They totally asked to be hackedIRL

Saw this today:

and I have to say, with that tagline so conveniently placed after an expanse of blank space, they are just begging to be trolled. Sadly, I possess neither a modicum of drive or a can of spray paint, so I'll just settle for photoshopping some of the many possibilities.

Feel free to steal the original image and be creative - just upload it in the comments section so I can see!

Fake People Crushes

I read "Your Weirdest Crushes" on Jezebel Groupthink today and it reminded me of all the irrational celebrity/fictional character crushes I've had in my life, so I decided to blog them.

 Don't let me be alone in my public shame though. Comment with your weirdest obsessions with fake people!

First up, all my ludicrous childhood crushes on fake people:

Age 4 - Michelangelo from TMNT

Cool action hero on the most violent TV show I was allowed to watch? Check. Good sense of humor (for a turtle)? Check. And... most importantly of all... This dude always had pizza, which as any 4 year old knows, is the best food ever.








Age 5 - Wolverine from X-Men

I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that my generation's cartoons were a gazillion bajillion times better than the crap today's youth is watching. Case in point? Wolverine, a la 90's Saturday morning cartoons. Not really a crush because he's literally hundreds of years old, but in first grade, I used to tell people he was my dad.




Age 5 - Gambit from X-Men

This one was a legitimate crush. In my first-grade fantasy world, Wolverine was my dad and Gambit was my boyfriend. (I was also best friends with Rogue and Storm, even tough they were older, because fuck Jubilee. She's practically the X-Men equivalent of a Squib.)






Age 6 - Batman from, well, Batman

Can you tell I grew up with brothers? I loved 90s-cartoon-version Batman. In my fantasy, we used to make fun of Robin behind his back while Alfred made us chocolate-chip french toast for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.






Age 7 - Speed Racer (Cartoon version)

Ok, honestly? His eyelashes were longer than his girlfriend's, but so what? He had an awesome car and a PET MONKEY.






Age 8 - Half of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers

 Look, I was 8. I couldn't make up my mind on just ONE power Ranger to commit myself to obsessing over for the entirety of second grade! Tommy was always my fave, but sometimes you just need to mix it up. For the record, I never liked Jason (Red Ranger). He was just too... frat boy.




Age 10 - This guy from "Out of the Box"

Apparently his name is Tony, and apparently he has only gotten better looking with age. All I know is, he was the solitary reason I would "begrudgingly" let my little brother put "Out of the Box" on TV even though it was my turn to pick.






Age 12 - Bran from The Dark is Rising Sequence

He was a book character not well-known or popular enough to generate much fan-art, so I'll just tell you he was an Albino Welsh teenager on a magical Arthurian quest... ok NOW it sounds weird, doesn't it?


Age 13 - All of Hanson... and their Canadian counterparts, The Moffatts

I was 13, okay? At least they were real people and not cartoon characters!

Age 14 - Sirius Black and Remus Lupin (the book versions, obvs)

Unlike a lot of people I knew, I never bothered having crushes on any of the characters that were my own age. I mean seriously, who is Cedric Diggory next to an escaped convict, amirite?






Age 15 - Seto Kaiba, Marik Ishtar, and Yami Bakura from Yu-Gi-Oh

 So this was definitely a relapse into crushing on cartoon characters, but whatever. I was in high school during the height of the anime-takeover of US teen pop culture, or at least that is what I will tell them if I ever get called in for a psych evaluation.




Age 15 - Brock from Pokemon

I am not proud of this. In my defense, I suppose I needed a reason to watch Pokemon as a 15-year-old girl, and at the time this seemed better than just admitting I thought it was kind of cool. AT THE TIME.







And I won't lie and say my crushes on fake people stopped when I grew up. Here are some examples from my late teens through present day of completely weird celebrity/fictional character crushes:

Severus Snape

You know what? Any version. Book version, movie version, that one awesome hogwarts-was-real-in-this-dream-I-had  version... I don't even feel (that much) shame. This guy was smart, funny, sarcastic, good-hearted, and really great with comebacks. Really his fatal flaw is not existing in real life.





Gale from the Hunger Games (book version)

This guy is badass, okay? I just can't believe they let Miley Cyrus' boyfriend play him in the movies. Worst casting choice ever.










