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Probably should have posted this a few months ago. Anyway. Stop coming here now. It doesn’t exist.

I am: a pretty serious boozehound. Go ahead. Smell me. Gin and cigars, sir.

I am not: diabetic. Yet. Try to calibrate my boozin’ to keep me thus.

The Scene: Brighton Beer Garden with the lovely brookem, out for some Monday night cocktails. All first-time blogger meets are — it cannot be denied — supremely first-datey. But after a few seconds of “who are you in real life? what do you do?” back-and-forth monologue, we fall into an easy conversation that drips liberally with TMI.

You know the convo. Guys who couldn’t get the condom on, the perils of breaking in virgins, …crampiness. I fill her in on the joys and perils of taking a blowjob class and we sip for a moment in contemplation.

Later, as we finish our third round and begin to move toward the inevitably homeward barstool shift, I turn to her. “So what NTKOG are we doing tonight?” After only a second, she asks, “Well, speaking of blowjobs, are you the kind of girl who would ever — order a blowjob shot?”

My inner classic cocktail snob recoils. Any mission that sparks this much disgust, though — it’s perfect. We wave the bartender over and when she asks what we’re having next I start with bravado: “Can I get a–” then my vocal chords constrict. Goddamnit, TKOG, channel Cancun, sorority socials, reality TV! “Can I get a … blowjob shot?”

The waitress reassures us that 9pm on a Monday is a perfectly fine time to be ordering shots (enabler!) but the bar doesn’t have whipped cream. What’s in a blowjob? she asks a fellow bartender. “Yeah, we don’t have whipped cream,” the woman smiles. “The cream is the best part of a blowjob.” Uh, agreed?

We brainstorm for a few moments about similarly embarrassing cocktail, when the original bartender suggests a slippery nipple. A moue of approval rises from the chorus. After I send the bartender off to slip up some nipples for us, brookem turns to me: “What’s in a slippery nipple, anyway?” No clue, but I have a gut instinct that it’s the same ingredients as a Cocksucking Cowboy.

Two nipples, ripe for the slippin'.

Bailey’s. Butterscotch schnapps. My god, do they sell this in Big Gulp size?! I was, in fact, so enthused by the discovery that I immediately had to share it with someone by finally making good on my threat to send a man a drink. One lone man sat across from us in the sea of couples, so I nodded toward him and asked the bartender to send him one.

Brookem and I were all fluttery feminine optimism for the four point five seconds it took us before she noticed the orphaned beer sitting next to said dude. Oh god, what if I’d sent a drink to a guy with a girlfriend? Was I an attempted homewrecker?! The beer’s owner returned from the restroom and — even worse. The worst, in fact. The guy was super mega cute. I mean, picture Vince Vaughn crossed with Conan O’Brien. Now stop picturing him because he’s MINE ALL MINE.

Bartender ignored my frantic flagging to send the drink to the cuter guy and placed the shot in front of the first guy, nodded over toward me. The guy raised his glass to me; I grimaced. Then he tasted the vaguely alcoholic sugarbomb and it was his turn to grimace. Pale waltzing lord, I managed to send a guy a drink gayer than three dudes hanging out by a wishing well in front of his cute friend. Do I win at dating forever or what? Brookem and I finished up our convo and skrinkered out of there right quick, studiedly avoiding eye contacted with our buttered-up comrade.

The Verdict: So embarrassing drinks, it turns out? Exist for a reason. Cute guys? Um, we already know their purpose. ANY MEETING OF THE TWAIN? No, no, oh my god no.

I am: the girl who — stepping in front of the register at Dunkin’ — takes one look at the cashier and squeals: “I looooove your earrings!”

I am not: quite so keen on extending the same charm to men. God forbid they think I’m after something other than their brains.

The Scene: Bank of America, depositing a few checks for my office. The teller behind the counter is one of those good-looking guys with an almost feminine face that he tries to mask with designer stubble; judging by his gunmetal silver shirt and Kenneth Cole pocket square, I’d wager he’s one of those guys who falls on the side of uncool only because he’s convinced he’s so extremely cool. One of those people everyone loves at first sight then likes less and less. But even if I’m wrong about the personality, I can tell he’s not my type.

