"Gin is just flavored vodka" -- This I never knew, until about a month ago. Usually when people are keep independently referencing something that I know nothing about, it means I missed an event on the internet. Like I knew about the whole "double rainbows" thing, but when I overheard my co-workers watching it I just figured they were looking at porn, which maybe says a lot about me and my company, because I work at the kind of place where someone might be watching porn, but also the kind of place where I try to avoid watching YouTube videos and instead have a really meta understanding of web culture because I read countless re-posts of the same video, then actually catch up with the video itself on Saturday mornings when I'm already totally irrelevant.

At first, I thought the "gin is vodka" meme was just something my friend was telling me to explain why he was better than me when I was hungover, but I'm beginning to suspect there must have been a New Yorker article or a trend piece in the Times or something. In a world where flavored liquors keep multiplying (see: Cafe Patron) and as someone who consumed bubble gum-flavored vodka for the first time last Tuesday, it seems pretty bizarre to think that 400 years ago someone decided juniper-flavored vodka would be a hit and then it actually was.

May God have mercy on our souls if 20 generations from now our descendants are drinking bubble gum vodka on the regular.

My friend from high school trained me that self-awareness is pretty much the greatest facet of any art form. As such, he loved TV shows that broke the fourth wall and the musical episode of Buffy and the Paris Hilton song "Stars Are Blind" (which was not autobiographical, incidentally). In retrospect, I half-heartedly disagree and tend to view "really unspeakably bleak things happening to the main characters, especially in so far as they make your life seem better by comparison" as a really key element, but maybe I'm just thinking that because we just finished Season 1 of Party Down.

I'm really not this abrasive.

Currently, I'm on an NJTransit train back from the beach. Fourteen hours ago I was drinking margaritas and playing Settlers of Catan (because I am The Coolest). Twenty four hours ago I was on the beach. So far, the most exciting thing to happen on the return trip is that one of the conductors screamed at a forty-something couple who wanted to bring their bikes on the train, peppering his speech heavily with the F-word, because this is NJTransit, not the elitist off-peak MetroNorth to Greenwich (which, truth be told, has its share of rowdiness, at least while the bar cars were still active)

Probably the worst thing about coming back from a trip is how miserable the return itself is, in sharp contrast to the promise and excitement of your outbound journey. Who cares about waking up early to go TO the beach? Of course there's traffic! Going to the beach is a great idea that lots of people had! You sing songs and play games with the road signs ("Silver alert! Ha ha ha!"), you talk about life and your job and your apartment in broad strokes, and there's a sense of camraderie because your all escaping lame things and responsibilities (see above: life and job and apartment) to go to the beach because you are all geniuses who had the same great idea as 15 million other geniuses stuck in the same traffic jam. Then, suddenly, it's all over and you're running late and maybe missing your train and half your worldly possessions are sandy which means you'll have to do laundry again and you'll probably have to get up at like 4am tomorrow just so you have time to wash your clothes and rearrange all your furniture and still spend a solid fourteen hours looking for a job online that doesn't require and advanced degree and ten years experience and the ability to code in Java and Flash.

Ultimately, though, I should appreciate these little panic attacks because they correct my anxiety equilibrium. Otherwise I'd just spend all day analyzing my sunburn patterns.