‘The Orchid Thief’ Writer Susan Orlean Went On A Drunken Tweetstorm And People Loved It

Things are, shall we say, a bit intense these days, with the country over four months into quarantine and cases spiking across the country and no end in sight, thanks in part to wearing masks somehow being a controversial act. People have been desperately searching for ways to cope, be it reading great writers, who try to make sense of what we’re going through, or, well, simply turning to drink. On Friday we got both when Susan Orlean, journalist and bestselling author of The Orchid Thief, went on an epic and hilarious drunken tweetstorm.

As caught by Entertainment Weekly, Orlean’s Twitter bender started out sober, with her worrying about Supreme Court Chief Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who revealed she was suffering from cancer.

Four hours later, things changed. Orlean tweeted a single word: “Drunk.” It was then that the misspelling began: “Thank you for your support duri t this difficult time all misspellings are mine totally.”

She continued to tweet, revealing she had had some wine with neighbors and stumbled home.

She also met a newborn colt, who “thought my hand was his mom,” and thus, in her words, “has tasted life’s infinite tragedy.”

She said she was going to bed.

But she evidently did not.

Susan Orlean does not do this often, which may be why she was drunk tweeting.

She wanted some candy.

And she couldn’t find her cat.

Orlean, renowned for her verbal faculties, lost her way with words, but did become slightly self-aware.

But she could still perfectly articulate our shared frustration and outrage over it all.

Her family were possibly not as amused by Twitter, who shared and re-tweeted Orlean’s drunken tweetstorm like mad.

She tried to do some chores.

But she failed.

She was finally able to find some candy. Sort of.

She also remembered she’d made yogurt earlier in the day.

She again threatened to go to sleep.

But not before she assured everyone this was the real Susan Orlean and not, say, a Bitcoin scam hack.

Then she found her cat.

Orlean finally made good on her promise to hit the hay, and wisely grabbed a bottle of Tylenol before doing so, bringing our epic journey to an end.

On top of being an acclaimed writer, Orlean was embodied onscreen by Meryl Streep in the 2002 film Adaptation, in which screenwriter Charlie Kaufman attempted to turn her non-fiction book about flowers into a movie and instead made a movie about a fictionalized version of Kaufman, played by Nicolas Cage (who also played his doofus twin brother, who doesn’t exist), trying and failing to adapt it. One of its better scenes find Streep’s Orlean high as f*ck.

But this was actually funnier.