How I got my Freshman Class Drunk

I had never intended to become black listed with the teachers my first year of high school. In all honesty, I had always thought of myself as one of those well behaved children.  I was praised by friends of the family when I was a small child.

I was praised by early teachers who hardly noticed I was in their classrooms.

And I was even praised by children my own age.

I was praised so much no one really believed I could do much wrong. This is probably why the teachers never suspected that it was my fault that half the freshman class had decided they were drunk and had begun to act accordingly on the freshman band trip to everyone’s favorite amusement park. I probably would have gotten away with it too it wasn’t for the boat ride.

I’ve never been sure how half the class got involved. Only years later when trying to puzzle out the chaos have I even begun to grasp the events I had set in motion. The idea on my part had been a simple one. Impress the boy across the table. Browsing our cheerfully decorated menu during a lunch I discovered that there, lurking among the boring normal foods, was pasta. But not just any pasta. No, this pasta was blessed with a magical sauce. Wiiiiine sauce. And, being ignorant of what cooking does to wine, I closed my menu and smirked at group of six sitting around the table with me only to make one of the boldest declarations of my teenage life.

I was an idiot. Luckily, all my friends were too. And as I saw the stars in the eyes of my peers I realized that I had just shattered their image of me. No longer was I Ember the well behaved girl who was too sweet for her own good. Suddenly, I was a rebel. I was a trouble maker. I was.. Cool.

 Drunk with power, I casually tossed my order to the waiter, slightly confused by his lack of being amazed with my balls of steel, and managed not to grin and break my game face when all the occupants of the table eagerly echoed my words. I was invincible.

Being so sure of myself, and my genius, I’m sure you can imagine my shock when I was half way through my meal and felt no effects from my well cooked noodles. I’d never had so much of a drop of alcohol but I knew that if this sauce was going to do anything it should have done it by now. It never occurred to me that perhaps any service worker worth their salt would never have served booze to a group of obviously fresh-out-of-gradeschool kids. What mattered now is my devious plan was already doomed.

I needed to do something. Serious thought on the matter proved there was only one true way out of this with any chance of saving my reputation. So, I summoned every last bit of movie knowledge I had and took a deep breath before I turned to my friends and pulled the obvious last ditch effort.

I slurred, hiccuped and swayed in my seat as I acted for the other kids at the table. Soon, I began to discover that the acting was contagious. The others around me, desperate not to be left out in the high-school-life making claim of having gotten drunk, began to act along. We were the young. We were the desperate. And if we were going to fake it, we were going to fake it right. Together, we finished our meal and began to do over exaggerated stumbles from the patio area and back into the park proper. Then we parted ways, as all great people do, and span across the over priced wonderland to spread our own particular version of cheer.  

Convinced I had dodged a bullet, I dropped my act and spent my time searching out a group of closer friends who were unaware of the effect my plan was having on the current student body. The six who had joined me for my meal met with their friends, who met with their friends, and it wasn’t long before the word of wine sauce had spread.  The line in front of the patio restaurant began queuing, and the kitchen began serving of dish after dish of the over priced pasta. Chaos was being purchased at twenty dollars a bowl, and over acting kids began to make a run of the park.

I became aware of this when I was met in the line by the most disturbing sight of my trip.

My friends had bought a bit too much of what I was selling and now they were dragging me with them. Some how between the time I had spent trying to find them they’d all had their own bowl of pasta—Well, Two bowls for the boy—and where already well in character for their drunken spree. They puzzled a moment over my sudden sobriety, as rumor had it I was the genius who’d discovered this magical Italian wonder, and then hauled me onto a small slow boat ride that promoted that it was, indeed, a small world after all.

In retrospect, the teachers might have been able to prevent this if not for the fact they were spending that exact moment in time trying to round up another twenty five kids who had decided that they were drunk enough to try and drown a park mascot in the fountain.

And that's how I ended up inside of a automated ride with a group of drunk thirteen year olds singing along badly to the ever repeating music. Maybe it was the music, or maybe it was all the wacky drunk acting. All I know is half way through the ride one of my friends snapped.

He began to rock wildly in the boat, clawing at the little automated signing children of the world.

