When all is said and done, and you are rotting away in a retirement home, long since forgotten by all but your closest friends (and not even they are a safe bet), one thing you will be able to look back on is how, at the peak of your life, you were known for throwing a hell of a party. If people still remembered you, they would be constantly bothering you with solicitations for advice on how to ensure people have the wildly good times that you were once known for facilitating.
Sadly, though your once legendary parties are now a forever buried remnant of your spent past, future generations still have much to learn from your indulgent, hedonistic ways. I have taken the liberty of compiling some of your key strategies for partying in the hope that the obnoxious alcoholics of tomorrow will not be confused as to what to do in going about their chosen lifestyle path.
STEP ONE: FINANCIAL BACKING
Generally, when people inform you that having a good time does not necessarily cost money, they are hoping to deflect attention away from their empty wallets. If you have no cash, you should start looking to your friends immediately, either for direct financial support (which is preferable) or assistance in providing required items: beer, wine, spirits, chips, a glass pipe, and petroleum. The guests you invite to your party should hopefully also aid in the valiant effort by bringing their own alcohol supplies as well as illicit drugs.
STEP TWO: DECORATING
Many people tend to assume that decorating your home in preparation for a party can be quickly and easily accomplished. If you find this step to be particularly stress-free, you are certainly doing it incorrectly. Decorating does not merely mean covering the entire carpet in wine-resistant coating and putting up colourful banners and posters on random parts of your wall. You must also remember to hide all of your valuables (pro tip: no one ever checks the front yard, especially if it's raining). Experienced party throwers always know to lock up the fridge and pantry, and obscure the plentiful supply of toilet paper so that guests are more frugal with their wiping. You will also want to hide your towels.
STEP THREE: INVITATIONS
Invitations are often a complicated business, as you can never be entirely sure who of your average seeming acquaintances deserves to be invited into your humble abode. If you get extra selective in your invitation process, and the party turns out to be a flop, you feel like a total idiot; if you invite everyone you've ever had a thirty second conversation with, there's a great chance that those people will show up while your closer acquaintances will be busy exchanging bodily fluids in the privacy of a crumbling share house. You don't want either of these things to happen.
You will end up needing to go through your list of potential invitees individually, asking yourself the same question for each person: “How upset would I be if I found this person passed out naked on my couch in a pile of vomit just before I leave for work?” If the answer is “very upset,” you will want to reconsider what value this person will add to the intended atmosphere of your wild party.
STEP FOUR: FOOD
People who stand around drinking enormous amounts of alcohol rapidly while apparently engaging in conversation often experience a phenomenon known as 'munchies,' where their drunkenness leaves them with a voracious appetite that can only be cured by easy to prepare, popular, and generally unhealthy snack foods. People get more drunk if they have had less to eat prior to the commencement of their binge, so you will definitely want to hide any foodstuffs until a couple of hours into the party, in order to better facilitate the social comfortableness of those around you. You should probably stay ahead of the pack, on the other hand, and eat as filling and nourishing a meal as you possibly can. This gives you an enormous advantage much later in the evening when the frightening reality of sunrise occurring in a matter of mere hours begins to make everyone feel great amounts of sedated pain and despair.
STEP FIVE: DRINKING GAMES YOU'LL LOVE
The way to win over the populist sentiment at your gathering once a suitable number of players have arrived, of course, is to engage in heinous drinking games which force everyone to get ridiculously intoxicated. Here are a few classics:
* Wait until there is a long queue outside your bathroom door. Get a small group of people (5-7) and stand around the queue. Everyone takes a drink when you hear a flush. Everyone takes a drink when you hear the faucet being turned, implying that someone has just washed their hands. If someone does not wash their hands, the entire group gets to jump on the person in question as they exit the bathroom. This game encourages good hygiene and has the added benefit of being right next to the bathroom, where you and your friends will be spending a lot of quality time.
* Look for a group of smokers, probably situated in your backyard, and ask them for a cigarette. Tear up the cigarette and empty the tobacco into a bottle of vodka and let sit for two hours. Strain the tobacco from the vodka, mix it with soft drink, and serve it to anyone who looks like they have stayed inside for the entirety of the party. This is not so much a drinking game as it is a fun chance to watch people get very sick (remember, you get to clean up the mess later!).
* This game is an individual one, which you get to play on your own. Take a big swig of whatever alcoholic beverage of your choosing every time someone you have never seen before in your life comes up to you and says, “Dude, great party.” You may be able to get drunk simply playing this game and not drinking at other times. (If this is achievable, you have definitely “won.”)
STEP SIX: KICKING THESE ASSHOLES OUT
It's three in the morning. The police have already told you to stop making noise and start getting people home, and you are getting a little bit sick of all this bullshit, too, if you are being entirely honest with yourself. This is where a wondrous transition occurs: in one moment, you are friends with practically everyone who has invaded your home, and in the next, you are yelling at them all to get the fuck out right now or you'll start throwing broken bottles at them.
No matter how thorough your late-night purge, there will be stragglers. People will be found in all sorts of odd places, sleeping in highly amusing positions and making objectionable noises which prevent you from going close enough to them to check if they are still breathing. Occasionally you will find a completely silent body, and you will lean up to it to not only find that it is alive but also smells worse than your bathroom, which has had an incredible stench of projectile red wine vomit for about two hours now. The best strategy for your stragglers is to wait until you rise the next day – the chances are they will feel embarrassed and either leave without saying anything or stick around and help clean up.
STEP SEVEN: THE PROPAGANDA WAR
Finally, you need to win the propaganda war. A party is only as fun and exciting as it is made to seem on Facebook, and to win this particular social game you will need a camera as well as a willingness to take literally hundreds of mostly uninteresting photos. From this collection of photos you will remove the blurry, hopelessly mundane, and personally embarrassing, and subsequently upload the rest of them to your profile page, where you must then go through each photo and tag every single person in every single photo. This ensures that your party photos show up on a large number of other people's profiles, and people simply browsing a friend's profile will take note of their friend's attendance at this seemingly wild party where he features in half a dozen totally wacky photos. Everyone loves proof of shenanigans and hijinks, and more importantly, when your brain begins to finally show noticeable memory impairment due to years of heavy chronic alcohol abuse, you will still have your photos to remind you of what a great party you were capable of hosting.
And so, to all of those in tomorrow's generations who are preparing for a long livelihood of barely making ends meet while not actually doing anything productive, I hope you have found this advice helpful. One day you, too, will be rotting away in a retirement home and lamenting on your inability to steer society's youth in the wrong direction. Godspeed and God bless!
