Sometimes I Make Lists.

My Hands are a Little Dirty.

2012-01-31T16:14:00.013-06:00

The other night my brain did that thing where I have waking nightmares and sleep paralysis, and I hate that shit.

Right after I graduated from college, during my brief stint in grad school before I realized it was a waste of time and money, three very important things happened: (1) I got really into The X-Files, (2) I saw The Notebook and realized Ryan Gosling was a crazy, crazy creepo, and (2) I taught myself how to control the action in my dreams. Lucid dreaming is almost automatic for me, but then again that's just the awareness of being in a dream, and not controlling the action.

But sometimes the dream fights back and won't let me take charge, and then it makes fun of me. It's like my psyche is lashing back over having too much control and starts to fuck with me. So I will dream about Ryan Gosling, for example, and then my dream will make him speak, and speaking completely defeats the purpose of people like Ryan Gosling, who is not a real person at all. If he had a voice like, say, LA Confidential-era Russell Crowe or Fabulous Baker Boys-era Jeff Bridges or always-era Paul Newman, things would be different. But he doesn't. He speaks like Ryan Gosling, or an audible abusive relationship, which means he always sounds a little bit drunk and kinda pervy and sensitive to the point of serious violence. He's best in photographs with feminist thought bubbles and Drive.

So Ryan Gosling and dream-Rassles are in an elevator boudoir, and I am like, "Oh, this dream is about to get ab-tastic" and then Ryan Gosling speaks, and dream-Rassles is all, "No good. Talk like Bruce Willis" and he totally ignores me and smirks and then dream-me is all, "shut UP Ryan Gosling" and Ryan Gosling is all, "u wan me ta shoo urp n hid mer emoshins? Za wah u wan?" and I'm all "YES" and he takes off his shirt and starts to fucking cry, wiping his nose on the bedsheets, and I'm like "How about this - shut your mouth or I'll kick your teeth down your throat and I'll shut it for you" and he smashes a window and starts carving my name into his arm with a giant shard of glass and then he just looks at me. Like a horny Labrador. And I'm all "stop eyefucking me, Gosling" and then he gets stigmata and a bunch of Golden Globe nominations.

But that wasn't my nightmare.

For those who aren't familiar with it--during that stretch of time between wakefulness and legit sleep, if you can slide yourself in there...that's how you start actively influencing your dreams. At least, that's how it works with me. Usually I have to make the conscious decision before I sleep.

The problem is this: sometimes I don't make the decision and my brain gets switched around, so instead of me consciously controlling the dream, I have no idea I am dreaming and everything is fucking terrifying and more realistic than life.

So the other night I was laying in bed, waiting to fall asleep, when a severed head started throwing up on my stomach, and I was like, "WHAT THE FUCK" but I couldn't move or speak. But then I heard my dog and I strained to move my eyes and just out of the corner I saw a giant fucking Overlord gargoyle beating my dog, alternating between my Louisville Slugger and his rocky fists, and I could hear my dog screaming and I tried to cry and snarl, and then someone started smashing rocks through my bedroom window and the gargoyle like apparated over to me and raised the bat above my head, beating his wings and laughing like a small child, and I was struggling and trying to move because my dog was still alive and I knew I needed to kill him and put him out of his misery, he whimpered and sputtered to breathe, and I couldn't fight and fucking kill everything around me, I couldn't do that, and I couldn't cry and I was so, so, so scared, and the vomit was coagulating all around me and slipping down my sides and it smelled like roadkill and old milk and the severed head rolled between my legs.

And I woke up screaming and sweating and yelling, "WHAT THE FU--" and I felt the shadowed gargoyle whisp away, and I felt the bat land on my neck and bounce off my jugular and heard it thwack into my dog and clatter on the ground, and I heard my dog die, I felt my crushed windpipe and the warm vomit and at the "--UCK!" and I woke up, and all was well. But I was sure it was there. I was so sure.

I smashed my head into the wall behind me, and I started crying.

I walked over to the corner and picked up my bat, which was resting nicely where it lives. And I carried it around my apartment and I looked in every single corner, because I was sure. It was there. I knew it. But I was clean, and my dog lives with my parents. I turned on all of the lights. No one was there. I took a shower. I got dressed and walked around the block with the bat. When I got home I watched Drive. Twice.

Now, I know it's sleep paralysis. I'm familiar with it. But can't my brain come up with something less sinister? Some people just imagine a monkey sitting there at the foot of the bed, but no, with me it's all baffing severed heads and dog-murdering gargoyles. I wrote this letter:

Dear My Brain,
Please stop being so scary. You are not helping.
Regards, Me

I've been grinding my teeth for days. It hurts my jaw and my head. And it's like, why can't my paralyzing dreams be of Ryan Gosling? I don't mind his voice that much. I swear.

...

in which I take bites of things

2012-01-19T19:11:00.005-06:00

Thirty-one, I think, is going to be copacetic. Even though it might not seem this way from the last post, birthdays are my very very super favorite thing other than costume parties, puppies, and John McClane, but I decided to keep shit low-key and hyphenated this year: Bingo at the neighborhood church on Friday, live band karaoke on Saturday, Wu-Tang on Sunday. Hot damn I am awesome, even in my wrinkled old age.

Everyone won Bingo except for me, which sounds about right. I am completely addicted. At LBK I had to call an ambulance after some twenty-one-year-old cretins beat the shit out of a hapless smoker on the sidewalk in front of the bar. He looked at them sideways, and they threw him into a parked car and stomped all over him, and then all these people on the street started yelling, "Go back to Wrigleyville!" and they ran away, which is hilarious and terrifying for the following thirty-one reasons:

fist-fights don't happen there EVER
even the bouncer attested to that
therefore: Wrigleyville = accurate assumption
frat-tastic chads are officially moving in on the bars I frequent
I go to certain bars specifically to avoid those guys
since hipster fashion is now the preppy norm, there is no way to distinguish the undeserving elitists from jock pricks, and previously I engaged both sets differently
I'm fairly mediocre-looking, so even when I'm just waiting for a beer and in light conversation, once it becomes evident that I am much more clever than the hipster/chad, it behooves me to determine in advance whether he is going to accuse me of being an uptight bitch (hipsters) or a lesbian (chads), so I can scoff him appropriately.
those are the only "insults" they know
(men rarely insult beautiful women to their faces)
but this happens to me whenever I say something as simple as "no thanks" or as complex as "no I will not go down on you in the alley behind the dumpster because I am not your roadwhore"
when insecure guys come face-to-face with a less-than-beautiful girl who doesn't fawn and giggle over their superior manliness, they get angry because they are obviously doing me a favor by speaking to me in the first place
50% of guys are very pleasant and not at all douchey.
I tend to start a conversation with whoever is next to me as long as they aren't engaged in a conversation themselves just because I like talking to people until they start sucking
and it's like, if you all stopped being fucking sexist manbaby-coddlebunnies, maybe you could have a conversation instead of getting angry at me for not buying your bullshit
But no, women who don't stroke your ego are controlling bitches.
I am sure that ego-stroking has something to do with penises
I will stroke your ego if you deserve it.
(Penis)
Mad Libs?
So this guy at trivia night (I know, I know, I went to a trivia night last week as well. Who the fuck am I and what have we done with the real Rassles and what's with all the digression [you love it and you find me coy]) who is a friend of a friend was angry that I "took over" trivia night.
His only reasoning for this was the fact that I am awesome at trivia.
Now, if I didn't know the answer to a question, I left it to the table and threw in ideas when no one else knew either. But if I knew the answer then he was all "but HOW do you KNOW that?" even when he didn't know the answer, and I was like, "Why you bitchin, handsome? The Decameron is the Ten Commandments. THAT IS WHAT IT IS. This isn't fucking rocket surgery. No, I don't need to think about it. I haven't been wrong yet. No reason to get all testy-twisted. I accept your answers when you're sure of them. If I was a man, this wouldn't be an issue. We would have fist-bumped, and you probably would have been all, we need to team up all the time bro, no homo."
This is why I don't play trivia with strangers.
He proved to be the type of guy that would put his arm around his adorable little blonde girlfriend and say, "Yeah, my brains are rubbing off on her. She gets cooler every day." I know he's the type because he actually did that. He actually did that with complete sincerity and without any sense of deprecation or irony, and his girlfriend actually looked proud.
His girlfriend actually answered way more questions than he did, but she did it by consulting him first for his approval. If he didn't like her answer, she wouldn't tell the rest of the team what it was.
Then he started ragging on the announcer because he sounded like a 'gay theater guy. it's cool if he's gay, I mean, you know, but do you have to be so obvious?'
FUCKING SERIOUSLY? DO YOU HAVE TO BE SO OBVIOUSLY STRAIGHT?
So then I did that thing where my heart grows a swampland because I don't care how handsome you are anymore. I don't care that your pouting was kind of adorable.
You are now my property, and you will live in the gator-infested swampland of my heart and you will hate it there because you're a pig, and gators eat the fuck out of swine. I can still feel them inside. Chomping away.
I need something to fight, I think.
whatever, it was my birthday week, I did what I want

So anyway, the LBK band asked that I take a tip jar around the bar for them, and I made Schmee come with me because she's gorgeous and people are always more likely give money to beautiful women (for the record, she is also smart and funny, but M.E. is the smart one and I am the funny one and Schmee is the pretty one and that's the way it is, Schmee, so stop complaining). And these guys were mean to Schmee when she was all pretty and approachable-looking, so you know they were assholes. One of them goes, "I don't have any money, I'm twenty-one. Plus I give like $90 a month to charity." And then Schmee said, "so how did you afford that round of shots? Why are you at a bar that charges $5 a beer if you can't cough a dollar up for the band you came to see?"

He could have just said "no" and we would have thanked him and walked away, like we did with the other people in the bar that didn't spend all their time acting like an infected foot.

And then like twenty minutes later they beat the shit out of a guy and I called the cops and an ambulance. Victim guy was okay. Oh! and Schmee gave the cops the evidence they needed to catch the gutless bastards that ran away. Well done, Schmee!

In other news, Wu-Tang is the old-ass Led Zeppelin of hip-hop. The only one who's got any energy left is Method Man and the rest of them just politely towel each others' foreheads and shout, "Make monay monay, make monay monay monay!" and I'm all, "Dude. You're like forty" which is what I think about everyone older than I am between the ages of thirty-six and seventy.

Also, I've started reading US state maps in the bathroom. I've been collecting them for years (MoLinder and I wallpapered a room once, but they've since been taken down, refolded, and stashed in the bathroom) and since I have no road trips planned, I'm just memorizing them so when I DO go on a road trip I can be all "BOOYAH. Suck it, GPS."

...

The Thing About Healthy Parrots

2012-01-06T03:29:00.003-06:00

On New Year's Eve I got good and drunk. Gyna was here. She brought Germans. There were all of these Germans in my apartment, and we drank White Russians and ate Caesar salad and M.E. came over, who is Japanese, and Xtine who is Korean. But it was very unlike the Cold War, in all honesty, yet I imagined myself a diplomat anyway until I started doing that thing where I get angry for no reason, which passed quickly.

We went up on the roof and watched the fireworks at midnight. Drank champagne out of solo cups. The usual. I love it up on the roof. I think that was the turning point for me. After midnight everything goes downhill, because I never want to leave city rooftops when it's windy at night. Partly because of the dancing lights and fireworks and partly because it is really hard to put the ladder away. It makes a huge fucking racket.

Sometimes I think--no, I know--that I am extremely juvenile about things like rooftops and fireworks and champagne. I wonder if they felt it too, or if it was just me? I'm sure they felt something, everyone went off into their little corners and made out with each other and I just stood there staring at the skyline, feeling sad and alive. It was wonderful.

But then it's over and we're not on the roof anymore, and we're fighting with the ladder and it just kills everything completely and I'm embarrassed that something so pure has to end so ridiculously. And I'm nervous because I don't know everyone very well, except for Gyna of course and I will miss the hell out of her when she goes back to Munich tomorrow. Muffy is moving to South America for the summer. Just because she can. How does that work? I feel like I would be much more likely to up and move if it wasn't alone, because I'm not very good at making new friends on my own. I'm excellent at being introduced to people who have already heard about me, though. That usually works out well.

But on New Year's I was nervous. I would just talk and give prolific answers to very simple questions. And then I ask questions and receive simple answers, so I talk more and get angry at myself for talking too much until I say something offensive, and then I get angry at myself for being offensive and end up yelling at everyone when I'm mad at myself...I don't like it when my friends get down on themselves. It makes me sad and angry, because they are perfect. If they are perfect, what am I? Angry. This is how it works, I think in circles.

Did your mothers tell you to judge people by their shoes? Mine did not. Apparently Gyna and the Germans were told otherwise: you look at peoples' shoes. This has never occurred to me before, not until I really got to know someone. You look at their shoes? Really? I feel like if I paid attention to everyone's shoes I would get annoyed.

I feel like I would gravitate towards worn-down boots and stained sneakers, frayed laces. Or shoes that are ridiculous and overly-buckled, like too many elves got excited with their tiny belts, or shoes that aren't shoes and all and are just like leather ace bandages. I support walking around in slippers all the time.

Anything too tidy would make me nervous. Or someone who wears Toms, those shoes you send to Africa. Why don't you just donate money to an African charity? They need medicine and opportunity and release and they need us to stop dropping our unusable electronics to the African desert, because Africa is not a dump where you can put the stuff you don't want anymore, you fuckhead. You might as well just buy forty dollars worth of flip flops from Walgreens and put them in a box labeled "Africa" with a picture of a baobab tree and hope it gets there. Put money in the system instead of sending over canvas shoes that fall apart when you wear them every day.

Also, excessively well-groomed shoes confuse me. Do you avoid puddles just because of your shoes? That's ridiculous. Why else would you wear them? I specifically wear shoes so I can walk through puddles without hesitation. They are feet armor. Not accessories. Alas, this is where I differ from the world.

My mother told me to judge people by their stories. If my stories were shoes, everyone would think I was rich.

The next morning I was in the process of waking up and I thought I heard one of the Germans say that I came from wealthy parents. It kind of bugged me, because he does not know my parents. Then again he could have used a completely different word. He could have been talking about healthy parrots. "That's the thing about people with healthy parrots," is what he could have said.

I don't really understand what it means, but I think I heard it.

I am thirty-one years old right now. It just happened like three hours ago or something. I'm playing bingo tomorrow night - tonight - because now I'm an old lady.

...

Something to Sing About, or: Funnels

2011-12-06T16:41:00.004-06:00

My head is falling apart. Everything I read feels instinctively full of shit. Is it paranoia?

I went to a book fair. An author fair? A book expo? I guess it was, they were selling bound piles of paper. Prose written by hundreds of different authors that are all disillusioned and pasteurized, like they all took the same class with the same professor who published a poetry book in the nineties called "The Fog of the Zeitgeist" and then met up in the back of an locally-owned coffee shop and edited everything together and as a result creativity is a formula instead of an idea.

Set up. Punchline. A sentence that lists one, two, three things followed by a hyphen---and a question? I'm just sayin. Your pacing? Is bullshit. I do it too and we can smell our own. Self-deprecation is disguised as a gimmick of endearment instead of actual loathing, it's just cool to refer to yourself as someone with self-loathing because Chuck Palahniuk said so.

But hope is so much more powerful than self-loathing, hope and want and the balls to exist, which is something I completely lack and desire deeply and I write myself in circles, I'm sliding around this funnel-bong of meta-actualization, and I don't own a fucking bong because weed makes me even paranoider about people's perception of me than I already am.

Nonsense because someone said nonsense was funny, not because they themselves are nonsensical, and can't people smell contrivance when it's thrust upon them? Not everything is contrived, of course. TED speeches seem unique, but sometimes they are so rhetorically slanted I get frustrated. I can't stand social commentary because it's old and it's tired and it's always about things I know inherently or things that ring false in my fibers and I have this craving for things that are new, even if they're only new to me.

If I ask someone for something new and they give me something old I feel like a guilty scumwhore, because should I thank them and move on? My uber-obsession with authenticity (which, I know, is something most single people my age are going through right now, and believe me: shut up, that doesn't fucking help me feel authentic) tells me that I should thank them, but let them know they told me something I already fucking know, because did you seriously think I didn't know that?

What a terrible way to function.

At the same time, 90% of the strangers I've met are a slopbucket of self-righteous cunts that love congratulating themselves on educating me. "Well, you probably don't know this, but..."

I stay away from these people as much as possible, because all they've really taught me is that 90% of the population is full of self-righteous cunts, and I'm trying real, real hard to believe that statistic is inaccurate. But I've thrown up defensive firewalls because there are some irksome, irksome people out there, and weeding through them is exhausting and in the end I'm terrified that I will come across as ungrateful to the people I love and respect, but I'm argumentative. It's who I am.

So I try to stay self-aware, but I am aware of my self-awareness. I am so aware of my self-awareness that it becomes a chore to make sure I do not look like I am so incredibly buzzing with molecular reactions that I forget to pay attention to other people just so I don't split apart and little bits of me don't go flying in their faces.

I forget that my stray thoughts might sound careless and cruel. But I love having conversations with people that disagree with me: those are the best. But people who disagree with me hate talking to me because I want yelling matches and debates, and I can't help it if my logic is more meta and more logical due to my self-awareness. Come on.

Talking to people who have the exact same opinion as me is completely boring, we're just jerking each other off, and poorly. As if I jerk off. Saying "we're just fingering each other" sounds way dirtier, and I've never been good at being dirty in public. Unless it becomes a contest over who can say the same thing in the most interesting way: I love that game.

I acquire energy through conflict, but whenever I conflict with someone they don't want to explore the conflict, the nature of it, the why behind it - do they not care?

Why do we live in a society driven by people's opinions instead of a society driven by their actions? Why is it that I'm aware of this, dislike it strongly because I believe actions are more valuable, but I know that I am better at opinions and words and therefore continue to focus on them, and dislike myself for it and wish, wish, wish I were different?
I keep on making things because I have to. It's my only real acting compulsion. I think it's because I keep gaining weight, and I keep gaining weight because I keep drinking the beer. People keep on leaving it at my apartment and everyday, like clockwork, there I am: drinking the beer and building the clock.

Oh, I made a clock, did you know that? From scratch. I mean, it was made out of paper. And it kind of works.

In some ways, it's the most successful, innovative clock ever created because it completely defies the logic of spacetime and essentially the room in which it dwells exists in a completely different timeline than the rest of my apartment, so I am constantly crossing the threshold between alternate timelines where the rules of modern-day societies' timekeeping do not apply, and that's a comforting thought.

But according to the small-minded, little people living in reality: one of the gears is totally warped and the fucking thing is broken.

My truth, of course, is better, and the other truth is truthier. And as much as I want to believe in truth and the importance of actions and harmony, I don't. I believe in nonsense, and talking about how I feel about nonsense, and going out and committing nonsense and causing and resolving conflict, and the joy that comes from conflict and talking in three-hour funnels. Fuck, I love talking in three-hour funnels. Circles and circles and circles and circles and circles and boom! Result.

So this is where it comes from: I know who I am, and I wish I wasn't that way, and no matter how much I strive to be someone with virtue and the beauty of soul, someone who acts for the greater good of mankind, someone who truly loves the people of the world--and I'm trying, I really am trying (DO, there is no try) and the harder I try the more I realize that I'm trying to be something I just am not. Because people I respect and want to emulate are that way, and they always seem so lovely and free even within the cages some of them built for themselves.

We, as people who blog, or people who read my blog, are all familiar with my navel-gazing - although fancy people like me call it omphaloskepsis. But you know what? Sometimes it leads to things I'm proud of, and it's okay to be proud of them, because writing is my meditation, I guess. I'm navel-gazing.* Who cares? No one but me. I'm the only one who cares to call it that. Probably because I'm funneling my own thoughts, and no one is helping me with this. YOU! Blog readers! Look alive, people. Call me on my bullshit. Give me something, please. Do I make sense? Does this feel like truth to you, even despite the nonsense? Does it make any sense? I'm appealing to you, asking you, all you motherfuckers that read this blog - am I yelling at nothing and no one? You read this, and you soak it in, and I know you do and you file it under "Rassles Talking Garbage" and you know all of this shit about me, and I know nothing about how you feel about it. Selfish. Fuck you.

...

* Not naval-gazing. Not naval-gazing. I DO THAT ALL THE TIME. I ALWAYS GET THAT WORD WRONG. I should just stop saying it. Naval.

...

SHERLOTTE HAS BEEN MIA FOR FIVE DAYS NOW AND I AM FA-REAKING OUT AND TOTALLY LONELY

2011-12-02T11:13:00.003-06:00

I need a dog.

...

The Case of Randomly Appearing Things With Legs

2011-11-21T13:16:00.009-06:00

There is a beautiful, fucking massively bulbous spider living outside my window. I named her Sherlotte, because she is ginormous but friendly, and we have had many nervous chuckles together in our 127-hour rapport. As long as she stays on her side of the window life is good. But when I can't see her I get all fidgetty, thinking she decided to come inside and join me for hot chocolate. We are not there yet, Sherlotte. Slow the fuck down.

She spun herself a six foot web that stretches across the whole window, but the bulk of it is only on the upper half. I first saw her when I opened my blinds and I shrieked and tried to scramble up on top of the object closest to me for protection, which was definitely a book. Higher ground.

I texted Al the landlord and told him about her and made him promise not to squish her because that would be very messy, like those videos of draining abscesses, and then I thanked him for my new kitchen chandelier.

About two weeks ago I got a text message from him which read, "you are the proud owner of a golden chandelier" and I was all "baohwr?" and then when I got home from work there was a fancy magic chandelier in my kitchen, and I almost hoped Al the Landlord hadn't texted me because then I would have had a thaumaturgical (thaumaturlogical? thaumaturgenical?) mystery to solve ("The Case of the Appearing Chandelier") and that would have been a very exciting mystery indeed. For the sake of this blog post I wish the chandelier had eight golden curly arms, but there are only six, and because of that this transitional sentence into the next paragraph functions with less than the rhetorical ease I would normally strive towards--

I'd put her at about an inch and a half without legs. Sherlotte. And she has eight of those, by the way, golden black, striped and curled shiny dagger legs. She is easily the biggest spider I've ever seen in person that was not in a terrarium or a jar or nailed to a wall in a museum. This is Chicago. Not the outback.

You know how spiders are either plastic or furry (those are the legit biological terms, don't fight it) and sometimes they are just pretty jewels with terrifying knives for arms? Sherlotte is a very pretty plastic spider. We're friends, because I have to make friends with things that scare me. It's a thing.

Still, plastic spiders are way less scary than the furry ones. Furry things usually come with teeth, and teeth lead to bite marks, and I am a fucking ambrosial peach. Everyone wants to bite me all the time.

