rules for drinking alone... stolen from My Blog is Poop

- DON'T tell anybody about it. If you do, you risk the possibility that a friend might say, "Oh, you're drinking? Cool! I'll drop by. Want me give Mike a call, I'm sure he'll be down too." Then suddenly you're no longer drinking alone, you're entertaining people. And that sucks.

- DON'T drink beer. It's wasteful. You're going to have to drink a lot of it to get drunk, so chances are you're going to get bored with the concept of drinking alone before you actually start to feel it. Beer is a friend drink, whiskey is an alone drink. Remember that.

- DON'T drink wine. Unless you're sleeping outside. And drinking it out of a paper bag. Then it's cool.

- DO occupy your mind with something else while drinking. The thought, "I'm drinking alone" gets depressing after a while, so make sure you have something else to concentrate on. Sports work. As do movies. But do not, I repeat, DO NOT watch porn. The combination of drinking alone plus doing something else alone has the potential to depress you to the point of no return. And it's not pretty.

- DON'T go through old photo albums. Don't start rummaging through that junk drawer. Don't start thinking about high school and college. Actually, don't even think about what you were doing earlier that day either, it can only depress you. You know what was more fun that sitting by yourself drinking Jack out of a coffee mug, Tony Almeida-style? Everything.

- DO try writing something. Even if you don't consider yourself a writer. Just grab a pen and some paper and go to it. It doesn't even matter what you write: poems, short stories, essays, a great American novel. Whatever. Most of our greatest authors were drunks, and now you're just like them! Go for it!

- DON'T listen to music by the following artists: Radiohead, Travis, Arcade Fire, Counting Crows, Sufjan Stevens, or the Venga Boys. Especially not the Venga Boys.

- DO listen to George Thoroughgood. And relate.

- DO read something. Like a book. It will make you feel productive, like you're not wasting your life away by drinking alone. You're drinking alone AND getting smarter. It's a win-win.

- DO devote some time to staring out your window up at the sky like Fievel from "An American Tail." But don't start singing that fucking song... unless of course you're so drunk that it will make you laugh.

- DON'T blog while you're drinking alone. You'll only embarrass yourself. That's what livejournals are for.

- Finally, DON'T even blog about drinking alone. Because inevitably people will start pitying you, even if the idea for the post came from a friendly conversation about purchasing a flask and NOT from the act of actually drinking alone. I swear.