It's Monday. It feels like twelve Mondays all crammed together into one day, for I, Rifleman, feel like shit (shite, if you're Scottish). And rightly so, I suppose. Four days of drinking will do that to you.

It all started Wednesday night. Feeling a bit stressed from work, I convinced 'Shank to meet up at SSW official pub, Rocky's in Valley Ranch after he got off work at 10:30. Late, I know, but that's never stopped me before, even though I did have to go to work the next day. We drank a couple of pitchers of Shiner, harassed pseudo-Oompa-Loompa waitress Jessie and played NTN Trivia. NTN Trivia is the best thing about hanging out in bars, as it lets you avoid conversation with drunken fucks. And, being that it was poker night at Rocky's, the place was chock full o' drunken fucks. A good example of this was one drunken fuck who objected to the fact that the evening's soundtrack--piped in through the bar's PA--was electronica. He approached the bar and demanded that Chris (aka Wins-STON) change the music, as the electronica was not really music in that "It ain't got no words! It's gotta have words to be good music. Only good music has words!" He said this like a televangelist would say something about the word of the Lord, with above-normal conviction in his voice. I think he talked like this because he was drunk, which would mean that most televangelists are also drunk. And I can't really blame him--if I had to live with myself after bilking people out of their hard-earned money every day, I'd probably be a drunk too.

We left Rocky's at 1 or so in the morning, 'Shank heading home to do God knows what and I going home to play on the Internet. And by "play on the Internet", I mean download 10 second porn clips and masturbate. Falling asleep immediately after "playing on the Internet", I dreamed of Jennifer Love Hewitt, amongst other things. The alarm came too quickly, which, thankfully, has never been a problem for me. I rolled out of bed and took a quick shower, foregoing shaving again and headed out the door to the car and over to the office.

I got to work around 9. Late for me, as I usually get in around 8:20 or so, but I didn't care--my boss was off on vacation at his brother's place in "northern LA", as he kept calling it, as if he were embarrassed to admit his brother lived in Glendale or Burbank--just down the road from Topanga State Park, which is the only state park named after a character on Boy Meets World. As they say, "when the cat's away the mice will play" or some stupid thing like that, and I followed that credo Thursday. After arriving at the office, I surfed the Internet (notice that I used the word "surfed" rather than "played", as the two are entirely different activities and the latter would probably be inappropriate at the office, or at least it would be at my office) for an hour-and-a-half, took a fifteen minute break to wander downstairs to the cafe for a cup of coffee, came back upstairs, killed some more time on the 'net, then went to lunch. After a long lunch, I came back, did some real work (stuff that has to be done everyday), then surfed some more until 5, at which time I went home. Or at least went to one of my second homes--Starbucks.

'Shank was working, which meant I would get the hook up. And I needed it, as I was obviously up late the night before. Unfortunately, I got sidetracked while I was there and decided I needed to go home (frankly, I couldn't stand being around the people there) before actually acquiring any of that sweet, sweet nectar of the gods--coffee. 'Shank and I made plans to meet at Rocky's for more drinks and whatnot after he got off work. Luckily, this night he was getting off (of work) at 6:30, so it would hopefully prove to be a somewhat early evening. Not that it mattered--I was off work the next day in observance of "Good" Friday. Though how any Friday you get crucified on could be good escapes me.

I met 'Shank at Rocky's at about 6:45, where we ordered our customary pitcher of Shiner and a couple of NTN Trivia boxes (or, as NTN's propaganda would have you call them, "Playmakers"). The sad thing is, 'Shank and I, usually masters of triviality, were being beaten about the brains by others. Others with inane NTN player IDs like "ISGUYS" and "GORDOO". We ate some fries and had a second pitcher before calling it an evening and returning to Starbucks, where I finally got the coffee I so richly deserved. It was while we were at Starbucks that we witnessed a Mexican eating. A regular occurrence, played out at countless construction site lunch trucks across the Southwest everyday, I'm sure--but this was decidedly odd. He had two faux Tupperware containers, one containing cold noodles and the other containing what could only be described as gazpacho with large chunks in it. He was trying to mix the two, but only managed to get some of the noodles and some of the "gazpacho" on the table. Apparently, Senor Wetback lacked mixing skills. It was while he was inside Starbucks purchasing a frappucino that we noticed some of the chunks in the "gazpacho" were steamed, in-shell mussels. Yum. And weird.

