So, out of every hangover is supposed to come a lesson, I think -- some kind of wild proclamation of abstinence, followed by the realization that We Are Older Now, or My Body Doesn't Chug That Anymore, or perhaps my personal favorite, I Should Not Have Eaten That, Because When It Comes Back Up It Looks Like I'm Dying.

Our recent flirtation with binge drinking could have taught us a lot, then. Restraint, better aim, or that we should keep our lips to ourselves. Or our tongues, or our hands. Or that we should be flirting with something else.

But no. We have shunned such lessons -- or at the very least, rewritten them to fit our more rapacious, naughty aims. We have met Insight and Wisdom, shaken their hands, and then tickled their palms with our middle fingers. We're turning a birthday flirtation with intemperance into a full-blown love affair. We've rededicated ourselves to the art form.

We have embarked upon this, The Summer Of Excessive Drinking And Inappropriate Behavior.

I'm not sure when this decision came, initially. Certainly, we knew that The Summer Of Excessive Drinking And Inappropriate Behavior had arrived full-force when our commitment to excellence in the consumption of frothy, cold pints was not dimmed or diminished by Jessica's birthday celebration. In fact, despite the hangovers, our overall good time seemed only to whet our appetites.

Personally, my journey toward debauched self-discovery began when I realized that I'm turning into Fun Bobby -- the girl that's a laugh a second when she's loaded, but when she dries out, she sits on her ass and hangs her head and weeps about life's woes and her aching heart and the fact that Indian food is so damned expensive sometimes, and the length of her too-long, supposed-to-be-capri-length-but-mysteriously-aren't pants. (This is of course the wrong reason to pick up recreational drinking. And that tiny fact paradoxically makes it completely the right reason.)

I conclude, however, that the true, glorious, so very storied origins of The Summer of Excessive Capitalization And Inappropriate Drinking truly began about two weeks ago, when Jessica and I said to each other almost simultaneously, "We really ought to drink more. I like drinking."

These are the profundities and incisive insights bubbling forth daily from our lips -- the lips that, incidentally, will soon be romancing pint glasses, salt-rimmed margarita stemware, and probably a lot of other things, all in support of The Summer Of Excessive Drinking And Things We Won't Tell Our Mothers We Ever Did, Ever.

In short, we're going to turn immature, but do so very maturely. We're figuring this is a foolproof way to drink away the pain, forget our neuroses, and basically just laugh a lot. If one of us, but preferably all of us, happen to end a night hooking up with an avowed heterosexual, then so be it. We can't help it if it happens. But we can help it happen.

Or at least, we think we can. But it's not the goal. (Okay, maybe it is.) (But it's not.) (Not really.) (No, really, it's not.) The goal is, Don't Worry: Be Drinky. Or, as I said to Michael -- our dedicated campaign manager for this summer-long initiative -- "I'm gonna be drunky, but funky."

Strategizing for this unprecedented marathon buzzfest is a special gift.

Step One is to make plans.

"We should go bowling," Jessica said. "I like bowling."

Step Two involves spicing up these plans.

"DRUNK bowling," I screeched.

"Oh my God, I LOVE DRUNK BOWLING," she yelled. "I LOVE DRINKING."

"Drinking is the best," I agreed. "Maybe we're bowl drunking, and not drunk bowling."

"Priorities," Jessica nodded knowingly.

And so, off we go. Tonight we're kicking things off the way all major celebrations should be kicked off: By watching drunk people put turtles on the floor or a local bar and cheer them toward the finish line.

I want to get Jessica drunk enough to give her a rabbit and have her enter it, talking all this trash about how it's faster than a turtle and it could lap the turtle and then beat the turtle and then do a victory dance on the turtle and then mate with the turtle and birth little turbit babies who are very, very pokey, but cuddly. But then once her bunny entered the contest, we would watch the bunny sprint for the finish, stop a foot short, crawl under a barstool, and fall asleep in a puddle of beer. Because fables always come true, especially when recontexualized into a bar setting.

So, clearly, I have to run to the pet store.

Wish us luck. We'll keep you posted.

Someone got here by searching for: Shakira breast dancing; Shakira is not so much a part of The Summer Of Behavioral Drinking And Excessive Inappropriateness, although I can't promise that breast dancing won't make an appearance -- I mean, we already made waves with the Erotic Scarf Dance Stop it with the weird titles and capitalization of words. No. Bite Me. Fine. Have you at least finished A Walk In The Woods yet? No. But I'm working on it. It's good.