I’m back at Tharunka writing a Hot or Not column. Here it is, bitches. LOVEJESS.
Barometer #1 February 2009
The Barometer is back for another year because I am back for another year, spending more time studying my very lucrative Arts degree, just waiting to nose my way into hundreds of waiting jobs in the even more lucrative Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Irish Literature Industry. Until I’m head-hunted though, here is, for your entertainment and disgust, a regular instalment of the Barometer.
The Barometer is a Hot or Not column that will help you live a socially acceptable, or at least less-nemesis-filled life. In 2008 we dealt with such important topics as: Coca Cola, ice-cream sandwiches, wedding presents, and Channel 10’s ill-fated yet brilliant programme: Taken Out.
I look forward to another year of discussing similar topics of grave interest; things with psychological and political and philosophical resonance, things like Lindsay Lohan’s new eating disorder, nougat, and why I hate public transport.
HOT
Melted cheese
My housemate did something really nice the other day. We were cleaning the house in preparation for our TOTALLY ROCKIN’ OUT AUSTRALIA DAY PARTY(!!!1!) and my other flatmate who is diabetic needed to stop and eat something to prevent passing out, whereas I needed to stop and eat something to prevent turning into Hungry Princess Bitchface. So my kind anonymous housemate, let’s just call her Waroline Callace, made us a plate of ‘quick nachos’, also known as a bowl of guacamole and some corn chips with melted cheese on them, yeah I know, it was delish.
Now I don’t know about you guys, but I would eat grilled cheese on cardboard if I ran out of bread, crackers, amusingly-sized melba toast or rice thingymajigs. I have an embarrassing obsession with the stuff; now that I’m old and musty, cheese has replaced shortbread biscuits as the sort of food my Mum used to need to hide from me as a kid if she didn’t want me to sit there, eating them solidly until I had to lie down and sob for the next four hours. I still feel a repressed pang of longing whenever I see a packet of Glengarry shortbread. Rest assured that the week I spent in Scotland over New Years was a very challenging and delicious experience.
Anyway, these nachos were amazing and then when we finished eating the corn chips, we ate the little globs of melted cheese that had dripped all over the plate, like piggy little dishwashers. And that just set the scene for a fun and patriotic Australia Day of eating, drinking and soaking in our own filth, to be outlined further below.
NOT
Falling asleep in the daytime while drunk
And here I shall continue on my little odyssey, quickly becoming quite a blatant attempt to basically tell you what i did on the weekend. We had our Australia Day party on Australia Day and decided to kick it off at noon so that everyone would be out of there by dinnertime and we could sober up for work the next day.
Things were going to plan. People got drunk by 2pm and were gradually being trundled home by their loved ones. Those of us who lived there, instead of being good hosts, had taken residence in one of two blow-up pools where we mixed two excellent things – glass and bare feet – by drinking lots of alcohol while stewing in increasingly champagne-filled water. Slowly, one by one, we staggered out, to have drunken showers and then “totally just lie down for ten minutes”. And then suddenly, we were asleep in Waroline’s room, totally dead to the world for two hours of potential partytime, and all because we were drunk and stupid and maybe had exerted ourselves too much from the continuous lifting of mugs of cider up to our mouth and drinking from them.
And here is where our cunning plan had failed. Daytime drinking, for all you impressionable first years, is an AMAZING thing to do if you stay awake for the gradual sobering process, allow yourself to be hungover between the sleeping hours of midnight and morning, and then wake up, fresh as a daisy, unaware of the World War III you liver has been subjected to overnight.
We had broken two of the cardinal rules of life:
- Thou shalt not nap after 6pm if thou dost not want to feel like crap when thou wakest
- Thou especially shalt not do this if thou is drunk to start with, thou dumbass.
We woke up hungry, sober and smack bang in the middle of a raging hangover. It was awful; we sat in front of the TV watching the people who didn’t sleep playing Wii (surprisingly un-fun), ate our body weight in pizza and paddlepops and then lay prostrate on the couch, groaning for the next two hours.
It was a hard, cold process and it will stay with me as a guide for even longer than this damn Australian flag ‘temporary’ tattoo that I stuck on my leg and now can’t seem to scrub off. Learn well, first years. Let my ongoing grievous mistakes be your opportunity for a life lesson.