As he glances down at my deposit slips, his eyes flutter for a moment and, oh, he’s got the thickest, longest eyelashes I’ve ever seen outside of a Revlon commercial. If he were a woman, I would have immediately cooed, but because he is a man — and, worse, a man who might think I’m angling to sleep with him — my instinct is to check my tongue. But hey, I’m not that kind of girl, right?

TKOG: My god, you’ve got the most beautiful eyelashes! They’re spectacular!
Definitely Not Wearing Mascara: Women always say that. They’ve been saying that my whole life.
TKOG: That’s because they’re jealous. Hell, I’m jealous.
DNWM: That’s sweet of you.

For the rest of the day, I thought all was right with the world. I complimented a man! He didn’t take it awkwardly or give me a look dripping with letting-you-down-easy! We were able to interact completely platonically on a lady-dude-to-dudely-dude level of discussing physical aesthetics!

Then it all went downhill. Over the next few days, when I came in to make deposits, he escalated our chitchat to the degree that I had to take out both earbuds instead of only one. By Wednesday of the next week, he had complimented my dress. The unpleasant encounters came to a head when I dropped off a deposit after the 3:30 rush on Friday afternoon.

DNWM: So what’re you listening to all the time?
TKOG: Oh, y’know, everything. Gregorian chanting, commercial jingles. Right now I’m listening to Stevie Wonder.
DNWM: That’s cool. I go to lots of concerts around here. I’m going to one this weekend, actually.
TKOG: Sweet.
DNWM: Do you have any plans this weekend?
TKOG: Uh, I’ve got to clean my apartment and reread The Great Gatsby oh my god look at the time I’ve got to go bye.

The Verdict: This is why I don’t compliment men. Not because I’m the type of raving narcissist who imagines any guy would fall for her immediately (HA!), but because Murphy’s Law says that any guy I’m seriously not interested in will be the like one guy in five thousand who falls for my accidental charms. That way when I tell the universe, “Dude, seriously, can you not show me some damn love here?” the universe can be like “remember that guy at the bank? geez, all you ever do is complain” and it will be technically right.

I think I’m just going to stick to complimenting women. They’re lovely creatures who smell good and know that I don’t want to hook up with them. That’s as high-pressure as I can get.

I am: immune to pain. You’re looking at a dude who ate a steak sandwich twelve hours after getting her wisdom teeth out. I once put an ice pick through my whole palm, then went on mixing mojitos without so much as a schmear of Neosporin.

I am not: so delicate or anal-retentive that I need hand prophylactics just to wash a few dishes.

The Scene: My matchbox-sized apartment, slaving like Cinderella over a teetering stack of bowls super-glued together with soymilk residue. After spending the past year as a kept woman in a palatial converted 1920s mansion, it was a rude awakening to move back into an apartment where the dishwasher is this guy. As a result, I strenuously believe in blasting the water as hot as possible to at least approximate machine-powered sanitation levels.

Problem: I could only wash a glass or two before my skin would scald seventeen shades of fire engine and my finger tips would start peeling off. Great for my secret life as a gentleman art thief (no prints!); terrible for pretty much anything else.

The answer to this, as in all things, came from the charming Muscles. Muscles — as his epithet implies — has the heart of a lion, the physique of a well-groomed bear, and the hands of an 18th century duchess. Last summer, after dinner at his and Justice’s estate, he gathered up the dishes and snapped on a pair of yellow gloves.

“Dude?!” I sputtered. “You look like a promo for The Pacifier 2.”

The power of the gloves was immediately apparent: he didn’t even flicker at my ribbing, just gazed on with the smug serenity of a Bikram instructor. “They’re more helpful than you’d think,” he replied, then thrust his gloved hands into the cloud of steam rising from the sink.

My first purchase when I moved into my Boston apartment was my own pair of dorky yellow dish-washing gloves. And frig it if the ol’ guru wasn’t onto something.

