Monday, December 10, 2012

Dean Koontz Drinking Game

Now that school is wrapping up, the truth is, I'm having a bit of an existential crisis.  Not my usual, ongoing existential crisis, but an entirely new one.  You might even call it depression: I sleep all the time, feel like shit pretty much constantly, and have no motivation to do anything at all.

The thing is, I feel like I won the game.  It's all over now.  I proved everyone wrong and I graduated and got my degree and... now what?  What do I really want to do with my life?  I guess just to be happy, but I don't see any clear like from point A (here) to point B (there).  I feel like I'm in a real fug.  Mostly I just want to sleep away time and hope I wake up in some future utopia, which seems unlikely.  I also really want to drink which is stupid because pouring depressants over depression is like pouring gasoline over fire.  It's a pity, too, since I have a couple of bottles of rum in the liquor cabinet and, oh yes, I just recently finish making a little something that I like to call... The Dean Koontz Drinking Game.


Hey Kids! It's time for...
The Dean Kootnz Drinking Game!

The fastest way to encourage reading while getting so trashed that you can no longer recognise this as a terrible, terrible idea!

Take a shot every time...
  • Someone is wearing Rockports.
  • Something evil is also genetically engineered.
  • The bad guy is German or Russian. Take an extra shot if they're Nazis or part of the KGB.
  • The bad guy has a sweet tooth. Take a extra shot for each additional trait he has: parent issues (double if it's a mommy issue), handsomeness or charm, a ridiculously expensive wardrobe, OCD levels of neatness, extreme narcissism.
  • An Asian person is described as either a serene Buddha or a concentrated, determined karate master. Take an extra shot if they actually know kung fu or another form of martial arts. Take an extra shot for every time the word “Zen” is used.
  • Someone's close family member has autism or Down's syndrome. Take an extra shot if they have an extraordinary ability like teleportation or are psychic.
  • The dog is a golden retriever. Extra shot for every time a dog gets called “Fur-Face.”
  • Someone has a Chief's Special handgun.
  • Evil scientists.
  • The person with the gun “recognises the need for guns in a troubled world” even though they're basically a level-headed pacifist. Take an extra shot if they've been to a shooting range.
  • Anytime Koontz goes on for a paragraph or more about how the world is troubled and it seems like there's no moral fiber left in society anymore, et cetera et cetera. Take an extra shot if he tries to awkwardly disguise his rambling as the character's rambling.
  • Indian laurels or bougainvillea.
  • When the protagonists are a man-woman team, and the man is calm, gentle, and level-headed and the woman is a total spitfire.
  • Anytime the protagonist's backstory includes someone being murdered. Take an extra shot if the person murdered was one of their parents.
  • Someone who needs to steal a car conveniently finds one unlocked with the keys in the ignition or tucked in the sun visor.
  • The Book of Counted Sorrows” is quoted. Take an extra shot if it doesn't end up having any relevance whatsoever to the section it's introducing.
  • The person who steals the car switches its license plates with the plates of another car.
  • A shot for every time anyone ends up in a church. Extra shots for every time someone has a conversation with a priest or other religious authority figure.
  • Koontz makes a point that the good guy has never had a premonition and doesn't believe in them, but immediately after having a foreboding sense of doom, goes with his gut and abandons all reason.
  • The child is a genius, or at least an eccentric sort of savant. Take an extra shot if they also have supernatural abilities or can see/sense dead people/ghosts.
  • It's set in Southern California. Take an extra shot if Arizona gets mentioned. Take two if any of the main characters visit Arizona.
  • Koontz makes a point of saying that it rarely rains in California, and then sets up a scene in a total deluge. Take an extra shot for every subsequent thunderstorm.
  • The character's BMI is less than 21; if it's a woman, less than 20.
  • A crack is made about how the motel the characters are staying at has clashing orange and blue wallpaper/carpet/sheets/lampshades.
  • They make spaghetti. Double shot if someone seems to be overdoing the salad preparation.
  • Someone wears a Hawaiian shirt.
  • They order Chinese take-out.
  • The male character was a cop/detective but now he's retired.
  • Someone has an “ethnic” name that's such overkill it borders on offensive. (Such as Abraham Malachi Rosenstein.) Take extra shots if the person with the “ethnic” name has additional “ethnic” clothing or jewelry because they're so “ethinc” (such as yarmulkes, sombreros, et cetera). Take triple shots if one of the MAIN characters has a pun-based name like Drake Everyman or Jim Ironheart or Montgomery KillYourFace.
  • There's a chase scene in a snow storms. Double shots if it's anywhere in a vicinity of Lake Tahoe.
  • You know what? Shot for every visit to Lake Tahoe.
  • Sodium vapour lights.
  • A child speaks awkwardly, indicating that Dean Koontz has never heard a child speak and doesn't know what the hell kids sound like. Bonus shot if he attempts to write from the child's POV and fails abysmally.
  • And, last but not least... finish the bottle anytime the word “literally” is used completely, unforgivably incorrectly.

1 comment:

  1. I vote also take a shot any time a character is afraid of bugs (especially roaches) or Dos Equis is mentioned

    ReplyDelete