Throwing a party can be a really good time, but welcoming a bunch of people you won’t know that well into your home has it’s obvious drawbacks. For instance, there’s a good chance some of your stuff might go missing afterwards. Think about your sketchiest friend. Now think about the sketchy people they’ll invite to your party. Scary right? Here’s some essential items to stow away and lock up before the party starts.

Your Booze

You’re already sharing your house with everyone, and possibly even a keg. You shouldn’t be expected to share your bottle too. Don’t leave it laying around for anyone to try and steal. Of course, it does depend on whether we’re talking about Ron Diaz or Grey Goose here. You don’t want to be the lunatic who’s hell-bent on protecting Ron Diaz after all.

Here’s the prime example for watching where you leave your booze, from personal experience of course. This kid brought a bottle of Ciroc to a party (I’m assuming because he was a big P. Diddy fan, because why they hell else would anyone bring a bottle of Ciroc to a college party?) and within the hour some kid had tried to pour half of it into his water bottle. Once again, watch your booze.

Your Room

This should be obvious, but I’ve been to many parties where someone gets stuff taken from their room because they didn’t lock it. On top of that whole theft thing, there’s also the distinct possibility that a girl and guy at the party might look for a room to get more “acquainted.” You don’t want that to be your room do you? No, no you don’t.

Anything People Could Draw With

You might not think of this one, but it shouldn’t be overlooked, regardless of whether it’s a pen, marker, sharpie or pencil. Clear these out of any room people will be in. Leaving coloring materials out near drunk college kids is like leaving a loaded handgun with a monkey. My friends learned this the hard way when a party-goer decided to paint a mural on their kitchen wall free of charge. The kid was not an artist either.

All Game Systems And Accessories

I’ve heard of multiple people that threw parties and ended up a controller poorer for the trouble. For some reason, drunks feel like they need another PS3 controller before they head home sometimes. Also, a vintage game system and any games are easy targets to steal as well. Who doesn’t want a Sega Genesis when they see one? And who can resist this face……

Everything You Can’t Afford To Replace

Sadly, just about everything in your house is ripe for the taking. If you see something that you might cry over if it got taken, you should probably just lock it up. Everything else is probably good to keep out. Obviously you’re not going to bring your television outside the main room, but you never know how ambitious some of these young thieves can be. And on top of the chance of theft, there’s the ever present chance that someone could just break your stuff by way of falling, dropping, punching, vomiting, etc. Man, now that I think of it, throwing parties is a huge hassle. I’m glad people keep doing it because I sure don’t feel like risking my stuff….

The post Throwing A Party? 5 Things To Lock Up Before Things Get Rowdy appeared first on The Campus Companion Party Lab.

…There, that wasn’t as painful as I thought it was going to be. Just a precaution, in case I get killed before I can finish this post. Now let me fill you in on my current situation:

It’s dark. I’m crouched in my closet, trying to be as quiet as possible. I’m typing this at a rate of one quiet, agonizingly slow button press per minute. I’ve been here for seven and a half hours.  

I’ve got the brightness on my computer screen turned way down low. I’m scared. And a little hungry.

You see it turns out that there’s a pretty solid chance that my new roommate is actually some kind of serial killer. (He also happens to eat all my fucking cereal every time I buy a new box; not that that’s related, but seriously, what the fuck man? Get your own Crispy Hexagons.)

The cereal that says “I’m gonna fail this pop quiz because I can’t afford a goddamn Geometry tutor.”

I really have nobody to blame but myself for this. If I’d have just paid attention to him long enough to see the signs, I could’ve just moved out and avoided this entire situation. But no, I just had to spend every waking hour trying to resurrect my childhood yo-yo skills, and now I’m probably going to die. 

I was going to include some yo-yo-related joke underneath this picture, but the more I look at it the more it creeps me the fuck out, so let’s just move on.

