Noishenvantengutencastlestein v. Hitler's Casino

We snuck out of Gyna's apartment early Monday morning with gambling on the brain.  The original plan was to make the arduous trip over to the famed Schloss Neuschwanstein so we could oggle the castle sham that triggered Disneyland.  Because we love Disneyland.  Disneyland is amazing.  Got that, H8RZ?

Neuschwanstein was literally staged by a goddamn set designer and a mad king, basically guaranteeing a sort of crudely charming, slapdash fantasy riot, which pretty much describes like, my entire goddamn existence. How could I not belong there?  But dze Germans gave Neuschwanstein a lackluster thumbs sideways, pushing us towards much more suitable and historically relevant castles in areas where there are more things to do, because if Germans are anything, they're practical.  But MoLinder, Katsisch and I had already seen those kinds of castles.  We wanted the daydream, not the reality. 

Alas, we sought guidance from the oracles at Google, who imparted this knowledge: scaffolding.  The treachery!  The damn, dashing nerve of it all!  Bunch of ruinous frogfuckers, that's what they are, going around ruining things, like Gilbert Grape's mom eating bolognese without a bib, just splattering sauce all over her pressed white shirt and beefy flapjack tits.  Fucking scaffolding? On my castle?

"We could go to Salzburg," MoLinder suggested.

"I find it insane that a feasible option for tomorrow is a quick jaunt to Salzburg," Katsisch declared, which was bonkers because I thought she was completely zonked out in her very heavy-looking history book that had a title with a colon in it and a long, over explanatory subtitle, like History of Things: How The Fourth Great Awakening Launched a Resurgence of Religious Cultural Icons That Are Still Moderately Relevant Today In Certain Backwoods Areas of the Missouri Ozarks and One Small Corner of Arkansas, and Also Representations of Feminism, Oil, and the KKK.

"But I wanna see the pretty pretty castle," I whined.

"But you won't be able to see it.  Scaffolding.  And it sounds so hard to get to.  It's a lot of travel time."

"Well yeah, but I wanna goooooo."

"And I've never been Austria."

Katsisch piped in.  "Me neither!"

"And it's supposed to be awesome."

"Okay," I start doing business.  "If you can convince me that Salzburg is more awesome than Neuschwanstein, I will gladly go without complaint." 

"Done."  MoLinder sniffed closely at the guidebook in her hand. "Mozart was from Salzburg."

"Duh."

"They have a castle fortress there.  On a hill.  Oh!  And it's white."

"Mur."

"Sound of Music tour..."

"Meh." 

"Excellent shopping, no...BEER, right?  Scenery, mountains....oh, oh OH!  They have a casino."

Katsisch  perked from her book.  "Casino?"


"Oh yes."

"I do always enjoy a good casino," I said.

MoLinder holds up her guidebook and reads triumphantly.  "Schloss Klessheim is a baroque palace four kilometers west of--"

"A palace!" Kat squealed and clutched her book to her chest. 

"-- the city. A former summer residence of the Archbishops of Salzburg, and used by Adolf Hitler--"

"HITLER!"  She crumpled with giggles.

"--to host special guests and conferences, it is now a year-round Casino." 

"CRAPS! WE ARE GOING.  Screw Noishenvantengutencastlestein!  We have to do this.  Rass?  WE HAVE GOT TO DO THIS!"  She clamped onto her book, wrapping herself around it with delight.  "Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!"

We have this thing, you see.  It's a Rossi sister trait to roll up into a ball when (a) we are holding a book and (b) we find something incredibly exciting.  Like most of you, I'm sure, my sisters and I were big heavy readers as kids.  And it wasn't uncommon to have the three of us sitting together on the couch just reading and being still when our parents would announce something that would thrill us to the fucking core -- "We're getting a puppy!" -- "Let's go to the park!" -- "Who wants Burger King?" -- and we would fucking lose it and flail about, beating each other with our books in a frenzy and yelling words that aren't real.