...

Straw Man

2011-11-14T14:10:00.000-06:00

I got wicked milk breath right now. Over-spilled milk in my coffee this morning and drank it anyway, and now I regret it, like a lower back tattoo. No, too easy. I regret it like perfect attendance. I regret it like SPF 4. I regret it like not taking that job in Ireland eight years ago. I regret it like letting haters win. I regret it like donut number four, like blacking out around hot men, like working late, like rum and Dr. Pepper, like 4am bars and waking up with your pants on the porch, like the feeling in your gut after you watch a full episode of Toddlers and Tiaras, like when you take a blog break after a particularly depressing post, like when you're hungover and you seriously fuck up band practice.

We got the band back together. Half of the band. And we're not doing original songs anymore, this is strictly for one show and we're covering Adam Ant, and I am awesome at "Stand and Deliver".

It's obvious that we're old because everyone was all, "Hey, let's have band practice on Saturday mornings" and no one groaned their dissent. But I sure fucked up this last Saturday morning, and I showed up sloppy and still drunk from the night before and I couldn't harmonize for shit, and then I felt intense guilt because honestly, what doesn't make me feel guilt, and since when did people get angry at fucking rock stars for being fucking rock stars? I'm all, "sorry for partyin" and kicking ass at everything except for one thing that is very important so stop hating, haters.

No one was angry with me, though. They were all understanding and adult about it. God, when did my friends become so tolerant? Should I be glad they are growing as people, and realizing that they take shit too seriously, or angry at their complacence? Perhaps I should be drunker next time and we'll see what happens.

If I try to be the enemy, does that make me a dick?

Being grown up is hard.

...

Having Things

2011-10-05T03:01:00.006-05:00

I have many things.

I have, for example, a bathrobe. I also have 2/3 of a box of markers, four bottles of wine, four dead grandparents, 37 envelopes full of old pictures, $2.80 in library late fees, one nut bowl shaped like a walnut containing a handful of empty pistachio shells, and I anticipate having a headache tomorrow.

Currently I have hot spiced wine, which is a thing. And I have been drinking alone which should not be a thing, and I have yet to spill all over my very nice white sweater which is a good thing, and I have been drinking whiskey sours with family and that is a bad ass thing, because that was Grampa's favorite. See all of the things that I have?

I have a memory of my grandmother's funeral back in August (Nonny) where all of my male cousins stood up at the lunch and recounted their fondest moments with her, and Katsisch and I had nothing to say. Katsisch was on fire with anger at ll of their words because she hated Nonny. I can understand that because Nonny ignored us and doted all of her attention on the male cousins, but basically I think she was being dumb. During one particularly heartfelt speech, one of several goddamn thousand, she started shaking and crying uncontrollably. Everyone thought she was sorry to see Nonny go, but in reality she was furious.

I told her to leave. "Go, just go. Come back when you're okay<" I told her. Sorry, I'm durnk and I'm using a lot of backspace right now.

"Why? She was a bitch."

"But not to them. Just leave, calm down. Do it for Dad." and that worked.

And then after all of the stories, when Katsisch and I refused to speak (and Yellavitch was six hours away at grad school, which had started that morning and is a legitimate excuse to not come when Nonny had been losing it, nigh gone, for years) my dad stood up after several glasses of wine and spoke.

"I just want to share a story. So hypothetically, the first female President of the United States is elected. And she wants her parents to come to her inauguration. She calls them to invite them.
'Just come dad,' she says on the phone. 'I'll pay for your ticket.' And her dad says, 'oh, I don't know, I'm not sure if they'll have anything for us to eat.'
'I will have them make any food that you want,' she says.
'Well, we might not be able to afford the flight.'
'Air Force One will pick you up, I will personally see to it.'
'Well, you brother invited us to a football game...'
'There'll be a million more for you,' she says. And it goes on and on, and eventually she convinces them to come. So they do, and after the speeches and all that the Vice President leans over to her dad and he says, 'you must be as proud as I am right now.'
And her dad looks him straight in the eye and says, 'Oh, did your son play football for Notre Dame?'"

Then he laughed, and I laughed, and I've never been more proud of my dad in my life.

I have a new television. Kind of. It was my grandpa's television and it's about twice the size of my old one and the picture is much better, but it has that nigh-undetectable high-pitched buzz going on and I'm worried about any dogs in the area. Enough to make me keep the old TV on the floor next to it just in case it becomes unbearable. It usually goes away after fifteen minutes or so. I have a second couch that also belonged to Grampa and it's in my spare bedroom, because oh yeah: I have a spare bedroom.

I have several cousins that I would number among my best friends, and I have several cousins that would number among minor acquaintances. I have a pipe and a hat that belonged to Grampa, and I have to wear them tomorrow morning at the cemetery. I have a mystery to solve, because I don't know why my uncle rarely talks to the family anymore.

I have to go to the funeral of a person I love tomorrow, and I have to remember to celebrate and be strong even though the Catholics regard this as sober and solemn.

I have to talk to someone right now. I am alone and I have to talk to someone, anyone, and there is no one here.

And I have to remind myself that I have nothing but love, because if I don't have love I don't have anything.

...

Debates for the Universe

2011-09-29T16:13:00.001-05:00

Is there a God? Why is it that when you slice a seashell in half, you find math inside? Why can't I start working at noon as I am not a farmer? Does a man really want a woman with a sense of humor, or does he just want a woman who laughs at his jokes? Who is the sadist that keeps on airing those ASPCA commercials?

When did irony stop functioning as a rhetorical device and become a cultural slogan for sloppy contrast? Who steals my pens when I'm not at my desk? Are dragons real? Chickens and eggs, which came first? Who is the most important musical figure since the inception of Rock and Roll: Elvis, Les Paul, or the Beatles as a cheeky whole? Why does everyone buy Puffs and still call it Kleenex?

Who coined the phrase "throw you under the bus"? Where do they live? Is it near a bus stop? Why do people repeat that phrase when it makes no sense and sounds fucking idiotic? Why are potato stems useless? How many apple seeds can you eat before you feel the effects of the cyanide? How is it statistically possible that I am undefeated in air hockey (Holla)?

Does anyone ever enjoy a Hollywood reboot? When did rope become irrelevant? How did Mrs. Grass chicken noodle soup become a proven placebo cure-all for everything bad ever ever? How did I get so close to one set of grandparents and retain such antipathy for the other? Fucking magnets, how do they work? Which is better: quality or nostalgia; sub-question: So which is the best Weezer album?

My grandpa died last night. This one. I am sad. My grandmother, from the other side of the family, passed away about a month and a half ago. I was not nearly as sad. Oh, I really want to get drunk.

...

dude.

2011-09-25T14:16:00.003-05:00

I am surprisingly not hung over, for a drunken asshole. Last night marked the first time I've ever gone to a bar and gotten fucking wasted without spending a dime. Apparently, I need to do the following:

1. Go to the douchebag bar where Phil works
2. Sit down
3. Laugh at guys' jokes when they aren't funny
4. Speak in cliches

And the next thing I know, I'm fucking hammered and I've done about a bazillion shots, and the last several of them were water, because I scam with the bar. Yes, you can buy me a shot. It's called "The Usual." What kind of a doucheface goes into a bar and gets a shot of The Usual? It was legitimately impressive to these people that I knew the bartenders well enough to do this, and it was annoying to me because that bar is loud and full of ageless frat guys with unfortunate goatees and hair gel.

All you need to do is pretend you don't know what they're talking about and that you find their opinion incredibly interesting, never offer any contradictory arguments. Basically, they say a sentence and then you repeat it back to them in different words. Fucking annoying. I didn't think it would work, but it does.

I said some of the most repulsive things last night.

"I don't know why, but I've always gotten along with guys better than girls."

"I'm not like most girls."

"Of course I don't want to see that movie, I'm a girl." (OMGWTF)

"I like, hate shopping."

The worst part about that? IT WORKS. You try to sound as bland as possible, say how different you are without being different, and everyone wants your number and to take you out for lobster on Wednesday. I actually had a good drunk conversation with one guy, who was surprisingly undouchey, and he's the only one who didn't ask for my number. I even had a guy talk about his wife and newborn child and then offer to take me out to dinner. He was the worst.

If any of them call, I'm still debating on if I should suffer through a free meal.

Fucking secret hand-baff and go home already, but first, buy me another shot of water.

...

title what the fuck

2011-09-25T05:10:00.000-05:00

Oh my god. i am so fuckng drunk. There are all of thse men abnd they're all like, make out with me. And I'm like, no. And then I don't and i send emails to people. "I have a problem.

Glamorous Batman

2011-09-16T02:18:00.002-05:00

Xtine, old roommate extraordinaire, got hitched the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, and I was the minister (a calling I found around this time). She decked me out in this polyester 40 year old vintage fluorescent-mint, monstrous get-up with long, hazy butterfly sleeves. It was a nightmare on a hanger. But I itched it on and looked like a goddess when I wasn't scratching myself. I was made of regal magic and lovely dreams. From now on, Xtine will dress me every day. Every fucking day.

I gave a sermon about The Little Prince and The Pink Panther and did an impromptu interpretive dance to a poem by A. A. Milne because the reader said, and I quote, "This is a poem by A. A. Milne, and while I'm reading Rossi will do an interpretive dance."

"Shit. I mean, shit. Sorry. Go ahead." And then I vogued with my flowing sleeves and the awkward grace of a dancing bear on a tricycle, and only gave the thumbs up once. But never in my sermon did I directly bring up how many men Xtine has slept with, which was hard to do because Paul stopped by before the wedding for a beer on my porch and left me with this: "just don't say anything about that time that she fucked those two gay dudes on my couch." Which is my couch now, by the way, and I silently blessed myself for washing the cushions.

She and Kevin had popcorn vendors roaming around while we sipped a meet-cute of champagne infused with cotton candy (invented by Adam Moby-Statham during a happy accident) and sang karoake. We went to a bar afterward where Adam and I teamed up against another co-ed team of attractive pool sharks (I was his wingman, because my dress had wingsleeves) who took their eight ball very seriously. My sleeves kept on getting in the damn way. Fucking pool.

I dislike playing pool at bars with people who insist that we follow professional rules. Recreational softball is nothing like the major leagues and touch football isn't nearly as convoluted as the NFL, but tall hipster males take their sharking very seriously. At one point I yelled, "Who the fuck are you, Minnesota Fats? This isn't a goddamn Paul Newman movie." And then he tried to get me to play again, which in retrospect was a good sign but me and Adam were through with trying to woo these people and besides all I could think about was how rugged and lumberjacky Kevin's little brother had grown in the past two years after fighting wildfires in California and I really wanted to touch his arm and talk to him about spaceships and conspiracy theories as a continuation of our last conversation in 2009 after we played Risk on his birthday. Which I won, by the way.

But alas, I have gained - ho-lee FUCK - 22 pounds in the last two years. That was the last time I stood on a scale. I've decided to blame my stolen bike and my friends who left me (I am looking at YOU, MoLinder and Gyna) for this weight gain, because even though I know the bulk of it is bite-size Butterfingers in groups of seven and 2am pizzas (which I blame on CrazyLiz), I refuse to accept responsibility. Something will have to be done, and I will have to find more obscure things to blame until I am either (a) satisfied or (b) amazing-looking.

Despite how awesomely I glowed in my dress, how I felt like glamorous Batman on a winning streak in Vegas, I was not mentally capable of starting that conversation and was afraid I would make some joke about how much both of us had grown in two years and come off sounding desperate, which technically I was. Alas.

Weeks and weeks ago, after hearing about the dress, the Smith Sister Savannah said to me, "Ross, for my wedding? I would never, ever, ever make you wear something like that," which was her kind way of saying "don't you fucking dare pull that neon circus-garb out again for my wedding."

Coincidentally, Savannah's wedding was the Sunday of Labor Day weekend, so after I woke up the next morning I had to get my ass in gear to officiate another wedding, which will, of course, be discussed in a later post, because I have run out of wine and it is time for bed.

...

EDIT: Aaaaaaand there's the dress. I don't have any pictures of me in it where you can really see it in all it's glory.

...

WHEN IT RAINS IT POURS

2011-08-30T18:23:00.005-05:00

Last night I dreamed I gave birth to an ugly, bloody baby and I was ashamed of it. I didn't know it was there, inside my dream uterus. Plus, it was probably born drunk because of its drowsy baby eyes, and I thought it was dead because it wouldn't make a sound. Already I'm the horrible mother everyone said I would be, and my child was merely three minutes old.

I wrapped it in a shroud that quickly became soaked with blood, put it in the corner. I tried to ignore it while I curled up on a heavy, green marble table and cried for what seemed like the majority of the dream, thinking and brewing and refusing to look at the corner my child silently occupied. Visitors came to see me while I twisted on the table, and they would tell me jokes and I would laugh and they would ask for advice and I would give it, but they didn't know about my child and I couldn't forget it was there, and that I threw in the corner and I was so afraid to claim it as my own because it really was mine, so it must be fucked up.

Because if they knew it was mine, they would judge me and tell me how terrible I am, and say things like, "your skewed version of how the world should be turned your ilk into monsters" and then the undead, bloody thing would scream and cry and never learn multiplication. But that was imaginary dread, even in the dream. Or they would laugh at my child and call it a clown and say things like "your spawn is a joke and the thought of you teaching your values and morals to a creature of your loins is absurd, nearly as absurd as the thought of a man wanting you to mother his child in the first place." And they would laugh and so would I.

But honestly? My values are so much better than theirs. That's why I fucking have them in the first place. Because I'm right. I'm right, and I'm sick of gutless people telling me otherwise, even when it's disguised as something as nonchalant as "you're looking way too into this" or "why can't you just do XXX like Normal people."

Obviously this is a theme on my blog, reconciling my mind with other people's versions of Normal. But my problem is not that people criticize me, because I don't give a fuck about that. It affects me so greatly because sometimes I give trust and loyalty to people who try to push their own version of Normal in the first place, which means I push my version.

I might insist it's so people can share the things I love, but really, what if I have some sort of secret agenda to turn everyone into me? I don't want people to be like me. I want to be the only me there is. Sometimes I'm even insulted when people say "you are so much alike" and then I meet that person like me and I think, "this person is nothing like me" and then I get angry on behalf of myself and that poor other person that was accused of sharing similarities with the likes of me.

But is it really so bad, not being the only one? Wouldn't it be nice to share Not Normal things with others instead of demanding my undeniable uniqueness and individuality?

So in my dream, I sat up on the marble table and wiped the tears from my face, because it was time to claim my Not Normal child. And I breathed and walked over to the corner which had grown a bookshelf, and I pulled out the VHS clamshell that housed my dream child. I cracked it open and there he was, in a bloody clamshell, and he looked just wonderful, and there had never been anything more wonderful in the history of the universe ever ever than me and this beautiful child, and all of the other things I had made in my life that were sitting on that bookshelf, (which was the one my mom and I made together) like my first painting called "a pony" and the first story I ever wrote and the first dress I ever sewed and the first blueprint I drew and the first egg drop experiment I designed and everything else, and I licked him clean and hugged him and laughed and he stretched and opened his eyes, and then...and then I opened mine, and I had to go to fucking work.

...

CK Dexter Haven, Either I'm Gonna Sock You or You're Gonna Sock Me

2011-08-29T18:22:00.003-05:00

Because I am nonpareil at dental hygiene and less important things like making giant balls of cheap rubber bands and reusing the same piece of tape over and over and over again, two habits which directly correlate to this story because they portray my determination to accomplish mundane tasks with pride and drama, last Thursday I was flossing and trying to get at them pesky back teeth and I totally I dislocated my jaw.

My jaw clicks. It always has. When it clicked open that morning I didn't think much of it, but I did have some flashes of thought like, "I am so awesome at flossing" and "I'll bet my mouth-opening abilities could rival that of the Burmese Python, 20-foot terror of the Asian jungle" and then I tried speaking in Parseltongue and learned that my mouth couldn't close. It hurt like fuck.

I stood there gaping, trying to ease my mouth shut, but I couldn't bite down and it felt like someone lit a hedgehog on fire and wedged it into my temporomandibular joint (Dear Version-2001 of Professor DeWitt: like I said, I don't need your 8:30am anatomy classes for shit and your ponytail is stupid). Sure, I could close my lips and pucker (thank god, with all my daily smooching), but my teeth weren't flush. In fact, the upper row of teeth couldn't meet the lower at all.

But I was late to work, so I just powered through it. Finished the morning routine and fucked around with my jaw for awhile on the bus. My speech was fine, and when I was wiggling my jaw around and just sitting there it didn't hurt at all. But I still sat at my desk for hours and tried to strain my teeth together, massaging my cheek, hoping to grunt things back into place.

This lasted for the better part of the day, until I took my late lunch. I was only two excruciating bites in when dawned on me: I cannot chew this Big Beef n' Cheddar without medical assistance.

After some intense googling, I learned that I could probably force my jaw back into place, and all those silly people on the internet who were all "go to a doctor immediately" were amateurs, because it really wasn't that bad, right? It only hurt when I tried to chew, or like, move. Granted it felt like someone was slowly ripping my ear off - but I wasn't bleeding or swelling or bruising.

So I when to the bathroom I made sure I was alone, because I didn't want anyone watching me abusively magic my jaw back into place. I grabbed my lower mandible, fingers wrapped around my teeth, palm cupping my chin, and opened my mouth as wide as possible, like the queen of the Alien brood, but way scarier because she had my eyes, that bitch.

I breathed deep. It was time. My sandwich was getting cold. I raised my right fist, closed my eyes, counted to twelve (YOU FUCKING SALLY, JUST DO IT ON THREE), yanked my jaw down hard and punched myself in the face, right on the jawline.

And then I screamed.

But a few seconds later I opened my eyes. Wriggled my jaw around, which was pleasantly clicking like normal, and I bit my teeth together, which were clacking like normal. A bit strained, but normal. I traced one finger along my jaw to make sure everything felt right and good, and you know what? I AM THE FUCKING BOSS. My skills as a de-dislocator are legendary. Fucker popped right back into place, just like it was supposed to. Keep that bitch in line with sock to the jaw.

It's been five days, and despite a few raging headaches, everything is hunky dory. My life is perfect. I fucking hate doctors.

...

People say memories flow, but to me it's more like thick glops

2011-08-18T15:01:00.001-05:00

Every Friday (or at least, usually every Friday, or some Fridays, or sometimes it happens that it's a Friday) I walk to the Harold Washington Library on my lunch break to admire the huge rooftop owls-on-fire thing they got going on and check out whatever book I got on hold. I have to stop buying books and movies because I'm running out of shelves almost as quickly as I'm running out of money. Plus libraries are bastions of awe.

This particular Friday was the first day of Lollapalooza, the music festival of sweat and metal, and the sidewalks on the way to the library are crammed with drunken teenagers who are crammed into as little clothing as possible. When did tiny, tiny shorts become the norm? It's slightly troublesome, seeing them strut amongst the suits, giggling and talking about bands I'd never heard of and bands that were popular fifteen years ago in the same sentence and breath, and all I can think about is how I want out of the mob so I can get my book and I realize not much has changed since high school.

Lolla is something I'm not even remotely interested in. Too many people, too loud. You have to fight for things that aren't worth a fight: being noticed, a conversation, a breeze. I'm starting to think that living alone will suit me well because now I can officially become a lonely, battered drunk and write that novel I always knew was brewing inside, only I felt too guilty and comfortable ever to write it before.

That's a problem I have: feeling guilty for taking time to myself. There's always something to do, somewhere to go, something to see, and I love that. But I feel guilty turning people down, I feel guilty when I talk to a stranger at a bar and ignore the people I came with. Even for a minute. I felt guilty going out and leaving CrazyLiz's cat home alone. I felt guilty going out leaving CrazyLiz home alone with her cat. I feel guilty right now because I started moving things into her room and she's been gone for a week, so I stopped.

She'd been one of my best friends for fourteen years, and I think she was the hardest person to live with out of everyone. She was always fearless and sensitive and completely irresponsible - the type of person who hears "do not do this thing that you want to do" and then she just fucking does it with a shit-eating grin. Do not rollerblade down that twisty slide, CrazyLiz. Do not pay for grad school with your credit card, CrazyLiz. Do not call your ex-boyfriend, CrazyLiz.

But at the same time, she is funner than hell. She's a person you call for adventures. She's a person you call to listen to your troubles, or to help you get into trouble. She laughs harder and cries more easily and takes more life risks than anyone I've ever met. Every day she pummels herself with as many feelings she can reach. Running the emotional gauntlet. In a way, CrazyLiz is better at living than everyone else because she hides nothing. But that doesn't mean she's not exhausting.

There's a kid walking in front of me with his hat askew and he's talking to a girl wearing daisy dukes and it's weird. But they don't call them daisy dukes anymore, they call them something else. I don't know why. Like when All-Stars became Chucks, which both of them were wearing all strategically flopped over on purpose, because it makes them look alternative, I guess. I'll never understand the allure of completely contrived effortlessness. It feels like a shadow.

"This is gonna be sick," he's saying to the girl.

"Totally."

"Seriously. Cuz it's like, okay. Sometimes I feel like I was born too late, you know? I shoulda been in high school in the nineties. You know, underground shows were literally under the ground. And you found out about parties and raves and shit becuzza flyers, not Facebook, and shit wasn't all secondhanded and full of douchebags. Raves were epic then, man. My brother told me."

"I wish I like, knew more. About it. And stuff." The girl did that thing that pretty girls do, that thing that I've never been able to pull off properly, where you coyly look up at a boy using your eyes instead of your whole head.

And I remembered being back in high school in '95, walking to a concert with a group of friends and talking to Justin, who I found moderately dreamy. And my chin was tilted up full throttle and I was wearing overalls, chucks and a wifebeater, which was my favorite thing to wear to shows and concerts. And I told him how I wished I was in high school in the late sixties when rock was raw and unashamed and being a rebel actually meant something, and he looked at me like I was stupid and he said, "So? That's stupid."

And then Justin went over to Andrea Kaniuga, who wore skirts and looked like Audrey Hepburn and could do that coy thing with her eyes. I loved being friends with Andrea Kaniuga because when she was around boys would follow, and I hated being friends with Andrea Kaniuga because they only paid attention to her. And then she went to France for the summer and when she came home she was even prettier and more elegant and free, and she told me we couldn't be friends anymore because her boyfriend thought I was a dork and they didn't want me going to their parties.

All of this is glopping into my brain in thick mud pies, so I turn it off and switch back to dropping eaves on Lolla kids.