The Verdict: Every time I peel off my gloves after a half-hour spell of doing dishes in 180-degree water, I gaze at my dry, unscalded hands in delight. If I were a 17th century peasant, I would burn these gloves because surely they are tools of magic and of wonder. But I am not a 17th century peasant. I am just a happily unboiled dishwasher — even if I am a slightly dorky looking one.

Also, I’ve fought the draft of this post for months now, convinced that y’all would leave me forever for sharing a story so dorky and banal. But after twenty minutes of passionately proselytizing about rubber gloves to Anglophile the other day, I realized my conviction is too great to keep bottled. If one dishwasher-less person reads this post and goes out to buy gloves, dude, this whole blog will have been worth it.

Check out her post here.

To give you time to read her post, the shortest NTKOG ever:

NTKOG #115: The kind of Ingalls-lite who bakes crackers. Crackers. Honestly. Isn’t that like the simplest atomic guise of bread? I just assumed they were formed in nature.

The Scene:

The Verdict:

[Edit: for those of you who want to try it, this is Mark Bittman's recipe for parmesan-cream crackers -- which I, naturally, slathered with garlic. Thanks to Leigh at Full Gastronomic Tilt for passing on the recipe a few weeks ago! And apologies that I was too deliriously tired to give credit where credit was due in the first place!]

I am: a Proustian aunt when it comes to hangovers. Just give me a nice bed and I’ll take it to it indefinitely, praying for death to come.

I am not: even amused by the idea that there exist people who prefer the gym to boozin’.

The Scene: Bleary-eyed in Brighton, the morning of February 15, reeking of chocolate fondue and sweating straight Merlot. I didn’t think I drank that much during Anglophile’s and my little V-Day voodoo sesh, but all the mental holes in our morning-after recap disproved that theory. (“How’d I get into my pajamas?” “You changed after you made us listen to Usher’s ‘Burn’ fifteen times.” “I hate that song. Oh jesus, tell me you didn’t let me text.”) After Anglophile scooted on her merry way, I was prepared to take to bed, spreading peanut butter on homemade bread with my fingers and mainlining equal parts water and Hugh Laurie. Instead, I remembered a killer blog entry by the lovely kk about how to kick hangovers in which she suggests hitting the gym after you hit the bottle. What did I have to lose?

After I’d arranged a gym date with Sister and actually exited the apartment, the list of things I had to lose became apparent: permanent use of my retinas; my balance; control of the nausea dragon wrapping its tail around my stomach. Ugh. And that was just from walking to the T station.

By the time I got to the gym, I’d have placed even odds on my vomiting on the elliptical. Set the timer for 30 minutes; for the first five, I cursed the gods; for the next five, cursed myself; the middle ten, cursed friggin’ kk, that ho; and then — everything stopped being so bad. Remains of the Day was on TV! Brookline water tastes awesome! I am alive and healthy and feeling moreso every minute! Hell, after the elliptical, I jumped on a treadmill next to Sister for the sheer fun of it for twenty minutes.

The whole walk to my Sister’s place afterwards, I sipped water and cooed over the success of the project (“I feel great! I feel awesome! Wanna go to the zoo and race some llamas?!”). For dinner, we made healthy choices instead of indulging in usual hangover atrocities (brie and roasted garlic sandwiches, anyone?). And then the foundation started to crack. Got a splitting headache and the only medication my sister had on hand was Tylenol PM. Popped two of them and started home. Unfortunately, the drowsy effects of the medication kicked in while I was still half a mile from home, my heart slowed down to 45 beats per month, and I literally stopped three or four times to consider taking a nap on someone else’s stoop.

By the time I returned from this miracle hangover cure, I was fit only to take to my bed, cursing the gods. It’s just the natural order, I guess.

The Verdict: There’s no denying that this felt significantly less pathetic than my usual program of eating junk food and lolling around miserably, but exercise is most definitely not a panacea. I mistook the endorphin high for significant improvement. Right the frig not! Turns out exercise is only meant to be supplemental to a strict regime of lolling, napping, and misery.

