The Comedian PHD Blog

Ah, the hangover.  Nature’s way of saying, “You sure about all that?”

Is there anything, anywhere, that’s a clearer sign that you have put stuff into your body that your body does not like?  Okay, maybe food poisoning, there’s something about screaming full-throated at a toilet for four hours that’s more intense, but since FP happens about once to every 500 hangovers, let’s stay with the HO.

You should be grateful for the hangover, because without it we’d all be alcoholics.  If you didn’t have to pay the piper, you’d happily dance to his tune every time he wanted to play.   “What, drink?  Absolutely.  Alcohol makes me feel amazing the next day, the more’s the better!”

Not in this life, unfortunately.  In this life, you drink, you body pay.

Which sucks.   And there’s no real way around it once it hits.  I used to go to the gym on hangover days hoping to “sweat out the alcohol,” or “burn off the hangover,” but the truth is I was miserable all day long, and pretty miserable to be around, because hangovers make me moody, morose and irritable.   And let’s put the jacks on the table, you can’t burn off a hangover, only your awareness of your hangover.  Internally, alcohol is a toxic smoothie, releasing a metabolic/organ earthquake inside your body.  But it’s fun on the front end, so…

Which points out one of the big challenges in the health game:  how do we continue to have full-fun, continue to get all our pleasure – eat what we want, drink what we want, work as many hours as we want, ditch sleep as much as we want – while avoiding paying the health bill (with, you know, weight gain, metabolism derangement, organ injury, and disease susceptibility)?

Well, let’s start with this:  you don’t.  There’s no way to go full pleasure and avoid having your body pick up the check.  No, Huey Lewis, we don’t have a new drug.

So, we turn to the options, of which there seem to be three.

Option One:  limit the pleasure, limit the pain.  You can do targeted drinking, get your BAC up to an intended point, then put the cap on the gas tank, no more.  For you youngun’s out there, this is what the old people do.  You experience enough hangovers and you develop an internal alarm that says, uh, you know, this amount of fun is not adding up to tomorrow’s amount of pain.  So instead of thinking, ah, not enough fun, drink more, it’s not enough fun, abandon the rum ship.

Option Two:  unlimit the pleasure, deal with the pain.  Here’s the hedonist’s logic of full pleasure – even over-pleasure – and by satan just deal with the fallout.  But the thing is, I’m not sure we ever think of the fact that there are two levels of fall-out:  short term and long term.  Short term we know is going to end, just get through the hangover and the next day the ship is righted again.  And sure, it’s miserable, but it has an end point.  Long term is quite different.  As we suffer through the obvious effects of treating ourselves like dumpsters, we aren’t able to monitor the low-level, subtle, long-term, imperceptible damage, the stuff that builds up over time and erodes your inner landscaping.  Then later, when the long-term aggregate damage hits us way harder than any short term ever did, there’s no real end point to it.  So we run to a doctor and say, “Help me, for some ungodly reason I’ve been stricken, and I need a pill!  Can it cure me by Tuesday, I have a party to go to.”

Option Three:  avoid all the toxic pleasures.  Either just go full monk, or replace the toxics with other pleasures.  Uh, I guess that includes things like geek-ridden fake fun (charades?), and nature walks (which, okay, sure, squirrels are darling, but they’re no tequila and dance-floor body grinding).  Or some actual alternative fun, which for me includes cooking/eating great food, having people over who are ACTUALLY INTERESTING (yes, they are out there), having a deep, surprising, stimulating relationhip, and building an environment to live in that I like to look at.  And while I’m not always able to fully bring those things into my life all the time, I prefer putting my effort toward that kind of fun more than just constantly re-upping the illusioning of alcohol fun.  Because alcohol fun is illusion fun, by definition – it’s tricking our brains into liking something more than we would if we were sober.  Which works, but, again, costs you body and brain destruction.  It’s like going to Chuck E. Cheese and the rat beating you in a backroom just before you leave.

I guess all I really want is to have big life fun and still be able to open my eyes on Sunday morning without my first thought being, “Can I just die for one day?”

Texans do things their own way, and it ain’t your way, and that’s the way they like it.  And if you don’t like it, that’s even better.

Per exemplar, Texans don’t dress like you or I.  They wear Wrangler (‘Rangler!) jeans and boat-sized belt buckles.  “I’m wearing steel pants and a hubcap, because that’s how I do it!  From here up I’m all overly-pressed shirts and semi-lesbian flannel.  From here down I’m Iron Man sportin’ 20-inch rims.  I put my baby in Wrangler diapers, that boy can already rope a hamster, tie all four paws with a twisty tie!  He sleeps in one of my old belt buckles, and the other is a birdbath for condors.  I said ‘condors.’  Those are big birds.”

Wranglers are a pants unto themselves, they’re so tight you can count a cowboy’s butt hair (not that you would, well, okay, some of you would, but don’t! I ain’t into that, gay cowboying died with Heath Ledger, God rest his musky-scented soul).

And why are Wranglers so tight?  Because you don’t want a bunch of extra fabric flapping around when you’re leaping from your horse onto the back of a terrified calf trying to get back to his Mama before you burn your initials into his butt with a smoldering black iron.  Half an extra inch on your boot cuffs can be the difference between being horn-dragged into the middle of a burger stampede, or sitting back and gleefully watching some bell-bottomed hippy get dragged into same said stampede.  Don’t die because you got fabric-greedy, buddy.  I read that on the wall of the bunkhouse outhouse, wisdom can come from anywhere.

Texans love them some Wranglers.  Which explains all the new products about to come out, including the new Wrangler denim 80’s style knee socks and sweat bands, the tangy new Wrangler denim chewing tobacco, and, of course, the much-anticipated brand spanking new Wrangler denim condoms  — just because you wrangle, don’t mean you need to procreate.