That kid's talking about Ween now, as if Ween were a force nature that shaped the hearts and minds of the teens of the nineties, and I want to tell him he's stupid because Ween was basically known for "Push the Little Daisies" and remained relatively obscure until about 2001 and then became retroactively relevant.

I don't, though.

...

It's just that I don't like to sleep alone

2011-07-18T03:11:00.004-05:00

Listen to the song because you've never heard it before. Because this was one of the only songs we recorded when I was in the band. I mean, we recorded it on a Mac, but whatever. I like it better than the ones we recorded professionally. Still, I'm going to find our recording of "Run to the Hills" if it kills me.

So I can play this song, yes. I did play this song. Many, many times. Not very well, but fuck it. Everyone else in the band was amazing. Xtine is singing this song, she wrote it, she arranged it, she should get back into music. I'm not really building this up properly. I wish I had some telling anecdote, but I don't feel like thinking of one right now.

Then last week I was feeling nostalgic, since it's the five year anniversary of Lewis' death, and the end of immortality. I decided to make a video of all of our theme nights. No one else participated in these things, we just did them every Thursday on our own. I've said so many things about hanging out with The Whores that I feel like I should just link all of it instead of repeating myself, letting you decide whether or not you want to read about us.

SO NOW FOR THE WORLD RASSLES BLOG PREMIERE OF "SPOONING BUDDIES"

day 26 - A song you can play on an instrument (or something like that)

...

Don't expect him to thank or forgive you

2011-07-12T11:33:00.005-05:00

The fourth of July left me lonely and covered in bug bites, like I sprouted fifty-seven fat, red nipples in the most inconvenient areas of my body, including my forehead and six of my toes. I looked amazing. Every time I stepped onto my rug I would fist up my toes and scratch them along the shag and breathe. Simple pleasures, really. Itch fulfillment and drippy air-conditioning window units propped up on rocks. And a new ceiling fan, one that doesn't spin like a renegade hula hoop. You know, for kids. Now the itching is all gone, but those fucking red bumps are still there, and I wish they itched with the same ferocity of the Tuesday-era bug bites.

Remember the good old days, like last Tuesday? When you paid the price for fun with uncomfortable tingling, but you could vanquish the fuck out of it with a scrape? Because you're a fighter, and you don't take no crap out of nobody. Mosquitoes are fucking loitering hooligans, but they can't scare me. I wear my weekend festivities on my forehead, and everyone knew I spent a warm night outside and my only regret was a lack of bug spray.

Sure, everyone probably spent a warm night outside that weekend. Let me have my pride.

I tried scratching my toes on the carpet this morning just for shits, but without satisfying an itch, just barely quieting feeble memories of last Tuesday when I could still feel them. I miss it, oddly. As annoying and uncomfortable as those bug bites were, I preferred having scars to not.

day 25 - a song that makes you laugh

...

Life's Like a Movie, Write Your Own Ending

2011-06-22T14:09:00.002-05:00

Some people are gently handcrafted model ships, proud, stable miniatures of the USS Constitution or a romantic Spanish galleon. They were filled with intent and hopes and are dearly loved, and they're bottled up and paraded around with honor and gratification. These are the girls I work with, the ones in their twenties. All younger than me, all with jobs requiring higher qualifications. They are smart, polite, friendly, elite. They went to important colleges and they live in classy neighborhoods; they exercise at least three days a week, they never take more than one cookie at a time, they drink out of those metal water bottles, they wear pencil skirts and sensible heels and shower everyday and they are always on time.

I'm sure, like I am with most people, that if they have any dreams that stray from the socially comfortable, they do not voice them. They could be dying inside, they could be human-shaped sacks of marbles, spilling slowly instead of in torrents. They could be truly happy and confident and pleased and successful. They could be secret artists or dream of hermitage. I don't know, because it's work, and they got their outsides on so well.

Some of us have caged mothers who are extremely private and lawful, and it scares me how much she fortifies because I learned to do it as well, and I wonder: is she happy? She would never tell. And we have fathers who carved faint traces of defiance into our lungs just because it was funny, just to see what would happen, and I'll tell you what happened: I can't breathe properly unless I'm dissident about something. Incompatible ideas and images are scrimshawed into my bones and they will always be battling each other, and sometimes I know he's prouder of me than anything and he's sad because he thinks no one sees it, so I'm constantly reassuring him when I'm not sure myself.

Then again, I may be no schooner, but maybe I'm more.

It's frustrating because I know I'm a dreamer, but then rationally I crush those dreams with temperance. I was not raised to trailblaze, because as successful as my parents were in giving me the confidence to believe in my thoughts and ideas, and as much as they encouraged creativity, they encouraged rationality so much more and I want to do anything and everything but I'm terrified of spending money and trusting people.

So I've reached a decision. Money can go fuck itself. I don't even care anymore. I'm tired of penny pinching, I'm tired of making lists of things that I will do when I have the money to do it, because you know what? I am NEVER going to have that much money. Never, unless I finish number 6 on my list: write bestselling novel and reap the rewards. But plots are so hard. I can do it. I CAN DO IT.

day 24 - a song to play at your funeral

I used it already, but fuck this meme. I used to imagine dying would be like Kermit's show at the end of the Muppet Movie, walking down a road and passing all of the people I loved over the years, and they're all serenading me with "Rainbow Connection." And then at my funeral everyone gets fucking wasted and they break things, talk shit about me and have a sing-a-long.

...

I can't take hand-me-down destiny

2011-06-02T13:08:00.002-05:00

day 23 - a song that you want to play at your wedding

I didn't know people thought about things like this. Picking a song to play at your "wedding" like I'm going to have one or something? That's like naming your children or your dog before you meet them. Makes no sense to me.

Sure, when I was little I imagined I had a giant red dog named Ox who had absolutely nothing to do with the giant red dog named Clifford. Ox was more feral and hyena-y and ate chipmunks and lilacs, because those were the two things that were most prominent in my parents' backyard. He was extremely protective of me. Oh, and I had an imaginary mustang named Astronaut who lived under the apple tree and I was the only one who could ride him because I was patient and kind and could totally speak horse. But I don't ever plan on owning a horse or a dog with those names.

Quaint little child, eh?

So I need to come up with a song to play at my wedding. Since I have no boyfriend, fiance, or possible marriage in sight, this seems pointless. But a meme is a meme, and memes are unstoppable.

Traditionally at weddings, the bride dances with her dad, correct? Because my dad and I have an anthem, and this is it.

Sure, it's not exactly appropriate for a father/daughter dance, but fuck that, right? That's what makes the song perfect. People will probably scoff and wonder why we aren't playing "Butterfly Kisses" or "Wonderful Tonight" or some other fucking nancypants song, and them I will REFER TO THE LYRICS.

Although apparently now it's all hip to start dancing with your dad and then bust out Soulja Boy choreography halfway through the song to show that you're his special little girl, but ya'll can pal around be goofy cuz u don't take sh*t 2 srsly.

(Sorry, I have this weird obsession right now with sporadic, mean-tempered textspeak)

On another note: My boss (I have two) and her wife got their civil union license yesterday. Hooray for separate but equal! You lesbians have to use the lesbian bathroom, but at least we let you go inside now.

...

Drink a toast to never

2011-05-25T12:40:00.004-05:00

I stopped feeling sorry for myself in public because I never got anyone to sympathize with me - oh, look at that independent, self-sufficient white girl from an upper/middle class family who has a job, a home, and a loving family, fucking boo waaah hoooooo, I sor you sad, have 10 cookies shaped liked stars cz u r 1 LOLZ!!!!

* * * * * * * * * *

Right? Why don't I get that? It's all, "shut the fuck up and stop feeling sorry for yourself."

day 22 - a song that you listen to when you’re sad

That's legit, though. You know what's better than dealing with your issues? Not realizing you have them in the first place. Issues cripple your psyche. I didn't even know I had issues until someone told me I had issues, and then all of a sudden it was like, "I have issues? Where are they?" And then I found them, like a pile of bones at the foot of the stairs. When you throw 'em down one bone at a time they don't seem like much, but bones don't go away. They just accumulate.

Sorting through them is a solitary activity, and "After Hours" is my soundtrack. Lou, Lou, Lou...how did you know? I never realized I could identify with something so much and feel so isolated because of it.

...

You Take Your Own Life In Your Hands

2011-05-23T18:07:00.005-05:00

day 21 - a song that you listen to when you’re happy

"Wull, yeah," Michelle shrugs and cuddles her shins. "Just on the floor."

"Just...on the floor."

"Just on the floor."

I taking a long pull from my beer. "I don't get it."

"Well, it doesn't occur to people to...you know. Look down."

She's right. I set the beer on the table, pick up a pair of scissors and start cutting the paper in front of me. "And you just find it there. All the time."

"It's not just me," she says, delicately peeling a piece of tape from the back of a pinwheel and shifting its location. We're making pinwheels. It's very Martha Stewart. "I mean, I have friends that work at bars and they say that after their shift when they're cleaning up they find a ton. You know, people get drunk and they're stupid. They drop things."

"I just don't buy it. I mean, I've found like a dollar before. Usually in my own pocket. Or something. Or a nickel. I find nickels. I find fuckloads of nickels."

"No, I don't even bother with, like, nickels," she laughs and shakes her head, thick black curls shading her face. "Sometimes I'll find a dollar and I'll just be disappointed."

"So you're finding what? Big bills?"

"Usually. I found sixty the other day at Rainbo, just three crisp twenties laying on the floor. Yesterday there was a ten crumpled up on my lawn. I just pick 'em up. You know, and like, drug dealers are bad with money and they drop things all the time. I find cigarettes too, but I don't smoke so I'll just give those away." She turns to set her finished pinwheel on the ground, then tilts her head with a soft pause, staring at the thing.

"It looks good," I say. She smiles and drops it on the pile. "So just cigarettes? You just...pick up loose cigarettes? Or packs?"

"Oh, like, packs. I wouldn't pick up just like, a cigarette."

"No, of course not. That would be ridiculous."

Xtine laughs from the other side of the table, but Michelle just keeps talking. "And then when I find like, a pack of cigarettes I'll give them to a friend in exchange for drinks."

"Prison currency."

She laughs. "Yeah, I guess."

"This is bonkers. I can't believe you just find money. Like laying around. Did you know about this?" I flap a maniacal pinwheel at Xtine, who is jamming wooden dowels into carved wine corks and getting glue all over her kitchen table.

"Michelle is just lucky," Xtine giggles, wiping her fingers on her skirt. She hands me the dowel, and I fasten the pinwheel to the wine cork with a thumbtack and give it a spin. "Oh, they look so fucking good."

"Your wedding is going to be awesome," Michelle tells Xtine.

"I know," Xtine laughs. "Everyone is going to be so jealous. And we're almost done! But I'm thinking about starting a pinwheel sweatshop. Michelle, you ready to get back into the work force?"

Not sure if I heard right, I ask, "You're not working right now?"

Michelle looks sheepishly through her hair and shakes her head. "Mmm mmm."

"For how long? Does it suck?"

"Three years or so."

I stop making pretty pretty pinwheels to look up in disbelief. "What the hell? So you don't have a job? Other than finding money?"

She laughs and doesn't answer. "Right now I'm making wedding decorations in exchange for cookies, lentil soup and wine." After a brief silence, she adds, "But I can't give away all of my secrets."

"I had no idea finding money and cigarettes was such a lucrative business."

"I dunno. I find at least thirty or forty dollars a week. You just need to look down. That's what people don't realize," she shrugs, pulls her knees closer to her chest and starts cutting another piece of paper.

"I'm so confused."

"Just, like I said. Just look down. It's there."

...

The Chosen Whites

2011-05-18T16:40:00.006-05:00

day 20 - a song that you listen to when you’re angry

"Please can you just let me back in?"

"Back of the line."

"Five minutes ago you said I could get back in when I got off the phone. Five minutes ago."

"Well now you have to go to the back of the line," the bouncer snaps without looking me in the eye.

"What the fuck? Seriously?" The bouncer ignores me, looking over my head. My eyebrows smoosh. "I don't have my ID," I sneer.

"Not my problem."

"Yeah it is. I'm not the one who goes back on my word, dick."

Fraya slides between me and the bouncer and turns. "Ross, calm down." Bouncer's eyes flicker towards her and then back to the line. Someone else comes up and he let's them right through.

"See, Fraya! This is why I fucking hate coming to bars in this neighborhood, because this dick won't let us back in because HE GETS OFF ON WITHHOLDING," I push past her. "Come on, guy. Just please let me back in LIKE YOU SAID YOU WOULD."

"Not my problem."

"Yeah it is, because my ID is inside. With my credit card. With the bartender."

"Not my problem."

"Ross--"

"Actually, your fucking retarded bouncing system IS your problem."

"--be nice."

"NICE? It's three in the morning and we're surrounded by fucking douchebags" (I'm sure that did nothing to get anyone in line on my side) "who buy their jeans fashionably fucking torn and speak in Jersey Shore quotes. NICE has no meaning here when you're dealing with goons on a power trip. Nice gets you ignored. So if I have to yell LIKE A BITCH, I will."

Fraya grabs my elbow and pulls me back. "Ross. Let me handle this, okay? All right? You're being an asshole."

"I'm being an asshole? OF COURSE I'M BEING AN ASSHOLE. I'm being an asshole because THAT FUCKING BOUNCER OVER THERE HAS FUCKING MEMENTO MEMORY AND WON'T LET US INSIDE."

"Listen. Ross. Ross," she growls. "You are being a bitch and you don't make any sense. It's Friday. Friday. Partyin partyin, that's all they're doing. Ross? Listen to me. Tomorrow. ROSS. Yesterday was Thursday, and tomorrow? Tomorrow is Saturday."

I take a deep breath. "And Sunday comes afterwards."

"Partyin partyin--"

"Yeah." I smile.

"Okay. Just stand here and let me do this."

The bouncer let's some hoe bag through the door who was definitely not in line. I lift up on my toes. "Fucking EUNUCH."

Fraya giggles, and tries to be stern with me. "He probably doesn't know what that word means."

"Fraya. Be nice. I don't want to be at this shitty bar anyway. PLEASE CAN I CLOSE MY TAB?"

The bouncer doesn't even look at me, just checks another ID and says to me, clearly, "Back of the line."

"What the FUCK is your damage? You know I'm going to yell at you until you either get my shit or you let me get it myself. You think I want to give this bar any more money?"

"Back of the line."

"Get me my shit and I will have no reason to stay."

"You gotta get in line."

"And then do what? Argue with you in half an hour when I still don't have my ID? That makes no fucking sense. You were not hired for your ability to fucking reason and...rationalize. And shit."

Fraya squeezes her way up to the bartender wearing her apologetic face. "Listen, I'm sorry my friend is being such a bitch, but we gave her whiskey earlier and she just lost $150 at the casino."

"AND YOUR HAIR IS FUCKING DUMB."

"Could you please just, please let us in so we can close our tabs and we'll leave right away. Please? Otherwise we're both going to have to listen to her bitching."

"THAT'S FUCKING RIGHT."

"And I don't think either of us want that."

The bouncer looks at her. Looks at me. "Close your tab and leave."

"Thank you," Fraya says. "Thank you so much. Come on, Ross."

"Fuck you, I won't do what they tell me."

Aaaaaaaand I'm thirty.

...

I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours.

2011-05-07T14:00:00.002-05:00

day 19 - a song from your favorite album

Picking my favorite album isn't very hard. Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, easy peasy lemon squeezy. Makes me pissed at the world, giddy because I get the joke, longing for romance, relieved at my self-sufficiency, cheated out of peace, serenely relaxed, embarrassed by my capriciousness, guilty for being selfish, impressed by my personal complexity, and giggling at the ridiculousness of everything. It spoke to me at what, sixteen? Yeah. I'm still a bit shocked every time I hear it.

I was loitering at Record Swap, listening in on those music guys talking music. Back then, in high school, I was in love with up to seventeen boys simultaneously and most of them never spoke to me, but half of them hung out at Record Swap and I would go there after work at Cock Robin or Bookzellers or wherever I worked that day and just meander and listen to them talk about music. Then I would walk over towards them with my purchase, and one of them would slip off the counter and ring me up on the register. We never made eye contact. They never showed any recognition, not here or at school, and neither did I.

My shift would end and I would decide to walk over there, thinking, Today. Today I'm going to talk to them. And I'm going to say, "Hey, I heard Pipebomb is playing at Limonjullo's on Sunday. I think I saw you at their last show at Off the Alley" or something cool like that but I never did.

So yeah, I was loitering at Record Swap and browsing when I heard them talking about me.

"Dude, does she ever buy anything?"

"Sometimes."

"Don't think I've ever seen it. It's weird."

"She usually gets like stuff like my dad likes."

"She's like always here."

"I think she works next door."

"Oh." There's a pause, and I pretend to be fascinated by the back cover of something, glowing that I am the topic of their conversation. Do they think I can hear them? Probably not. "I think she just comes here because you make her wet."

Okay, that is...the fuck? I crack my jaw a couple of times while he giggles at himself.

"Dude." Other guy drops his voice. "I hope not."

My arms tighten up and I lock my knees, just staring straight ahead at the wall, while "dude I hope not" echoes over and over and over again in my mind. I knew it. I fucking knew it. I am repulsive. I blame my mother. Now I am FURIOUS. I take a few deep breaths squeeze my fists, which is counterproductive but whatever, and decide I'm going to say something. I am going to go over there and let them know I can hear them. I'm going to give them a fucking lashing.

With a devil grip on whatever's in my hand and the resolve of carpet-stain remover, I make my way towards the register, head high. I glare at both of them. They are just...so...fucking...hot. We could have been friends, I think. We really could. I was sure they were different. I was sure that they would recognize we had a common interest in music that would last us years in conversations and banter, I was sure that one of them was about to say to the other, "but she's kind of cute, you know?" and I was sure I would get near them and they would laugh and call me over and say, "Come on, we know you heard us. We've been trying to get your attention for months" and I was sure one of them would say "but my girlfriend would kill me if I talked to another girl" and I was sure I could go over there all coy and smile at them and say, " Just this please. Doesn't-" I look down at whatever I'm holding "-Bob Dylan get you all wet?" Bob Dylan? Where did I pick this up? Shit. Come on boys. Give me something. Please. Just help me. Just a little. Please.

Please?

Nothing, they just pretend they don't see me and I pretend I don't see them and that I'm not buying anything today and I walk right out the door clutching this fucking album that I pulled from the Classics section. Stolen album.

It's much easier to be brave on behalf of others than on behalf of myself.

Looking back I don't think I could have stolen anything better. After that I started scooping up Mr. Zimmerman like candy, and I would feel small and I would cry and I would feel overwhelmed and I would laugh. Sometimes people give me shit for being a huge Bob Dylan fan. Inevitably, someone will just tell me about how much he sucks live, as if seeing an icon growl and sputter at 70 years old (a) makes them an expert on anything and (b) will convince me to reject a musical catalog spanning a full fifty years.

Not gonna lie though, all I want to do after listening to this song is stroll down a sunny street on a weekday, fantasize about guys that don't return my affections, smoke too many cigarettes and throw bottles abandoned houses, thankful to be alive.

...

no wall

2011-05-05T16:00:00.002-05:00

I wrote this last night and found it just now. I had been drinking. I love it.

day 18 - a song that you wish you heard on the radio

Originally I couldn't think of what song I should put here, because I don't listen to the radio so I never know what's on there. Fact is, it's a school night and I've been drinking because I cut six or seven inches off of my hair and I haven't gotten the chance to show it off yet and all I want to do is listen to the Beastie Boys because let's face it: they're my favorite.

I don't listen to the radio is because it's annoying. Just is. Sure, sometimes it's fun to blast B96, but only when I'm driving and only when Gyna is in the car, and she lives in Germany now so fuck that. Gyna? Move back here. You have to see my haircut. Then sometimes I'll flip on NPR, but everything on NPR is loaded with seriously brainwashed entitled smuggery (people who listen to NPR think that people who don't listen to NPR are automatically uneducated for not using alternate news sources but they never stray from NPR themselves, ergo, people who listen to NPR are fucking idiots. Plus, I like Fox News. Geraldo is like a South Park character), so that usually lasts about three minutes.

Anyway, I'd rather write or philosophize than listen to other people talk about things I don't care about.

I wish I heard every song from this album on the radio:

because Funhouse is about fucking.

I know what you're thinking: Rassles, what would you know about fucking? Okay, so, not much jerkface. Thanks. But we've met. I'd recognize that sound anywhere, and this album is just a whole bunch of instruments having dirty-ass sex with each other and it should be on the radio all the time. Just to make things interesting. If I were a stripper, I'd dance to this. I bet MCA is a huge fan of this. Poor MCA. Man, fuck you, cancer.

...

Raping the Women and Wasting the Men

2011-05-04T17:36:00.007-05:00

I am interrupting my memetic programing to tell you this: the song categories for this meme were created by assholes.

Because of this, the original days 16 and 17, "a song that you used to love but now hate" and "a song that you hear often on the radio" will be eliminated and new categories created.

So I bring you days 16 and 17, Two Songs I Dominate While Driving.

Why would I want to show people music that sucks? And I don't listen to the radio. Too many commercials. And I don't have an iPod, so there better not be any iPod categories in the near future.

I am not a big fan of Bright Eyes (Conor Oberst's other band, which you prolly already knew but I'm saying it anyway because I had no idea who Oberst was when I first heard this song because Bright Eyes sucks) and the Desaparecidos had this brilliantly horrible hollerin' garage-feedback shitty anthem rock thing going on, like Black Flag covering Springsteen.

Once someone made me a CD with this song on it - Muffy, of course, because I get all of my music from Muffy, Xtine, and my dad - and it makes me wish I'd just gotten away with robbing a bank.

And this next song, well.

Don't even pretend you don't like it. DON'T EVEN.

When I was a very mediocre keys player/back up singer for a band that really, really could have been big had the members stuck with music instead of taking a "hiatus" to get an "MBA" or go to "law school" so they could get "real jobs" and stop working at "restaurants" and "UPS," we did a cover of this for a battle of the bands and we goddamn killed it. We practiced constantly. Fucking constantly. We were determined to play it in under 3:30 while keeping faithful - which is like running the Kentucky Derby, by the way - and BY FUCKY WE DID. Thank god. Every day we'd practice, get hammered, and close with a sweaty, screamy sloppy Iron Maiden cover, and eventually we decided to just do it for real, and we tightened it and cranked it up. I'm going to see if I can find a recording of it, because we were awesome.