Also, a TMI word about dehydration? Apparently I’d severely underestimated either the sheer degree of dehydration inherent to a hangover or the prolificness of my sweating, but I realized about eight hours after the gym that I’d drank 70 oz. of water and hadn’t needed to pee. Thank you, body, for delighting and horrifying me.

–

TMI Thursday! Lilu! Archives! Lovely!! Lady took a polar bear plunge with some Hulk Hogan impersonators. Good frig! Hero of the day.Alzyby  

And for more NTKOG brilliance, do read this hilarious post

I am: too broke to make more than one or two carefully considered contributions a year.

I am not: virtuous enough to make the sacrifices that would allow me to give more. Regret to inform, I’m more or less pulling a solid B+/A- in “being a basically good human being”.

The Scene: The little town square across the street from my work in the pouring rain last Wednesday. Weather forecasters had called for several inches of snow (never showed up) and we were all grimly excited about the blizzard; no greeting was complete without a “whew, it’s going to be a rough one”.

As I walked past, a Save The Children volunteer beckoned me near. His hair and beard were already plastered down to his face. I started my standard response: “I admire what you’re doing, but I’m just really broke,” and the guy smiled at me like I’d just bought his mom a new car.

“Don’t worry about it!” he grinned. “I don’t need money. Just thirty seconds of your time.” When you look at the words they seem banal, but his face was limpid and radiant — even as water flumed down the side of his nostrils he remained serene as a mountain, transparent and bottomless as a freshwater pool. Even his face moving to form words looked like nothing more than the wind rippling sweet meadow grasses. Real Pocahontas-style voodoo shit, is what I’m saying, and I knew immediately that he was deeply religious but one of those dudes who never brings it up unless you ask and doesn’t think you’re going to hell, not even if you have sex with robots and punch foreign dignitaries.

He gave me a lightning-round history of Save The Children, talked about their low corporate overhead, showed me pictures of some kids in the Congo, then checked his watch. Exactly thirty seconds.

“Dude,” I smiled at him. “I’ll bet people are awful to you sometimes, aren’t they? I always see people shouting, ‘Save the children? I want to eat the children!’ and stuff like that.”

“Oh, I love those people!” he grinned with genuine enthusiasm. “When they tell me they want to eat the children, I ask them to come over and swap recipes with me. When they tell me they hate the children, I say I’ll sell them a black market slave child! You just can’t take yourself too seriously. I love those people.”

I don’t know what happened but somehow, magically, my Visa was in my hands. As the man took my information, he told me about atrocities in the Congo and what the program’s money was doing. And, I dunno, a particle of dust must have wormed its way in or something, ’cause my eyes started to emit a transparent salty liquid.

After he handed me back my form and card, and had thanked me a few times, I took one last look at his drenched skin and clothes. Really sucks having to be out in this weather all day, I told him — and what about when the blizzard hits?

“Oh, we’re not supposed to be out here today. The company is closed. But I woke up excited this morning. I knew I had to come out here no matter how bad the weather was, just in case someone needed to hear what I had to say.”

Oh jesus. My eyes. They’re malfunctioning.

The Verdict: Made a one-time donation and have vowed to myself that if my temp job becomes permanent, I’ll set up a recurring monthly payment. Pretty psyched about the research I’ve done about this particular organization. That said, I take absolutely zero credit for pretending to be a good person on this one. This guy was a thinly disguised angel in Converse, and the next time I see him out there, I’m bringing him a cup of coffee to thank him for helping me keep my faith in people. And to warm him up ’cause, dude, it is cold out there to have a canvassing job.

This post too chipper for you? I know! Vom! Balance it out by checking out Secret Society of List Addicts and reading my list of phrases I would be perfectly okay never hearing again (and will punch you repeatedly if you say to me).

I am: single.

I am not: bitter.

The Scene: My glorious cinnamon- and chocolate-scented apartment, V-Day evening. Anglophile came over and we discussed the douchebaggery of men in general (and a few men in particular) before deciding on our plan of attack for the evening. Dude, we decided, let’s list all the reasons we never liked them anyway! Then make voodoo dolls! And burn effigies of the pathetic motherfuckers! Uh, and did I mention chocolate?!

