we were driving on was shifting, the base was gone ... and certainly, when commandeering a multi-ton vehicle down a road, you do need a base to operate from.

Ahh, the good old days. We somehow (as always) arrived home safely, the car and ourselves unscathed from any mishaps or mayhem.

Don't try this at home, kids. We are trained professionals.