So my parents realized they raised three girls with mild control issues.  They trained us to fold around our books when exciting shit was going down just to keep us from clunking each other on the head. We still do this, but only when we are physically holding a book.

"Fucking.  Yeah.  Okay.  Let's do Salzburg.  But ONLY if we can go to Hitler's Casino.  Because that sounds legit." 

"HOORAY!" MoLinder shouted, and Katsisch rolled around Gyna's couch like the top of a bobblehead, squealing profusely and holding onto that book for dear life and jabbering on about updating her Facebook status.


But I think MoLinder put it best:


MoLinder
April 1 near Giesing, Bayern via mobile

Disney inspired castle trip tomorrow has been scrapped due to logistics and scaffolding. Looks like Salzburg instead! (the sisters Rossi are excited to gamble in a casino in one of Hitler's former residences)

So like I said, we snuck out of Gyna's apartment early Monday morning with gambling on the brain, and started to make our way to Salzburg.

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Predictable.

Munich feels like walking through a hugely-proportioned, freshly-scrubbed Bavarian village on mute. Polished professionals with calculated relaxation. There are no loafers dallying about a city like Munich, and there's little room for pissing around, which is ridiculous because Falcor lives like, right there. 

Falcor and I are now best friends and it's about fucking time.  You can ride him, and they play The Neverending Story (Die Unendliche Geschichte!) song and film you on a blue screen so you look all Atreyu-y.  It's basically the most amazing thing you could ever do ever, and our first day was a jet-lagged daze crammed into a list that happens after a colon: plane lands in Munich.  Hug goddamn everyone who I love and haven't seen in forever.  Go to Bavarian Filmstadt.  FALCOR.  Beers and beers and beers.  Save the world using naught but the power of my fucking imagination and a single grain of sand. 

There were beers, and they were done very efficiently. We drank gallons in an exceedingly organized manner and never all at once, which is a nice way to have a day of dreamy chuckles without ever approaching lazy or belligerent.

On Sunday we rode a ski lift to the top of Blomberg.  They have a slide going down the mountain for the last 3/4 of a mile, but it was frozen and that was horseshit.  Either way, it was all very darling and cozy and smart, and there were signs with blue and white striped poles and a tidy Bavarian inn that served actual coffee and cold beers.

* There's no coffee in Munich, which is like saying "winter is coming" or "there's always money in the banana stand" because it doesn't really fucking mean anything until some German bitchslaps you in the face with what it really fucking means.  All coffee is espresso because it saves time, and they don't like it when you call it express-o because that shit is wrong.  The Germans don't understand that when you want a big coffee you want a pint dangerously spilling with dark, scalding, thick dirty water, not a giant cup filled halfway with slightly darkened water, which is the amount of coffee they think you need because you're a nancy-ass that can't handle her coffee.  But coffee leads to bathroom breaks and hypersensitivity, two things they don't have room for in Munich. Still, I like dallying over cup after cup, because half the fun of coffee is wasting my time and getting caught up in enjoying it and then paying for it later. Repercussions are half the fun of consumption. Silly Germans.

So the back at the top of the mountain, tables were full of serious hikers and people wearing assertive endurance garb that states, without guile: "if you're going to be outdoorsy, fucking do it right." There was this permeating sense of al fresco throughout it all.  Kind of like, "no, we are not eating outside, we are dining al fresco." Hiking and drinking and doing all of these things that are awesome, but with a twist of validity.

As a person who loves wandering astray--and I mean that damn literally, I love getting lost and I love the stress and immediacy of finding my way back--but lives in a land that is actually a grid, where you can plot things and where the major hills are streets that rise over highways, and also as a person who is fucking wicked out of shape, there was a ten minute uphill trek that nearly goddamn killed me.  Dude, that?  Is the worst.  It's like, I'm out of shape enough that it could be mockable, but I'm so fucking determined to not look out of shape that it becomes sad, and as a result I don't want to try anything because I'm afraid people will feel sorry for me and fuck you for feeling sorry for me, and then I'm angry before anyone can try doing anything.