As what is likely to be the last act in my short and insipid life, I would like to help you, my dear reader, so that you may never find yourself hiding out in a dark closet with a really bad itch on the bottom of your ass that you can’t quite reach without repositioning yourself but you’re too scared to move because you think you might make a sound and then get murdered or at least chased around for an hour and a half until you vanquish the homicidal maniac in a final showdown (complete with dramatic monologues and kitschy one-liners) or something like that.

 So, before I peer cautiously through the slits in my closet door and see nothing at first but then come face-to-face with an extreme close up of one of the killer’s eyes and then duck down just in time as a knife stabs through the door and the music gets really dramatic and shit, let me tell you about the 10 telltale signs that your roommate might be a fucking lunatic. Because knowledge is power (or is it “knowing is half the battle?” Fuck…maybe ”sharing is caring?”…um…“Don’t trust Whitey?” Yeah, we’ll go with that).

10. Zero Wall Coverage

Does your roommate prefer a sparse environment, with no posters, paintings, flags, or random junk on the walls? This could be an indicative of one of two things: either they’re a soulless psychopath who is too busy killing and/or mutilating people to have a sense of interior decorating, or they’re a fresh out of prison psychopath who didn’t have enough time to buy any sweet band posters (because they’re too busy killing and/or mutilating people).  Either way, remember that an empty wall signifies an empty soul. Beware. 

 9. Aversion to Light

There’s no such thing as vampires. There are, however, such things as paranoid schizophrenics who believe they’re vampires. They can usually be identified by their pale skin, deeply recessed eyes, and calloused thumbs from hours spent playing video games in the dark. And not even good video games. Weird games that only creepy bastards enjoy, like The Sims.

They obviously couldn’t be real vampires because you’ve seen them chugging down plates of Garlic wings like a tube-handle-nozzle-fucking-plastic-thingy on a vacuum, but that’s beside the point. Anyway, should it come to the point where you need to protect yourself, remember that stabbing them with a wooden stake would only be as effective as stabbing them with a piece of wood would normally be.

8. Unhealthy Obsession

Beware if your roomie has odd obsessions with odd things, this can be a sign that he or she is not like you and therefore probably wants to kill you. Obsessions with terrible TV shows like The Big Bang Theory or Glee are a surefire indicator that your roommate is either freaking insane, or a teenage girl. In either case you should run for your life.  

7. Fast Food Diet

Watch out if your roommate only seems to eat Big Macs and ranch dressing, this can be a classic sign of detached sociopathy. After all, most people are well aware of the terrible business practices of fast food mega-conglomerates: the way they exploit indigenous peoples for cheap labor, destroy vast tracts of pristine forest for factory farms, etc. Your roommate probably eats fast food because he or she is completely devoid of morals, and derives some sort of sick satisfaction from the horrible way that factory farmed animals are treated. What other reason could there be?

6. Inordinate Amounts of Personal Hygiene

This one can go either way. Maybe they haven’t bathed since Pluto was a planet, or maybe they’re excessively clean germaphobes who’re constantly scrubbing away invisible spiders. Either way, we can all agree: they’re “nucking  futs.” (Thanks to the writers of the one-and-a-half star piece of crap Dickie Roberts for that gem.)

Avoid people who don’t have normal cleaning habits. Actually, first decide what constitutes “normal cleaning habits” in your mind, and then avoid people who fail to meet that standard. That way, if you happen to be a psychopath who defines normal cleaning habits as “shaving all my body hair so the reptilians can’t implant a microchip in it,” you’ll probably just end up avoiding all of us normal people, making our (awesome) lives that much easier.

5. Dodgy Past 

When you ask your roommate about their family or their hometown, do they go quiet or quickly change the subject? Do they talk about people in the past tense, as if they aren’t still alive? (i.e. “My mother used to drink water and breathe air…”) Do they constantly make allusions to events that imply violence, but then elaborate no further? (i.e. “She was breathing all my air, so I had to take care of her.”) If so, then congratulations! You’re going to die next. 