Sadly, the ride had been built for people who were not crazy, so it wasn't long before my friend found himself tumbling end over end out of the boat into shoulder height water. Which, wasn't a big deal. To us. The ride workers, however, take this very seriously. Sirens sounded. Our boat was forced to a halt by a bumper that appeared from no where.

  

To be honest, it was rather like we'd done something much more horrible than have the more retarded of our group take an unwanted trip into less than savory water. Yet still, the workers showed up and ushered us all out of the boat and fished my friend from the obviously dangerous river before marching us to the front of the park mystified by my friends acts of drunkenness the entire way.

Once there, we were picked up by the teachers, who grumbled about having to pick up the rest of our class for acting the same way. The fact that I had been the cause was never picked up on until my wet friend had to open his big mouth.

  

I guess you can't win them all.

Ronas Out.

Why I'll never be Indiana Jones

When I was ten I decided that I was going to live the rest of my life exploring. My job was going to be finding whole new islands no one had discovered and I, armed with a faithful side kick and maybe a comic relief pet or two, would wander these untamed lands and have adventures that people would later beg me to tell over and over again. Who knows. I was pretty awesome. Maybe there'd be a movie deal. I even knew exactly where I needed to start.

This is legit.

History be damned. I'd watched the Discovery Channel. I knew what was going on over there. It was obvious there was a very small part of that strange world across the ocean colonized by people with funny accents, and the rest had been left to grow wild because there was no one cool enough to tame it. That's where I came in.

Shut up. I'm adorable.

I was going to be a hero.

All heroes need to learn somewhere, however, so most of my time was spent exploring a large field in my grandmother's back yard. I roamed in the relative safety of the early 90's, marching through weeds and Texas cactus where my greatest foes were the rarely seen snake and terrified rabbits. I slayed bushes, making the part before me dramatically with my trusty stick, and each day I made it my business to sneak just a bit farther from the house. I probably never would have made it more than a half block away at that age were it not for the help of my father.

On a drive home from the store my Dad slowed as we passed a wide field, split by a valley, and pointed out the window. In that moment, he told me something you should never tell a kid who grew up watching Indiana Jones over and over in an effort to learn everything about exploring they could.

That's a Native, not a redneck. Just so you know.

I was entranced. Instantly. Suddenly, my adventures no longer needed a trip across the ocean or even a driver's license to get to. I had been ignorant to the treasure in the back of my very own home. How had I been so blind? So closed minded?

Look, if you owned a hat that awesome you'd never take it off either.

There was gold out there! The early settlers in this common Texas town had to have missed most of it. They weren't as clever as I happened to be in my ten years of intelligence. There was gold and I was going to dig it up. I figured it could be used to fund later adventures, and if there was enough I could  use the left over to buy my family something nice. I could see it all now.

I blew the entire blog budget on this to add color.

Why don't children consider how fat they'd look as a balloon?

I swear. He's native. Ignore the hippy vibe.

I didn't see these ideas as being unrealistic at all. If anything, I was being reasonable or maybe even underestimating the wealth. So, after we'd gone home and had a simple family dinner, watched TV, and I spent the night laying in bed and plotting my new outing that was going to take me at least a whole mile (A MILE!) from home, I walked out my front door the next morning with purpose.

First off was supplies, which I gathered easily enough.

Anyone else think of Boondocks?

And then I was off. I marched bravely down the dirt road from the house and began my quest to find gold. Once I'd found it, I could probably carry a good bit back in my bag and maybe make another trip tomorrow or that day after. We'd have all we needed then. This plan was fool proof.

After what was probably a half hour of walking I was tired and convinced I'd covered twice as much land as the car my Dad was driving had. I'd probably made better time too. The only problem was I couldn't quite remember where exactly the gorge was.

Master of the cow-eyed stare.

To be honest, I couldn't readily remember the way I'd come from either.

Nothing over here.

Or the direction I needed to be going.

Nothing over there.

And then the real world sank in.

I hope you can understand the drama of this moment. A WHOLE MILE.

I had done it now. I'd wandered to far from home and now I was never going to find my way back. I was going to die. It was the end of everything. The promises of gold were forgotten as I began to run, crazed, back the way I thought I had come as fast as possible while doing my best not to cry.