Man, remember back when I was solid peasant stock?  I could throw hay bales and build fences.  I did throw hale bales and build fences.  Proudly.  Ain't no way I could do that shit now.  Staying fit is so much easier when the shape of your life demands it, but now I have to make the decision to do it because there's this desk in front of me, automatically, for ten goddamn hours a day. 

We rode the ski lift back down to real life, and Gyna and I rode together all awkwardly and I feel terrible because throughout the entire trip down all I could think about was that. Up there, two paragraphs up about my abrasive inferiority.  I keep on trying to fix it and it keeps on punching me in the face, and the more menial I feel the more aggressive I become which is soooo fucking predictable because I'm trying to justify my self-worth, I'm trying to take the things I'm good at and turn them into something positive, but again, predictably, I never quite get there and in the end I'm still sad, angry Rassles who uses her blog as failed self-therapy.

Hot damn, I hate being predictable. 

When I decided to give up hating on things for Lent it worked, but then it was over and I didn't try to stick with it because I am weak. 

Look at this: I started out talking about my vacation that I loved.  I was going to talk about how amazing it was to see Gyna, about how crazy it is that she is a legit grown up and how well it suits her, about how proud I am of her for moving abroad and creating a life and taking chances and making friends, about how I'm sad that she really is a grown up now and she's moving up on and onward and I'm really just kind of laterally spreading. 

I was going to talk about how glad I was to see MoLinder again, about how well we travel together and how we're both just up for making shit up as we go along and if we want to go to Salzburg, we're going to go to Salzburg, and if we want to go to Sweden we're going to go to Sweden.  We do things the same way like that - head to a place with a hundred ideas and live through the first story we stumble across.   The only time things get stressful is when there's a schedule, but as long as we don't have any time constraints or any real things we feel like we must do, everything is always awesome. Being around MoLinder is also good for me, well, because her bitterness makes me look like a peach. 

I was going to talk about how much fun I had traveling with my sister, which I was kind of worried about.  But she proved herself to be up for anything, throwing in ideas as we walked the streets and not really giving a shit if her ideas weren't chosen.  She never freaked out when we weren't really sure if we were getting on the right train or the right bus and she totally just went with it, which is a big sacrifice for her because she is a SCHEDULER.  I almost said "big step for her" but it's not really a step, because that would insinuate one thing is better than another, and I really don't believe that.  I just believe that one way is more comfortable for me.

I used to think that when you traveled, if you didn't really get to "know" a city your trip wasn't as good as another. Too many Robert Frost poems and Kerouac, I was caught up in the romantic adventure of freedom and I was completely missing the point:  the point is not to do what no one else has done, the point is to do whatever the fuck you want and not give a shit what everyone else does.  Because you can.

Okay, once again: Lent starts after this post.

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I Think You Know What Time It Is

This morning I was browsing through lists on Cracked when I landed on this one, and like fucking clockwork "Lux Aeterna" sneaks onto my Pandora and ten seconds later I read on FB that MCA is dead, and a little bit of my heart fell off.

Aside from being a sexy, sexy man, MCA was easily the stoickest, assholest, most sensitive Beastie Boy, a role I think he shrugged into by default because he had the manliest voice of the three.  And really, calling someone the "stoickest Beastie Boy" really doesn't mean stoic at all. Ad-Rock is an adorable little jackal-man who steals pies off of windowsills, Mike D has Mojave-dry sarcasm and a dark horse sharpness, but MCA is--was--an upright bass wearing fluffy slippers, aviators, and haughty reluctance. 

He doesn't--didn't--want to be that guy because of all the Buddhism, but he is totally that guy. He's the guy who gets impatient when people don't understand that "the difference between an emcee and a rapper is like the difference between a barista and some jackass making coffee" or blah blah MCA interview I saw on youtube once. Because lesser rappers reuse Beastie Boys lyrics like Hollywood does screams (re: I'll steal your honey like I stole your bike), so it's no wonder he gets all gassy and hornblowy about it. 

