Vodka and Tequila. If you really try hard you can probably make that sound really evil. Like if you pretend Vodka is the name of a Russian Mob, you could say something stupid like, "Vodka is going Tequila (pronounced ta-kill-ya)". Regardless of how evil they actually are or how they sound, I like to call them the great equalizers. If you're not cool and someone else that is really cool is drinking vodka and/or tequila it will bring them down to your level. Now, the thing to keep in mind is that if you're drinking it and you're not cool and the cool people aren't drinking then it will have the opposite effect. We call that being the un-equalizer. Or maybe the deequalizer. No, someone probably won't repeat the e in that. Let's try disequalizer. Ok that works. If you're not cool and drinking while the cool people are then vodka and tequila are the disequalizers. Now that we have that out of the way I should say that the stories that I am about to tell have nothing to do with vodka and tequila. Ok, so I lied they do share the center stage with being a geek. I just thought that you might be more likely to read on if you thought the story was about alcohol. Hopefully you're invested now and will continue to read on.

If you have been paying attention, then you have probably realized that I am a HUGE geek. For those of you that haven't been paying that much attention, I'll just state it: I am a HUGE geek. Being a geek like that I do have to do some geeky stuff. For instance, I have played an online game called Darkwind on and off for several years. For those of you who are interested in finding out what this game is, click on a link somewhere here. So basically it's this big text based game that a bunch of people go to to talk and play. Wait, I should clarify that, it's not just a huge porn chat room.

Every once in awhile there's a big get together where all the geeks converge on one location, often in Texas. So if you're in Texas, beware the big geek gatherings. Ok, so the background is done, here's the actual stories about these gatherings.

The Giant Martini

It was the first of these get togethers that I had been to and everyone talked about how there was going to be lots of alcohol and everyone was gonna get pretty plastered. I figured that the more that you got plastered the better off you were. Before I go on, I should note that by this point in my life I had actually been drinking for less than six months. No, not six months straight, I had started drinking six months before. You get the picture. I was really into martinis and I wasn't about to take a shaker and martini glass to the lake, though in retrospect I should have given that a second chance.

I decided that in order to have my martini, I should take a 750ml bottle of Stoli and then mix a shot of Vermouth with it. Yes, I was cooking with vodka now.

I got to the lake at around noon and there were already quite a few people there. There was food and beer and sprinklers to cool off in because it was melt your skin hot outside. I'm not kidding, the ozone advisory for the day was "Small kids will burst into flame if they venture outdoors." So everyone's hanging out and I have been swinging on this bottle all the while. I really didn't think that I had drank that much, but someone came up and told me that maybe I should slow down. I think that I set the bottle down for five minutes and then continued to drink. That was slowing down, right?

Needless to say, I was ready to pass out pretty quick. At about 4, the bottle was over half gone and I had been drug to the perforate hose by some of the people at the party.

It wasn't much longer before someone at the party thought, "You know, maybe we should get him out of the sun and to his apartment or something." Somehow my ex-girlfriend at the time (not because of this, she was already my ex at the time, but if she wasn't, she probably would have been because of this. Does that make any sense?) got the task to take me home. I get put in her car and we start driving down the road and probably within a mile I start to feel like I need to throw up. Say what you want about me, but most people will tell you that I am a very curteous drunk. I have often been called the social director for the world when I am drunk. So I told Jen that I was going to throw up and she stopped.

Let's take a break from vomit to talk about Jen's car. Jen drove an old Honda Civic which, while it ran just fine, had it's own share of problems. One of the problems that it had was that the passenger side door could not be opened from the inside. Kind of like a permanent child lock. Ok, back to the vomit. Jen pulls the car over and I, in my drunken stupor, have forgotten that the door won't open. I fumbled with the handle for a good little while thinking it was just my drunkeness that was making it hard to open until I rememberd. I frantically started to roll down the window and Jen finally realized the problem that I had and started to fly around the car to open the door. About halfway through rolling the window down, I could hold it no more. I threw up all over the inside of her car. Yes, now you see why she would no longer be my girlfriend if she was still my girlfriend at that time.

There's nothing like waking up at seven at night with a hangover. Well, except maybe waking up at 6:30 at night with a hangover. I have never done the latter so I can't really speak from experience, but I would imagine that they are roughly the same. I woke up at seven that night with a hangover, for those of you who need more clarification. My head was throbbing, it was still slightly light out, and I had no idea where my car was. Wait, I think I just realized grounds for a lawsuit. The people that wrote 'Dude, Where's My Car' must have stolen the basis for that from this experience. Mind you, they added some stuff. I'll let you see the similarities and judge for yourself.

I said to myself, "Fuck, where's my car?" Ok, some difference there already, but read on. I walked outside my apartment and saw my neighbors who I had not met yet, I decided to make a great impression and ask, "Hey, have you seen my car?" They both said no, so I walked out to the parking lot. Amazingly, the car was there. It's a total idea rip off if I have ever seen one. So that's story number one about the geekfest. Let's move on.

Why Do People Buy T-Shirts?

This was fairly recently. Several people had come into town from across the country and we were hanging out for the night and going to have drinks at a nearby restaurant. Jeff, Tripp, Brian and some others and I (hell, you don't even know who those three are, why are you worried about the names of the others?) got to the restaurant and had a normal dinner with Margaritas and beer. End of Story.

Ok, there's more, but it didn't actually happen at dinner. We walked outside and there's a little porch area that we decided we would hang out in for awhile before we headed out. I was sporting a shirt that says, "I Make Stuff Up." I'm not expecting you to be keen on my fashion sense, but it is integral to the story. This drunk girl in a group of drunk people starts talking to us, eventually she turned to me and said, "What do you make up?"

I was so not expecting a question like that from this drunk that I had almost no comeback. I come more prepared now. Now I have answers like:

"I make up fake alibis"

"I make up origami sex toys"

"I make up new ways to masturbate"

"I make up excuses for failing the drug test"

I didn't have any of those answers so I just said the truth, "I make up t-shirts!"

She kind of looked at me like I was some troll who was defiling the entire patio by being there and then said, "Why do you make t-shirts?"

I quickly replied because I knew the answer to this, "So people can buy them?"

"Well, why do people buy t-shirts?"

This, I wasn't so quick to reply. Why DO people buy t-shirts I thought to myself. Jeff finally rescued me and said, "To wear them, what do you think?" Everyone burst out laughing and she went back to nursing her drink, and probably her pride. Yeah, the geeks won this one.

Those are the two stories, maybe I'll put some more geekiness out there in the future. You can only hope.