M-O-O-N, that spells beer!

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24413990-1243,00.html

This is news? A chick is blind for 3 days? Isn't that the usual way of the typical Aussie battler? Luckily for you, me and the lawyers, I keep a very strict diary. I have transcribed a typical week for you below. Behold the story of the man who is blind for 7 days…

Monday:

Ow. My head hurts. Stupid Sunday beers may have caught up with me while I was sleeping; I should probably take the beer IV drip out. I tried to roll over to turn off my alarm, but the sharp corners of my pillow poked me in the face and made me cry - well, I would have cried, but my body has sucked my tear ducts dry for their precious moisture.

I go to work and spend most of the day staring at a single piece of paper, cradling my head in my hands and trying to look like I'm concentrating, which wasn't easy considering that I was also trying to sleep. I'm not sure how I made it, but I managed to slide out of work at 5:00pm without having spoken to a single person. This could be because I smell like sixteen dirty pubs (the other four I visited were clean) and spent most of the day emitting a single, droning groan of pain.

I figure I deserve a bit of a celebration for having made it through another bleary Monday, so I head to the pub for my rewarding ale.

Things get hazy from here on in, and pretty much the only thing that I can remember is me singing the Happy Days theme song, but changing a few words:

Monday, Monday - Happy Days!
Monday, Monday - Happy Days!
Monday, Monday - Happy Days!

At this point in my diary, there are several pictures of a giant grasshopper attacking a small village, and a few haiku poems about tanks, so it can only be assumed that it was a good night.


Tuesday:

I have no idea what happened last night, although I have the feeling that it's my shout. This could be because I have a new tattoo on my bum that reads "my shout". No time for breakfast today, which is handy, because I also have no food in my house and I head to work.

I am halfway to work when I realise that I should have driven, and it's a shit walk to the office. I turn around and walk back home to pick up my car. It's also a shit walk home, I discover.

The glare from my computer screen was too much to bear for the morning session of work, so I avoided turning on my computer at all. To keep up the illusion that I was working, I moved my mouse around and randomly clicked, and made comments like, "Ah come on you stupid thing!" and "has anyone else's computer gone down?" I enjoyed today at work - who wouldn't love a few hours spent drinking coffee and watching a blank screen?

No more drinking, I told myself. I went to the pub and told them not to serve me any beer that night. They appreciated what I was doing, and agreed. I had been cut-off.

Handy for me that there's another pub next door, as I started getting the withdrawal shakes and sweats by the time I'd reached the door. Phew. I think it was a nice pub as well, but I can't be sure, as my memory isn't what it once was. I think the floor kept moving and someone who looked like me kept spilling beer all over my shirt. They had great pool tables though - or at least they had tables and I had a stick - or maybe it was a fire extinguisher. In any case, I'm pretty sure I won pool, or whatever game I invented using the bar, bottles of alcohol and a fire extinguisher.

The staff there were very good as well - they knew I'd had too many to drive home, and stopped me from trying to get into a car. Very handy, since it wasn't even my car. In retrospect, I should have realised this, as I don't drive a white car with "Police" written on the side. I guess someone's a massive Sting fan. La de dah.


Wednesday:

I promised my boss I was going to be early into work today. I have no idea why she believed me, because I called her house at 5am to let her know. Anyway, I rolled in just before lunchtime, still a bit worse-for-wear. No more drinking, I told myself. Actually, I emailed it to myself. Partly as a reminder to stop drinking, and partly so I could type something and pretend that I was doing work. Somehow, that email chain got me through to the end of the day. I am quite an interesting person to converse with apparently, especially if your conversational preferences revolve around dinosaurs and MC Hammer. I discovered a new species of dinosaur anyway: the "Twolegitasaurus", which had a briefly successful domination during the Triassic period. Some scientists say it evolved, others say it is completely extinct. I'd like to think it's lying dormant somewhere, and will come back with a vengeance.

After a hard day at work, there's nothing better than heading to the pub for a few cold ones. "Too cold!" I thought, so I levelled things out with some flaming shots. "Too hot!"

Needless to say, it took a while to regain the equilibrium. During the course of the evening, fire was introduced to beer, which was introduced to ice, to ice-cream and to a microwave. Equilibrium is a horrible tasting liquid, it seems.


Thursday:

So bright this morning, and that was with my head under three pillows and a doona. Bright bright bright. Either my curtains were on fire (they were, actually; it's lucky I woke up), or the sun was shining like a motherfucker. It also was. I concluded that "today could be a bright day," so I grabbed my sunglasses from the washing machine (long story) and went to work.

