New Cast of Laguna Beach, originally uploaded by MaggieMason.

This is a photo of the new cast of Laguna Beach, which is now called Newport Harbor. If you’re unfamiliar with the show, it’s MTV’s “reality” high-school drama.

The California educational system could clearly use some reform, because apparently it’s taking our high-school seniors eight years more than the national average to graduate.

Tip to the MTV casting director: If you’re trying to simulate reality, don’t cast Katherine Heigl.

Let’s say you’ve had a particular Yahoo email address since college. You use it to order products, give it to new people you meet, keep in touch with old friends. Now say it randomly stopped forwarding to your daily inbox about two years ago. And you? Failed. To. Notice.

You randomly log in to find thousands of messages waiting for you. Notes from old friends, notices from services, Evite after Evite after Evite.

Suddenly, you can taste the upper part of your esophagus.

Once you begin breathing again, how much time do you spend searching for the “Do Over” button before it’s acceptable to bang your head against the keyboard?

Me: You used my toothbrush.
Him: I did?
Me: Yes, you’ve done it three times this week.
Him: Oh.
Me: Mine is the blue one. Yours is the green one.
Him: Eh, it’s not like we’ve never made out. Same diff.
Me: Ugh! Uggggh. I’m not into finding my toothbrush mysteriously wet. Also, you don’t rinse off all the toothpaste and it’s gross. Also stop using my goddamn toothbrush, dude
Him: OK.

Two days later:

Me: You used my toothbrush again.
Him: Oh.
Me: Stop it.
Him: OK.

Three days later:

Me: Did you see I bought a purple toothbrush for me?
Him: I did!
Me: You are green! I am purple!
Him: I appreciate that.

A week later:

Me: AAAAHHHHHHHH!!! AHHHHHH! Stop using my toothbrush you big jerk! Stop it! Stop it!
Bryan: Shit.
Me: You just use whichever one is closest, don’t you?
Him: Yes.
Me: You don’t even check, do you?
Him: No.
Me: You’ve been doing this for several years and I’m just now noticing. Is that what’s going on here?
Him: Yes.
Me: Excuse me while I go scrape my tongue.

Reader tip! Don’t wrap an evening of drinking by spiking your champagne with Limoncello.

Buuuuuut, as long as 32-percent alcohol is coursing through your veins, you may as well send a few dozen text messages. You can send them all to different people by simply thinking of a new person you’d like to talk to. Don’t be all anal about whether you’ve actually entered their phone number or just the one you last dialed. Hit on the following key points:

Everything south of my waist is wet, and not in a hot way.

o never has anyone been drunk enough

Sara could fix my car, love. We are so very drunk.

Just so. Sara Brown is wasted. She won’t have anything theft, monsieur. How’s france treatin’ ya?

Around 2 a.m., compose incoherent messages on the postcards you’ve been acquiring since college. For example:

Dallas has the worst airport in the continental U.S. and you’re always on that thing with the guys who golf.

What?
OK.
I’m going to lay down.
My nose, even my nose hurts.

-It’s 2:32 a.m. I mean seriously, go to the bathroom.
-OK, I’m going to.
-OK.

Every once in awhile I am so afraid of ghosts, I can’t sleep. Which is bullshit, because ghosts don’t have muscles.

True enough.

When you wake up unsure of whether you may still be drunk, call a cab instead of driving to breakfast. Of course, the taxi driver will be drunk, but he will still take you to the place where they melt the cheese over the potatoes and give you plate after plate of andouille sausage.

Thanks, wasted cab driver. We needed that.

Excellent dialogue from my friend’s four-year-old daughter, Isabel:

When playing with a toy harmonica, elbows akimbo–
“All right everybody! Let’s hear one for the briiiide!”

When coaxing the dog to chase you–
“C’mon, doggie! Chase me! C’mon doggie! You wanna piece of me, doggie? You wanna piece of me?!”

When encouraging the dog to obtain a cookie traped inside his hollow toy–
“Get it, doggie! Eat it! You know who you are! You know what you want! EAT IT!”