Freaked out by this, we decided to retreat to 'Shank's house for some movie viewing, or miewving, as I like to call it. We settled in to watch Snatch--the Guy Ritchie film, not the female genitalia--when we discovered that, in his attempt to be frugal--'Shank had purchased not the movie, but the companion disc with all those DVD extras that you maybe only watch once. Not his fault, really, as it was in a plain white box at Movie Trading Company and was marked for only $3, but disappointing nonetheless. We settled for watching Pixar's The Incredibles instead. Which actually turned out to be a good choice.

The next day I slept in, saving my energy for that afternoon and evening, as we had a plan. Friday, we would sit at Rocky's for hours, drinking beer and playing trivia. 'Shank picked me up around 3:30. We were at Rocky's at 3:38. We drank and drank and drank. And played trivia. We started to get hungry at one point, so 'Shank suggested we order some wings. Three pounds of wings, to be exact. Which sounds like a lot, but when you really get down to it, they're mostly bone. So it wasn't really all that much food. Thus, barely an hour-and-a-half later, we elected to order a pizza. Now, normally I would've felt like a complete glutton for eating this much, but as I hadn't eaten lunch, I justified it by telling myself I was just cramming lunch and dinner together into a short amount of time. 'Shank, on the other hand, had already had McDonald's, chips and two Hot Pockets, so I don't know what his excuse for being such a fatty was. And I don't really care. If he wants to be a glutton, than that's his prerogative.

It was 'Shank's co-worker Charisse's birthday celebration that night, so we elected to join the party at Olive Garden in Lewisville at around 8:30. We didn't eat, as we were still sated from the earlier food. And it's not like I'd eat anyhow, as Olive Garden is fucking disgusting. And this is coming from someone that has been known to occasionally eat Arby's. We hurried them along, anxious to keep up the drinking. Finally, we left, headed for Denton. Now why we were going all the way to Denton to drink when there were plenty of bars in the Irving/Coppell/Lewisville/Carrollton juncture, I don't know, but it was Charisse's choice, so we complied. Our destination was a bar called Cool Beans, which sounds like a coffee shop, but then what would you expect from a bunch of baristas? Luckily, Tim, a gay Starbucks hipster and former barista with a hard-on for 'Shank and who'd been at dinner, didn't make it to the bar. I was afraid that I might have to pry him off of 'Shank at some point during the evening.

Cool Beans was okay, if you like college bars. But to me, the college bar of college bars will always be the Dixie Chicken in College Station. It's the Dixie Chicken's fault that it took me five-and-a-half years to graduate (I refuse to accept any blame for my laziness). The best thing about Cool Beans was that we were able to stock up on $2.75 shots of Cuervo Especial and Newcastle Brown on draft (or draught, for you English fucks). By the end of the night, I was buzzed (thank you, massive alcohol tolerance god) and 'Shank was, well, gone. Thus I drove us back to my place to crash.

Somehow, I was able to get up at the crack of dawn (9:00 in my parlance) and shuffle 'Shank out the door as I left to go to Tyler, a hole but also a World Capital of Barbeque (at least according to writer Neal Pollack--personally, I tend to agree on the first, but the second claim is iffy). I killed the day hanging out with Riflemom--Rifleman's mother. Exciting, I know, but I felt guilty in that I hardly ever do anything with her and I think that she gets a bit lonely sometimes, especially since she killed her dog. We made grilled shrimp for dinner--quite tasty. Later that evening, I went over to Minotaur and his wife's to watch a hilarious home movie of Minotaur, Custardstyle (the missing member of SSW) and myself in Houston, featuring cameos by Holly and her friend PD (aka Pete, aka Purple Dick). It was about this time that I received a text message from Holly saying "It's the remix to Ignition". I convinced Minotaur and his wife to join me in meeting up with Holly at Armadillo Willy's, because, after all, it was the freakin' weekend, baby, and I was about to have me some fun. We arrived at Armadillo Willy's to find Holly, her boyfriend, ace Tyler Morning Telegraph report Mark Collette, a drunken Monica and her boyfriend Ben. Miss Courtney Rogers was there as well and hanging out with her is always cool. They were singing karaoke, serenading the drunken East Texas fucks with Elton John's classic "Tiny Dancer", which may or may not have been about his penis.

The night gets kind of hazy at this point, a combination of tiredness and the effects of mass quantities of both Shiner and Amber Bock. At some point, we retired to Mark's to listen to Tenacious D and talk about the best way to rub a lover's foot to avoid ticklage. All I really remember was awaking Sunday feeling like shit. But, you know, any time you can hang out with friends like these, it's worth it.