That's right, I fell, got up, ran into a fence, rolled down a hill and ended up the the ground with a tumble weed.  Don't hate.

I sat there for a long time wondering just where I was. It wasn't long before I realized that I'd fallen into some sort of dried out river bed. I staggered around down there several long moments, dragging wire behind me as I walked. My fear of being lost was gone, replaced by wonder in the short term horror only a true ADHD gift child can muster. I was in a new place. A magical place. My TV based knowledge told me that this was the part of the story where something amazing happened (I'd seen the Goonies dammit) so I began to walk.

And walked more.

And walked more still.

And then, the metaphorical clouds parted and I found what I'd come for. Waiting for me at the far end of the gorge, right before I rock slide that could lead me up and out was the most amazing thing. It /had/ to be what I'd been meant to find. What could be better that what lay before me? In the span of those few seconds I fell in love with my discovery. I had been given a treasure. Something I'd always wanted, just never known I'd been missing until that moment.

This is a goat. No. Legit.

I instantly named it “Rosie.”




I liberated the rope from my pack, mindless to how dark it was getting outside, and fashioned a nice collar for my new sidekick. The rope was looped around the goats neck with ease, and with new found determination to rescue my four legged friend I began to climb the land slide wall to exit the gorge. The climb was long, hard, and tricky (Thought the goat seemed to have no real problems) but as the sun was going down I managed to  make it out and began leading my pet toward my home. Or where I thought home was. In reality, I wandered down several side streets and back pastures dragging the oddly obedient goat along before I happened across my grandmother's house right about the point that she was setting dinner on the table.

I don't know where the rest of the kitchen furniture went. We were poor, dammit.

The goat...

My grandmother was in shock. Not only had I been gone all day, but I had stolen someone's livestock. That was still a hanging offense in backwater Texas. Sadly for the goat owner, I couldn't retrace my steps the next day to tell anyone where I'd gotten my pet from. So, instead, my grandmother placed the goat in the large chicken pen she kept at the back of her farm land. Over the years Rosie the goat eventually began to believe that she was a chicken herself and lived out a long and happy life as champion of the chicken pen.

That goat was a hero. Title stealing goat.

Rosie fended off skunks, snakes, stray house cats and wild dogs from her precious chickens, providing for a small profit for my grandmother as she was able to sell off the sudden surplus in birds. It ended up being the best bit of thievery I'd ever done even if we didn't become rich.  The best part was some of the extra cash went toward me getting one of the best presents of all time.

[insert Zelda 'received item' sound here]

But that's a story for another time.

Ronas out.

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Once again, our art is thanks to the same wondrous lady as last time. It's amazing she puts up with my requests.

[Edit: Fixed spelling errors. Nothing like hardcore comments to make you realize you shouldn't post at midnight.]

I didn't mean it like that, I swear

Well, while Quin has been arrested in a true show of how hardcore he is, I've dealt with less life changing events. In reality it was just one thing for me. My waitress was weird.

No, not like that. She wasn't adorable, enlightening weird.

Like this. See, isn't that bump cute?

She was dark things in my closet weird. She was creature lurking in the depths of the shadows weird. I hadn't seen something this socially awkward since my early days in junior high when all the kids were going through the twisted world of what-puberty-can-fuck-my-life-up-with-next. To make matters worse, in most cases of this type of weird you at least don't have to deal with the socially awkward facial damage.

See that? You can never say anything about that. If you bring the obvious up you will be banned from society forever. They'll leave you to rot in a dark cave they normally dub 'insensitive', or sometimes 'you're-a-douche', where you'll eventually turn into the super nerd as you resort to spending all your free time on the internet.

You can never mention that. No matter what. I think they show them off to fuck with me.

The social freaks were spared of these more obvious freak marks because some divine pity deemed it too dangerous for polite conversation/possibly awkward body language moments. Which were totally on accident. I swear.

But no. Not on this day. On this particular June eve I won the fucked up girl lottery and got both.

Like this. Only uglier.

She was wounded. Socially odd, and wounded. I really thought it couldn't get any worse than this when all I had intended to do was go out and have waffles at five in the afternoon with a date, until I noticed that the other waitresses and cook staff were all giving our wounded waitress the stare down while she took our order.