We gathered voodoo supplies and fired up the fondue pot. Cute idea, I thought, but we’re not actually going to do all this stereotypical shit. We’ll probably just end up watching a movie or something…

As for how it turned out. Um, I’m going to let the following pictures tell you a few thousand words. Don’t worry, though. I weeded out all the shriekingly scathing ones.

Turns out it only takes two vindictive girls, three pens, a jumbo pack of Post Its and one hour to completely cover the walls of a small apartment. Also, dude, some of these were so scathing that they burned my skin when I took them off the wall.

After determining Post-Its weren't sufficiently violent, wrote and popped some of the things we hated about dudes.

Voodoo dolls. To stuff them, we wrote down things we used to like about the guys, then shredded 'em. (But before you get all z0mg-dark-energy with me, yes, I believe in karma too much to have actually wished ill on anyone. It was pretty positive energy.)

Putting the "eff you" in effigy. What up.

The Verdict: It’s funny. This is the first Valentine’s Day in five years that I’ve been single. It’s also hands-down the best Valentine’s Day I’ve ever had — maybe one of the best days I’ve had, like, period. I thought all the V-Day man-bashing would feel too forced or stereotypical or just plain ol’ negative, but it was actually a pretty liberating night. One attempts to resist using the phrase “girl power,” but one doesn’t resist too hard.

The emphasis of the evening was less “I hope you get chlamydia of the face and die” and more like “dude, remember the shitty details and don’t let yourself get hung up on something that just really doesn’t matter that much.” Okay, okay, and there may have been a certain amount of emasculating joking. And doodling. And pin-sticking.

Still, this gets an A++ from me. Sometimes bitching about guys isn’t about men being idiots. It’s about remembering that the women you’re doing the bitching with are total badasses.

I am: a woman living in the 21st century. You know, the one in which the phrase “best thing since sliced bread” is archaic because nobody bakes bread?!

I am not: sure I’ve even bought a loaf of bread since I moved here. I’m more of an English muffin person.

The Scene: My postage-stamp apartment, armed with a few ingredients  and a fantastically easy bread recipe from The Simple Dollar. Although the ingredients are all pantry staples, I had to run to the convenience store for milk and butter, ’cause I don’t keep any moo in the house. Dragged my goods up to the dude at the counter and whipped out my Visa.

Cashier: Ooh, sorry, your total is $3.89. We have a $5 credit card minimum.
TKOG: Bugger. Do y’all sell Nutella?
Cashier: Happy Valentine’s Day.

Love it, sir, and love you. Went home and after twenty minutes, the little cutie was rising. After I rolled it out for the second rising, decided to cinnamon swirl that motha up. My addition to the recipe: mixed two tablespoons each cinnamon and sugar; brush rolled dough liberally with moo juice; sprinkle with delicious. Let rise and bake as noted in recipe.

Look how cute! Now imagine it slathered with Nutella and warm caramelized bananas! Now stop drooling on your keyboard.

The Verdict: Holy friggin’ gosh are you kidding me?! The whole shebang took less than half an hour of active time (plus two and a half hours of passive rising/baking time) and was some of the best bread I’ve ever eaten. For $4 and with pantry staples, I got enough supplies to make dozens of loaves. Which I’m totally doing the next time I have a free afternoon.

Also: whaling on the dough for ten minutes is the second most satisfying thing ever. Waking up hungover and inhaling a warm slice of this smeared with Nutella is the first most satisfying.

Anyway, that’s not what you came here to see! After a few hours of Excel spreadsheet torture, I asked random.org to pick an iPod winner. The magic of randomness chose:

Reading through the comments and typing in 519 entries gave me plenty of time to listen to your music recommendations. Currently stuck in my head: "Canadian, Please." YouTube that magic in honor of the olympics, dudes!

Congratulations to Kelly L of [Insert Clever Title Here]! Enjoy your bright red, 8 gig, slightly late valentine! And thanks to everyone else for entering!