I knew I'd normally never be able to get away with wearing sunglasses in the office all day, so I thought up a fairly plausible story ("I gave my eyeballs in a transplant yesterday and am awaiting some replacements, which should arrive this afternoon") and made my way to my desk. It wasn't easy, as the "seeing eye dog" (a stray cat) I had pinched on the way in was pretty angry with me, and was making my blindness act pretty hard to keep up. All was well until lunchtime when I was caught "not being blind" by my boss as I was watching YouTube videos. I was asked to return the cat and do some work. This threw me a bit, cause kitty had wandered off during my 11am nap, and I hadn't seen it since.

Thursday also just happens to be pay-day, and what better way to celebrate being able to eradicate bills and rent and shit and stuff by going to the pub? There is no better way, trust me. I've tried drinking by myself, drinking at someone's house, drinking at a park, drinking in a movie theatre, drinking at a nightclub, drinking at a sporting event... nothing matches the wonderment of drinking at the pub.

Imagine my surprise when the bartender calls 'last drinks'. Ridiculous. "It's still lunchtime!" I tell the bartender. "Maybe it's lunchtime in Russia, champ," he replies. Using my mathematical brain, I figure I've been at the pub for about 15 hours (that's 14 hours more than I usually spend on a lunch break) and spent 18 days worth of pay. I also figure it's too late to go back to work, so I grabbed 'one for the road' and headed on home. Lucky that one was for the road, because that's where it ended up. Damn those glasses; they're really hard to hold, especially when you're also carrying a hot-dog (for the road) and two bar stools (also for the road... and my house).


Friday:

Someone at work asked me if I had been bathing in beer, cause they could smell it soaking out of my pores. I laughed that comment off and said it was a new aftershave. Apparently rum is not a strong concealer of beer-sweat. That's unfortunate; what am I going to do with a bathtub full of rum?

Note to self: Buy some Coke on the way home tonight.


Saturday:

My diary fell away last night. I remember coming home with a 2-litre bottle of Coke and a straw, and hopping into the bath for a relaxing soak. How I woke up with a sombrero and Jose Gonzales' passport is totally beyond me.

I'd better stop these drinking shenanigans, I think. It would be a shame to waste such a glorious weekend in a drunken stupor. However, it would also be a shame to waste such a glorious weekend sitting at home reading a book. I think I should combine the two and read a book in a drunken stupor.

Well... reading when drunk is hard. The words all run into one another and I can't tell if Harry Potter's casting an expelliaramus spell or an adava cadavra charm. Then it was pointed out to me that I wasn't reading Harry Potter at all, and I decided to put the book down (or the 'wine list', as the bartender called it - the movie was better, anyway), and concentrated on the sport that was showing on TV instead. Sport on TV is great; guys are lucky that they can watch pretty much any sporting event and be happy, although I must admit I did get a bit bored by the monotony of the raceI was watching, as no-one was getting into a position to overtake anyone. That smart-arse bartender then advised me that I had fallen off my chair and was watching the ceiling fan instead. I would have punched him in the head, but Schumacher was just about to get into position to make his move and I didn't want to miss that.


Sunday:

Sunday is always a hard day - the weekend is almost over and there's so many empty bottles to throw out. It's depressing, really. However, by the time I'm sober enough to stand up, it's late afternoon, and therefore too late to think about starting anything. I put the empties into the rubbish chute (I don't have a rubbish chute per se, but next door always leaves his mailbox open) and headed out for some fresh air. The air was fresh all the way to the pub, where it then became wetter and more beer-like, therefore slightly more palatable.

It was quite beautiful, really, watching the sun set over the horizon, spreading its golden pink rays over the wispy cloud formations in the sky... it makes you feel small and humble. (On the other hand, do you know what makes you feel huge? Midis. But don't order midi-sized beers, they're a waste of time. Honestly).

So the night began and the world opened itself to me; a wonderful dome of stars circling above... then the sun began to rise, and it was kind of pretty the way that the streams of sunlight made the stars dissolve into the sky... and then it got really bright and my hangover kicked in, I realised I had to go to work in like 20 minutes, I still haven't called Jose Gonzales back about his passport, and the bar staff had been poking me with a broom for four hours and I was getting angry and tired.

It's weeks like this that I'm glad I keep this diary, to remember the good times. Another Monday dawns...