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Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



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   vodka party and the game of asshole
Monday, February 3 1997 In the evening I was watching the Simpsons with my housemates when suddenly my house was invaded by a fairly large contingent of my friends. These were Matthew Hart, tall Brook and his girlfriend K@sh@, Josh Must!n (who is K@sh@'s younger brother), and Torrin (the guy who never looks at you when he talks to you). They had two different kinds of vodka, a gallon of orange juice, and marijuana between them. It was a party on wheels.

So we set about making up drinks and smoking the pot and then, in the living room, playing Asshole, the card game in which temporary abusive heirarchies are set up among friends. After the first game Matthew Hart had seized the role of President, I had the role of Vice President, and the others...well I don't know. Matthew was lording his position over the others (but not me; we were the "Aquarius team" and ended up having adjacent positions in the heirarchy the rest of the night). Matthew was full of a very amusing sort of faux haughtiness, eloquently speaking of the responsibilities of his position and the meagerness of the others.

But by the next game how he had fallen! Now he was the "ho", the lowest of the low save for me (I was the Asshole, the absolute worst, since I'd failed to get rid of all my cards during the preceding game). Now Matthew was given to speaking of the "good old days" when he was President, as though it was many years ago.

Over the next several games, positions changed and people acted out different roles of power. For my part, I never lorded my power over anyone. But I also tended to casually dismiss the orders of my superiours in a rebellious way typical of my behaviour in real life. This hautiness-in-defiance-of-position infuriated Torrin (who never managed to achieve high status) whenever he was superiour to me. But since I had to work this night I couldn't drink like the others. And I couldn't smoke as much pot.

Matthew had his usual fun-loving haughtiness, but now it was a cartoon of the real thing.
Under the influence of the pot I came to see the game of Asshole as every bit a microcosm of the real world of social hierarchy. How we adapted to our roles reflected the sort of social skills we have in everyday life. Matthew had his usual fun-loving haughtiness, but now it was a cartoon of the real thing. Torrin had his familiar whiny criticalness about him, and reacted to being ignored by asserting himself yet louder while still managing to be ignored. Brook was the soft spoken giant. K@sh@ would abide no ones dorkiness. And Josh Must!n had a cruel whimsy about him that yet did not make him into a particularly burdensome overlord.

The exaggerated social cruelty of the game (in which being made to drink is a punishment) was a bit unnerving to me while under pot's influence. I wanted people to be more egalitarian with each other and said so, thus further strengthening my Aquarian reputation.

In other things, a shy girl, a friend of Brook's named Daniel, appeared and said nothing at all the whole time she was there. But she smoked an enormous amount of pot. A couple of my housemates more given to the evil weed came down and joined in on our festivities. Matthew and Elizabeth had a long conversation in the kitchen. This mostly featured Matthew's railing against Annette (the girl mentioned in the weak ass entry of the Glossary). He wanted to go to her house and throw bottles against her window, and kept proclaiming his intention to do just that. He tried to raise a contingent for this end from amongst our ranks but we would not be moved. He ended up going with Torrin to try to find Morgan Anarchy, but came back unsuccessful.

By the way: Torrin and Matthew are still living at Zach and Peggy's old place on Altamont Street. The landlord knows they are there and apparently, in a state of defeat, doesn't care.

When we were so drunk and stoned that we could no longer play Asshole, the game dissolved into other things. As K@sh@ said, "It did what it needed to," (that being get us all fucked up). The time was about 9:30pm, but the others said "it felt late" (like 1am or something). That's an indication of intoxication. I took my prework nap at 10:30pm. I was not nearly as messed up as the others at this point.

Another aside: Matthew Hart normally refuses pot but tonight he smoked a lot.

At work I chatted some with blixa in Sam 'n Ellas. blixa has implied some shocking news to me about a mutual friend. The person behind the blixa personality may visit me in mid February if a certain van can be fixed. We can't FTP our bodies just yet.

That guy in Sam 'n' Ellas named DART made some non-complementary remarks about my Glossary homepage. He's one to talk; his homepage is a hollow shell. Still, this is what it took for me to do a little redesigning on the Glossary homepage. Now there's new fonts and a cleaner look.


For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?970203

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