We were competing against all these heavy metal bands that hated us since we sounded like a cross between Queen and Os Mutantes and a marching band, because Xtine is a hipster who plays the theremin listens to things like 1960's Brazilian psychedelic rock, plus we had about nine people on stage. And a violin. So these guys, over the course of several nights, all Danzig-ed out and heckling and jerking themselves into a Faygo frenzy had to shut their yaps when we speed-metaled the hell out of them. Their shitty bands couldn't do that. I wanted to cover "Ace of Spades" too, just so we could show those fuckers what's what (and because I would have gotten to sing that, not Xtine) but no one else was on board.

...

Bang Bang Shoot 'Em Up Destiny

2011-04-13T16:06:00.007-05:00

Day 15, a song that describes you, also meems are for lamewads

If "Rainbow Connection" is spring, "Spaceman" is September. Not in a Sinatra kind of way, of course, or at least my thirties better not be my September years because that would be like drinking beer before it ferments. So like, barley dipped in water. This better be the motherfucking May of my years, with blooming and getting drunk on porches and Red Rover, Red Rover, send Rassles right over.

It's not that the lyrics necessarily describe what's going on in my life like a Zack Snyder movie but this is just another one of my favorite songs, and it's what plays in my head when I'm going through the motions of waking up in the morning.

Okay. Press play.

If I'm ever the star of a morning preparatory montage this is the fucking song I want to play in the background, and not some bullshit Sheryl Crowe cover that the director had recorded or something just because I'm a girl so a girl has to be singing when I drag open the blinds to welcome the sun. I have a wide, glorious window covering the front wall of my apartment, and it sucks in the cold and owns in the sun.

Whatever, so when I'm shaving my legs I don't want a fucking leg stand-in, okay? You will watch me shave my turtle legs and you'll like it, especially when I knick my ankle like a fucking amateur. You'll like it hard. Just like you liked it when I alternated hitting snooze on my dual alarm clocks for half an hour and then dutch-ovened myself, because it's a good way to get me to scramble out of bed and I like to fucking party.

After I shower, I brush my teeth, dribbling toothpaste down my cleavage. I don't notice it until I change clothes after work ten hours into the future (BABOOM! Time travel). Then I oggle, but ultimately dismiss, the dental floss.

Cut to me standing in front of my closet just wearing an ill-fitting bra and a pair of polar bear boxer shorts that have a prominent hole tattering across one creamy ass cheek (no ass stand-ins, either, not in my fucking house). You'll be able to see an unfortunate tan line over my chest and shoulders, which I forgot about until I looked down just now.

Because you see, in this hypothetical montage, I got home from vacation in LA just last week with a wicked bad sunburn and sore calves from wearing goddamn high heels at a Beverly Hills wedding (told you I liked to party) and since then I've turned sort of...golden and freckled. I alternate pasty, freckled, and golden.

So I take a shirt from a hanger that I haven't worn in over a year and slip it on, but it buttons tightly across my boobs and I look like a fat freak. I consider duct tape and then stomp and rip the shirt off, flinging clinking button shards across the floor. From now on all important and wearable shirts will have snaps, and I turn to look for the fallen button and see that shit my blinds are open.

I drop quick, crouching low because the window ledge hits my knees, and creep over to the window to lower the blinds speedily and discreetly, but I am not an expert blind-lowerer and I always accidentally pull it wrong because you have to do that thing, you know, where you pull the string horizontally, but if you don't get it just right then shit, those motherfuckers snap up like a rat trap and you're left standing in your ladyknickers in front of an open window.

Of course I live across the street from an old Ukrainian church full of old Ukrainian people and why didn't you put on a nicer bra this morning, you dirty underwear hag? More importantly, why didn't you just flip the blinds open with the little plastic stick thing earlier? Ever think of that? No, you didn't, because you don't think. You know what happens when you let your guard down? Tony Soprano gets shot, that's what happens, and why are you just standing in front of your open window like a fucking retard? (Don't say retard, you have to stop doing that, you were doing so well!) Shit. Pay attention. Get down. NOW. .

I snap myself shut faster than the blinds snapped open and wonder if anyone saw me, but I realize that I was too busy thinking about myself to notice that there are other people in the world who like, you know. Exist. People are always walking their dogs right now, going to the bus, those kids that get high in the alley over there before school.

I decide to own it, rising, fists akimbo, lording over the sidewalk just ten feet below. I glare around the street so I can stare down my audience with the pride and the fury of the half-naked bourgeois, like an empress with no clothes, but there's no one there, no old ladies or dogs or stoned high schoolers or nothing. I'm slightly disappointed. And very cold.

Quit fucking around.

Sure, now the blinds close easily.

...

unless you step out into the light

2011-04-08T02:00:00.004-05:00

Day 14 - a song that no one would expect you to love

I guess I picked the wrong day for Luda, eh? Hello? Is this thing on?

Apparently Luda love is limited. That's so sad. I celebrate the man's entire catalog.

A song no one would expect me to love...I'm not sure. It depends on who you talk to, you know? Some people are surprised about Luda, some are surprised about Bob Dylan. Some focus on my unrelenting addiction to Foreigner, and lately KISS' Dynasty, mostly because it sounds like they goddamn wish they were Foreigner. I love Elvis when he screws up then mumblegrowls and giggles to himself, I love how Joe Strummer plays likes he's fucking the shit out of his guitar, I love it when Stevie Wonder breaks it down just at the end of a song.

So let's just delve into the sadly hopeful and sentimental.

My favorite Daniel Johnston songs are easily "Story of an Artist" and "I Live My Broken Dreams" which is predictable if you know me, and doesn't everyone who reads this regularly know me well enough, by now? But I also love, love, love the one you all know, the one he's most known for writing, and it's the one that's hardest to admit. So honestly, I should have posted this song yesterday and then just slammed you bastards with Luda today, and I would say more but I really just want to hear the song right now.

And if you've never seen The Devil and Daniel Johnston, well, go educate yourself.

...

Who them girls you be with when you be ridin through?

2011-04-07T08:00:00.009-05:00

Day 13, a song that is a guilty pleasure

First things first. I love Ludacris. I don't feel guilty about this at all, so does it count? Let's say yes, because someone is always surprised. I'm really not embarrassed by my love for Luda, but I'm not embarrassed by anything I love so fuck it. He's in a movie, I watch it. He does a song, I get it. Did you know if you go low enough, Ludacris will appear in your mirror? True story. I got lower than I ever really thought I could. Yeah, I practiced in front of that mirror. Just in case.

I have no story, no background, no explanation. Only joy and love.

I wish I could post the "dirty" version. How asinine is life when you can only watch a fucking Luda video with all those words glocked out? Also, I'm about 500% sure Luda and the Beastie Boys have better music videos than basically everyone ever, just for sheer ridiculousness.

...

I'm about to ruin Sucker Punch for EVERYONE and I don't even care because I sympathized with the dragons

2011-04-06T08:00:00.012-05:00

Days 11 and 12, a song from your favorite band and a song from a band you hate and I'm sorry for reviewing a movie but I'm very angry because this movie was horrible

You know, whenever I want to escape my horrible real life where John Hamm is hammering an icepick into my heavily lined-eye, I like to escape to a magical Sailor Moony realm in my head where I'm a whore in a whorehouse where the whores aren't even proper whores with sexual providence and snappy comebacks and drug addictions, they're all weepy angelic ballet dancers who are blondely baffled that one keeps knives in kitchens (they are women, and whores at that, so illogical stupidity is forgivable), because kitchens are mysterious and vile just like potatoes and fat people. Apparently no one keeps knives in drawers or in wooden countertop knife holsters but everyone has shimmery tactical shotguns and thigh-highs and soldiers bleed steam (PUNK!) and it's totally okay to go around slitting the throats of adorable baby dragons napping on beds of bones hidden in the bowels of Mordor, and then the whores all kill terminators with their samurai swords on the train that's going to contaminate all of the water in Gotham and throw Molotov cocktail tantrums elbow-first like sex pansydolls with ginormous blinky-eyes. And then Don Draper is all, "I'm starting to think lobotomies are old hat, this is my last one I swear, and then I'm going into advertising" and all the rapey people simultaneously arrive at the enlightening realization that rape is wrong, and hey guys, I don't think this is a good idea because she has the golden sacrificial face of an ANGEL and that urinal hasn't been cleaned since the first time we raped someone in here back in the good ole days o' rapin' but lately they bitches been gettin' stabby.

So there were pretty okay fight scenes sometimes, although I never got the impression that these girls were kicking ass so much as they had really easy targets (you trained your men to fight in 300, do us a favor and make your women do the same, asshole), and I'm glad Zack Snyder at least tried, embarrassingly so, but you know what Snyder? Shut the fuck up. The best part of your movie was when you started killing whores because you couldn't think of anything else to do with them. It was hilarious.

Back to the meme.

So I couldn't decide if I should post the hand-painted original video, which is awesome, but a little too ADD and seizury for me right now after a night of Sucker Punch.

And I'm not going to post a video from a band I hate, because right now the thing I hate most is the soundtrack of Sucker Punch and its literal lyrical narration with grrrrl power covers of songs that were perfect to begin with.

...

Apparently it's Emily Browning singing the covers, and she's the main actress. That makes things a little bit okay-er since she utters two sentences in total. You should have just made it a battle musical escapist world and nixed the whorehouse. Poorly done, Snyder. Call me next time and I will Tim Gunn things for you.

...

Lord, I Can't Even Live In Peace

2011-04-05T10:43:00.007-05:00

The reason I never do stupid meme shit is not just because usually it's stupid meme shit (even though I'm trying to use it as a vehicle to tell stories instead of just like, you know, because I think you care about songs I've heard at one point in my life, as if I'm the only person ever to hear ELO ever, like I'm enlightening anyone or swelling their musical knowledge as I swell their Rassical knowledge, like I matter to anyone but me but really this train is all about me. Dammit, use your words, Rass, do not ramble on so) but it's because I just don't have the gumption to post every day just because some intangible rule tells me to do it.

This, of course, is the exact same reason I had problems in school. Fuck your timetable, you'll get my homework when it's ready. Fuck your timetable, I'll send my resume when it's ready. I'll call you back when I'm ready, I'll do that report when I'm ready, I'll come over when I'm ready, I'll stand up when I'm ready.

Days 9 and 10, bullshit categories

The other big problem, of course, is that I don't like what your idea is. Who wrote this stupid ass list? A song that I can dance to? I will dance to anything, really, as long as I feel like dancing. A song that makes me fall asleep? Why would I listen to a song that makes me fall asleep? This is retarded. Don't say retarded. Shit.

Instead, I've decided to include my favorite song to sing in the shower provided there is no one else in my apartment, immediately followed by my favorite cover of my favorite song to sing in the shower provided there is no one else in my apartment.

I'm a big Chicago blues fan, so of course I've gotta hollaback to Willie Dixon, and Koko Taylor is just fucking growling and bonkers, and really? Go sing this song in the shower. It will change your life.

The Detroit Cobras are one of my favorites, even though they're strictly a cover band. But if I could sing like anyone I'd want to sing like Rachel Nagy.

My ideas are better than your ideas.

...

Hielten sich für Captain Kirk

2011-04-01T15:07:00.003-05:00

Day 8: a song that you know all the words to

December 30, 2010. I walk up to a DJ at a bar. "Hey. Can I ask you a question?"

He looks down, raises his eyebrows. Slides the bridge of his shades down his nose and back up again. "Bitch, if you ask me to play Chumbawumba or Baha Men you can just go sit yo' ass back down."

Joey Lawrence whoa. I just start laughing. "Dude. Turn down your shitty Soulja Boy/UB40 remix. No one's dancing and I want to have a conversation with my friends." I walk back to my booth, cackling. "Dick."

I sit down at the table and scoff the story back to my friends. "It's just horseshit. Do I look like the type of person who listens to goddamn Chumbawumba?"

"Well, when you get knocked down you do get back up again," Sean says.

I narrow my eyes at him. "Sean. I expect better from you."

He giggles and shrugs. "Well, you're wearing a shirt from 1997. That guy reads people like you read the liner notes for Tubthumping."

"Better."

"Wait. Is your shirt really from 1997?" Meatball pipes in.

"I can't keep track of these things. But do I dress the same way I did in high school? Yes. Basically. Still, I mean come on. I never listened to Chumbawumba."

"Yes you did," MoLinder inserts herself. "You know all the words! I've heard you sing it in the bathroom. You know you cruised to Tubthumping in high school. Don't lie."

"That was when I was drunk by myself, ass," I glare at MoLinder. "Besides, that was hilarious. I kept myself entertained for hours."

There's a pause, and Meatball bites. "What were you--"

"Pissing. The night away."

"HA!" Sean freaks out. "You do know all the words. That DJ was right about you. Don't fight it. It's a song that reminds you of the good times."

"It's a song that reminds me of the better times."

And the sing-a-long began.

That's basically just a story that I wanted to tell. I really don't want to subject anyone to "Tubthumping." I know the words to a shitload of songs. I know all the words to basically all of the songs I know. I can hear a song once, twice, and repeat it back to you if I'm actually listening to it.

So I sang this at a wedding once.

Honestly, I used to know all the words, aber Deutscher ist schwierig so I basically just make up words that sound like the lyrics and no one can tell the difference because I am amazing. Once I sang it for ze Germans. They thought it was funny.

...

Before this, did you really know what live was?

2011-03-31T10:00:00.006-05:00

Day 7: a song that reminds you of a certain event

Muffy was the first friend I made in college in 1999, and she stuck, surprisingly. She was cool. She listened to Alkaline Trio and the Pixies and other bands I don't remember or give a shit about, but music was her thing. She introduced me to Modest Mouse and Promise Ring (of course, this was before everyone became a fucking sell out. Muffy was very anti-selling out. I think I learned to care about that from her as well, although I had a similar mindset towards certain filmmakers). I forced her into a more in-depth understanding of Stevie Wonder, Led Zeppelin, and the Kinks (at 18, I was a musical traditionalist). She smoked a shitload of weed, dyed her hair weekly and housed everyone at Goldeneye. I think. She could have been horrible, but she was the only one with an N64. I grew up playing Sega.

So one day, some time into freshman year, we're stuffing towels under the door of her dorm room so no smoke gets in the hallway. There's about six of us in there, including some extremely cute boys that I had never met that terrified me down to my girl parts, but Muffy was friends with like, every cute boy ever so I wasn't surprised. I didn't smoke weed at all, I was just there to play Goldeneye.

"Music, Rass," Muffy yells while she packs the bowl. Dudes are talking and doing that dude laugh. I am very nervous. Everyone in the room is so cool and attractive, and they aren't freaking out about getting caught and sweating uncontrollably - we need to open a window - no, nevermind, they're open - this is like being in a movie, and I'm hanging out with the cool people, and these guys would have definitely have ignored me in high school.

My hands shake as I pop in People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm and skip to track 8, because hip hop is a genre Muffy and I have yet to cover, and she snaps to attention, because what white girls from the suburbs listen to Tribe Called Quest?

"YES." Muffy exhales. "This is the shit." She passes the bowl to a dark-haired young man with insane eyelashes and white teeth. I decide that I love him.

"What, what is this?" The skinniest boy asks.

"Old school, dude," Muffy laughs. "This shit is old school."

"Tribe Called Quest," I venture and then stop talking.

I stretch out my legs and glance around, trying to look nonchalant. What would make me look nonchalant? Shit. I start singing along. "If you feel the urge to freak, do the jitterbug."

Muffy laughs and joins me, but she only knows the last few words of every line. The guys are watching us, amused. I start to get into it. Muffy gets into it. This is the first song we played, in our one-month friendship, that we both knew and loved. We jump up and bounce around, doing the best damn Q-Tip imitation we can pull together, and we're so fucking into it, we got call and response, we got synchronized moves we so didn't plan in advance, and we're awesome.

Skinny guy speaks up again during the musical break. "Yeah, but what's the like, background? I know this."

I scoff at him. "Lou Reed. 'Walk on the Wild Side.' Duh." This is the only reason I know about Tribe: because I know about Lou Reed. I don't tell them that, though. I want them to believe I am worldly and multicultural.

"Ohhhhhhh." I hear the dark-haired guy say, "I'm so glad when people know music."

"Can I kick it? YES YOU CAN!"

"I think my older brother listens to this."

"Mine too! That has to be it. I can't believe I never realized how good this band was. Now I wanna hear that other song. The background song."

"That is a dope idea."

"What was it again?"

"That 'Wild Side' song."

"Oh yeah."

"Mr. Dinkins, would you please be my mayor?" me and Muffy shout, and giggle. I turn to the skinny guy and sing, "And all the colored girls say, 'doo doodoo. doodoo doodoodoo..."

"Oh, THAT song!" They are all really excited that I know what I'm talking about. This, by the way, was before we all officially discovered the internet and all its marvels. This was back when I just knew shit and solved people's trivia debates. I loved knowing shit and being celebrated for it.

I flop down onto Muffy's bed after the song and breathe, smiling to myself. The dark-haired boy (Matt. His name is Matt) leans over to me, and gives me the first of rare compliments I've received on my appearance. "Dude," he says, staring at my face. "You have awesome eyes." I hold my breath and just return the stare, because I'm afraid if I don't he'll forget he was talking to me and everything will fade away. "Adam!" he says, still staring. "Come check out this chick's eyes."

The skinny guy crawls over. "Whoa."

"Dude."

"Dude."

Muffy comes over and stares at me, and the other two guys who'd been interjecting randomly lean over and look. They're all squinty and high-looking. I start to laugh. I feel like an exhibit. And I know that this is my first time existing so blatantly around any drug use, because in high school I was a severe buzzkill. And I promise you, I promise that no one else in the room is nearly as effected by the events as I am.

"Whoa."

"Dude," Muffy guffaws, "your eyes are like a fucking storm right now."

"This is awesome. Muffy, I'm so glad you invited this chick over."

...

Don't You Realize the Things We Did Were All For Real, Not a Dream?

2011-03-30T09:00:00.005-05:00

Day 6: a song that reminds you of somewhere

Once upon a time, I was unbeatable at Egyptian/European War/Rat Slap/Screw/Fuck/War.

You know. That one card game where you hit things.

Sean and I were sitting at a picnic table on a cliffside of Mount Shilthorn in Switzerland, looking down into a valley of cows and rainbows. Shit was pritty.

We played like, a fucking twelve hour game of E/E W/R S/S/F/W or something, drank no less than four bottles of wine and passed the hell out. The next morning we were both sure we'd won the previous nights game.

After a full day of bickering and a return to our hostel, Muffy demanded we play a second game to determine, once and for all, who was more bad ass at childish card games. Also, she wanted to prove herself worthy.

She was out quickly. Sean and I battled for hours, drinking mug after mug of mountaintop beer.

Things got interesting. Shit got wagered.

I won, of course. Proud new owner of a small Swiss Army Knife (guess where he got that), a red Zippo emblazened with Che Guevara (lame, I know, but it was important to him so it was important to me) and the crowning jewel: a glowing, vintage ELO belt buckle.

Oh, and his belt. I totally made him wear rope for a day while we hiked up the mountain. I fluttered about the valley and sang sweet, nostalgic, doo-woppy nothings to butterflies and waterfalls and a herd of shaggy Swiss ponies while he scowled from the rocks ahead, constantly dragging up his pants.

...

We Spend Our Lives On Trial

2011-03-29T11:00:00.009-05:00

This article just punches me in the chest, because I had to deal with that bullying shit for years (of course, I retaliated by yelling louder and pointing out how the things they loved were stupider). I still have to deal with that shit, although on a much smaller scale. I hate getting that look, that confused, oh-she's-one-of-those-girls looks. I don't have socially acceptable interests. At least not among extroverts. And by "extroverts" I mean "guys who don't live in a basement." Hey guys - GET OUT OF YOUR BASEMENT AND COME TO THE BAR.

It's easy to get addicted to being bullied after having it define you for years. Of course now I have this ridiculous arrogant air about me because yes, I was bullied for being smart and nerdy and not very feminine, so say it. Go on. Say what you're thinking.

And then it's my fucking turn.

They called me crazy because talking back, of course, is a sign of mental dysfunction. Teachers never stepped in, mostly because in high school the bullying is all sidelined and mental and pansy-assed. The smart kids (who were the biggest assholes) trap insults into class discussions during Literature of Romance and Tragedy, "I think it's commendable that Hester just bears all of the persecution with nobility. I admire that. It's always obnoxious when they fight back. Right Rassles? Wouldn't you agree?" The most neanderthal, and the rarest, hang out in the cafeteria near the quiet, greasy-haired kid in a black trenchcoat and combat boots and loudly talk shit about his clothes and music from a short distance. So I would walk over there in my little sweater vest and khakis (fuck you, mom) and call them gutless and make fun of their shoes or their hair or something and just walk away.

This did not make me popular. If anything they ignored me.

Of course, in college my behavior was a virtue. I think it's just because students didn't know me well enough to know that you're supposed to avoid me, like all those kids from kindergarten through the end of high school. Then again, in college we clung to the people we knew would have our backs, because that place was like a fucking battleground where everyone was fighting to be the most awesome.

So...now you know why I'm a fortress.

Day 5: a song that reminds you of someone

Basically every song reminds me of someone, it's just that sometimes that person is myself. I thought long and hard about this. Who would I honor with words, affection and song?

You better be reading this, asshole.

Gyna is moving to Germany in one month. This makes me very very sad. Gyna is leaving and now I'll be swimming in a sea of couples and pairs. Goddammit. Having someone like Gyna around, someone who perfectly balances the excruciatingly rational with the excruciatingly silly, is kind of nice.

You remember those guys I mentioned above, the ones who live in basements? Gyna is the girl they approach at the bar. It makes sense, she wears glasses and is roughly shaped like a superheroine. Sometimes I get eerie osmosis loiterers that stand close to me and laugh at my jokes but never say anything, just soak up my shine, but Gyna gets picked up and then they want to see her again.

That's because Gyna laughs readily, tells good jokes and engages in the ridiculous (like when she threw a Four Loko party with eight flavors of Four Loko chilling in wine coolers, plates of lavish cheeses and grapes on the vine, bowls of fruit, delicate crackers, and the 100 Sexiest Music Videos counting down on the TV), she's whipsmart and knows a lot about a lot of things. She is also very self-assured and fashionable, but the good kind of fashionable because she still hangs out with me when I wear Pumas and a t-shirt to a club (not that I go to clubs willingly but birthdays are birthdays) and she's all cleavage and fancy jackets and heeled boots with belts on them, even though she shakes her head and calls me an asshole (which is fine, because I know very well that I am being an asshole when I deliberately dress down so I don't have to talk to douchebags that hang out at fucking clubs which will let me in because my friends are hot).

I just noticed something when I was fielding through pictures: there are lots of pictures of me and Gyna going places and sitting on things, like motorcyles and barrels with saddles on them and strange hands.