4. Maniacal Laughter at Odd Times

Sometimes we can’t help laughing at the little things, but this goes beyond just that. For example, does your roommate ever fall into fits of maniacal laughter at odd or seemingly random times? Do they laugh uncontrollably when confronted with the sight of: A. A dead squirrel on the side of the road, B. A jar of mayonnaise, C. A forest fire, or D. An unfunny chick flick about bridesmaids that everyone said was so “raunchy” and “groundbreaking” when in reality it was just a whiny melodrama about friendship thinly veiled behind repetitive vagina jokes and the C-word? If you answered yes to any of these, then your roommate is probably some kind of axe-murdering lunatic building a macabre statue of you out of human body parts. This is absolutely true 100% of the time.

Best recommendation would be to get the hell out of there before he or she needs your head to complete it.

3. “Off” Smells

Has your apartment or dorm room smelled “off” lately? Pay close attention to this. That rotting smell coming from the mini-fridge might be a two-month old slice of pizza, but it might also be a human pancreas. Similarly, did you know that burnt popcorn and burnt brain matter smell almost exactly the same? Always exercise caution when investigating strange smells such as these, lest you end up as one yourself. 

2. Stockpiles of Weapons

Have you found any stockpiles of knives, guns, or other weapons in your home or dorm room lately? Perhaps a bloody pair of brass knuckles with little bits of what looks suspiciously like teeth attached to them? Don’t panic, yet. There could be a perfectly normal explanation. Perhaps your roommate is an old-timey fur trapper and needs to keep a fresh supply of sharp knives so he or she can make coonskin caps. Or maybe they simply enjoy hunting deer at 3 AM with an AK-47. Nothing sketchy about that.

What I’m trying to say is keep an eye out, but don’t automatically jump to conclusions if you start finding stockpiles of bloody weapons hidden throughout the house. 

1. Blood Stains That Seem to Show Up Out Of Nowhere

Now when I discovered the first pair of bloody handprints on the walls of my roommate’s bedroom, I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. He said he had been finger-painting, and explained away the knives impaled into the wall as some sort of new-age sculpture. He was very convincing, especially when he told me that he’d slit my throat if I told anyone. I believed him, even though something tasted very off about the meatloaf he made later that night.

But like the saying goes: “Fool me once about your secret identity as a mass-murdering lunatic, shame on you; fool me twice about your secret identity as a mass-murdering lunatic, shame on me.”

The very next day, I came home to find him dragging a particularly heavy trash bag  that seemed to be oozing some sort of reddish mush down the front steps. This time I was especially suspicious, to the point where I even refused to give him a ride to the closest state forest to help him dispose of it. But alas, he just rebutted with the same old “do it or I’ll slit your throat” standby, and I stupidly gave in.

So please, pay attention to these signs before it’s too late. If you have even the slightest inkling of suspicion that your roommate might be a mass-murdering necrophiliac psycho, please tell someone. I didn’t, and look where it got me…

Being trapped in the closet isn’t nearly as glamorous as he made it out to be, but then again, neither is peeing on children.

Images courtesy of punkoryan.com, moremashup.com, and Wikipedia.org. 

The post 10 Signs Your Roommate is Fucking Crazy appeared first on The Campus Companion Party Lab.

BAC Calc In The Field

BAC Calc was actually recommended to me by my mom. Mom’s aren’t normally the most technically savvy of people, but I did take her up on this one and decided to check out the app. Drinking and driving is not cool, and a good rule of thumb is to never drive if you’ve drank, but an app that gives you a ball park figure of where you’re at can be helpful.

This app is pretty straightforward and easy to use. First, you’ll be asked to choose:

• Imperial and metric measurement options.
• Male and female options.
• Low, medium and high Drinking tolerance options. 

In the US, we use imperial measurements for drinks, so that ones easy. Drinking tolerance is a little ambiguous to me, and an explanation would be helpful. I just set it on medium. 

From here you’ll get to the above screen, with sliders for weight, hours, beer, wine and liquor. The options are nice, and the BAC it spits out seems to be pretty accurate for a free device. Obviously the app can’t tailor itself exactly for you, but giving guidelines for people your size works for most people.

