Fear, Loathing, & Publishing

Note to self: don't buy dumbass girlie alcohol like this again!

I still remember the exact moment when I learned to love beer (and, by extension, acohol in general). Not that I hadn't been drinking plenty up to that point but until then it had been a necessary evil to revel in the moment of the true high party-ness. (Or something.) Anyway, I was at a buddy's dorm room on a bright sunny day and something--who really knows the details before after a momentous event itself?--but I remember turning up a full bottle of Michelob to kill it on the spot and to be able to choke it down I decided that with each gulp I would say "good" in my mind so that its drinking would just be a soothing whisper of "good" over and over again. And it worked: I was sold. By the end of that one bottle of beer I LOVED beer. Drink it all day. Drink it all night. No matter the consequences!

Anyway, all that aside, other than to establish my credentials as a serious drinker, today I did the stupidest thing at the liquor store. I was looking at rum and saw this lime-flavored Bacardi rum that was half the calories of regular rum. And, I'm like, shit, I got bad body image . . . why not drink smart (and hard) and do something good for my body? I was sold. Again. (See above. Michelob? My Gawd, what was I thinking/drinking?) Anyway, I kept looking for just regular Bacardi--that flavored shit is good for a few drinks but go too far and the next day you'll wake up with a 1/3 of a bottle of coconut-flavored rum that will take even you six months to get rid off--but couldn't find any. So I got the lime, thinking that woul be the least obnoxious flavor. Just as I got back out to the black job and cranked up Prodigy it dawned on that they probably cut the alcohol in half to get the calories in half. I looked at the bottle: goddamn if I wasn't right. So then it also dawned on me that the reason there was no 36 proof (as opposed to the standard 80 proof) regular Bacardi was that this stuff was flavored (and with half the calories) to sell to college girls that don't want to taste alcohol when they drink . . . and don't want to think that drinking too much is what might be making them gain weight. I felt like a rube. I felt like I'd been duped. The first thing I'm thinking is, fuck that, two shots per drink it is, maestro. But, then, I'm like, hey, why not get in touch with my inner college girl and just have some 75-cal drinks?  

You know, anything to help preserve my girlish figure.

Or, just fuck all y'all . . .  twice!

Today. What a day. We were supposed to have a follow-up interview with a woman who runs a management consulting firm in Austin who wrote a semi-famous book about management theory who was chatting with us for an upcoming issue of a journal we publish. There was to be a recorded interview to then be transcribed and edited. There was an official dinner to take her out to. There was a hotel to check her in at on the school's dime so she didn't have to drive back down Damnation Alley at night to get back home. I mean, these are preparations, bub. And then . . . then . . . then, one by one, the major players began to drop out. I mean, what the hell? I was already the smallest fish in the room. Then, finally, it was going to be just me and a proxy for the other guys--a proxy that I had to find--to meet with her. No shit, all last night I had nightmares about this poor woman showing up and discovering she was only going to be talking to me. I mean, really, I'm not kidding: nightmares.  I felt horrible about it. So this morning I was going to email her to let her know the hap so she could make a graceful exit out of the whole thing. I got to work--late, of course--and got went down to another office to fill up our coffee pot with water to make coffee and talk to a buddy of mine down there and the DS (Departmental Secretary) comes down there to say the lady is on the phone because she can't make it today. She has a congenital birth defect: no hip sockets. As a child she had some kind of reconstructive surgery. Now her legs fuck up on her every couple of years. Like now. She can't walk. She can't drive. She's distraught that she can't make it down. I just don't know what to say. What am I to think? Is there a God? My feet do a sharp little happy dance. Is he/she this benevolent a God? I tell her that job one is taking care of herself. I send her an email saying we'll reschedule after the first of the year. We are, I tell her, nothing to sweat over at all. But, I suggest, why don't we meet in Austin this time? That will be simpler. Oh yeah. All hail Jehovah. Or, truthfully, fuck it. With happenstance like this I'm happy to say, "All hail Beelzebubba." Like the Diet Coke bottle says:

Give. Live. Fuck Off.

(or something.)