Also, she rides in my sidecar. Or I am her driver. Not sure which is which.

So "Youth Gone Wild" is our official karaoke duet. There's really no reason for it other than the fact that it's a bad ass song.

...

I Know You'll Never Get Tired of Me. I Hope It Never Ends.

2011-03-28T09:00:00.001-05:00

Two parts in one day because yesterday was reserved for a LOST marathon.

I miss that compulsion to move closer to the TV, that "ssshhhhhh sshshhshshs it's back on" after every commercial break, I miss being dangerously invested in the characters. LOST was the best kind of addiction. It never let me down or left me disappointed. I trusted LOST more than I trusted my friends. Someday I will learn to believe I deserve to be invested in my own life instead.

Days 3 and 4, Songs that make you happy and sad, respectively.

First, the happy.

When I first moved to Chicago, my roommate and I used to sing this song to each other. I hadn't been away from home since college, and Xtine was a friend I made due to our mutual love for live band karaoke.

Xtine was (IS) a packrat. She saved everything and kept it on display, making tiny shoebox dioramas of trinkets and junk that we stapled all over the walls of the apartment. Puddle-foot army men gunning down tiny plastic horses from vending machines against a backdrop of old band fliers, a forest of metal jacks and finger monsters amidst dangling Korean key chains, a mosaic of Garbage Pail Kid cards behind a collection of dried roses, Happy Meal toys and one-hitters. Our apartment was a disaster of ashtrays, DVDs, tampons, spools of thread, half-finished glasses of wine, bras and high heels. We had a giant filing cabinet in our kitchen full of clothes and bottles of whiskey and bolts of fabric, and there were always instruments lying around. Whenever we sat down on the couch we'd have to shove over the keyboard and old bags of take-out. It always smelled like cigarettes and booze and hair dye. We spilled a jar of beads one week after I moved in and I still find them in corners, just after I'm sure I tracked down the last one.

We cleaned together about three times in two years. Usually I cleaned. It drove me bonkers, but I knew what I was getting into when I moved in. But whenever we did clean Xtine would pop on her iTunes, and we would sing.

I was so happy when she cleaned with me. Plus, you know. This song is awesome.

And now, the Sad.

THIS SONG MAKES ME FUCKING LOSE IT.

Fox and the Hound is probably the most depressing movie of all time because its message is so simple and pessimistic: you can't be friends with people who are different than you.

I can say with confidence that most of my friends are very different, but everyone is different, really. I don't believe in the mindless masses. Some people just make their differences more obvious.

In the end the things my friends all have in common are drinking, a penchant for the ridiculous, and storytelling. We tell good stories. We tell stories about shit we've done and about shit we want to do. We make boring stories sound exciting, and exciting stories sound better. We're at our best sitting around with booze and memories and the friends we make that stick around are the same.

I know this isn't a unique trait, but it's what brings us together. Some people bond over sports teams, loving their children, hating their boss, music, skiing, sex, neighborhoods, politics, fashion, LOST. We tell stories and we rarely run out of them.

And when that changes it's sad. When someone decides they've told enough stories and it's time to move on to children or work, I understand, even though I can't see anything but stories being my priority. But when their priorities shift to the extent that it pulls us apart, I think of this song and I cry.

...

Catch the Spit

2011-03-26T11:47:00.009-05:00

Day 2: your least favorite song

I have a very low tolerance for shrillness, for nasal voices, for...unpleasant sounds. I react violently, shaking in irritation and angry at whatever fuckhead is assaulting my ears.

Rush sucks. Geddy Lee makes me wish I carried a team of knives to stab my ear canal in case I hear this song and cant turn it off. I don't even know why I posted the video. I suppose it's because those are the "rules."

You know what? Fuck you, rules.

Lee can play the shit out of a bass (not in this song, though, because in this song he's basically all synth and when he switches to bass I just get angry and shout "MAKE UP YOUR MIND, GEDDY, YOU HONKY HOSER"), I'll give you that, but they couldn't find anyone else to sing lead vocals?

I hate the contrivance of the John Teshy synthesizer (yeah, I know, Rush is pre-John Tesh, but not in Rassles years because I knew about John Tesh before I knew about Rush), I hate how Lee's voice compliments absolutely no tangible instruments ever played by man except for maybe a theremin, which is just wagging your hand in radio waves anyway. I hate how their version of a modern-day rebel sounds like an annoying asshole that I don't want to be around. I hate how their idea of a rebel is Tom Sawyer, who I've never seen as a rebel and more of a mischievous kid trying to start some shit because he's a dick.

Now, I understand that some people believe the song is a critique on the modern day rebel, and to those people I say: Shut the hell up. Let me go on hatin.

Plus, I was always more of a Huck Finn girl, myself. Huck Finn owns.

...

We Know That His Pobble Be Magic

2011-03-25T10:08:00.013-05:00

I'm going to do it. I'm just going to be lame and do it. It is a meme. Blame Ginny.

You know, lately my life hasn't been too eventful. Or perhaps I'm out of practicing observation skills. I don't talk to crazy mumbling people on the bus nearly as much, I don't drink or go out as often. I've been a black hole for books lately, just swallowing them whole. Hell, I don't even watch TV anymore. After LOST ended I just felt...lost. What is the point of watching a show that isn't LOST? Answer: there isn't a point.

It snowed on Wednesday and I was bowling at Fireside, and I haven't been there since 1998 when it was a brokedown-bowling-alley-turned-shitty-music-venue with years of sweat and grime gunking the floor and the buckled lanes served as an unsavory den of drugs and flyers. I don't know how people still bowled there in the nineties. Man, I used to do stuff. Now I'm tired all the time. It's so clean there now, and the walls are all like, you know. Clean. The bathrooms were clean, the place isn't even a shadow of the shows of the past, it's a poor reboot of the 70's Fireside that nobody remembers.

Anyway, topic at hand, and jumping in late in the game because punctuality is a problem for me and I've been using all of my artistic inspiration for writing things that aren't this blog:

30 Videos in 30 Days: or, how I am a big fat meme sell out

Day 1: Your favorite song.

There's no arguing here. "Rainbow Connection" is the single greatest song ever written ever ever, so as far as I'm concerned that makes Paul Williams the greatest songwriter. I've known it since I was a wee tot, and there was this stretch of pipe jutting dangerously out of the rear corner of my parents' backyard that was just Rassles Microphone Height, and I would sit on the rock behind it and give concerts to rabbits, singing this song and waxing nostalgic about life and silly observations, like Garrison Keillor or Mr. Rogers.

There's a video of me at the ripe age of three serenading family and friends on the fourth of July singing a bright, enthusiastic, sometimes mumbled mash-up of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and "Rainbow Connection." I think my favorite part is when I sing, with gusto,

soooooomeday where there are lemon drops
and so up on the chimney tops
that's where....
youuuuuuu'll...
FIIIIIIND
meeeeeee
(deep breath)
SooooomeWHERE! Ooooover the RAINBOW!
skies are blue
and the dreams that are dreams like the rainbows too
Raaaaaaainbows are fissions
and rainbows are fusions
and rainbows have nothing to hiiiiiiide!
so we been toe and we shoes and bereave it
but I know you're wrong! wait and seeeeeeeeeee
Someday will find it
the rainbow connection

and then my aunt starts to sing along on the video and I reprimand her fiercely, with, "No, no don't SAY that! You wait til I am finished."

and then everyone laughs and I beam like a brat, curtsy awkwardly, and continue singing my song with the Vegas theatrics and Broadway sentimentality. I stroll around dreamily and wrap my arm around a table leg like Dorothy and the tree, I lean a nonchalant elbow against a khaki knee, I climb onto a picnic bench and dangle my legs like Kermit, slowly bopping and twisting my head just like he does in the swamp and then I look wistfully at the camera and furrow my eyebrows and belt, "we know that his pobble be maaaaaaagiiiiiiic!" while my dad laughs as he films and mumbles, "My daughter, ladies and gentlemen. The damn hammiest of hams."

It's one of my earliest memories and the greatest moments of my life.

...

We've Had it With Your Discipline

2011-03-10T13:46:00.002-06:00

1. Saturday night I got drunk. Like meathead drunk. I was sloppy and slurry, and at the end of the night I felt very awkward when Apples definitely pulled me in for a long hug, smelled my hair and whispered, "I love you so much" while his girlfriend stared at us.

2. But Apples is an awkward guy, and making people feel awkward is pretty much his job. I've never met anyone better at making people feel awkward than Apples. Regardless, in my drunken stupor it affected me deeply and irrationally, and I wondered what he meant by it other than the usual and freaked out.

3. So I met up with M.E.'s girlfriend at a shitty Puerto Rican thug bar called Lockdown and complained for awhile about how "skulls are so mainstream" and "ironic t-shirts are for pussies" and overreacting with worry regarding Apples, because I was fucking hammered. It lasted an hour, maybe, before I crawled home at 3:30 and started making mahfuckin' stroganoff, what what.

4. My buzzer rang twenty minutes later because Al the Landlord forgot his keys and saw that our lights were on, so he came over and we cracked some more beers and woke up CrazyLiz around four, who grabbed a beer and cheers-ed in because she's a fucking rock star. Al was pretty shit-faced himself and he didn't want to wake up his girlfriend (who was asleep in his place upstairs) and we talked about toilets.

5. After much laughter and camaraderie, AltL grunted, "Check this out," slammed his foot on the coffee table and dragged up his pantleg Dreyfuss-style, and all I could think was, "YES! battle-scars!" but instead he slid a handgun out of his ankle holster and laid it moderately delicately on the coffee table. So there was a gun in my apartment.

"And there's my gun," he laughed, like it was nothing.

"Fyou think we're playing Russian roulette," I slurred, "then you got a 'nother think. Sthera rule bout cops n guns? Can you even do this?" AltL is also a cop.

"Ha! I know, I know. S'not loaded." He pressed a button or something to prove it to me.

I stretched out my hand and grabbed at the air. "Gimme, please."

AltL held the handle out towards me and I grabbed the gun like a light in the dark, but my motor skills were all scrambled and boozy.

"Cock it," he said.

I turned the gun over in my hand, gripped barrel and looked at him. "Is this the barrel? Do handguns have barrels? Or is that just shotguns?" He answered, but I did not pay any attention since I was holding a fucking handgun. I'd never held a gun before. I shot my first BB gun in like December, shit I think I saw my first handgun like a year earlier. One time I shouldered an antique rifle.

My mom is the Queen of the anti-weapon-people. We weren't even allowed to have water guns. I don't think I even used a sharp knife until I was eighteen (this is probably because I am an idiot, and not really the work of my mom). Which is stupid, I think, because it does not lead to careful respect for firearms, it leads to wonder and complete irresponsibility. At least for me.

So drunken Rassles held a handgun and tried to cock it like a pro. But I forgot how hammered I was, and my hand slipped off the barrelgrip and I jammed my finger and pinched my thumb in some snappy invisible crevasse, dropped the gun, and then snatched it midair like a slippery little fish because I have wicked good catching skills but sloppy, fidgetty fingers.

CrazyLiz gasped and carefully wrestled the gun away from my cold, drunk hands.

"Snot loaded, Liz," I scoffed at her. "Give it. I'm fine."

"I don't give a shit," she explained. CrazyLiz, the guffawed voice of reason. "You aimed it at me, and now you lose your gun privileges."

"Horseshit. I did not aim atchoo."

"Yeah, you kinda did," AltL laughs like an oafish donkey putz. I like AltL.

"I like you, Al," I say, and my head lolls. "Sors. I don't not know...I know I don't...I don't, um. I know not what I fucking do, man." My head collapsed on the arm of the couch because my neck stopped working, and I looked at AltL with heavy eyes. "Sors."

"It's cool."

I closed my eyes slowly. "Liz. LIZ!"

"What? I'm right here."

"I am sors for pointing guns."

"It's okay, sweetie."

"You don't call me sweetie. You are being...pphhhh something."

There was a series of serious of lock-n-load clicks and snicker-snacks, and I glazed over at CrazyLiz, who mobilized the gun like a soldier and passed it back to AltL with discerned respect. "You should put that away before she hurts herself." I wanted to grab it out of her hands and just cuddle it like a teddy bear.

Al reaches for his gun, and nods, smiling. "That's prolly a good idea."

"Fuck you guys and yer guns."

AltL looks at CrazyLiz, I think. My eyes were closed. "So she's never held a gun before."

"No, she hasn't."

"But you definitely have."

"I learned how to shoot when I was in elementary school," CrazyLiz did her CrazyGiggle. "My dad is kind of a fanatic."

"My parents are accountants," I interjected. Loudly. "They do Lord of the Rings puzzles and taxes." I realized how lame that sounded, so I had to add something badass and huntery. "But I can gut n' skin a rabbit in a minute."

"What'd she say?" AltL asked Liz.

"To feed the tigers," I slurred. "We put 'em in pumpkins."

"What? Tigers?"

"She worked at a zoo," Liz translates, "like eight years ago. She thinks she's an expert."

"Oh."

"Tiger blood. Hehe. What? If tigers eat rabbits do they have rabbit blood? AltheLandlord! you should take the test. I bet you'd be a eagle. What? Stop talking. Shhhh." I opened my eyes and looked up. "Can I see the gun again?"

...

Oh, and BITCHES. New header. Give me compliments. Jeeze.

...

Hypothetically, I am Awesome at Double Dutch

2011-03-07T00:30:00.003-06:00

Someone called me quirky recently. I was confused and a bit insulted. I am not quirky. At least I don't think I'm quirky.

"Quirky" suggests a gleeful pride in your own peculiarities, whereas I don't think I'm very peculiar at all. Everyone else is peculiar for thinking I'm peculiar. I am just me. Peculiar is highly underused, as far as words are concerned.

But this guy was just so lame. I have to talk to strangers at networking events; it's a non-profit hazard. But do they all have to suck at the art of conversation? I don't give a shit about where you went to college. I don't think it's interesting that one time you and your buddies took a road trip to Miami and it was so wild, you just like got drunk and just acted stupid, your friends are so crazy! You're just like the guys in Entourage!

Sometimes having a conversation with strangers is like...it's like hypothetically, I'm fucking awesome at double dutch. But my turners are a T-Rex and a kangaroo and their quaint little arms just ain't fit for rope skipping. So I get all tangled up because they just don't have the skill to play, and after encouraging them to try and coaxing with candied meats and repeated failures at both, I snag the rope in frustration and jump alone while they watch. And I'm hammering the shit out of tricks and spins, I'm a butterfly on cocaine and I try to pass them the rope and they just look at me, and the kangaroo giggles to the T-rex, "someone has a lot of time on their hands. You're quirky." Fuck you. I just gave an Olympic oratory performance, you jealous fuck.

"You can't just ask people if they can hear punctuation," CrazyLiz says. "It's weird."

"How is that weird? Have you ever had a conversation with someone who only speaks in run-on sentences? It's infuriating, and I never get a turn."

"But you have to do small talk first, that's how it works. Those are the rules."

"Those rules are fucking stupid. Stupid."

"People need to be eased into your thoughts sometimes," she explains lightly.

"That's ridiculous. If you can't play, I don't want to talk to you anyway."

CrazyLiz laughs. "You are such a bitch."

"I have rhetorical fucking standards, is what it is. Quirky. They called me quirky. Who the fuck are you?"

"Well Rass, you've got your quirks."

I remain silent in protest and rub my forehead, because I've been drinking for about nine hours.

"Okay, for example: you bought a pair of boots. Instead of saying, 'hey, do you like my new shoes?' you throw yourself into a ten-minute expose about 'gratuitous boots' and 'buckle-fashion' and 'equestrian-decked pedestrians' or whatever, and you can say it to me because we've been friends for fifteen years, but strangers are just going to think you're crazy."

"They can't handle my shit. Charlie Sheen could handle my shit. And then this other girl starts talking to us and she's all adorable with big deer eyes and boring and she laughs at everything, and the guys are like spilling out of their seats to snag her attention. I'm sorry that I'll only laugh at your jokes when they're fucking funny."

"I thought that was a different conversation...didn't you already tell me this?"

"It happens all the fucking time."

"Okay, Rass, I'm going to bed, I can't have the same conversation again. I'm tired."

"It's just fucking bullshit. 'Oh, you drove a car? And you had a beer? In Miami? That's sooooo funny.' Spoons and gagging. Fucking trollop."

"It's six AM, can't we talk about this tomorrow?"

"And it's like, is that what they want? They would rather talk to someone who just fucking fawns over their insignificance and offers no actual thoughts or sentences to a conversation and I hand them fucking gemstones and ingots and it's like, 'oh, you're quirky. Oh, you're feisty.' Fuck you. I am brilliant."

...

Tsynq Yr

2011-02-22T12:23:00.005-06:00

Dude, my bookshelves look awesome. It's the dawn of an arranging revolution. Much like John Cusack's flash organizational disclosure in High Fidelity -

"What is this, um chronological?"
"No."
"Not alphabetical..."
"No."
"Then what?"
"Autobiographical."
"No fucking way."
(and then hipsters across the world were overwrought once again with Cusack-induced orgasms of jealousy)

- I am changing the face of bookshelves. So get on that. But then today I googled, which is an inevitability of modern times. So I am not the first person to color-code their shit. Lame. Even worse, my shelves are puny compared to the libraries pictured. And I've got a shit-ton of books. Pre-0rganizing, though, I pulled out about 30 for donation. Do I really need a copy of Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling? No, no I don't. But I cannot let go of Stinker From Space because it defines me as a person in ways only an intergalactic space warrior trapped in the body of a skunk and befriended by a dorky little girl can.

Maybe I should keep some of those books so people think I'm smart. No, because what if someone comes around and sees I read Kierkegaard and postulates ethics and the rationality of faith, and then I'm all like, "remember that part in Wayne's World when they're speaking Cantonese and Wayne's all, 'Was it Kierkegaard or Dick van Patton who said if you label me, you negate me?' That was awesome."

Because if you want me to be honest here (that's what I'm about: fucking honesty) the only reason I read Kierkegaard at all was because Wayne name-dropped the bastard in the first place. I think it's the only reason I ever watched an episode of Eight is Enough, at that. I do lots of things because of Wayne's World.

...

It's February. People Are Bound to Get Hurt.

2011-02-18T14:36:00.005-06:00

So apparently growling, "I see yer a geologist now, ye bastard!" is not the appropriate way to congratulate a co-worker on her recent engagement, and even the further explanatory phrases of "geologist? rocks? precious stones? are you fucking engaged, or do I need to take my metaphors elsewhere?" aren't warranted.

There are two of them right now in the office. Engaged people. With fee-on-says. One question popped right after the fucking other with giggling and rings and sweet fucking Christ you should see the blood diamonds these guys dug up for my co-workers,.

I've been waiting for this day, when all my co-workers are married baby-makers, and not one of them asks when it's my turn to settle down.

So here's my question: is that because my co-workers are fairly progressive (because they are, and that's one of the reasons I like it here) and they know that people don't need to be married to be happy (not that I'm very happy - we all know I am an angry, confused, smashed little car crash)? Is it because they don't think I have a chance in hell of ever getting married in the first place? Is it because they don't give a shit about me or my relationship status?

I am far too insecure to be dealing with this right now.

What did you guys get for Valentines Day? I got bronchitis, a flat tire, a new mole, and a papercut on that skin between my thumb and my forefinger. Bullshit. Stupid February.

...

I Can Go Twice As High

2011-02-09T14:53:00.001-06:00

I try to be all casual with my books, but I can't help thinking that from now on they should be categorized by color instead of intentionally haphazard favoritism. You know what I mean: the top two shelves are bursting with the books that are the best, but they're staggered by size and color and age and binding to give the appearance of carefree, random shelvism when in fact each book was strategically planted next to another that provided a surprising and instantly approved juxtaposition, proving I am eclectic, blithe and approachably worldly. I mean, could you imagine how preposterous I would look if my bookshelves indicated I was snobbishly elite, or even worse - vapid and fatuous? I know. I know, right? omg lolz.

The first thing I do when I get to someone's house is cruise their books, and then I judge them mercilessly. So of course I have to prepare myself for the day when I come over to my own house and realize how much insight I can offer to the human condition because my book collection is intuitively brilliant.

Browsers (the few) always comment on Breakfast of Champions, so it's front and center. Probably because they're jealous. My copy is very hip and vintage, with a faded cover and green-painted edges. If I ever write a book, I will demand green-painted edges on the pocketnovel edition or fucking mutiny.

Immediately after BoC you'll find Roving Mars: Spirit, Opportunity, and the Exploration of the Red Planet because I am sciencey, serious, and smart; then Gods of Pegana, which no one has ever heard of because I'm obscure as fuck; The Martian Chronicles for irony; Easy Riders Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and Rock 'N Roll Generation Saved Hollywood because I am edgy, liberal and interested in relevant history; Mr. Popper's Penguins because I am fun-loving and adorable; and a horizontal stack of comic books and National Geographic(s) because I am well-varied in my media sources, which is something I learned to do at my small liberal arts college. Oh, and it's capped with an old, peeling globe that still has Soviet Russia on it that sits on top of a thesaurus which I promise I did not use for this post.

So after enjoying this carefully constructed representation of self on a shelf for a few years, it's time for change. Placing so much effort on ensuring my favorite books are seen initially by apartment guests is neurotically fascist. As someone who's always gone for seeming intelligence over aesthetic appeal, people could think I am - dare I say it? - pompous. The nerve. Two-years-ago era me would crack her knuckles and snicker at their misguided inference.

2011 era me thinks that putting so much thought into things is tiresome. Perhaps I should be more accepting regarding stupid stuff. The majority of people in the world don't put a quarter of this effort into their bookshelf coordination. The majority of people in the world don't even have a fucking bookshelf to coordinate.

I am an ass. People in Haiti need houses. I read about it in National Geographic.

Now that imaginary bullshit people think I'm pompous, fucking posers, I came to the realization that everyone likes things that are pretty. Since I'm more comfortable changing the order of my books than my appearance, I think it's time to color-code the bookshelves. Like a reading rainbow.

...

* For the record, I strongly oppose the Mr. Popper's Penguins film adaptation because I can't stand Jim Carey and everything should star Tom Hardy. Everything.

...

Terribble, Powerful, Wondrous

2011-01-31T10:01:00.012-06:00

Apparently yesterday was Draw a Dinosaur Day and I didn't get the fucking memo. It sounds like the most asinine thing I've ever heard of, but far cooler than Talk Like a Pirate Day because I've never been very piratey and I've always been very terrible-lizardy.

You should see me at the Field Museum: it is my meth. I just creep around, twisted and cranked and ready to burst in a euphoric fury of rushing, chatty blood, suddenly expertly obsessed with every -ology they got cased up in there. Honestly, any guy that asks me to go to the Field Museum with him will be gettin some, or at least fling himself into danger by being the victim of one of my soul-crushing crushes. Museums are so dreamy.

