Monday, October 3

Weather Report

Whatever it is, I'm under it.

I came down with a case of Self-Inflicted Transient Positional Vertigo, or White Russian flu, early Sunday morning. The hell of it was that I didn't really drink much, five or six drinks over five hours, depending on whether the coffee our hostess passed around along about 11:30 had liquor in it (reports vary). We were playing their favorite game, Name That 60s or 70s Tune, aka "How the fuck does Riley know all that shit?" (In my defense, knowing that, say, Billy "I Can Help" Swan had only one eye seems like such a simple thing I don't even bother putting it on my resumé.)

Anyhoo, at some point I realized that the strobe effects in my head were warning lights at the edge of Losing Consciousness Lane, and I got up, told the assembled guests I was going home "by rail", * and left. (The party was next door.) My Poor Wife came home fifteen minutes later and found me on the couch, unlaced my boots, told me I was whiter than Andy Warhol (always with the art metaphors, that woman), and covered me with a blanket. I woke up an hour and a half later with a near-perfect buzz going, and--swear to God--went into the office and posted the Groucho birthday card. If this was a hand-written blog you'd have noticed something funny.

I slept Sunday away, except for reading the papers and watching football. I was up early this morning to do the Eddie Cochran thing, but Blogger was sick too. So today I'm playing hooky, though I am still a little shaky. And I'm hoping it's a bug of some sort, because if my capacity is dropping off I'm gonna have to go into training.

* traveling by rail: "So tipsy that one has to hang onto things." ca 1930. Partridge's Concise Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, London: Routledge, 1989.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ok, great. Now I have "I Can Help" going in my head, but some cyclops guy is singning it. Thanks.

Anonymous said...

Ah, White Russians. Thanks to an unfortunate overload during an outing to Turkey Run back in the late '70s, it's the main reason I STILL can't look at one without gagging. Good times...

Hope you're feeling better, DR.

Alex said...

Traveling by rail.

Man, oh man, I'm stealing that.

Anonymous said...

Watched a dear friend chug a full liter of White Russians one New Year's Eve. Later that night he was barefoot in the back yard and shooting off fireworks.

He doesn't do that any more.

Billy Swan's "I Can Help", huh? That's some serious Velveeta there.

My verification word is "gibhio", which I'm sure is what Giblets plans to rename your neighboring state as soon as he thinks of it.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous? Moi?

Anonymous said...

I had a similar Sunday, and in fact am having a similar week, though without the fun parts with the Cyclopses and the music and the drinking.
All migraine, all the time. Wheee!

Hope you get to feeling better, Riley. Better than you described here, anyway. Better than me, you couldn't miss.

(My verification word is "isktoq", which sounds like some kind of shoe.)

julia said...

it would sure do me good to do you good, let me help...

ah, yes, I am middle aged. I'd forgotten.