Thank you for being my friend.

I'm still at least half blaming the Twitters for the Blog Death '09 that's happening. Sometime between getting called "ADD" and "retarded", it dawned on me that my hybrid of "scattered" and "slow" was not charming anymore. And my presence on Twitter is NOT helping. I don't even read blogs anymore, much less comment on them prolifically and write on my actual blog. It makes feel so mentally dirty, people. And not in the way I like to be mentally dirty.

But despite this fact, I still know some damn smart people in this world. In fact, some exceptionally smart people still call me friend and (shockingly) think I'm reasonably intelligent. I can put up a solid façade. So this blog post is a tribute to them. Despite the fact they will probably just be embarrassed to be associated with me. OH WELL FOR YOU, FRIENDS.

So on Tuesday night I had dinner with a friend I hadn't seen in a while (read: two years), a writer I know, who I often just refer to as "The Smartest Person I Know" because he kind of is. During the course of that meal, I detailed my plight of texting and twittering, my all-around general commitment to Attention Span Murder and how I'm rocking a bad case of The Dumbs these days. He ordered me to read actual books again or he would stop talking to me altogether. (That's the kind of tough love I need, people.)

So his ominous threat has at least scared me into reading Neil Strauss's latest book, which I've had sitting around collecting dust the past month. It's a great read and I'm not just promoting it just because it's genuinely good, but because Strauss is a really good friend to me, and I appreciate that he put up with some serious drunken Clover antics this week. See? There is a pay-off after all. I blog about you when you love me unconditionally. Yes, debatable pay-off, but it's all I've got right now.

So Strauss became the latest victim/beneficiary of my Drunk Texting. (A hobby which I only grow more passionate about as the days go on.) After the writer dinner Tuesday, I was feeling smarter and energized by the encounter, so I went and visited my friend who tends bar nearby. It seemed too early to go home, and I wanted to share the posi vibes I had gotten with more than just the tivo-ed American Idol waiting for me at home. (Clover LOVES posi vibes and the sharing of them).

It turned out to not be my slickest move to date. Writer Friend had gotten us a bottle of wine to share and I was already "feelin' the flow" (as Kevin Nealon's character might say to Happy Gilmore in the eponymous film). Except this flow was drunkenness, and since it was a slow night at my friend's bar, he began pouring me champagne glass after champagne glass and I begrudgingly (read: enthusiastically) drank them all.

And because Strauss is how I know the Very Smart Writer Friend, I decided it was high time to begin enthusiastically drunk texting Strauss that Mutual Smart Writer Friend and I had FINALLY gotten together after a year of endlessly talking about getting together. There was general celebration that this feat finally occurred and then (I think) we began gossiping about people we know, projects Strauss is working on and how he was leaving for New York in a day, but we CLEARLY had to "catch up" on all of these things before he left, because in my drunken haze, these were the most important topics to be discussed on earth and had to be discussed THAT NIGHT.

Unfortunately when I turn on the drunk text charm, I am inexplicably articulate, lucid, even witty, and this is a problem. He could obviously not tell I was under the influence of "the spirits". Because I somehow convinced Strauss that I was in some sort of place to discuss anything. I left the bar, went to Strauss's and promptly passed out. Yes, I was a charming visitor.

When I woke up the next morning (confused to be at Strauss's [LOLZ, Clover]) I asked him if he was interviewing Judd Apatow for Rolling Stone. He looked at me like I was a Giant Moron, and I almost punched myself in the face remembering that he told me eight times last night it was for Maxim. Apparently the one thing I did enjoy doing was asking that question over and over.

Strauss had the interview that morning, but being the good friend he is, told me that he would finally teach me how to milk his goats (yes, he has goats) and while he prepped for his interview, he still found time to show me how to milk a goat. So I proceeded to spend my hangover straddling a goat trying to keep her from running away with the nonexistent power of my inner thighs and simultaneously keeping the baby goats from cracking open Strauss's skull while they jumped on his back as he milked their mom's teat. Hollywood living.

These are the actual goats if you want to see what I'm talking about:



So after my clothes got glamorously covered in goat hair and goat paw prints from the goat milking venture, we tried to go back inside and inexplicably all the doors back into the house were locked. Really, doors? What's your damage? Strauss smartly had me run after the goat caretaker who was already in her car (because I could not fathom a solution to this crisis), and luckily I caught her before she turned out onto the street, so she was able to click open the garage door for us.

But this was not before the goats squeezed out the fence gate behind me, and we then ran frantically around trying to wrangle in three frolicky, spastic goats before they ran out into the major thoroughfare right by his house.

If you think this is a fun way to spend a hangover you are wrong.

But I did learn that baby goats are surprisingly easy to pick up. Much easier than squirmy bunny rabbits, which is what I used to do at Ex's. The skill set I have developed living in rustic Los Angeles.

I've already forgotten the point of this blog because I am ADD, and it is much longer to construct than a text, but I think it was kind of a public apology for subjecting Strauss to severe Clover inebriation.

Um, I also pledge to blog more because I really miss it, and my brainsicle is atrophying more than it already is without it. Troof.

But all the talk of drunk texting is really just a lengthy preamble to inform you that Baking With Plath and I have a joint blog venture in the works and it will knock yer socks off. JUST YOU WAIT AND SEE.