The were looking at this poor awkward woman so hard that I came to the only reasonable conclusion I could. Our waitress was odd enough that it had already brought conversation at my table to a grinding halt and I sat there stewing for several long moments before I felt the need to try and save everything. I was a small talk hero. I was totally on my game. I could do this. So, when our poor waitress walked away I leaned over to my friend and attempted what I like to call humor.

Now, this seemed as natural a joke to me as breathing, but obviously my friend was more of a tender sorts.

This is actually pretty close to what his face looked like.

In other words, I'm pretty sure the guy was wondering why they let me go out in public. Which lead to endless pregnant silence as we ate our waffles. This dragged out over the entire meal until we muttered farewells while the beaten waitress took our money and looked horribly over grateful to get a tip at all.

I suppose I could have brought up the fact that the Japanese have been able to make meat out of human feces as a way to lighten to meal, but it didn't really seem like dinner conversation anyone would approve of. Plus, I'd already scared away yet another person in the world, no reason to leave the too terrified to go outside for the rest of their life. I did, however, take a look over my shoulder as we both left to head out separate ways and got a good look at the restaurant windows.

I'll never get this image out of my head.

Sometimes I think life is out to sabotage my chances at dating. Really.

Ronas out.

PS. Our art today is thanks to my hero, Cupcake Fingers.

Guest post: I watched gay pornography.

Usually, there's some sort of preceding fan fare over the meat of these entries. I don't have time for that. See, I have a confession:

I watched gay pornography.

Now, this would be perfectly fine were I a homosexual, but I ain't. So, like the videos did to me, I will now detail perfectly my experience, I'll also explain why you shouldn't put things up your ass.

But, there should be some sort of prologue to this, I suppose. You see, I wait tables (for free, aren't I fantastic? I will also strip for food). I come from a little town in <country> near <provincial capital> where the population is mostly British, and mostly gay. This is obviously a powder keg of glitter, bitchiness, and soiled condoms, but that's beside the point (also, they think my brother has nice nipples...yeah). I was 'working' one night with my legs chained to the glass washer behind the bar as I sang convict songs such as 'like a virgin' by Madonna...or maybe that's just gay, I have no idea anymore. A frail old gentleman entered one night with a considerably younger man at his side. To me, he entrusted a bag to keep safe as I showed him to his seat...little did I know that what I would find in this bag would change my fucking life forever. So, being adorably conniving, I surreptitiously opened the bag.

There were four cases. Two were uncovered DVD jewel cases. I feared they may contain illegal material.

The customer left, forgetting his bag to ostensibly go and have his colon budded by his younger partner's phallus (try and clean your ears with a q-tip now, you'll get the metaphor). So, I took these cases home in their little Hawaiian Tropic bag. After some time tried to persuade The Ronas to watch it with me-- She is lucky I got bored of waiting. I also feel it prudent to point out no Hawaiians were harmed in the production of those movies.-- I picked out one of the unmarked cases which had a little paper note inside marked "Bareback". Being familiar with the homosexual vernacular, I was aware this meant something like "Man puts his unwrapped penis in another man's rectum and starts making a reciprocating motion...without lucubration." 

It was like every gory war movie mixed in with a little bit of horror. This was some very underground stuff, with men doing very painful looking things to one another. One scene I remember quite fondly was when it was all over, the receiver started clenching his cheeks and suddenly a copious amount of semen started falling liberally out of his anus. Mouth still hanging open, I turned off the DVD and started smoking. It was at this point I realized that, despite The Ronas' insistence, I was not gay. In fact, this movie only strengthened my love for women in general...so long as they prepare fine meals, press my shirts and tell me where the hookers are when I need 'this thing' sucked.

Anyway, what we can learn from this story is that holy fucking shit; you do not put things up your ass. Holy good mother of God they look all stretchy, and I hear some of them lose sphincter control and shit themselves.

Oh, I'm also looking for a Green Card. If anyone's interested, hit me up at mr.0_o@hotmail.com...I do dishes!

I HAVE CRABS!

Or a post about them.

So every now and again I get too busy to do you lovely people a weekly update. That's where my friends come in. See, they're just as weird as I am so I figure you might get a kick out of them once in a while. This being said, let me introduce you all to a dear friend of mine. Quin.