It's been a few months since I had a decent museum trip (and by "museum trip" I mean "museum trip," this isn't some sick, dinosaur-induced analogous reference to "doing it" (and by "doing it" I mean "doing it")) and I'm thinking about just heading over to the Field this weekend (which I have been saying for weeks) because it's my favorite museum in the world. Ever. All other museums are barren, dank, desolate establishments, and the Field Museum is the sun. It's the place against which I judge all other houses of artifact.

I understand that in most internet lists created by professional museum analysts (because if it's on the internet, it must be true) the Field Museum doesn't even crack the top fifty. Most of them are art museums.

I don't give a shit how important your art is.

FACT 1: A museum without bones is not a real museum.
FACT 2: My art should be at the Field Museum. See above sketch for reference.

Argue with me all you want, my mind was made up twenty years ago. Best museums in the world, ready? GO.

1. Field Museum
2. National Museum of Ireland - Natural History
3. Creation Museum

Do not argue with me because I am right.

Okay, fine, argue with me. You are entitled to be wrong. But if you're going to spout off some shit about Jurassic Park and how the velociraptor was actually the size of a turkey and blahgiddy blah blah: duh. I know. I been to the Field Museum, bitches.

...

Edit: I don't know if you know this about me, but I have a gift: I can draw a decent sketch of anything. After doing this quick dinosaur...I miss drawing.

...

DB the Squeakwel

2011-01-19T15:54:00.002-06:00

So I'm looking through my old blog drafts, right, like the ones I did not post, and I noticed one from the night before New Years Eve. The night that MoLinder spontaneously flew back to Chicago, and Sean was in town from Alaska and we got 2drnk2fxnlolz? Yes. That night. And I woke up in media res, balancing my laptop on my knees in what is now known as The Battle of Le H'ang'ouvres, which is the kind of hangover you get after drinking too much wine, yes? Oui.

Anyway, I don't know if you remember way back when, but MoLinder and I used to sit around and get wasted and yell at each other, and that was basically our very favorite thing to do ever. For her entire visit we talked about doing another drunk live blog, but we never got any further than this, which I'm posting more for MoLinder than anyone else and found just fifteen minutes ago:

So MoLinder is in town right now. And although I don't necessarily feel like moLinder is ar requirement to have good drunken coinversation, let's fucking face it; molinder is a requi9rement to have goot drunken converation.

It begins elsewhere.

Me: I am going to drunk and I am going to navigate this. I am going to Tim Gunn it.

MoL: You are going to make it work. Why did you get more soup than me?

Me: Because I wanted it more.

MoL: You know what I will take your Mrs. Grass, but only under duress. Do you hear me? DURESS.

Me: Fuckin I hope you get herpes.

Post date and time:
12/31/2010 6:42 AM

...

Luckery and Astrology

2011-01-14T10:38:00.016-06:00

In the midst of all the excitement of being thirty years old I've been researching my "novel," and by "novel" I mean "newest unreachable goal." Technically I reached my last two unreachable goals, so that's awesome, and I got them by juuuust half a foot or so, and now I have new ones to make even though I'm pretty sure those were the first goals I've ever reached in my life and I may never reach another. No, I will reach another goal, because that falls under my goals for this year.

Whatever, so I read every book on my shelves and I win at year 29. I make Age Resolutions.

For a decade I was one of those people who would hoard used books with the intention of intending to read them eventually, but I can't even pretend I always had the intention in the first place. Some books I just picked up because I heard someone once say it was good, some I picked up because hipsters referenced them and I wanted to sneer at their pretentiousness, those shifty little fuckers, and some I picked up because they were Classics that Everyone Should Read. Most of them just sat around on my bookshelves, always the neglected topic of conversation.

Last year I read all of them.

This year I have a two new goals in mind:

(1) From now on I will be Lucky.

I spent 29 years believing I was unlucky. Rossi Curse and all. Because, oh, my family has a curse. Haven't I mentioned it?

Unto each Rossi generation there will be an Unluckiest.

It's not an official curse, it's just a fun little game that my bastard Poppy invented to explain why he won at everything and his brother Joe always lost, and the tradition carried down to my dad, John The Unluckiest, and now to me: Rassles The Unluckiest.

It's been accepted throughout the extended family that I am The Unluckiest, and I'm used to being berated for it. Of course you got robbed, you're Unlucky. Of course you're not married, you're Unlucky. Of course you deliver pizzas, you're Unlucky. Of course your job is a dead end, you're Unlucky. Of course you got pulled over on a day-old expired driver's license, you're Unlucky.

Of course comparatively worldwide, I'm extraordinarily lucky. And I actually consider myself lucky to be unwed because marriage is a sham.

So fuck it. I didn't get along with Poppy anyway. I refuse to be The Unluckiest Rossi, and I refuse to believe that my refusal of unluckiness will result in that unluckiness being passed on to another family member with an overabundance of luck to restore the balance of luckery. I've decided that instead, my unluckiness will pass on to some dickweed I don't like who's been lucky his/her entire life. Because fuck that guy.

So what I'm saying is this: I decide to be lucky, because luck and its adversary do not need capitalization because they are in the mind and not decided by someone who isn't me, and now I'm not a Capricorn anymore. I fucking win. Being a Capricorn sucked. Honestly, if I identified with those horoscopic descriptions in the slightest I probably would have grown up to be a fucking gastronomical astrological nightmare, like how I am with the animal test. Do I whip out this shit at parties? Yes, I do. It's a huge annoyance until someone takes the test and flips at its accuracy, and I'm like "bitch I told you" and they're all "yeah you did" and I'm all "fuckin worldshaker and heartbreaker" and then I point to myself with my thumb while they awkwardly laugh and slyly curse my always-right-edness and innate ability to fucking work it.

Then again, I don't think an astrologer named Kunkle should be trusted at all. Kunkle sounds like a Harry Potter character. Plus, astrology is fucking stupid and rooted in absolutely nothing logical. And all you believers shout, "Stars!" and I say, "No, you fools! It's about interpreting the symbolic nature of the position of celestial bodies. Fantasy."

Now that we're clear on my position, and now that we all know I am a Sagittarius (I still don't really identify with any of it, it just sounds more pleasant than a rigid, organized, ambitiously serious Capricorn), I think it's time to move on.

(2) I have a list of about sixteen books to research and master. For the "novel." Which I am "writing." "Hypothetically."

What books they are you'll never know, not until I'm giving interviews and TED speeches about my genius and someone asks for my greatest influence and I'll say, "Honestly? There are so many, but I've always been partial to Winnie-the-Pooh."

...

Like a Leap Year, With Actual Numbers Instead of Spelling Out Numbers - A Tactic I Prefer, But Would Defeat the Purpose of the Post. Which Is Math.

2011-01-02T17:01:00.007-06:00

On Thursday I will turn 30 years old. I wish there were some philosophical weight associated with that number other than the obvious decade references, but there isn't. It's just a higher number than last year, and only by 1 which is not a lot anyway when you think about how many numbers are actually out there just hanging out. Doing math. Being way more than 1. Too many numbers to count, for reals, that are way more than 1.

1 is comparatively much less than 4, for example. I would be so much more distraught if I was turning 33. Could you imagine waking up one afternoon and just being 33 years old, knowing that just last night you were 29? Oh, that would be horseshit.

...

MoLinder Says

2011-01-01T05:12:00.003-06:00

i am so unhappy with rossi right now. she has decided that she is refusing to write this blog and has left it to me to write something amazing and awesome but i think i might fail epically on it. so here it goes: (and i am wasted and her computer is missing the "s" and "g" keys") muther fucker
so here it is -
so i'm in chicago for new year = because i pulled the stupid girl bullshit with some guy who didn't want it, fine. ok. i'm dealing with sucking at life because i pulled the stupid girl shit which i hate. and you all know what i'm talking about. you say something and really mean something else. boo on me right now. by the way i think that lucy mclane has down syndome. does that make me a bad peron? no lo so - that's some italian at you.
anywho i had my tarot cards read tonight and was told that i should go back to being mean. i stopped being mean b/c rossi yelled at me for being a douchebag but honestly, that's who i really am. part of me wants to make people cry and question their existence on earth. AND GODDAMN I HATE THE FACT HER KEYBOARD IS MISSING THE KEYS I MENTIONED EARLIER. FUCKING WHORE. i'm buying her a new computer for her b-day. done with this shit.
oh so back to being mean. rossi and other friends did not like that aspect about me but you know what, i do. i like hating on poeple who are not as smart or as funny as me. this blog makes no sense. i am drunk and watching die hard. by the way fuck you sean for taking my x-mas greeting of FUCKING KEEP IT TOGETHER ROSSI. she is trying to fall asleep right now,. because she is "tired" or some shit. oh so anyway on christmas i texted rossi with "now i have a machine gun. ho. ho ho" and fucking sean just tried to steal my thunder. dick.
so i just went to have a cigarette and it it is fucking cold outside. it was in the 50s earlier and now it's probably in the 30s. love you chicago. thank you for reminding me why i moved back in san diego. fuck this cold weather shit. i love this city but not the weather. it is 6am and there are birds chirping. stupid assholes.
anywho, i'm sure you people want to read something awesome but you get me. i might write something great but i'm drunk and it's not happening. I HATE ROSSI right now. this should have been drunk blog part 2 but its not because she sucks at life. know this blog readers. because she is passed out on the couch.
aight i'm done. i wish i could write better but again-she is passed out and i'n hammered. happy new years! maybe i'll start my own blog but i'm too wasted to form a coherant sentence. yay me

Casual as Castles

2010-12-29T15:00:00.002-06:00

I don't want to pressure you to respond to comments, although more Rassles = more better, but I'd like your opinion on this. Someone said "if you're laughing at what you're writing, stop drinking." There seems to be a fundamental flaw there, but I can't put my finger on it.
- JMH, The Good Word of Sprout

You know, I would say that it's just plain wrong, because I am fucking hilarious and currently sober. But then I realize: ever since I stopped drinking as much as I useterr, everyone is so much less interesting, including myself, and I am easily the most interesting person I know.

For example, lately I've been nonstopgoogling pictures of Putin with various adorable animals. If anyone is a Real Life Magnificent Bastard, it's Vladimir Fucking Putin. I think it's the nose. He looks like Hitler Youth Julius Caesar, like he could be the fucking Emperor of Everything. I don't know if he's a hero or a villain, and I don't care. He leans like Jordan Catalano, casual as castles. He's carved from ice and St. Bernard puppies, he burns like an Unextinguishable Thing That Brightly Burns. I am fascinated by pictures of the man, and I'm amused by my fascination even more than I am by Putin himself. My self-obsession is way meta-er than yours.

I think that someone who would declare something as ridiculous as that quote from JMH up there (who, obviously, is on my side here) doesn't really understand laughter and hilarity to begin with. Why would we listen to someone so ignorant? It's sweeping generalizations like that that kill society. Say something with assuredness and people will accept it as truth whether they understand it or not.

Most likely whoever said that is of the opinion that laughter is just discomfort at being confronted with the truth (people falling, feeling embarrassed, dirty jokes, close-calls) and they've ruled out the kind that comes from sheer joy of living. Someone reads too much Robert Heinlein.

But chances are it was said by a humorless cement-carving with weak, narrow shoulders and wide feet. Someone whose nose is far too small for their face, perhaps. People with too-small noses always need to be fucking taken care of. Victims have dainty little noses. I'm instinctively more watchful and protective of small-nosed people, because how can you properly take care of yourself when your nose is that small? How can you possibly make good decisions when you can't smell danger in the distance with your pert little sniffer? Haven't you ever desired a proud, handsome, substantial nose that suggests monarchial conviction? A nose that makes you seem, dare I say, a little more like Putin, a man whose nose is sweeping and elegant?

It's not that I distrust small noses or that I dislike people who have them, they just have poor interpretive skills and are bad at finding things. I just made a list of all of my friends with noses too small for their faces, and they're an adorable batch of noses growing on lovely people, but I'm totally right: they require way more emotional energy than everyone else. They need more reassurance, they're more easily offended, they enjoy being coddled and served.

I should write a book about this, about judging people's noses. And people will believe me because my nose is odd and prominent and because I say things confidently.

Either way: yeah, JMH. That person whoever said that shit was so wrong.

...

It's A Common Name

2010-12-20T22:01:00.008-06:00

The FedEx man, it appears, has a crush on me, because whenever he comes in here he rambles on and on, and all I can think is, "Don't you have somewhere to be in the World? On time?" I could never work for FedEx because I do not believe in clocks and live in that radical state of cracked thumbtips and inculpable delays. Also, my finger is a little infected and it hurts. Ruin my life.

Using the space bar is dreadful.

The other day FedEx mumbled in front of my desk for a good 55 seconds, which is 35 seconds longer than I am comfortable affording him. Something about, "Oh, hey, I always for-get your last name. Oh, that's right, it's uh...Rossi, like the construction company or the furniture sellers in Oakbrook."

"Martini and," I add, handing him back the Electronic Signature Capturererer with my incomprehensible scribble, which is somewhere between "drunkwasted bar tab authorization" and "look my cat can hold a pen." Odd, because my regular handwriting is sexy as hell.

"Or the martini drink, you got it," he bounces nervously and jabs the inkless plastic pen towards me, "Yeah, and we could like go for one of those sometime, right, that is if your husband don't mind then again you're the kind who'd have one that wouldn't, amirite? Yeah unless you're not married and we don't need anyone's permission which would be nice, or we don't have to go get a drink at all we could just keep this professional, right, Rossi?" He grins and guy nods; his silver tooth gleans with all the fidgetting.

I just smile and raise my eyebrows. Now, if it was Troy The Eagle Messenger guy? I would jump on that. He's one of the only bike messengers I've seen that smells like he showers. He's ideal, all Elliot Gould with classically disheveled helmet hair and a crooked nose that's definitely been broken several times. He also lacks metal teeth, which are really a fucking dealbreaker. I think I would have no problem with the metal teeth if we were already dating and he lost a tooth saving a puppy from the mean old dogcatcher (apparently we live in the 1920's), because I would probably make a boyfriend get metal teeth ironically just to be an asshole and ensure that no bitches try to steal my motherfucking puppysaving man.

"Yeah, you know, you're right, we don't need to go for a drink, I mean hey, you don't know me or my name and I always forget your name, what do I know I'm just the guy that drops off the packages. We don't have to do anything, you know, right? Yeah." He grins again amidst all the bouncing.

"Right. See ya later, Jimmy."

"Oh, you do? You? Yeah, I got it, I get it. Nametag. Yeah. Have a good weekend."

"You too."

...

Impound

2010-12-06T11:40:00.006-06:00

I left the auto pound on Saturday afternoon all dirty and sour and broke, but with my beautiful, battle-scarred car who loves me unconditionally, even when I leave him out in the cold. Poor thing was on a snow route between 3AM and 7AM on Friday night. Who has the patience to read the goddamn novels posted on street signs? Obviously not a single person in Chicago, because they were all at the fucking auto pound on Saturday picking up their cars.

There were about sixty people heeled into the double-wide that houses the Chicago Auto Pound's maze of a queue and it smelled like fucking bitter exhaustion. The guy behind me was wearing a fur-collared coat like it was a Hawaiian shirt, zipped open over his bare, red gut and a cartoonish, seven-inch silver cross hung perfectly between a pair of ruddy pecs. He hacked into grimy hands and kept on growling to his buddy about getting a "wrecker" in one of those voices that sounds like rock quarry. I wanted to tell him to wash his hands and put on a fucking shirt. It's ten degrees outside. This isn't fucking Kokomo.

The guy with him might not have been his buddy at all, I mean he could have just been a random dude standing in line that had to awkwardly half-chuckle at some boulder stranger's undecipherable jokes while trying to avoid eye contact with his gaping naval. I couldn't stop staring at it. Every time I turned, there it was being all belly-buttony and gross, like someone jammed a tulip bulb into a blowhole.

This one middle-aged woman in Juicy pants and Uggs took a good fucking half hour. She kept on sending her sixteen-year old son out to the car while she lovingly manhandled her adolescent daughter and argued with the worker in the window. And he would trudge outside and come back with some scrap of paper and hand it to her with loathing, and she would snap, "Whadaya doin? This expired in, like, foor yeers ago and it was fer the Acura. Go bayack and just bring mahmmy everything yoo find."

And he would stare at her with undead eyes fueled by sixteen years of scorn and belittlement, resigning back into the cold while his mom ran her manicure through her daughter's golden hair. "He doon't knoow where the glove compartment is at," she scoffed conversationally to the woman in the window, who snorted. "His dayad never teached him anything." I wanted to punch her. On behalf of grammar and justice.

Plus, the couple in front of me kept on making out and telling secrets in giggly, hushed Spanish and I was totally freaked out.

Nearly two hours later and I'm riding in a van with a wheezy old man around the pound trying to find my car in a lot the size of Siberia, and just as dirty, barren and cold. I hate it there.

...

I Am Stronger Than Professionalism

2010-12-02T11:45:00.006-06:00

This is just a little gripe, a horrible bullshit whiny nancy move and I probably shouldn't even post it but I'm in desperate need of validations right now: lately I've been pissed as shit at all the liars out there that put fantasies into my head. Confidence in my abilities does not look good on me. It's so much easier to drag through life knowing I suck at everything than it is to keep putting effort into dreams and getting shot down.

I mean, I'm going to keep on trying to get paid to write. I won't stop. But you know those people out there that say 'you have to believe you can do it or you never will' and all those fucking false, uppity, horsefeathery ideas that they drip into the ears of failures so they'll blame their mindset instead of their ability? I love what they're trying to do here, but sometimes a little honesty would be nice. "You don't have the skill or likability to do this professionally, Ross. Don't give up. Just face reality: most people are better at this than you are."

But I can't have any illusions here, as if I was some sort of scribbling savant shouldering a muse. If I could pick a muse, it would probably be Calliope and that's not just because I was Calliope in the eighth grade school play which I totally co-wrote, by the way. We sang I love I love my Mount Olympian girls to Calendar Girl and my line was, "Calliope: her good guys always win" and then I narrated the stories of Theseus slaying the evil Medusa where Theseus was an aspiring hairdresser, and of Perseus and the Minotaur where Perseus was a pizza delivery guy, and therefore an expert on topography and the psychology of space. It was so much easier to get your shit into the world in eighth grade. In eighth grade I was an epic, comedic genius.

But now, apparently, I am too "edgy." I lack "professional" knowledge of a topic (how much more professional can you get to write about cult classics than working at a fucking video store and rating like 4,000 movies on Netflix? Really? You want some pap smear with a film degree? Fucking bogus). That's the big thing, really. I lack the professionalism, experience, background,

Why don't they just say they don't like my writing? Dicks. I understand that my business writing skills are bullshit. I know. I'm too self-referential and when I eliminate first-person it sounds stiff and elitist and fuck.

There are people out there who believed in me and asked me write things for them, and I've fucked up every single one of those. I would lose sleep over it. Friends need band bios, or website copywriting, they give me ideas for short stories and they're so inspirational and wonderful for trusting me and my ability to promote and portray something so important to them. And I'll agree and get excited and sit down to write, because I know that this time I fucking got this. I'm hopeful, confident that I'll pull something sparkly and whimsical and excellent. I know I will, because someone I care about trusted me to do it.

I'll start typing and by word three it's just a fucking document wasteland, and eventually becomes some variation of, "You goddamn useless piece of shit, why can't you just write like all of the normal people in the world? Get it done. You can do this. If Stephanie Meyer can write a series of books, you can write a band bio. People love your writing. You had a fan club. Why are you such a fucking cumbucket of spider legs and suck, you fat, worthless, disgusting thing?" Then I cry, smack myself around. Sit in the bathroom and pull my hair like a bratty child without candy, do a red-faced mirror pep talk to snap out of it and notice how horrible the lighting is in that bathroom, and then I cry again because who could ever love someone so self-loathing?

Shit, this is depressing. I should not post this, but I have to. Otherwise I'm going to just stare at the draft every day and I'll never resolve anything. I need to just let the internet deal with my incompetence because I am not emotionally capable of handling it on my own. And this blog was always about stories and honesty. Breathe.

This post began as a pledge letter for work. I was drafting a letter and it mutated into a blog post about how I have writers block unless I'm writing about me. Do you see what I mean?

Shit. Shitshitshit.

...

The McFly Syndrome, Or: The Devolution of Sally to Four Loko

2010-11-24T13:56:00.006-06:00

Everyone's dressed like they're about to go urban chic horseback riding, and poor Gyna has had to listen to me mention working in a stable about seven million bajillion times over the past several months, when I haven't been in a barn in years. Whenever I see people wearing fashiony riding boots and jeans that look like fucking jodphurs I get all sentimental. And then Mongo told this heartbreaking horse story, and the only solution I can think of to get myself out of this sewer of schmaltz and memory is to quit my job and become a professional carriage driver, which I would probably dominate and loathe.

Speaking of domination and loathing, Gyna sallied me into hunting for Four Loko last week because she said, and I quote, "So we need to have a Four Loko night before it is banned."

My whole face raisined and scowled. "How about we just punch each other in the throat for a few hours?"

"How about you stop being such a sally? You are acting like a lame old lady."

It's actually pretty easy to get me to agree to stupid shit: call me a sally, and I berate myself until I do it better and harder with triple the gusto (and no, you cannot sally me into blow jobs). I agreed to her proposal in the name of science and bravery, and we sallied forth--

Holy etymological epiphanies, Batman! If to "sally forth" is to embark on adventure, and I believe in adventure with all my brains, then calling someone a "sally" in place of yellow-bellied chickerlegs is just downright irresponsible. Besides, I don't know anyone named Sally that reacts like a ninny-headed Nancy-face whenever something unpleasant comes up.

BOOM. Solved instantly. Here we go: Nancy is the new Sally. I've never liked any Nancys anyway, they're all so shrieky and nasally. Nancys are the types of people that can't enjoy Four Loko for even comedic value. Nancys are teabagging hypocrits who ask stupid questions like, "If your friend was a lesbian, would you still hang out with her?" or "do you want to go to Fridays for dinner?" and they love movies starring Ashley Judd/Katherine Heigl/Kate Hudson (remember when Kate Hudson was like a clean glacier stream and then she went and made a crapton of movies that weren't Almost Famous?).

I think I was spoiled living with MoLinder, because we always had parallel tastes in movies and TV shows, and argued our differing opinions incessantly. CrazyLiz lives on a completely different plane of entertainment and I feel like a dick because I loathe half the things she loves, and I will tell her so. But when I tell her I don't like something - and it's this way with everything - I want her to defend it with the same passion she claims to feel for the story itself. I don't want her to say,"Oh" and then silence herself.

