Screwed

One regular reader, and frequent anonymous comment logger, has already heard my oral sketch of this post. In the cast-away corner of the local Thai restaurant, the corner where they seat the bad kids who converse too loudly about inappropriate things, over my bowl of meaty Massaman Curry and her platter of clumpy Pad Thai, I spun the following yarn. She cast that sad glance toward me, like the one you would pitifully point toward a retarded child. I took that as a sign of approval. The story goes something like this….

I have a hazy recollection of some darkened dance space. It was like a living room, but it was behind a restaurant. The restaurant was closed, but the bar was open. Open, that is, with a capital O.

It was a birthday party for a co-worker, whose generous husband had rented the sub-hip space for about 100 of his wife’s closest friends. The food was varied, but plentiful, and the drinks were free.

“Drinks were free,” of course, is one of the most beautiful phrases known to Brian-kind. Feeling that it would be rude to snub the host’s hospitality, I felt fit to make the best-use of my god-given gift of bimanualism. “Two fisting,” they call it. Trusty Gin-and-Tonic on the right, certainly not the first of the night, and a pink-and-frilly (all-too girlie) Cosmopolitan on the left.

Dancing. Yes. I was forced to confess to the misssus, later the next morning, that I had danced shamelessly for all to see, whirling-dervish like, balancing in a seaman-like manner my twin cocktails without spilling (noticeably) a drop. Bad 80’s music popped and whined from the speakers. (Play some Skynyrd!!) (Oh wait, they did play Skynyrd…)

A few drinks later, after the porn-centered gag-gifts were presented to the girl of the hour, the evening ended.

Contrary to popular opinion, I do not drink like that every night. Sure, maybe back in law school, when you could find me studying in the Tahiti Lounge, I may have drank like that. Just, not these days.

So, maybe I drank water and took aspirin before going to bed. Maybe I didn’t. Hard to say really. What’s harder to say is just what sort of pain shot through my head at 6:30 Sunday morning when the Howler Monkey, who had been strategically placed against my head, let out her mighty morning YEEEEEOOOUUUGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

After some rag tag tot care, distracting maneuvers mostly while Mrs. Gin-and Tonic got her self up and put-together (Yes, a Saint.), I was able to nap until the crack-of-noon. Whereupon, I shuffled miserably to the poofy-couch and planted my nauseous ass back down.

The weekend had been intended to be active and production-filled. Christmas lights, billable hours, and monkey time. Sunday turned out to be, however, a 6-hour marathon of drinking cranberry juice, driving the poofy-couch, and watching Science Channel specials about flying to, and landing on, various comets, asteroids and space rocks the size of Texas.

As the pounding spike in my forehead dissolved over time, I discovered a pattern in the Science Channel advertising. Well, not so much a pattern, as much as it was one commercial being played over and over and over. I became intimately familiar that day with a company called Southern Tools, and what appears to be their only product.

It’s the Bit Shooter. Basically, it’s a rapid-change multi-bit screwdriver. Looks intriguing, but probably crap. $19.99. Seems pricey, but it comes with interchangeable bit cartridges. So, who knows?

Here’s the thing, though, for $19.99 you get not only the Bit Shooter and the four bonus interchangeable bit cartridges, but you also get a free cordless power drill.

FREE CORDLESS POWER DRILL… With the purchase of a SCREWDRIVER…

Doesn’t that seem odd? I can’t place my finger on it, but I am certain, somehow, in some way, the Chinese are behind this. Regardless, as long as I’m not getting the autographed Battlestar Galactica poker set, it would make a nice gift…