And then some fuckhead was all, "it's time to get ill, here's cancer" and he was like, "FREE TIBET" in that voice--like smoke over cool mountaintops--once, I think I called it a rich, virile purl--and then he saved a puppy from drowning and dropped mad beats. I'll bet he was a mean drunk and he didn't want to be, I'll bet he was tender and sincere behind closed doors, I'll bet he secretly wished he was a cowboy--or a samurai--I'll bet he was an encyclopedia of movie knowledge, I'll bet he knew a lot about astronomy but never told anyone, I'll bet his power animal was an antelope and I'll bet he was fucking stellar at Yahtzee and I'll bet he was a regular cut-up, but he's cooler about it than the other boys.


Oh, this makes me so sad. My thoughts are all up in a fuckjumble. 

...

EDIT: omg, this makes no sense, and I didn't even talk about how hilarious he is. As if I know him.  This celebrity death is really affecting me.

Your Face Is Trendy

So I caved and bought a pair of hip plastic glasses several weeks ago, which I've been putting off purchasing for years because in 1994 I swore I would never wear plastic glasses again after getting teased about them all the time because only uber dorks wore plastic glasses, and then when all the cool kids started wearing them like ten years ago or whatever I was like "omg fuuuuuuuuuuck."

Let's face it: I used to be the type of person that wanted to blend in unnoticed, but it never really worked very well because I get all up in other people's business.

Whenever I like something fashionable everyone feels the need to point things out, like, "oh, aren't you trendy" and I'll blush angrily and snap, "YOUR FACE IS TRENDY" and then everyone will be all, "um, thank you?"

And then I reorient myself: comments about my appearance are not necessarily nefarious.  Stop being a fashion philistine and apologize.  Smile, slide your plastic frames down your nose and say, "Sorry.  But yeah, I know, right? I am trend-machine.  Next I'm getting a lightweight scarf that compliments my entire wardrobe without being too matchy." And we all have a good chuckle and high five and fucks given = ZERO.

Glibness alleviates my ironic detachment from a mere hipster aesthetic to the legit insecurity of a girl who has spent most of her life being mocked or marginalized and even, to this day, only knows how to prevent either of them by wearing her insecurity like an aggressive Derby bonnet.

This, of course, draws people to her.  Why is that?  There is enlightenment somewhere in there, I just don't know which direction to go.

...

Advice, I think, is the root of all evil.

I am one of those people who is always late. Always. Without exception.

Rarely do I blame anyone other than myself for this. I know I am late. I know it’s bad. For the sake of perspective, chronic lateness is a bigger problem than chronic, say, ugliness.

Being ugly doesn't hurt, it doesn't ruin lunches or get you fired (technically). People do not assume ugliness is a sign of disrespect. Ugly surgeons still save lives. They still meet deadlines, they are Eagle-Scout prepared for shit, they don't get charged ugly fees on their cell phone bills.

As first-world Americans we don't really like ugly people, so we have all these ways to repair physical appearance. And when an ugly person refuses to see their looks as a burden, we freak out. "No!" we say. "You cannot be ugly! Give us this money and hide behind these products because we do not want to look at you. Also, do not use the word 'ugly.' It will give you low self-esteem.  Here, conceal your natural face behind this.  Now you can feel good about yourself! Your face isn't offensive anymore!"

We keep inventing ways to fix a problem that really is not a fucking problem at all, and in doing so we are perpetuating the problem. 'Beautiful' is feeling good and comfortable about your appearance, even if your face looks like goblin feet.

But lateness...holy shit. Lateness is a legitimate problem with legitimate consequences. It's an unforgivable offense, it is a conscious action. It is the theft of time.

We do not coddle the late-comers, because they don't deserve shit.  In our society that functions almost solely on time and immediacy, fucking latecomers are assholes.  We demand an explanation.  How can you be late?  There is a schedule!

But everything is scheduled down to detailed insanity. Our lives are so unnaturally over-scheduled that we have to set arbitrary time aside to eat, sleep, and exercise, and those should be the three most important things we do to survive and be healthy.

