Vodka is Made From Dinosaur Bones

He does these things you know, being a planner and a doer and a person of interest, he organizes these once a month, different liquors each time. Which gives us all an excuse to get drunk, and K. an excuse to make charts, and P. an excuse to smoke a cigar even though he quit cigarettes, and J. an excuse to bring up ancient British queens in conversation. K. is an encyclopedia, and J. is a Bullfinches Mythology, and L. controls things in space. They are interesting drunks.

This month was vodka. Since vodka is nothingness, is indeed the complete absence of something like hope or work or free countries or a life without Russian borders, we did it blind. 9 mason jars full of mystery nothingness, and we guessed.

9 shots of nothingness, of bone vapors and wheat blood and potato tears, which we smelled and sniffed and sipped and cringed (I brought those mixers for after the tasting yo, we were purists at first, but they sat there laughing at me in their juicy way, as I took taste after taste, until by the end I was already drunk and ready to never taste straight vodka again ever)

I guessed wrong on almost every one. My favorite turned out to be Ketel One, but hey, the local boy, the Paramount from Berea Rd, my go to freezer bottle of ten dollar goodness, it came in second only to Grey Goose. There was a bottle with an LED sign on it, that you could program to say things, any things. And The Rest? Imagine having to drink a bottle of nailpolish remover, only really slowly. Smirnoff came in dead last. Dead.

But then, when it was open free for all and after I had huddled in the snow with the cigar an appropriate amount of time, then is when A. started pouring the shots, and so many shots were had. Just sitting there, talking to the new girl with my birthday, over and over again, fill, tap, drink. I love the tap. The tap is my new favorite thing. Tap. Books! Tap. Boys! Tap. Projects! Tap. Oh god with the tapping.

By three in the morning, it was me and the 2 girls and the roommate left, and I was so drunk, I was so almost but not quite embarrassingly drunk. The kind of drunk where you think the people in the room with you are like the best kind of people that have ever existed. E! She's so cute! And J! So polished! And P! Stand up guy! In the morning, they were still all those things, but really morning was still far away for me. It was at least three drunken emails away, fucking smartphone Little Brother.

A. got up from his ritual mid-tasting nap, and then we had a little dance party for a minute, and I reverted to what I always revert to, taking pictures of building, of doorways and floors and windows. So much more fun than trying to catch people in moments, buildings stay still for you. I am always the last one standing. It is cold. Coldly satisfying, like I get to make sure the doors are locked and the babies safely tucked away, and I'm just one of those girls who can never go to sleep when there might be something to pay attention to. Cold like actually cold, like shivering exhaustion cold, which makes sleep so much better.

4 hours later, I woke up and we all made breakfast no they all made breakfast and I watched, and I decided that in fact I had died in the middle of the night, and I was dead now, but I could handle it, being dead is just a thing. We ate in the middle of the ruins, there was some conversation about ethics and I was being surly a little about Hearst and the duplicity of media (I am so full of bullshit, it's like being drunk fills me up with word spit and then I'm drowned for days) and I drove home, and the entire way back I was convinced I had completely forgotten how to drive. My car was a bike and I was falling off. My car was a machine, and I was toy girl.

I got home, filled up a gallon jug of water, and just lay on the couch for the entire day watching Hercule Poirot movies and documentaries about ancient tsunamis on Crete, and Masterpiece Theater movies about girls in Jane Austen novels.

And now here we are.

Saturday's Questions have way too many cookies to bake before 5pm today

The best kind of toast is probably rye with some tomato and swiss cheese, but everyone I know cares a lot about basketball today, so I wanted to ask - what's the most irresponsible kind of underwear?

The best kind of toast is lightly toasted Italian with real butter. But rye is a close second, so I'll let that slide.

The most irresponsible kind of underwear is the nonexistent kind you wear when you've forgotten to do laundry. Or thongs. I don't even think that qualifies as underwear.


Are Akron and Cleveland really different cities?

No. Yes. I guess so. I like Cleveland more, but it's bigger and has a lake. I think Akron suffers from not having a large body of water near it. Also from having way too many one way streets. Akron is just smaller, you know. There's less stuff going on there, and a lot of it is related to the university, which is fine, but I'm not interested in hanging out with college kids so much. It's much more an Ohio town, and Cleveland is a Lake town. People from Akron are more Ohioans than Clevelanders. They are closer to the unlit highways with dead deer littered everywhere, to cheese barns and closing car factories, to the snow belt and the tornado warnings and the long stretches of rural road with ditches. Akron is sort of the border, where you really leave the urban grit for the unemployed farmland grit.

