I wasn’t going to write anything today, not so much because I am hung over, but because I think that I’m still drunk. That was the only way I could face watching Smallville and the American remake of Life on Mars in the same night, an experience that I will probably bitch about at some point after I stop sweating oily gack that smells like Jack Daniels and I recover the ability to take a solid dump, or at least my will to live.
However, I had to comment after I was idly clicking around my GMail account this morning, trying to decide if Malaria or Tuberculosis was a more beliveable sick day excuse, when I found this under the “Labs” link:
Mail Goggles
Google strives to make the world’s information useful. Mail you send late night on the weekends may be useful but you may regret it the next morning. Solve some simple math problems and you’re good to go. Otherwise, get a good night’s sleep and try again in the morning.
While I’m normally inclined to give Google a pass on just about anything considering their ten-year history of easing my access to niche pornography, I’m gonna go on record and say that this is the worst, most ill-advised use of computer technology since the blink tag met MySpace.
Drunk emailing and drunk dialing are important. First of all, they teach responsibility. For the occasional drinker, drunk dialing causes terrible embarrassment, which is a good thing. Otherwise, that yappy 22-year-old twat yammering into her cell phone next to me at the bar while I’m trying to watch the Red Sox game will never learn to stop.
Second, for we serious people, drunk dialing teaches us that, if we’re going to drink, we need to become good at it. Sure, I had a few humiliating drunk dialing experiences back in college when I was learning my tolerances, but it taught me that that I either had to quit drinking, or learn how to do it correctly. Since then, I’ve communicated with people while shitfaced over the Internet, from the stage and on the public airwaves with 50,000 watts of power, and do you know what terrible consequences came of it? I got paid.
And make no mistake, there are consequences to drunken communications: good stories. Trust me: on a Monday morning, no one at your job wants to hear you talk about how you did off four frozen margaritas, went home, jacked off and went safely to bed.
However, if you can spin a yarn about how you did off a quart of whiskey and called your buddy’s fiancée to tell her she should dump the prick to be with you, and how then she got wrecked on scotch and called your buddy to tell him the wedding’s off, and how he tanked up on PBR Talls and called you to say that you’re a cunt and if he sees you again he’ll put you in the hospital, and you’re so drunk you remind him that he’s about 130 pounds soaking wet and the only way he could possibly put someone in the hospital would be if he somehow crawled back into his mother and gave her a second chance to have him aborted… you will be the fucking hero of the break room.
Trust me, I know: that exact series of events happened to me seven years ago last night… and it was my girl who I called, and we’re still together to this day. Picking up that phone while I was hammered was the best decision I’ve ever made, and I defy you to find a timid, conservative wimp who’s put together a better life… assuming you can find one today who isn’t in his garage hanging from a beam near an overturned chair with his 401K statement under their feet.
So take some advice from your Uncle Rob: drunk dialing is good. Drunken communications of all kinds have done nothing but improve my life. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna email my boss before I sober up and forget what I wanted to call him.
I mean, tell him. Whatever; what’s the worst that can happen?
[tags]Google, Mail Goggles, drunk dialing, drunk emailing, dark humor, satire[/tags]