One thing that did concern me a little is that when I set up the app with my specifications (medium tolerance, 170 pounds), and then set it to four beers in an hour, it said my BAC should be .08 percent. That’s the legal limit, and something tells me no one should drive after drinking four beers in one hour. If you kept at that pace over another hour, your BAC would be .151 percent, way over the limit. Maybe the app is a little too generous for first hour estimates or something.

Other than that, the app seems pretty handy, although I wouldn’t advise anyone to risk a DUI (and their lives) getting behind the wheel because a phone app said they should be fine.

Verdict? Decent, But It Won’t Save Your Life

The BAC Calc app taught me a valuable lesson: If you’re in doubt about drunk driving enough to consult a BAC app, you shouldn’t drive. This app is still pretty fun to play around with for when you don’t have to worry about driving.  Also, seeing how many beers a high tolerance 350 pound male could have in one hour before he’s trashed is pretty interesting.  The answer? 20 beers, according to the app.

The post Test-Driving The BAC Calculator App appeared first on The Campus Companion Party Lab.

The ad for Allianz Insurance is designed to warn bar-goers about the risks of drunk driving. The mirror is set to display a two-second delay, which is supposed to represent your reaction time when drunk.

The first thing I thought was that if the mirror delays itself to simulate inebriation, then by the time drunk people notice what’s happening, the mirror would project real time for them.

All sarcasm aside, anything that reminds you to not drive drunk is a good thing. I know too many people whose lives were ruined because of one drunken mistake. Today, most young adults are one tragedy away from being homeless or worse, myself included. 

One thing this ad does well is that it capitalizes on the social playground that is the local bar.  It gets people to call over their friends and say, “Hey, look at this crazy mirror.” Now the mirror has reached a small group of people. As far as engaging people, the ad has done its job.

 In my experience though, if someone’s drunk enough to think they can drive a car drunk then they aren’t going to be persuaded by a mirror. I can’t vouch for generations before me, but most people I’ve ever met are confident in their drunk-driving ability.

Sure, it’s a commendable ad campaign to raise awareness for drunk driving, which is good. I just don’t think it’s going to put a dent in the numbers. 

If you’re too drunk to be driving then by the time you’re leaving, I’m sure you’ve forgotten about the mirror. Unless the Drunk Mirror is your rear-view mirror, I don’t think you’re reaching anyone. Even if it is your rear-view mirror, I’m not sure. Keep trying though. That’s the beauty of the marketplace of ideas.

What this ad strategy fails to realize is the brevity of attention spans of the target demographic. But I can’t remember what that demographic is…or the ad strategy for that matter.

From the ad agency that brought you the Drunken Valet and outrageously priced bar tabs, Ogilvy Brazil brings you Drunk Mirror.

The post The Drunk Mirror: A Creative Ad To Deter Drunk Driving appeared first on The Campus Companion Party Lab.

After a long summer living at my parent’s house, it’s finally time to get back into the college swing.

For a lot of you, your college careers are just beginning.  Luckily, I had a group of upper classmen to show me the ropes and teach me social etiquette when I was a freshman.  They bestowed priceless knowledge onto me about the do’s and don’ts of going to house parties.

With the Fall semester getting underway, as it probably is my duty now, here are five mistakes freshmen make at parties:

Being too loud:

“IT’S COLLEGE AND I WANT TO RAGE.” I know, I’ve been there. More often than not though, the loudest person in the room is the most likely to get kicked out. Noise violation tickets run around $200 these days and whoever lives there is going to get it and make you the pariah of house parties.

Getting too drunk:

This may seem obvious, but the myriad reasons may not be. By getting incredibly hammered you are now susceptible to things like being drawn on, throwing up in a strangers bathroom or worse. College house parties can be filled with less-than-honorable people and you’re not in your sheltered high school bubble anymore. Keep it together.