Samwell Tarly from Game of Thrones

OK, so he's no Kit Harrington, but he is a genuinely nice guy and he doesn't pretend to be anything he isn't... like brave, or physically fit. So you know what? I think he's so endearing it makes him cute.





Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones

What he lacks in height he makes up for in pure wit. Besides, I like a man who knows how to drink like one. I do kind of hope that Bronn comes with the deal too, though.





And rounding out the Game of Thrones category...
Natalie Dormer as Margaery Tyrell/Anne Boleyn

I know a few people who don't care for her, and I don't get it. Something about her perpetually crooked smile just gets me like <3






So there you have my weird fictional character crushes. I mean obviously I also <3 Jon Snow from GOT but who doesn't?

What completely non-existent people have you adored?

Google Tried to Warn Us

In drinking years, I belong to AARP

So I'm hungover today. I fail at not drinking, although to be fair:

1) It wasn't even that much
2) I drank a lot of water in between
3) It was Saturday

So this morning my head was like "You need to keep sleeping BUT I'm going to hurt so you can't, haha!"

And then I was like "Well, fuck you then, I'm going to take some Advil," but my stomach was like "Not if you want to keep it down" and I knew it meant it, so I just had bacon instead. But then my stomach was like "I'm hungry/I'm full/Drink juice/Ack, nono not juice!" and honestly it's just a little ridiculous.

I think they need to lower the legal drinking age to 18 or 19, and I don't care about all the "real" reasons people always cite when debating the point. It needs to be a thing because face it, your years of being able to drink-drink are pretty limited. It would be like if you had to be 30 before you could play professional football - your peak's been wasted. Just like athletes set their career records in their 20s (at least, I assume they do, honestly I don't care about sports so I'm not sure) all of your crazy drinking stories happen when you're young. Once you pass 25, you will never again drink from a funnel or a comically oversized boot glass, shotgun a warm Heineken (so at least there is that silver lining), or even be able to hear the word "fireline" without instantly throwing up in your mouth.

After 25, You'll play beirut (beer pong for those of you that are doing it wrong) in a desperate attempt at a college throwback, and secretly dump most of the beer into the bushes when no one is looking. You'll have to take shots in two gulps and then rub your stomach for ten minutes before even thinking about taking another sip of your beer. You'll buy a 30-rack of beer when your friends come over, only to discover 22 cans of it still sitting on your back porch when you dig out the snow shovels 7 months later. You'll actually have the same bottle of whiskey in your house for so long it starts to taste better eventually. Or maybe you won't do any of those things, but I do and this isn't really your blog anyway, is it?

When I was somewhere around 22, the hubby (then bf) and I split a bottle of absinthe with maybe three or four friends, and we killed it by 10am the next day with the old hair of the dog shot. Now I can't even look at a bottle of that green shit in the liquor store without wanting to vomit and take a nap (not simultaneously, that would be dangerous - I know this because the mandatory "welcome to college, please don't die this semester" freshman class told me so).

Now it's like, someone mentions that whole "hair of the dog" thing and I'm like "omg are you joking? I am never drinking again" which is always completely 100% true. It's just that sometimes, "again" just means "today".

It's hard to accept being drinking-old though, especially when I'm still young for all other purposes. Sometimes I still buy a six-pack of beer thinking I'm going to drink it all on my day off, and instead I watch Netflix and then go to bed at 11. I drink nothing but bottled water all day, or, if I'm feeling adventurous and the expiration date is approaching, maybe I'll go wild and have a glass of milk.

I remember meeting people who were in their mid-20s to early 30s when I was 22 (I feel like I was 22 for like 5 years, is that weird? It's like when I tell stories about when I was a kid and in every single one I'm like "so I was like 11, and...") and anyway, they would tell me how they don't really party anymore, and I'd think they were boring people who didn't like to have fun. I thought of my drinking future in the exact same way that I thought about Disney World when I was a kid, like "Wow, I really hope that when I'm older I will still want to go to Disney World... I hope I don't decide it's lame and only for little kids," except it was more like "I hope when I'm nearing thirty I still think it's fun to play Asshole until I pass out in my chair... I hope I don't decide it's lame and only for college kids" And all I can say in response to that is "well, at least I still do want to go to Disney World."

Maybe the saddest part is that just when I've finally retained knowledge of the rules to drinking card games into the next day, I'm at the stage of my life where being the one that gets fucked by the table actually is kind of a bad thing. (If you didn't get that reference, you probably never played cards with a joker as the 5 of hearts on a coffee table with Jack Daniels ripples in it, and you have no idea what you missed out on.)

