So this is what it feels like, huh?

Holyfuckingshit.

Son of a left-handed biscuit. (hat tip to Dr. Whatley, inventor of Tide)

By the power of Grayskull.

Oh my balls.

Great ghosts of Gargamel's Balls.

Balls of Mount Balls' Scrote.

K-Fed ate my baby's balls.

Those are a few of the nonsensical utterings my overwhelmed brain has coughed up over the last few hours. Brutal hangover notwithstanding, I now know what the limits of my central nervous system are. In other words, I've literally reached that point where something so extraordinary and unfathomable has occurred that I have no method of processing it. Instead, I tend to sit here open-mouthed (a la Eli), occasionally blinking myself back into awareness, only to be forced to reconsider the course of events of the last 24 hours.

This is a world where a marginal player can somehow catch a football-shaped ball with his FUCKING HELMET. A world in which I am humbled.

A world where one team can enter the Super Bowl with the never-before-achieved record of 18-0, then lose to a team led by a quarterback affectionately known as "the crappy one" in his family even when his oldest brother is some finance chump.

A world where, while watching the game last night, I screamed "Gisele's been to the abortion clinic four times already this month" and "I hope Wes Welker's children die," yet still, somehow, the Gods of Karma chose to...reward my over-the-top hostility and downright nastiness?

Where the fuck am I?

In my sports-watching life, the team I care about most -- the Mets -- has won one championship. That was in 1986, and at age 8, I had no proper perspective to appreciate the its magnitude. As if to hammer that point home, a few months later, the team I care about second-most -- the Giants -- won the Super Bowl. Four years after that, the Giants won it all again. Those three games -- each absolutely wonderful and spendiferous and scrumtrelecent, yes -- are it, though. Other than those three games, I have nothing but heartbreak, disappointment, and rage in my experience column.

That's why it's both beautiful and baffling to me as I sit here trying my hardest to compute what happened last night. It's been 17 years since I've been able to call my team Champion. In those 17 years, there have been some notable events which I, and those odd Giants/Mets fans have endured: the 49ers game, the not-even-close Super Bowl loss to the Ravens, this past September's Mets collapse, and, most painfully, a World Series loss to my most-hated enemy.

At this point, I feel conditioned to events like that. But for events like actually, you know, succeeding, alas, I got nothing.

I can say this though: It does feel quite nice. That surely sounds deserving of a Captain Obvious tag, but as I've never been old enough to properly experience something like this, "nice" is goddamn eloquent, nay Shakespearean, okay?

Holy humping Moses Malone's Tits, this feels good.

The profound enlightenment to be found in this article has driven me to drink

When I was about 8 years old, I distinctly remember Side Bar demonstrating to me that a simple test of logic proves that Santa Claus could not possibly exist. Now, you might think that's just kind of dickish. And it was. But even as a youngster, Side Bar's bullshit detector could not be denied. I should've thanked him, I suppose, for his refusal to permit my continued ignorance.

His point was simple: "How could one guy visit every kid's house in the entire world in just one night?"

I was dumbfounded. I felt like my whole world had been torn asunder and rebuilt in a flash. Those sorts of things happen when everything you've ever known turns out to be total bullshit, but yet somehow makes perfect fucking sense. Like when you find out Bruce Willis was a ghost the whole time!

Just today, I spotted an article which gave me that same rush of mind-blowing discovery that was heretofore unforeseeable. (Is it redundant to use the same syllable twice in a row? Probably.)

Here's the article, the title of which I will post below:

College Drinking Games Lead to Higher Blood Alcohol Levels

No fucking way.

And just for kicks, here's the first paragraph. It's filled with such illuminating insights, I'm amazed that an actual human being was able to so skillfully combine left-brained poetic majesty with right-brained scientific fact-finding. (Though there's no byline, so I guess it coulda been written by God or something.)

SUNDAY, Jan. 6 (HealthDay News) -- The first on-the-scene study of college drinking behavior shows that parties with drinking games result in higher blood alcohol levels, while themed parties encourage college women to drink more heavily than men, new research suggests.

And finally, here's one more bit of 100%-pure amazingness:

The researchers found that playing drinking games, having a personal history of binge drinking, attending a party with many other intoxicated people, and attending a themed event all predicted higher blood alcohol levels.

Again, no fucking way!

Without bothering to read the actual study, I'm going to go ahead and predict what a few more of the predictions in this study will be.

1. While participation in any drinking game tends to increase overall alcohol consumption, participation in certain drinking games which entail more drinking than others lead to participants drinking more alcohol than in other games involving less drinking by the participants.
2. Usage of liquor as opposed to beer and/or wine in drinking games leads to slightly different levels of drunkenness. For example, chugging one pint of lager or ale will result in the participant getting "less drunk" and "less hospitalized" than if the participant were to chug a pint of whiskey or tequila.
3. Certain drinking games which involve "puke points" (wherein a participant receives extra points for drinking enough to induce vomiting, then returning to continue playing; also known as a "boot-and-rally") will involve more participants vomiting than those which do not encourage such skills.
4. Drinking alcohol leads to the drinking of alcohol.
   

In a separate study, an even more surprising result was found. See picture below.

(Pics from here and here.)