I want to hear why. I want everyone to tell me why they love the things they love, because "I just do" isn't enough for me. Drives everyone crazy, I know, but they drive me crazy. Can't you people just be on my side? I have to compromise for the sake of the world, shouldn't the world sometimes compromise for the sake of me?

So many people claim to love something and so few champion that thing with unbridled zealotry, it just makes no sense. I'm a fucking zealot for the things I love - that's how I love things. With insanity and repetition and constants. And like, math.

Right now I kind of love grape-flavored Four Loko.

...

Nostalgia

2010-11-17T10:00:00.006-06:00

I've found that whenever I feel like I've been sewn together from incompatible parts, I just boldly emphasize the utter weakness of stuff that holds me together in the most confrontational way possible. Suddenly, for the first time like ever, I'm starting to think that aggressive transparency is kind of unhealthy because I'm constantly reminding myself of my mediocrity. I guess I just figure it's better not to lie about it, right, and make sure everyone knows right away how average I am.

But I think pointing out how mediocre I am all the time is the lie, because I know I'm not average and mediocre. I know I am different, because people treat me differently than they treat other people. This isn't a scale of better or worse, it doesn't involve ethics, health, likability or any of that. It's just that sometimes I make people nervous, and sometimes people think everything about me is a fucking joke.

And sometimes I come to shocking realizations about my effect on people, because I keep on having conversations with dudes where they express interest in courtship immediately followed by mentioning their own very serious psychological disorders.

...

Dino-Fight

2010-11-10T14:43:00.003-06:00

I don't know if you know this, but smooth digital imaging is a thing of the past, man. The future of blogging is all about fuzzily-rendered image borders and poor photography, I fucking swear it.

...

A Sunday at the Empress, Fyra, Attica

2010-11-08T13:48:00.000-06:00

Okay, I rushed. Fuck. All of a sudden I feel pressure to be good at this, and inventive or something, like I'm taking a creative writing class. I don't like it.

Part the First
Part Deux, Harlot
Part Tres, Notion

The door slams behind me and I'm pissed. "Why is this necessary?"

"We're trying to avoid making a scene out on the floor."

I understand. Rassles would definitely make scene. Or make fun of me. I'm hungry. This would be far more enjoyable if they took me to the buffet. I follow the guard into a small gray room with two benches and a long metal table, and she sits me down. "Someone will be with you in a minute."

As the door closes behind her, I check my phone. No service, of course. Ludicrous. They could give me something to read, just to be polite. I decide that I will not cooperate. Especially if they make me wait more than ten minutes.

Ten minutes later, another woman with a clipboard enters the room and sits down.

"Hi, I'm Samantha."

"Hello."

"I'm with the gaming board. I'm just going to ask you a few questions, if that's okay." She has one of those metal clipboard boxes that has secrets inside. If I had a clipboard like that, it would be full of candy. "Name?"

"It's not okay, and I don't have to tell you anything."

"Well, yes. You do."

"Am I being arrested?"

"No--"

I shake my head. "Then I definitely do not. Why am I here?"

"We just need to ask a few questions."

"You've been asking questions. Do you keep anything inside that clipboard?"

"Why are you here?"

"I have no idea. If I had that clipboard, it would be full of candy."

"I mean, why are you here at the casino?"

"Because you refuse to let me go home and eat dinner. Could you please tell me why I'm being held here?"

"We just need to investigate a few things."

"Like what?"

"Please, could you cooperate?"

"Fine."

"Thank you. What's your name?"

"Yellavitch Rossi."

"Social Security number?"

"I will not give that to you, and you have absolutely no right to ask for it."

"It's just protocol."

"And it's within my rights to refuse your request."

Samantha glares at me, visibly exhausted. How many hours a week does she deal with this? "Fine. What brought you to the casino?"

"My uncle is in town. We like gambling."

"Is your uncle a gambler?"

"He's a pit boss in Vegas."

Samantha perks up. "He is?"

"Yes."

She writes down something that I don't care about. I fold my arms. "Your last name is Rossi?"

"Yes."

"Is that Italian?"

"Yes."

"Is your uncle a Rossi?"

"No, he's a FitzPatrick."

"Oh. And he lives in Las Vegas."

"Yes."

"Did your uncle teach you how to play craps?"

"Yes."

"He did a good job. I heard you won a bit of money early on."

"I lost a bit of money too. You don't think I cheated, do you?"

"I'm just investigating something while they review the tapes."

"You guys are idiots."

The vagueness circles around for a little longer. She asks me if I have a job, if I went to college, if my family is heavily involved in the casino world, how often we gamble. If there was a clock, the hands would be moving backwards. Wasting my time. I look at my phone; I've been here nearly half an hour.

"I do not see how any of this is relevant."

"Honestly, we're just--"

"I will not answer any more questions. You obviously think I'm a member of some Italian gambling racket or something, like my family is the mob. We're just trying to have a nice little Sunday at the Empress. As a family."

Samantha gives me the "oh girl" head tilt, and there's a knock at the door. A tiny man peeks his head inside. "All clear. I'm sorry young lady, we've been keeping you here too long."

"So she's clean?"

"As a whistle."

"I can go?" I stand up. "Thank god. What were you going to wrongly accuse me of doing?"

"The fella next to you thought you stole his chips while he went to the bathroom."

"The haphazard chip guy? Jerk. He couldn't just do it to my face?"

"It's a pretty common scam, actually. Accuse someone of taking advantage of you, make a scene, we offer a free buffet to calm them down--"

"You gave him a free buffet?"

"Yeah."

"What are you going to give me for being cooperative and law-abiding?"

The tiny little man grins in snarky surprise. "What would you like?"

"Five free buffets."

"Five?"

"One for me, one for my sister, one for each of my cousins."

His grin widens. "I think we can do that for you." He and Samantha escort me out of the room and back onto the casino floor where my sister and cousins are having a sit-in in front of the penny slots. So melodramatic. They trip over each other to stand as I walk over there.

"Well?" David asks.

"I got us five free buffets, bitches."

...

"Did they play Good Cop Bad Cop?" Rassles slams her car door shut and looks over at me with that mischievous, overly-enthusiastic face she reserves for when people get into trouble or mom bakes cookies.

I lean back in shotgun and close my eyes. "I don't know what that means."

"You know, it's like one of them is all, 'where are the other drugs going?' and you're all, 'I don't know man, I got a family' and then he grabs your collar and jams a Desert Eagle in your face and the other cop grabs his fist and is all, 'O'Malley! You're outta control, man, she's just a kid, this isn't fucking Saigon!' and then they hand you a Kleenex and give you delicious cake."

My sister is a fucking idiot. "I definitely did not get cake."

"Man, that's bullshit."

"They don't give you cake," David chirps from the backseat. Snidely. "And that's the most back-ass, convoluted description of Good Cop Bad Cop I've ever heard."

"Fuck you, and yes they do."

"Cops never give you cake."

"Every time I've been in an interrogation room I was offered fucking cake." She turns on the car and revs it a bit, like that's going to make her bullshit more plausible.

"You have never been in an interrogation room!" Sometimes I think Rassles is completely delusional.

"Irrelevant," she brushes it off, as if it's completely acceptable to tell blatant lies.

"Is this like that thing with CrazyLiz's cat?" I wonder, "Where you're all, he's got a half-eaten ear and one eye and the other eye's like THIS," I cross my fingers in an X over my eye, "and he's all mangled and limping and eats pureed fish out of a tiny feline syringe."

"I am somewhat prone to hyperbole," Rassles giggles to herself.

"I don't know how you have friends."

"I tell good stories sometimes."

"Are you going to fucking blog about this?"

"Ummm, duh. And I'm going to do it from your point of view." We pull out of the parking lot, headed towards the highway. And dinner.

My pocket is full of buffet coupons. So many coupons. I pull them out to look at them and silently gloat. "Just make sure you mention the part about keeping candy in the clipboard, because I would totally do that. Because then whenever I carried it anywhere it would make super-satisfying clinky candy sounds."

...

A Sunday at the Empress, Tres, Notion

2010-11-03T13:00:00.006-05:00

Oh, this is going to be a multi-parter. I started writing it, you know, and thought, 'there ain't no way people will pay attention to one giant post like that. You should create suspense. The kind of suspense that lasts months, like Paranormal Activity but with gambling and a realistic storyline.

Part the First
Part Deux, Harlot

Security escorts Yell back into a stark hallway and I am pissed. Don't you take my sister, you sonsabitches. She is the bravest, smartest person in the world. She's going to be President some day, I fucking swear it. We're going to be like the Emanuel family: Yell's gonna be President after revolutionizing public policy, I'm going to be a super savvy author that writes brilliant, mind-blowing bullshit prose, in like iambic pentameter and stuff, and Katsisch is going to be angry and jealous about it. We're going to give TED speeches and go on Letterman just like all the other white liberals who fantasize about changing the world, I mean, there's a goddamn fantasy all planned out and the security guard at the Empress is fucking it all up because she's a stupid bitch with stupid hair who waddles like ET. Ho-lee fuck, what if she's an alien, and they recognized Yell as the strongest example of our species in the room with their brain scanners and this isn't a casino at all, what better way to disguise your fucking space ship with it's blinky twirly lights and oddly shaped exterior than by pretending it's a casino? Fuck, they're going to probe the bejeezus out of her.

But then, it's Yell. She'll escape through a complicated series of slight-of-hand shit, and like disable all the cameras with her withering gaze and forceful self-righteous speeches, and they'll take her to their leader and she'll just smart-ass her way into their hearts and minds, and then she'll be the new alien leader and they'll end pollution by altering the basic make-up of their advanced weaponry.

"I am thinking some heavy shit right now, guys."

We wait. We wait for a good twenty minutes. Shit. We're late for dinner. I make the call.

"Mom?"

"Hi hon, you guys on your way back?"

"Um. We've been delayed."

"Everything okay?"

"Yeah, everything's fine. Yell's been detained. They've got her in like a holding cell or something and they won't tell me what's going on. I might break something."

"You're kidding me."

"Never."

"Oh my god. She is going rip into them."

"I know, right?" Pause. "You think they think she's underage or something?"

"I have no idea, but I know that--hold on."

I wait. "I asked if they thought she was cheating--"

"Yell would never cheat."

"I know that, but--"

"Hold on." She starts jabbering with family in the background. I hear my dad laughing hysterically and saying something like, 'they took Yell? HAHAHAHA. She's going to get herself arrested for verbal assault. I am woman, hear me roar, right?'

"Okay. Uncle Dave and I are coming back there."

I tried to imagine slim, soft-spoken Uncle Dave standing up to casino thugs. "Is that really necessary?"

"He'll know what questions to ask, it's his job."

"How about he just tells me the questions to ask?"

"Honey, no. We're coming. Call us if something happens."

"Lame."

"It's our decision. Wait - Katsisch says you called to gloat - sorry - rebelliously gloat over being victimized by the man," she laughs.

"Tell her to sit on it. And make the Fonzie sound."

"Goodbye, honey."

"Peace out, Mums." I turn off my phone and turn to the entourage. "Yeah, the grown-ups are coming."

"Fuck, I'm gonna go have a cigarette." David storms off.

We slink down to the floor of the casino, guarding the doors all stern and depressed. My dad calls back. Twice. Basically, he just wanted to remind me that Yell is probably back there defending her rights and being brilliant and strong, and that if it were me I would be cracking jokes like I "do on Facebook" because "everyone thinks" I'm "goddamn hilarious." Duh.

"Oh sure, Dad, nice. They take Yell and we're all, poor Yell! She'll give them a piece of her mind! They take me and it's funny."

"If they took you, you probably deserved it. We'd just leave you there."

...

A Sunday at the Empress, Deux, Harlot

2010-11-01T16:17:00.007-05:00

Earlier that Sunday that I wrote about awhile ago and never finished writing about out of laziness:

Me, Leeska, and her silent boyfriend (when boyfriends are silent, I don't know if it's because they truly do not speak often, or it's because I never shut up) arrived at the river casino an hour later than everyone else since we have to drive from Chicago instead of the suburbs. Also because we are just plain late.

As we stroll over to the tables (slots are for sallies) looking haughty as fuck, we see Yell and David doing shots out of mini snifters at the bar.

"You, madame," David declares, clinking and swilling his snifter, "are the source of all that is good in the world."

"Yes I am," Yell proudly agrees, "I am the best shooter this town's ever seen."

"Shots?" I snort, grinning. "It's fucking Sunday afternoon. Grampa's here, for crissake."

"Your sister just made me $300 at the craps table."

"What the fuck? In the past like half hour?" I punch her lightly in the shoulder and she feigns chuckled pain. "You couldn't wait for us? I got bills, you know. Shylocks and goons. You need to spread that love to yer effing sister."

"I can't help being awesome, okay?" Yell yells, and smacks her hand on the bartop. "BARKEEP. Gimme a water. Double."

"Water and--"

She winks, pointing a long white finger at him. "ICE." She swivels on her barstool to face us, opening and closing her fist with a cracking finger arpeggio. "I need to keep my mind clear and my reflexes speedy for the next round. And look!" She jams her fist into her pocket and retrieves a stack of chips. "There are so many black ones. Look at all the black ones! LOOK AT THEM."

"What's up with the black ones?" Leeska walks into it.

"Those are the hundreds."

"Holy fucking hell."

"Seriously?"

"I am awesome at everything!"

After greeting the rest of the family and properly expressing our jealousy at Yell's gambling prowess, we prowl.

Prowling drive-bys are the best way to feel the energy of a table. Integral to amateur gambling. Prowling jazzes and sponges up luck and energy, it gives you that confidence required to go and lay your car payments on the line, because you're a hunter and the chips are your prey. We watch some ruddy red man yell at a dealer about the Sox game while a woman waves her nails and cackles, "shuddup, Frank!" in his face.

We exchange silent nods and David slides onto a stool at the Blackjack table neighboring Angry Frank, followed by Leeska, her boyfriend, and me. Yell leaves to get herself a giant pretzel or something.

I'm awful at Blackjack because I believe in luck, but most importantly I believe I don't have it. Still, I got me a system: I play until I lose once. It's never, "Okay, one more time," because you can't beat that shit, and next thing you know you're out $400 and you're struggling down the strip clutching a forty of Old English at four in the afternoon, which happened to me before and that shit's rent. After two hands I tap out to whole mess of heckling from the gambling peers.

But I'm not that stupid.

I rejoin Yell, who is still prowling and clicking her chips in her pocket. "I'm ready."

She narrows her eyes and puts on her game face. "Let's do this."

People over at Angry Frank's table are cheering now, so we decide to slip in. The cackling woman welcomes Yell back into the game.

"Good shooter, good shooter," she approves, clapping Yell on the shoulder.

"Hi again."

"You back for more?"

"Of course."

I put five on the Pass Line just as Yell lays down twenty. As much shit as I talk about how I'm all awesome at craps and gambling, I can be a real wuss. Then again, she's playing with eight times as much money as me and I kick ass at math and percentages, so who's the fucking sally now?

It's a pleasant run, money's flowing back and forth. Angry Frank swells up in a rage about the Sox game and there's some good-natured mockery. Some dude at the table has his chips all bonky, haphazardly plopped in the groves of the table instead of neat, horizontal stacks like sliced cucumbers. Plus, they're all $1 chips. Who the hell only collects $1 chips, and chooses to prepare them so cluttery?

"I'm trying to decide how I feel about that guy's chips," I whisper to Leeska, who squeezes in between me and Yell.

"Oh, I don't trust that," she says. "No way."

"Dude, how much would that inflame Katsisch'seses OCD?" Snicker.

"His chips are in disarray! Cease your hasty lack of organization! I will react shrilly and violently in displeasure!" Yell does a perfect imitation of our missing sister.

"Why must you corrupt my vision with such asymmetry?" I add.

"What?" (This is the only word Leeska's boyfriend says all day.)

"Our sister talks like a villian," Yell explains.

"All the time."

"Plus she uses our parents' basement as an evil lair."

"That bitch crazy."

Boyfriend turns to Leeska for justification, who nods. "They aren't joking."

"THIS IS THE WORST DAY OF MY FUCKING LIFE." Seriously, someone shouts that shit from across the felt. Angry Frank. "Just turn it on! Your TV is fucking off! Turn it on."

"I'm sorry Frank, but I have no control over--"

"Just put the fucking Sox game on, God Almighty, this casino is full of retards."

"Frank, cap it or you're gone."

This continues for a while and the man with haphazard chippery excuses himself to go to the bathroom, asking a dealer to watch his winnings. The dealer pulls out a pale blue cloth and covers the freakshow arrangement just before David rolls up and Yell slides her chips to make room for him at the table, grazing the blue cloth.

It's Yell's turn to shoot, and Angry Frank's attention targets her dice. "Don't you let me down, little lady," he says. "I'm having the worst fucking day of my life."

"If this is the worst day of your life because you aren't watching that game, I'd say you're the one with the luck. Don't let me down. I want a free buffet." Yell laughs and tosses the dice down the tablestretch of felt.

...

Opposable

2010-10-07T02:48:00.002-05:00

There's a lily in a vase and I touched it. It'll be dead by the time I get back to the office tomorrow morning, but at one sunny time I smeared my thumb and the thumbprint held, so it's mine. I ached to pluck a petal and battled against it.

People say ridiculous things, like "if you want something enough hard enough, you will get it." Fucking liars. I doubt they ever wanted anything, they just believed it was theirs.

...

Boy, It Sure Is Fun Painting This Here Fence

2010-09-29T12:52:00.005-05:00

By the way, you people are fucking useless. Everyone exctept for Mae, who totally gave me a sweet picture to use that inspired me to create similar ones and I've gotten incredibly lazy about the whole thing, because I am very good at starting things and not very good at finishing them. Grinding ideas into irrelevant jokes is one of my superpowers (along with being the boss and blockin' cock (lame)), but a deprecating, esoteric superpower that really only exists in my mind.

Katsisch, the middle sister, is moving into an apartment from the depths of my parents' basement, and I helped paint her new place on Sunday because I love painting walls and changing things that I find boring. I've never been a visibly flashy person, and I never will be (it would make me insufferable) but boring is boring is boring is boring, you know?

Of course, Katsisch is a horrible painter but a master project evader, and after a few hours she'd unevenly smeared lavender paint all over the walls and I told her to go back to my parents' so I could stay and clean up her bullshit job.

So as I was wiping up the purple paint water I sprayed all over her new kitchen during "clean up," the oven started beeping. Stupid oven. I beat it and kicked it a few times, pressed every button with force and malice, and ripped the oven door right off the damn thing.

It wasn't even hard. I lifted the door and sighed at it as the oven blared away. There weren't even any fucking lights on, the clock wasn't set, I don't even think it was fucking plugged in.

Oven doors really aren't as heavy as you'd expect. Out of shock, I carried it around the apartment with me while I looked for more paper towels and cleaning products, getting chips of oven soot and grease all over Katsisch's three-day-old apartment carpet, waving my arms in frustration. I went out on her balcony and considered throwing it into traffic just to be a bitch, because fuck you, oven door.

Back inside the oven was still going off like a fucking smoke alarm (maybe it's the smoke alarm?) so I called my sister and told her I fucked up. She was all, "Talk to mom" and then I panicked, rambling on about beeping oven alarms and flapping around the oven door like a fucking lunatic Icarus, and my mom was all, "why don't you just turn the oven off?" and bam, beeping stopped. I did nothing.

"Okay, so it just stopped."

"See?"

"I didn't do anything."

"Don't worry about it, everything's fine."

"What do I do about the door?"

"Put it back on or leave it there. Get some sleep." Just like that. Like it's no big deal. She did the same thing when I set the basement on fire, like, "I thought I smelled something. Get some sleep." But when I wore a t-shirt to school or pierced my nose it was all, "WHAT ARE YOU WEARING? TAKE IT OFF. NOW. Go put something else on. Something appropriate. When you're supporting yourself you can wear whatever you want, but right now blah blah bliggity blonk you'll thank me." To her it was all about accident versus intent. I get that.

I do not thank her for those clothes, by the way. I'm still angry that I had to wear button up shirts and sweaters throughout high school. No sweatshirts unless I wore a collar underneath them, nothing with a hood, no ripped jeans, and all this because I got a scholarship to Bennett Academy and I didn't want to go because private schoolers were jerks, so what did she do? Turned me into a fucking jerk.

Whatever.

Not that you care, but I can't find an appropriate fall jacket anywhere. I wore the same jacket for eight years, and some asshole stole it off the back of my chair at a bar. Probably because the whole faux military/motorcycle jacket thing is all trendy right now. Whatever. I bought it at Old Navy, it's not like it's anything special to anyone but me. Now they're walking around wearing my well-worn coat, with my grandmother's buttons and the lining I added, and I never realized how attached I was to it, and everything's upside down because I miss my bike and my jacket and it's cold outside, and I feel incomplete.

If this were a movie, I would get everything back. Fuckers stealing my shit.

...

Walking Down the Street Last Friday After Many Beers and Rums

2010-09-27T13:05:00.003-05:00

Adam: See this funeral home? I'm thinking about buying it.

Rass: And turning it into a bar?

Adam: No, and turning it into a funeral home.

(puzzled, Rassles continues shuffling down the sidewalk)

Rass: Adam?

Adam: Madam?

Rass: It already is a funeral home.

Adam: I believe it is actually an abandoned building.

Rass: Of course, of course.

Adam: I mean, it is just brimming with potential.

Rass: And caskets. Do not forget caskets.

Adam: Brimming with caskets.

Rass: Which are, in turn, brimming with potential.

Adam: You know what else brims in caskets?

Rass: Fear. And the undead.

Adam: Exactly. (we pause for a few seconds and get our bearings) Okay, so you know the World Superhero Registry?

Rass: Of course. That's where I do my online dating.

Adam: (pointing his finger at me) Touche. Well other than being rife with suitable boyfriends for you--

Rass: I fucking know what I'm getting into.

Adam: --you know how it's like, a collection of profiles that list certain qualities for each individual hero?

Rass: All of them fight crime and none have powers. It's very disappointing.

Adam: There's one more thing they all have in common: not one has an arch enemy.

Rass: Oh, please tell me we're going to drive to Ohio and start a fight with a fake superhero!

Adam: I'm thinking about it. I know karate.

Rass: You also know me.

Adam: Yes I do, and you are freakishly strong.

Rass: It's a gift and curse.

Adam: As is my impeccable timing. So here's what I'm proposing: we form a guild--

Rass: --of calamitous intent?

Adam: Exactly.