I don't know exactly when it happened, but sometime after my 25th birthday, "going out for a few beers" actually became a literal thing and not a downplayed euphemism for getting shitfaced. Sometimes, when you're young, "a few" means "a lot" - usually on the same days that "again" means "today".

I just realized this blog is full of vomit references and random tangents but it is about drinking, so I think it's perfectly appropriate and I'm not changing it. Also, I'm lazy. You're lucky I blogged at all. I pretty much only bothered because my Chromebook was already on my living room couch and the Game of Thrones facebook game wouldn't load.

I think there's also a possibility that I'm being pessimistic about my drinking abilities because I was up until 5am and slept on a couch with my earrings still on, because none of this in any way diminishes my desire to go to Mardi Gras in New Orleans next year.

So I guess what I'm saying is that I am officially drinking-old, but that doesn't mean I'm ready to drinking-retire. I think I'm up for the beerquivalent of bagging groceries in my old-man orthopedic shoes ten hours a week for something to do. Maybe I'll even wink at the cute vodka bottle working the checkout register.

I'll probably blog more, since I'm "quitting" drinking

I know I'm the most sporadic blogger in history (or at least, you know, in my social circle - because non-bloggers are not sporadic, and all my friends either don't blog or blog practically every damn day) but I do have an excuse. See, most of the time, I'm too busy actually doing things to write about them. Like, I would love to tell you some of my awful/awesome drinking stories, but I'm usually to busy creating another one to bother. That's all about to change (for awhile)!

The hubby and I have decided to "quit" drinking for a few months. There are a few reasons for this, and some of them are responsible ones, so let's get those out of the way first:

1) To lose some weight - seriously, on weekends beer probably represents half my caloric intake, and since the other half comes from the buffalo wild wings I eat with the beer, this can only help.

2) To save some money - Duh, we need to save money to go to New Orleans (Hoping for Mardi Gras!) and/or Las Vegas (again, because why not?) so we can drink some more. There's logic in there soomewhere, yes? I just feel like Bourbon St would be more fun than Boylston, Massachusetts to drink at.

And then there's the not-so-responsible reason: tolerance break! Apparently there's science behind the whole quit-for-a-few-months, become-a-cheap-date-again thing. Something about enzymes building up in the liver. Wikipedia says it works, and I'm trusting the guys who co-wrote every single college paper I've ever done.

So those are my reasons, and the result is more free time, and it's twofold: One, I won't be going out as often so I'll be home and probably on my computer, and two, I won't be sleeping off hangovers every Sunday so I'll probably get up before most restaurants stop serving breakfast. I mean, yeah, IHOP, Denny's and Cracker Barrel serve breakfast all day, but 1) There's no way any sober person ever is going to go to Denny's, and 2) I don't care what time it is, if it's my first meal of the day, it's breakfast time. Bring me some bacon and eggs and to hell with your dinner specials!

So anyway, this all sounds pretty solid, right? So why did I put "quit" in parentheses? BECAUSE, I'm still 20-something years old and where the hell else can 20-somethings meet up with friends after work besides  a bar? I'm not going to suddenly become antisocial just because I'm cutting back (although apparently that is what happens to some people). I'm just going to employ the tactic I should be using every time I go out: One glass of beer, followed by one glass of water. Keeps the calories down and keeps me hydrated, so win-win, right?

According to internet lore/annoying advice from know-it-alls, I should be doing this all the time to prevent hangovers, but at the same time, I feel like a hangover is your body's way of telling you you're a fucking tool, and who am I to shut my body down when it wants to take a stand about something? Also, no one wants to be that lame-ass at the bar ordering free fucking waters from a harried bartender who's probably already thinking of spitting in your drink because they're pissed off that they're working on a Saturday night while you and all your annoying friends are still trying to make "epic fail" a verb.

So I guess what I'm saying is I could (but won't, without significant bribing) be a DD for a while. And I'll probably blog more (which isn't saying much, really).

In the meantime, if you're having Stina-withdrawal (admit it, you are), there are always a couple of options for you:

1) buy me a beer
2) buy me a beer
3) Buy me a beer somewhere - if I'm not spending the money, it doesn't count, as far as I'm concerned.