Drunk? Call [phone]

February 10, 2005 12:28 PM

Safe Drunken Dialing: Its a fairly new and growing issue and we here at slackertown are tackling it head on with booze in hand. We've taken the liberty of setting up a number [phone] for whenever the drunken dialing urge takes a hold of you. Whatever message you leave will be added to the slackertown web site so when you sober up you can check back see just how drunk you were.
posted by page404 (17 comments total)

The Charlie Brown Beatbox Escapade reminds me a bit too sharply of an ex who had a 5-minute rap about Tapatio Hot Sauce that had to be shared whenever he was high....
posted by mrs.pants at 12:50 PM on February 10, 2005

The solution to drunken dialing in my old house was to take apart the phone and put it back together with all the key labels scrambled.

Even though the keys still worked the same, the upsidedown and scattered numbers were enough to confuse people to the point where if you couldn't figure out how to dial, you were too drunk to be phoning anyone.
posted by anthill at 12:58 PM on February 10, 2005

Ah yes. Will the man who called me up asking for Melinda at three a.m. one night please call this number instead the next time he's drunk and has a quarter handy.
posted by orange swan at 12:58 PM on February 10, 2005

I don't get how this is safe drunken dialing? What's to stop me from building up steam by doing my rough draft on slackertown and then go a'dialin' for ex-booty?
posted by fenriq at 1:00 PM on February 10, 2005

Thanks so much! I'll give this number to the ex. Excellent.
posted by Turtles all the way down at 1:06 PM on February 10, 2005

Umm... yeah. See the thing about drunk dialing is, you're trying to talk to a certain PERSON, because you're convinced at the time it's a good idea. If you're sober enough to decide to call this instead, you're sober enough to not call at all.
posted by chundo at 1:24 PM on February 10, 2005

Yeah, I think most of these people are faking it to some extent.
posted by sid at 2:01 PM on February 10, 2005

But this doesn't stop drunk apartment intercom dialing.

Call me a fuckin' cab!! I don't wanna party no more!!
posted by Razzle Bathbone at 2:35 PM on February 10, 2005

Forget it, Jake....it's Slackertown
posted by Smedleyman at 3:56 PM on February 10, 2005

Drink-and-dial: Solved.

Now, when will they solve the problem of drink-and-type (drunken emailing)?
posted by mudpuppie at 4:45 PM on February 10, 2005

I misread the premise of this post, to my disappointment. I thought it was about a service to call when you were drunk that would set you up with a volunteer designated driver who would come pick you up and take you safely home (free of charge, unlike a cab).

Not a bad idea, except for the liability.
posted by Eideteker at 7:15 PM on February 10, 2005

So where did this term come from, anyway? And for how long has it been around? I had never heard it until about two weeks ago, and since then it has been used by MeFi, two friends, and (gulp) my boss . . . loudly . . . to the whole office . . .

"So, like, my Mom called me the other night, and started going on about [utter inanity] . . . and I realized she was totally drunk dialing!" Pause. "I probably shouldn't be talking about this."
posted by Uccellina at 12:55 AM on February 11, 2005

Reminds me of the Mixmag Mongo Hotline

At Mixmag we know all too well the confusion a big weekend can bring. That's why we invented the Mongo Hotline, so the fragile and the foolish can leave us odd ramblings on our answer machine. You talk bollocks, we print it every issue on our back page of Mixmag.
posted by nails at 4:48 AM on February 11, 2005

I misread the premise of this post, to my disappointment. I thought it was about a service to call when you were drunk that would set you up with a volunteer designated driver who would come pick you up and take you safely home (free of charge, unlike a cab).

We had that service in college. $0.50 a ride, or free if you didn't even have 50 cents to your name. It used to really piss them off when we tricked them into taking us to a party instead.
posted by fshgrl at 4:58 AM on February 11, 2005

They have a service like that in Washington DC, as well. From what I understand, it's only during certain holidays, though.
posted by Jart at 7:55 AM on February 11, 2005

What I have to be careful about...is drunked IMing :-D
posted by gleenyc at 7:38 AM on February 13, 2005

If you're sober enough to decide to call this instead, you're sober enough to not call at all.

You could argue that by creating a special number for this, it accentuates the fact, and could therefore cast a stronger light over your action when you're about to dial. That is, in the past you might have just drunkenly started calling someone, but having been exposed to this (having a friend give you this number, eg), the next time you find yourself starting to drunkenly call someone it might occur to you that it's not such a good idea. Then you could call this number just to rant or for fun...

I misread the premise of this post, to my disappointment.

the designated driver premise is pretty old news, isn't it? It'd be a pretty lame post to note the existence of some volunteer cab service for college kids. This is actually fairly original.
posted by mdn at 7:48 AM on February 13, 2005