Akron also smells like burnt rubber, whereas Cleveland smells like burnt metal and rock water, and I prefer the rusty taste.


What is a product I can purchase for little and sell for a lot?

Love.


What's the best way to tell a girl I love her when I don't actually speak her language all that well?

First, you should learn to speak her language better. That's always a good step. But if you're like me, and terrible at learning languages, then I recommend writing her stories. The good love letters I've saved are the ones that went on for pages with stories maybe having nothing to do with me, but I still have them because they were written for me, to impress me.

And if you're not a writer, then send her photos you take, or sketches you draw. Produce things for her. Girls like things to be made for them.


What's the best way to end my story about walking a dog?

All stories about walking dogs should end with a home break in, or the dog getting dried fish. They should never end with the dog dying. Preferably there should be a boat involved. Dogs and boats are the best combination ever.

Do you think that your online and real life personalities differ?

So when I was a little girl, I used to volunteer to read in public all the time. At church I was a lector. At school, I was always trying to get picked for speeches and presentations. I fully thought of myself as a loud, slightly obnoxious child. Later in life, my friends from grade school told me that I was always really quiet. Even now, I think I talk really loud, and turns out, no one can ever hear me.

My point is that I am not self aware at all, and therefore not qualified to answer this question. I don't think there's much difference at all between me in real life and me online. After all, how much of yourself can you really hide when you've got a blog, and Twitter, and Facebook? I don't mention a lot of the more naughtier things I do, because usually the least interesting things about a person are who they are sleeping with, and how fucked up they are at the time. Maybe sometimes people think I will be snarkier in person, but I try to be fair and nice to everyone who is not a reality show star or a politician. I can devastatingly cruel if someone wrongs me, but that's only applied to 2 people ever in my adult life. So except for certain breakup meltdowns, I'm usually pretty even keeled. If you don't cheat on me with a 19 year old, I probably won't ever be angry at you. My friends are pretty drama free. When I think about it, while I was with the Ex, I was the biggest source of drama in our circles, because of all the fighting and trauma and him making me sad all the time. Poor Bridget's friends. Now I'm a pretty happy person, and I want other people to be happy, and I want my interesting friends to meet all my other interesting friends and have fun.

Unless you've met me in real life, you probably don't understand what a 12 year old girl I am actually. But then I wonder if my real life friends get that either. Really, I should be asking them this question.

Ask Me Anything

The Sweet Spot

The beginning of your relationship with a building, with a thick sort of thing made of concrete and steel and brick, is exciting and troubled. Walking up to it, through the rain, the tension builds in your chest. You approach it slowly, wary, but pretending boldness. Your teeth are unconsciously clenched. Your ears and eyes are straining. You are trying to be observant. You want to understand the truth of the situation.


Once inside, it's a tightrope along the dark unknown floors. You clench close to your friend. You shuffle along, feeling for ledges and stairs with your toes. Out loud, like saying a prayer in public, you proclaim your love for the fear, for the excitement, the frontier. I love you, you say furtively. I believe we have some sort of chance here. I'm tougher than you, I'll fight you, but I don't want to.

And maybe it has nothing. Maybe all it has are unlit rooms, broken fluorescent lights, boring piles of debris. Maybe you are secretly disappointed in the place, and a little resigned, and a little let down. You make your way out with a feeling of calm dejection, deflation. You feel good for having braved the darkness, but it looks like it might not work out.

Then someone spots a door, and tries it. It's unlocked. And oh thank god, there's another chance.

As you climb the stairs, discovery grips you again. There's light coming through, and colors again, and the darkness lifts off your shoulders and chest like a thick cloak of rain burning off the sky. It's as if the place had to test you, and you passed, and suddenly you have reasons to smile again.
Sometimes walking into a new building, no, every time walking into a new building is exactly like walking into a museum.

It is almost a perfect first date. Adrenalin followed by quiet elation. It's that sweet spot between worlds, that builds like a favorite chord. Oh how many things we all have done to find that spot. Oh how many failures we've built around us, hoping for something to break down the wall, and then maybe it doesn't. But sometimes someone, something, some turn of events comes along and rescues you. Hope right? Isn't this what you fuckers are on about all the time? This chemical reaction to darkness followed by light? Your Computer having an equal and opposite reaction.

There should be a guidebook for people, How to Learn the Mild Magics.

So when we touched today, when we hugged, or you handed me my change for coffee, or you held my hand going up the wooden stairs, at those moments my entire chemical makeup was shifted oh so slightly. The songs I chose to listen to today. The words I chose to say to you. What you chose to say to me. Everything mapped out in the neurons of a brain that finds its greatest pleasure in this shifting of our physical reactions.



More photos from Master Screw here.