Twelve Ways To Turn A Perfectly Good Evening Into a Bitchfest That Makes Everyone Want To Kill Themselves (Or You) With A Butter Knife

Last night, I sat on a comfortable IKEA couch (the Ektorp series are my favourites), drinking a glass of white wine, and listening to a crazy, drunken Italian New Yorker rant and rave for about four hours on how horrible it is working at the United Nations. To the crazy, drunk Italian New Yorker: I’d believe you more if you didn’t repeat the same stories about seventeen times throughout the course of the evening.

Twelve Ways To Turn A Perfectly Good Evening Into a Bitchfest That Makes Everyone Want To Kill Themselves (Or You) With A Butter Knife:

1. Prior to arriving at the household, drink two tumblers of vodka, straight. Then, during the course of the evening, have about three glasses of wine.
2. Begin talking about your job, which you hate. The hatred, combined with the alcohol, is sure to make you a hit with the non-drunks.
3. Tell the same stories, repeatedly. Mention how the only way anyone gets anywhere at your job is by kissing ass and how a truck driver has a higher position than you.
4. Curse, lots.
5. When telling your stories, gesture loudly and repeatedly. Use the stranger sitting next to you as a prop, grabbing at his shirt and gesturing wildly at him, despite the fact that you just met him about 20 minutes ago.
6. While telling a story about how you yelled at a local Kuwaiti man at the Sultan Center, mutter “fucking Kuwaiti’s” frequently enough to make the two Kuwaiti’s in the room with you uncomfortable as well. Marvel at the fact that she escaped unharmed.
7. As you tell all your stories about your lack of assimilation into the culture, boast about how you yell at people, which makes them scared of you. Ignore the fact that everyone in the room is thinking “They’re probably not scared of you so much as they’re thinking ‘Who is this crazy woman and why is she in my face?’”.
8. Tell the same stories that you were telling in #3, again. Gesture wildly.
9. As the brains of everyone in the room start to atrophy, repeat your stories, and ignore the fact that you are now the only person in the room talking.
10. Drink more wine.
11. As people start to clear out because it’s getting late and they have to go to bed, keep talking. Repeat the stories you’ve been telling all night, to make sure that your audience (because they are no longer your friends that you are having a conversation with since you are the only one talking) really gets the point.
12. As your new husband (who has been sleeping and/or suffering from a heart attack) taps you on the arm to tell you it’s time to go, squint at him and slur “I totally forgot you were here.” Ignore his first two requests to leave, repeating the stories you’ve been telling all night, then finally leave when he starts to hand you your coat.

In the future, if you look around and see that everyone is falling asleep on various sofas and you are the only one talking, it may be a subtle hint that it’s time for you to go home, drink a glass of water for every alcoholic beverage you’ve had, and go to bed.