He likes to write and works for free. Which makes him the perfect guest poster. Really.

.......................................................................................................

The condemned man watched with uncomprehending vision as I looked up the best way to kill him. Unable to talk, likely struggling to even breathe, he flailed helplessly next to me while I sorted out the execution methods. Boiling, I had thought when I first took on the task, would be best. No, wrong.  No impersonal death, this. They said I had to do it by hand.  Stab him, or peel his body apart while he was stunned.

 For a three dollar blue crab this was starting to seem like a whole lot of horrifying fucking work.

 I've been eating ramen and cheap chicken soup day in and out, so when I saw this little crab, cheap, I leapt on it. Crab? Fuck yeah! And I can just boil him!  So I go to the internet to find out a good way to spice the water to cleanly kill the little guy. I say cleanly, I mean for me, I mean he's going to be boiled alive.  But he's a crab. Fuck him, he's a hockey puck with delusions of grandeur.

 So I set him down on the carpet to enjoy his last time in the exercise yard.  He watched me look up his demise and I think ate my carpet.

 "Okay, so it says here I take water and put ice... in it. Which is supposed to stun you." So far so good, maybe its like hypnotizing a lobster, so its more humane, "And then what I do is, while you're stunned and can't claw me, I... they want me to pull your shell off." His fucking shell. While he's alive. I can't do that! The fuck?! What the fuck is this, cooking for maniacs? Jesus.

 He looked at me. I looked at him. I decided it was time to fill the tub. Yeah, the tub! He'll be my housecrab! That's normal, right? To wuss out of killing a meal and making it into a pet? I could feed him scraps, and take him for walks on a leash. I was brought up in the suburbs of Chicago by a Jewish mother. The closest I ever got to even remotely hurting my own food was making fun of the presentation of a lasagna.  I don't hunt, I agonize how to have someone else cook it.

 So there I was and there he was.  I had, at this point, stopped IMing friends freaking out over having to kill the crab (I left that out to look like less of a pussy). "EMBER! TAMAR! I CAN"T DO THIS!" etc.

So I carried him into the kitchen, cleared a spot out, and took a deep breath. There. We. were.

I'm poor. He's expensive.

I'm hungry. He's delicious.

I've been eating ramen all week.  He's a good source of protein.

Fuck it, lets do this.

Time to do the deed. Time to kill the crab. Kill the brain they said. Ice water (No ice. Goddamnit.) So fill a pot with cold water, dump him in, and kill him.  Me and him. Mano a mano. The great Jewish hunter rides again!

My weapon: A heavy chisel bladed survival knife. I had at this point called a friend of the female persuasion who had begun laughing at me and my timidness; Now was my time to impress the weak female with my battle prowess. She would see that I was the hunter. The provider.  I wanted this nice and easy so I put the tip of the blade against the top of his shell. One good hit, he'd be dead, no pain and AH GOD HE'S FLAILING I'M SORRY MR CRAB STOP KICKING I'M SORRY SHIT SHIT HIT HIM AGAIN GOD DAMN HE'S PADDLING WHAT DID I DO I'M A MONSTER POOR MR CRAB!

 When I came to, I realized I had left the knife in, was across the room with eyes like dinner plates, and he was flailing. Turns out that it was just spasms.  Mr Crab was no longer with us. He was in fact, an ex-crab. All I saw, however, was the knife was fully in and he was still moving. I became rapidly convinced I had only angered him so hit it again. And again. At this point I had realized I didn't have an ordinary crab. This was the omega crab. The avenging crab. If I did not kill it, it would slay me and feast upon my flesh, so I did the most manly thing I did.

I stuck him in the fucking freezer and hid for five minutes.

Oh fuck you, the crab survived a combat knife. You’d be scared too. Don't you judge me, goddamnit, he was huge and angry and now had a knife.

Finally, mercifully, the moving stopped. I peeked into the freezer, and the beast was dead. And so, like a triumphant warrior, Tamar's laughter in the back, I put him into the boiling pot. No, I wasn't crying.

I did feel bad though, poor little guy. I mean I took a knife and took his life, I killed him and he never di...

Goddamn. This is good crabmeat.

Moral of the Story: Murder is okay if they're tasty.