Why is it that when someone's life is scatterfucked in such away that those three things become an encumbrance instead of a necessity we assume it's because they are lazy or disrespectful or trying to exert control over others?  Instead of helping people learn how to overcome lateness, we say, "You are bad at schedules.  Schedule more things! More bad schedules will make you punctual."

Who fucking does this? What kind of problem-solving logic are you using? 

Why do we try to solve ugly and berate late, when late is actually a problem that requires a solution in this day and age? 

Now, one of the reasons this is frustrating to me is because I cannot solve my lateness. This is partly because the passage of time never feels linear and so it doesn't make sense and it fuddles my brain. I can accurately gauge distance and direction, always, but time? Shit.

I don't know what to do. I have been googling for a week, and it's all, "Decide you will be on time.  Leave earlier.  Recognize the fact that you are disrespectful and everyone hates you.  Take their feelings into account.  You cannot please everyone.  Stop trying to control everyone else's life.  You are rude and people don't like being around you.  You choose to be late to everything all the time always.  Why do you hate yourself?  Calm the fuck down.  Stop being self-centered."

Advice, I think, is the root of all evil.

So...do you have any?

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Fashion Scarves In Fucking Charge

So as you might have gathered from the previous post, I just got back from Germany.  This just in: German people are the new French people.  Scarves everywhere.

In case you've been anywhere near my brain for the past thirty years you would know that scarves are for French people so they can be all "Hon hon hon, mondieu! In Francais oiu say bon soir, yiou stooopeeed fat Americahhhn! Eat le cake! Francais francais francais! Ratatouille! Le poisson! Zou bisou bisou!"  and then they will flip all of these scarves over their shoulders and smoke very thin cigarettes and never, ever wash their hair in that haughty, dirty, sexy French way. And then I'll eat cake because it is carrot cake, which is the most delicious of cakes, and if you disagree you are a goddamn liar.

I mean sure, there are fashion scarves all over New York and Chicago and basically everywhere in the US as well, but my scarflessness in Chicago makes me feel rebellious and in Germany it made me feel like a fat American.

But then I realized that I love being blatantly American, and I love it when Europeans point it out, because I consider it a compliment.

"You are so American!" they say. "You are so European!" I say.  And then I laugh, because Europeans are afraid to laugh out of fear they will seem too American.  Which reminds me of Stranger in a Strange Land which reminds me of Swiss Family Robinson, because in the end everything reminds me of Swiss Family Robinson and I believe, I know, for a fleeting moment, that all I want is to live in the middle of nowhere with a few people I love.

Apparently they say that to Gyna, too (actually, they said it to her first, and she warned me, so when it happened to me I was wicked prepared with witty barbs) which is crazy because (1) she lives in Europe, and (2) she is fancy.  This is why I could never be European: it's a lack of fanciness. I've always associated a certain fanciness with Europe.  Like, "Oh, Europe. It's fancy over there."  Mostly because of the architecture, and the circular logic of "Oh, Americans think they live in the best country in the world, but we know they do not and we are better because we know it" which makes the Americans say "What in tarnation? That there Yuro-pee-an acts like he's sat hisself on a spear.  Dangdurnit, they think they're better'n me.  Let's see how they feel about this here nuecular bomb."  And then the Europeans mutter in the mother tongue about how no one from the US knows another language.

So the point, dear friends, is this: I am a person who is decidedly not fancy, and proud of her not fanciness, and someone, apparently, who just sits at her desk all day burping for no fucking reason other than being extra gaseous.  Rassles = not fancy.  Also, math!

Um, and I'm totally on Pottermore, thank god, and I'm all up in Gryffindor and my friends are all, "you just want to be in Gryffindor because it's the trendy house, Ravenclaw/Slytherin what what" and I'm like, "you guys are elitists and you don't make any sense BECAUSE YOU ARE CHALLENGING A TRUE BORN GRYFFINDOR" and then I win all of the duels because I'm in fucking charge.  


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