Smoking weed for the first time while you’re wasted:

This could fall under number two, but it needs its own section. I can’t emphasize how big of a mistake this is. I’m not a math major by any means, but I do know that inebriation + smoking weed = 99 percent chance of projectile vomiting. It’ll ruin weed forever for you, or at least until next semester.

Going to a party and bringing 10 other guys with you:

This doesn’t apply to women so much, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a fleet of freshmen guys walk into a party and a group of girls walk out simultaneously. Odds are also in favor of one of those guys wearing a tank top and wanting to smash someone’s face before the night is over. No one likes when any of this happens.

Walking out of a party with alcohol:

After you’ve finished a night of partying relatively unscathed, freshmen are sometimes too drunk to realize that they’re still holding that red cup full of whatever. If you cross path with foot patrol, you’ve now won an MIP ticket of around $150 and a trip to community service. It’s a rookie mistake.

There’s only so much advice I can try to give without saying that, with experience, comes knowledge. 

Hopefully, these five warnings will allow you to attend house parties long enough to learn on your own.

The post The 5 Party Fouls That EVERY College Freshman Makes. appeared first on The Campus Companion Party Lab.

If I may be so bold as to say this… college students think that commercial is stupid. This is probably because that’s never how it goes down. The video below is usually how it goes when you try to be a good friend and keep your buddies from driving. 

The post Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk – The REAL Edition appeared first on The Campus Companion Party Lab.

We all saw what happened with the rise and fall of Four Loko, and although it was mourned heavily, perhaps the government had an adequate reason for pulling it from shelves?  Let’s take a look at what happens when you try and cheat the laws of booze and avoid that sleepy daze that comes when you’ve been going HAM for too long.

Alcohol and Energy Drinks (RedBull, Four Loko, Sparx etc.)

 Every heard of Chris Farley?  Yeah, mother freakin’ Beverly Hills Ninja himself.  Chris Farley died from a drug “overdose” caused by a practice known as “speed-balling.”  It sounds like a fun game you might play at a carnival, but on the contrary it is dangerous practice of mixing two distinct classes of drug, stimulants and depressants.  When you drink alcohol mixed with energy drinks YOU are essentially speed-balling because caffeine is a stimulant, and alcohol is very much a depressant.

Your first point of argument to defend your favorite sugary-nightmare of a beverage might be to suggest that Chris Farley was on some serious opiates and cocaine, which are extreme versions of both depressants and stimulants, but you would be wrong to think that caffeine and alcohol are any less dangerous when mixed together.  The effect of caffeine when drinking is to make the user feel less intoxicated by the depressants.  Ordinarily your body would start to get sleepy and possibly even non-responsive (if you are WAY drunk) when you attempt to walk or move appropriately.  BUT, caffeine counters these effects allowing you to feel more alert and “sober,” which with your standard college binge -rinker means “time to drink more.”

To drink more would be a serious, serious mistake.  At a certain point, alcohol stops just making a person intoxicated and doing liver damage and starts to do SERIOUS cellular damage to all parts of the body.  Your blood stops being efficient at oxygenating muscles and tissues, and the alcohol itself contributes to killing cells (especially brain-cells).  At this point you can risk brain-damage, and even death.  For this reason you might want to avoid the Caffeine.

Alcohol and 5 Hour Energy

 Ever heard the phrase less is more?  What about too much of a good thing can be a bad thing?  Well aside from the fact that generally both of those idioms are sweepingly true about alcohol on its own, it DEFINITELY applies when it comes to alcohol AND 5 Hour Energy.  Personally, I had never heard of people actually mixing these two until recently when I heard of some frat brothers cooking up a vat of punch with multiple cases of the stuff.  So, what goes down when you mix 5 Hour with Whiskey Sour?

