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Wednesday, January 01, 2003

Hung Over; Things Can Only Get Better

After all these years thinking I have an unusual dislike of people, I realize nobody likes people. Why else is it that whenever people get together in groups, they have to drink in order to tolerate each other?

I had nothing but water to drink last night, but still I have a hangover. I think hangovers are from being around too many people, but since almost no one can tolerate that sober, they assume it's the alcohol that leaves them feeling like they've just spent hours standing around desperately searching for nothing to say with dozens of other people doing the same thing.

(For the dry-humor impaired: ... oh, never mind.)

Actually, in truth last night's crowd was a pretty good one. I hadn't expected to leave the house at all, but Peter dragged me along at the last minute to a party hosted by some friends of ours, which I think had over a hundred people in attendance, an alarming number of whom I already knew.

But I do still have a hangover, I imagine from some level of inevitable people-related stress combined with going to bed at 5:30am. And maybe those damn fruit tortes they kept restocking all night. :)

Why do people ask questions they don't really want answers to? I mean, I do generally recognize when people are asking a question which even they know they don't want the answer to, but I'm talking about where they actually press on with some almost morbid curiosity even when it's becoming clear they don't really want the answer. From that description, you'd think I was talking about grody medical questions or something. But no, try: "So, where do you work?".

Try as I might to either side-step this question or answer it in some one-sentence way that will leave people satisfied, they almost invariably want more details. Mind you, these are drunk people at a party--substantial communication is implicitly verboten. I think they just get derailed from their conversational templates, and start grasping for some anchor. They ought to just say "I have no response to that." What they don't realize is that the more they clamor for a hold, the further they get from their templates, so in a matter of a minute or so they're looking at me like a deer in the headlights, mumbling something about desperately needing coffee, and stumbling off in a state of minor panic.

Mind you, this actually happened.

Though again that description is selectively barren in the name of humor. I wasn't poindextering. I got the impression I struck some particular interests of hers, and she genuinely wanted to talk about it in some depth, but her blood alcohol had been calibrated for less substantial matters.

Don't you hate it when you're on a long flight and the pilot dies and you're the only other pilot on the plane but you just took a double dose of sleeping pills and big shot of tequila? I hate it when that happens.

Heh.. my random music selection just kicked on Howard Jones "Things Can Only Get Better":

We're not scared to lose it all
Security throw through the wall
Future dreams we have to realize
A thousand sceptic hands
Won't keep us from the things we plan
Unless we're clinging to the things we prize

And do you feel scared - I do
But I won't stop and falter
And if we threw it all away
Things can only get better

Treating today as though it was
The last, the final show
Get to sixty and feel no regret
It may take a little time
A lonely path, an uphill climb
Success or failure will not alter it

And do you feel...

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