So, we already know about the caffeine now, but there is a lot of debate about the effects of B-vitamins on the liver, and research has not really conclusively proven anything, but a good general rule of thumb is that when it comes to vitamins, take a minimum.  The FDA suggested daily dose is usually quite arbitrary, and the simple fact is, your body does not need, and will not use most of the vitamins you take, and this means that one of two things will happen.  Excess vitamins will either be excreted through your urine (the case with most water-soluble vitamins), or they will be stored in your liver (the case with many fat-soluble vitamins).  Fortunately, most B- vitamins (the ones present in 5 Hour Energy) are water soluble.  

But still, your liver and kidneys are responsible for working hard to filter and remove these agents from the blood-stream, and this is where the complications occur.  Your liver works hard to metabolize the alcohol; it has what’s called an “alcohol preference” which means that when alcohol is present the liver tends to focus on metabolizing that stuff first to prevent cellular damage and because there is no place for alcohol to be stored in the body like proteins, fats, or carbohydrates.  This means that most of the vitamins taken from drinking the 5 Hour Energy are going to stay in your body for much longer than they need to and continue to pile-up.  For THIS reason, 5 Hour Energy is probably a terrible idea, because studies HAVE shown that in aggressively large doses B-vitamins CAN be detrimental to organ health.

Alcohol and Adderall!?!?

 Just don’t do it.  Caffeine is bad enough, but adding what is essentially a stable version of Meth to your debauchery can only lead down a bad road.  You might have taken Adderall and gone out drinking before to no negative conclusion, but I am willing o bet that you fucked up your body WAY more than you might have realized, and if not maybe you have great self-control and are the exception not the rule.  But when stupid sorority girls are ending up hospitalized from Four Loko, it is probably a good idea for them never to even go near Adderall.

Check out CBS news on what 5 Hour Energy Really does for you!

The post Mixing Alcohol and Energy Drinks appeared first on The Campus Companion Party Lab.

It is no surprise that students love to smoke in the dorms, and such is the necessity for the popcorn trick . No matter how strict the policy is, or how many close calls one has had; people are going to light up in their rooms. Most RA’s are aware of this, and while some may play dumb, others will not be so lenient. I’ve known a few to go out of their way to catch students smoking.

For this reason, safety first should be your motto.  There is nothing worse than a loud knock on the door in the middle of your session. But, sometimes, luck is not on our side.  Maybe you came back fucked up at 4 am and decided it would be a good idea to smoke without opening the windows (you would not be the first) or a cruel gust of wind has blown the smoke back into your room. Lets not beat around the bush here, folks – The alarm is blaring and you can hear the fire engines in the distance – You are FUCKED!

Or are you? This is the perfect time to implement “The Popcorn Trick”. Simply overcook your popcorn until there is a smoking, burnt, buttery bomb festering in your microwave. Because what it comes down to is this – People are going to think you are an idiot no matter what you do. Your fate is in your own hands. So, are you the idiot who:

GOT CAUGHT SMOKING IN THE DORMS

OR

THE GUY WHO DOESN”T KNOW HOW TO COOK POPCORN (snicker, snicker, snicker)

It is truly as simple as it sounds. Yes, even if you are high and freaking out, you should be able to do it. If you lack confidence – I don’t know – practice it at your friend’s apartment or something. Run to your cabinet, grab some Orville Redenbacher and toss that baby in the microwave for 10 or 15 minutes – Enough time to really burn it to a crisp. Run out the door with the rest of the dorm residents and remember to add, “Buy a Vaporizer” to your to-do list.

NOTE:

For those that don’t routinely have popcorn in their room the “popcorn trick” also works well with….

Dirty Shoes

Say you were trying to dry them off because they were wet. People will definitely question how you made it to college, but they won’t even think about whether your excuse is fake. It’s too stupid to be fake. 

Eggs

Say you were just trying to cook a snack, and lost track of time. Don’t do this one unless you really want your roommates to hate you. It smells like death for about a week.  

Comment below to include anything you’ve burnt in the microwave that you think could serve as a guise for smoking in the dorms. 

The post The Popcorn Trick – Avoid Getting Caught Smoking in the Dorms appeared first on The Campus Companion Party Lab.