Rass: You could be The Funeral Director! and your funeral home will be our secret base. And you can have zombie henchman, oh, I get this now.

Adam: I was thinking The Reverend.

Rass: Classy, but weak. And obvious.

Adam: It is not obvious.

Rass: Oh come on, Scary Preacher Man is so cliche.

Adam: FINE. But we still need something for you.

Rass: I'm The Boss.

Adam: Well of course, but-

Rass: I dish out evil memos regarding the rules of the break room, and use up all of the toner in the printer without replacing the cartridge. And then I call my assistant into my office at 4:59 and make her stand there with a clipboard while I talk on the phone for fifteen minutes. But I don't let her leave, oh no--

Adam: I think you're missing the point, here.

Rass: --and when I hang up I'll ask her what time it is and then just send the bitch packing. But it's too late! She's already missed her train! She'll have to stay at the office an extra hour, and we don't pay overtime!

(evil, maniacal laugh)

Adam: I was thinking something a little more evil, and a little more power-centric. We need to do something those superheroes have to fight. We need a plan. See, I've got a funeral home slash zombie henchman factory.

Rass: That I invented for you. Just now.

Adam: Only after I directed you towards that line of thought--

Rass: --because you're the Funeral Director--

Adam: --which was my evil plan all along.

Rass: Whatever. So what do we got for me?

Adam: I really want a teammate who will fight fire. With their bare hands.

Rass: Just give me a place and a time.

Adam: Anywhere there is a fire. And constantly. In fact, I say, fight fucking fire with such alarming brutality that fire will think twice before burning anywhere near you.

CrazyLiz: Oh my god, you guys, shut up.

...

The Interrupting Cow

2010-09-21T10:59:00.005-05:00

I used to put on my mom's make-up when I was like ten, drawing a superhero eyemask or a shiny star on my forehead like the Lady Amalthea. Once I tried to make myself look like Jessica Rabbit, with the big purple eyelids and round, red lips, and the mom told me I looked silly and was brave to wear such a ridiculous mask and made me wash it off immediately, so I spread toothpaste all over my face and ran around, crying out melodramatically, "What have you done to me? I'm a unicorn. I'm a unicorn!" until someone paid attention or I sufficiently annoyed the fuck out of everyone. Or something like that.

But usually when I gave myself toothpaste facials--which was a trick I learned from my friend Karla who maturely reasoned out the beauty and health benefits of toothpaste facials all on her own after watching her big sister Margot do it (Karla was unaware that Margot did not actually use toothpaste)--usually when I gave myself toothpaste facials I got in wicked trouble for wasting shit, and then I had to wash the woodwork and pull weeds.

The first junior high sleepover I went to all these girls brought their Caboodles full of make up and gave each other makeovers, and I made myself a breathtaking black eye and dropped a line about fighting in a phalanx a la Civilization to tinkling ridicule because I was unaware that there were people in the world who did not think Civ was the most awesomest computer game ever, let alone people who did not think computer games were awesome to begin with. Fucking weirdos, right?

They made fun of me for awhile, called me a loser, reminded me that boys didn't like girls who liked computer games and never wore make up (they were basically right), and they tried to fix me. Then we watched Pretty Woman, a movie that made me nervous and uncomfortable because it was just about kissing and I didn't understand why she wanted to be with the asshole guy I didn't know why she didn't just get a real job and take care of herself, and they laughed since I obviously didn't understand love and the importance of beauty, so I hid in the bathroom and cried because I knew they were right, and I would never be as beautiful and sophisticated as the rest girls that had life figured out in sixth grade.

They never invited me over again. Told everyone at school that I was weird like a boy and that something was wrong with me because I didn't even like Pretty Woman. And so began the battle of Rassles v. The Pretty Girls, a battle that rages on to this day but only in my brain.

So I have another wedding to go to in a few weeks, and I the other day I decided that this time, for this wedding? I'm going to wear actual make up, not just mascara. Fo' reals. But I needed to practice my brushstroke. I'm initially goonish at anything that requires delicacy, but I've got pretty good muscle memory. I figured I could get this shit down after a few tries, easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Feeling revolutionary, I opened up my make up case. I decided that if this worked it would change my life. Perhaps, just maybe, I should wear actual make up like, all the time. I could look like a grown up instead of a child playing make-believe. I could wear make up to work, you know? Or to bars? Of course, my friends would point it out constantly; I must be prepared to hear, "Are you wearing make up?" at least once a day for six months or so. Still. The possibilities were endless, and kind of exciting. Not super endless because, well, I only have gray, brown, and three shades of green eyeshadow (St. Patrick's Day, 2004). But still. I have to substantiate my place as a feminine consumer before I hit thirty in January. After thirty you have to call yourself a woman and women wear fucking make up, so do it, even if you think it's stupid.

Half an hour later I'd completely forgotten trying to be pretty and painted on a very convincing Frankenstein Monster Face. With scars. I am so awesome at making myself look like the Frankenstein Monster. I should go Frankenstein Monster pro.

So now you know why I haven't finished the casino story.

...

* You know, I like Pretty Woman a lot, when I'm not going all propaganda-brain. (She is valued by everyone in power for her naive, radiant beauty and her ability to subserviently follow orders! She knows about cars which adds surprising depth to her gentle, yet radiant character! Controlling man buys her love with fancy things! Fancy things make women complacent and enthusiastic love slaves!) But I do think it's fun and ridiculous.

Next Time I Will Be Wearing Pants: Many Profiles

2010-09-16T10:14:00.012-05:00

Last night me and CrazyLiz had an impromptu party on our porch, which began with a case of beer and heckling an endless stream of angry drivers who failed to parallel-ically squeeze their way into a iddy biddy rock star parking spot across the street, and ended with me passing out on my laptop.

The person who finally did get her car in that spot is the masterful Brenda, an Irish aviation engineer who lives in the basement. She's got this beautiful harlequin Great Dane named Seamus, and she's going to let me take him for walks. We applauded her parking job voraciously and tricked her into hanging out with us, and she got fuckin' durnk (which is a new word I just made up, just now, for 'drunk.' This is because I am creative, and not because I'm bad at typing) and made cat-calls at every single bike that cruised down the street.

After awhile Al roared up to the building on his motorcycle, and we shanghaied him for porch-drinking. Al is Brenda's younger brother. Lives on the third floor. That apartment up there goes through tenants like prune juice through a human centipede (I am a visual writer, if anything). Anyway, Al is the landlord (the Brenda/Al family owns the building), or at least he has been ever since Doug moved down south. I miss Doug. Kind of. Al is a better landlord, but Doug let me scam on his internet and he was in a band called DOUGOUT! and used to practice his keyboards really loud. And then he'd stuff fliers for shows under our door, and MoLinder would get all pissy because she slept directly beneath his "music" room. Now we have Al (Brenda calls him Alfie, it's friggin adorable), the Irish Chicago cop with a dog that looks like my tattoo

Oh, and Al is fucking hot.

According to Christy and Chad, who live across the hall from him and who were also hanging out on the porch with us last night, he has a plethora of lady-friends who frequently come a-callin'. And, psssst: they do it on his porch. OMG I KNOW HILARE.

It really didn't take much pleading to get these people to pile onto the porch, just some beer and an ashtray and a smile. I'm betting Al uses a similar system to lure his lady-friends, but they make the sex and I make bad jokes. Neither of us, however, end up wearing pants.

Next time we all have an impromptu party, though, I will be wearing real pants, and not boxers covered in polar bears. I promised.

We tried to get Upstairs Steve to hang out, but last time I made Upstairs Steve join me on the porch it was seven in the morning and I was still drinking from the night before and I gave him personality quizzes for like an hour. He thinks I'm odd. His power animal is the penguin.

So I'm hungover right now. Lame.

...

Tell Me Who's Yo Housekeeper Wutchoo Keep in Yo House

2010-09-15T12:49:00.001-05:00

I'm seriously trippin' right now, because there is a strong chance I forgot to turn off Clocky's alarm and I really wanna go home and make sure that bitch ass alarm clock isn't rolling out around the apartment.

Shit, Clocky.

I mean, we know I have issues with like, not sleeping. I am awesome at sleeping. Anything that involves suspended motor functions and unconscious creative output is like cake for me, and you know. Fuck yeah, cake.

Being awake is so hard. You have to be clean when you talk to people or else they make scrutinous little snipes, since everyone's a private dick, like "oh, are we too good for a shower?" or "I can smell you were drinking last night" or "go put on a bra, this isn't Wal-Mart."

So I need an alarm clock that'll get all up in my business so I can be a daisy-fresh daywalker, and Clocky is loud enough to get me out of bed. Sometimes. Usually. After awhile. Basically Clocky is an annoying little bastard, and if that alarm has been going off for hours...shit.

If Clocky's been bustin 'round the a.pt. like a wheeled schizophrenic banshee all frakking day, then right about an hour ago I'm sure the neighbors chopped down the door with a fire-axe and crushed him to bits in an alarm-fueled axe-rage, smashing family portraits and snatching my Band of Brothers DVD's because they are laying out on the table right now in plain sight omgwtf, and and then Oscar The One-Eyed Cat prolly got loose into the world (I started calling him Colonel Tigh) and is about to get grilled by crack-addled hipsters who don't have jobs because they need to focus on their "music" and eat cat-steak sandwiches for lunch. Cat-steak with hedonistic hipstery condiments and toppings, like roasted-red-pepper-and-guava-chutney-with-gluten-free-brie-purple-Japanese-sweet-potato-truffles.

GAAHHHHHH.

...

Weddings are no longer the worst times of my life: first photoblog ever.

2010-09-07T00:54:00.019-05:00

"Okay," sighs CrazyLiz, closing her eyes and cranking her seat back. "High Low, Wisconsin Edition. Begin."

"What do you mean? Like how many Highs and how many Lows?"

"Yeah. Five each."

"Okay. Highs? Bar with the tree at the bachelor party."

"Tree bar. For sure."

"Best Jukebox ever, super bonding music time with Phil's brother."

"I think my binding time with Phil's brother was a High."

"Well you got to make out with him, so I'd say your high supersedes mine."

CrazyLiz giggles like she's about to divulge in dirty, opulent secrets. "Until Liger Girl ruined it."

"Stupid Liger Girl."

"Did you know there's a Liger Farm in Romeoville?"

"You speak fictitious untruths. You are a fucking Liger Liar, silly sally."

"And you steal my make out partners. That was a Low."

"Concur." We pause to ridicule the audacity of Liger Girl on countless levels, because we're bitches that need to fill the three hour car trip with something.

"Okay," I start up again. "Taylor at the bachelor party. That fucking guy is like a roman candle."

"Who only drinks tequila."

"Neat," I remind her, pointing.

"Yes, only drinks tequila neat."

"And then we had to carry him down the hall to the hotel room after smashing him into the car like a drunken accordion."

"That reeks of tequila."

"Fucking Taylor." I take a sip of water, grinning.

"I got to kiss him too," she sighs, satisfied. "And cuddle. I would say cuddle time with both of them was a High."

"That's because you're a whore. I would say Taylor peeing on his pillow was a high."

"We saw his shween!"

"And then Phil had to follow the stream with the bucket and we made him sleep on it."

"You guys are such bastards."

"We are hiLARious."

"Whatever," CrazyLiz reaches forward. "Do we have any more beef jerky?"

"Fuck. Low: running out of road trip jerky."

"Lame." She puts on her sunglasses and leans back again. "Low? Not finding Otis Redding's memorial in Madison."

"High? Finding every single other memorial in Madison."

"Furious searching."

"Followed by extravagant failure. But then? Wrong turns equal super fun time."

"And Rassles' favorite museum of all time."

"Yes. New favorite museums. Could you imagine what would have happened if we didn't see that sign?"

"Yes. We would have napped, and my hangover would have mysteriously vanished."

"Small price to pay for the Circus World Museum."

"I love that you find a new favorite museum every year."

"I also love that about me."

"But you still had to wear that awful sweatshirt."

"Do not say things about my sweatshirt that you will fucking regret."

She cracks up. "Oh my GOD, that sweatshirt is such a fucking cock block."

"God forbid all of the smokin' hot dudes at the fucking Circus Museum want to stay away from us. THERE WAS NO ONE THERE."

"COCK. BLOCK."

"Shut up."

"You shut up."

"No you shut up."

"NO YOU SHUT UP."

"GAAAAHHHHHH. You know what? Fine. Okay. Lows: CrazyLiz talking mad shit about my fucking amazing-ass sweatshirt."

"Lows: Rassles wearing retarded-ass sweatshirts."

"I hate you so hard right now. Everyone loves that sweatshirt but you."

"That's because they all know to stay away from the Dorky Crazy Lady wearing Salvation Army rejects."

"I bought that sweatshirt straight from the fucking source. IT IS MY HOME JERSEY."

"THEN WEAR IT AT HOME."

"Oh, we are so in a fight right now."

"Whatever."

"Okay, okay. Highs. Circus Museum: climbing into the human cannon."

"Climbing into the off-limits human cannon."

"Having no one around to tell us to stop touching stuff."

"Climbing over all of the displays."

"And into creepy old traincars."

"Wearing circus costumes around the park that we found on a display rack."

"That cape was super itchy."

"You're a wuss."

"Plus it made me look huge."

"Mine was like a big gold moo-moo."

"Yes, but it was flowy and airy," I point out to her.

"And it billowed in the wind like a poem."

"Poems are known for being billowy."

"Okay. Next. Writing Phil's wedding vows for him after the rehearsal dinner."

I start to laugh, and quote our genius. "Your boobs look awesome from up here. This is because I am tall. Hey, if we have kids, are they going to be vegan like you? Because then I don't know if they can drink breastmilk."

"Low: Phil not using the vows we wrote for him."

"Seriously. Bullshit. High: beer canoe."

"High: dumping out the beer canoe and going canoeing in the lake."

"Okay, high: towel dancing on the bojangled dance floor."

"Oh, I loved towel dancing. Low: freezing cold."

"Low: everyone passing out and drinking and watching Big Fish by myself."

"High: you did not cry or fight with anyone."

"BEST WEDDING EVER!"

I think we had more than five of each.

...

I'm tagging this with my favorite tags 'cause I don't have one for that soundwave antenna beep-beep-be-deep sound, but this post is really about time.

2010-09-02T12:13:00.012-05:00

So I'm sorry, to all ten of you, that I have yet to continue my story.

Time is a factor, and starting tonight I have five-day-wedding-extravaganza, so you know. Fun. Just think about how long you had to wait in between Harry Potter novels, or seasons of LOST. Yeah. I just put shit into perspective.

Until...later. Eventually. Man, remember when I would line up guests posts and shit? Remember when I actually wrote things of substance? Yeah, me neither. Excuses are useless, like Folgers coffee and things cooked without butter. And movies starring Ashley Judd and amateur philatelists and calculators with sticky buttons. Dry erase markers. Old calendars.

So I have a calendar on the the wall of my office and on my wall at home, and both are permanently fixed on 2008. People always point at it like, "Um, it's August now." and then I'll say, "Actually it's September, and that calendar is from 2008. June is always the best picture."

And CrazyLiz moved in and tried to make all the clocks the same time, but luckily I keep on unplugging the microwave and the coffeepot so those clocks are just constantly bonked.

Take that, time.

...

A Sunday at the Empress, Part the First

2010-08-26T16:00:00.012-05:00

"Sure," I hear my sister answer a muffled question, and she calls up the escalator, "I'll catch up in a minute."

"What?" I am totally distracted and counting a wad of cash.

"She'll catch up in a minute," my cousin answers on behalf of Yellavitch.

"Whatever." I lost track of the bills on purpose and smiled as I started counting again, tripping off the escalator with my cousins in tow. David and Leeska. Not real names. We're standing there in the lobby of the Empress Casino, and I am awesome at craps again.

My Uncle Dave is in town from Vegas. He's a Pit Boss at the Stratosphere. Logically, when he comes to Chicago the whole clan goes to the casino as if he doesn't spend enough time at the tables already. Although I don't think he knows how to do anything but gamble. And watch people gamble. He can probably shoot things too, since he's some level of sergeant, which covers a broad spectrum of enlisted ranks, I understand, but I can never remember his official rank. He's a runner, very slim, soft-spoken, patient, gay. His house has only white walls and metal shelves housing four different sets of encyclopedias, with no other ornaments except a family photo above his desk and fridgeful of postcards. I would say he's the black sheep since he's quiet and blends into backgrounds, but I kind of feel like that side of my family consists of only black sheep.

So we're waiting in the lobby.

"Fuck is taking so long?" I glance down the escalator after a minute or two of waiting. Yellavich is speaking, folded arms, combative and sure, while the head of casino security scribbles on a yellow notebook.

"No idea," David says. "I'm having a cigarette. Be right back."

He ambles off and Leeska crosses her arms, sighing. "How long do you think this is going to take?"

"Don't know. Do they think she's not twenty-one or something?" Yellavitch, as I've mentioned before, looks like a pretty little fourteen-year old boy.

"Probably," she answers. "No, no fucking way, they scanned our IDs like seventeen times. They know she's legal."

"Hope so." I shift my weight and stretch, rubbing my stomach. I am hungry. "I'm getting hungry."

"Me too. Fucking hurry up, Yell."

"Screw it. I'm going down there." I pound my way down the stairs and stroll up to my sister and the security lady, who is very round.

I smile up at her. "Hi," I interrupt, and stick out my hand. The security guards stares at it for a second before gripping it, and I hold on. "I'm Rassles. Yell is my younger sister. Is there a problem or anything I can help you with?"

"We're just investigating something."

"What are you investigating? We actually have somewhere to be."

"It'll be just a minute," she nods, a little condescending, and yanks her hand away. Bitch. I'm braver around my siblings compared to the company of everyone else; more confrontational and self-assured, with a greater capacity to threaten.

"Are you afraid she's underage?" I duck my chin and crack my jaw, narrowing my eyes on the woman's face. "Because I'll verify everything in her damn wallet."

"I really can't say."

"Well, if I can help, let me know."

"I will, thanks. Yell, could you come with me please?"

"Sure," the Yellavitch sneers, arms crossed like a coat of bloody daggers, and the waddling Head of Security escorts my little sister through those key-coded doors that lead into the stark hallways behind the glittery casino floor.

...

Love Gun

2010-08-26T11:58:00.008-05:00

So you know that I'm not necessarily all about the videos, but a good friend of mine, Ms. Ellie Maybe, is in a bad ass KISS cover band called Slutter (brilliant) and I firmly believe they deserve to be all over all the televisions and the internets. Of course, usually their name is preceded by "All-Female," which is obnoxious unless someone is talking about irony, because it's KISS, you know? It's KISS. But usually they're not talking about irony, they're talking about how they're impressed that a band could find women who knew how to play instruments in the first place.

Rant over. Video now.

And just for the sake of balance, and because Ellie would get all pissy if I promoted Slutter instead of the Maybenauts, her 'serious band,' here's that little shout-out.

...

shootin at the walls of heartache

2010-08-20T19:26:00.002-05:00

CrazyLiz's cat is easily the neediest cat in the goddamn world. He's got those Hemingway cat-hands, the ones with all the fingers, and he grips the armrest of my Lay-Z-Boy like it's a barrel going over the falls and just fucking trills until I touch him.

You know, comparing cats to boys is just sad, but seriously. Oscar, I wish you were a boy.

I have drunkenness going on right now and the night was good. Some guy asked me to be in his band. This happens rfequently, where they gfive me napkins and pens and SERIOUSLY CAT LEAVE ME ALONE I DON'T CARE IF YOU CAN TURN YOUR HEAD UPSIDE DOWN.=

tyPing is hard right now. oscar pulled the 's' key off my keyboard with his clawsa nad I was all like chill the fuck out,k cat.

So yeah. I called muffy. she is one of those girls who always brings a guy home and is never embarrassed because HE is never embarraswing.

shit

How does this happen? How do you just be all like come home with me and then they just like do it?:

I DPM
T UNDERSTAND THEN AGAIN APPARENTLY THE CAPS LOCK IS ALSO AN ISSUE FOR ME HOLD ON

better.

My fingers are stretching to hit the appropriate keys and all I can think is, okaay, if I weren't so aweome at sim=nging Patty Smyth would yhou care? This is a big deal. van halen asked her before hagar. you can google it. or wikipedi it. fucking whatever.

I have all of these things to say that are way slower to porcess when I havce to type. also my backspace key is bullshit.

Yester Me, Yester You

2010-08-17T11:57:00.012-05:00

I've been mentally preparing myself for Phil's upcoming nuptials, because I am about 99% sure that come 3am I'll be sloppy, drunken, crying mess. I do not win at weddings.

Most likely I'll misquote my favorite authors while trying to explain my emotional plight to someone who will feel obligated to listen because they care about me just enough to put up with snivelly, yelling, abusive Rassles since I gave them advice that one time when they needed it. But they won't get it, they'll put words into my mouth and I'll snap at their lack of understanding because let's face it - I am a misunderstood individual, destined to wander the path of sage hermitage and loneliness and woe. I'll probably shoulder buckets of woe all over the fucking place, and when I spill it all I can just refill from the fuckloads of woeterfalls leaking out of craggy Woe Mountain that totally creates its' own woether, which, of course, is emo for "weather."

Woether, by the way, is 96 degrees and windless, relentless humidity and fat red bug bites. Seriously, for awhile there going outside was like wading through steaming salsa with shinfuls of papercuts. Me and CrazyLiz cranked up the dusty A/C unit, turned off all the lights, closed the blinds and watched three seasons of Buffy until the wind came back home.

I am so glad I don't live in fucking Florida.

Yesterday the wind returned, so I can breathe again. Phil and Rachel (fiancee) came over for porch drinking, and I warned them about dreading the wedding, and Phil laughed and punched my knee and called me a sally.

"Wait, I don't get it," Rachel asked, all concerned.

"Rossi gets drunk and feels sorry for herself at weddings," Phil laughed.

"You do?"

"Hey, I'm allowed wallowing."

"Why don't you just make your date take care of it?"

"Not bringing one. So I guess it's up to CrazyLiz to comfort me," I grinned evilly and smiled at her.

"Oh, fucking great," she sighed, and rolled her eyes.

"Aren't you bringing Adam or something?"

"Nah," I shook my head. "It's too complicated. I'd have to take him to the bachelor party, the rehearsal dinner, the wedding, Sunday Funday, camping - this is a big event, man. Any guy I brought would have to be dedicated to me for five days. Even Adam wouldn't do that."

"He wouldn't?"

"He's too clean," I shrugged. "His OCD would kick in, he'd need to wash his hands all the time--"

"He'd get his suit dirty," Phil laughed and chugged his High Life.

"Exactly. Plus, you told me, and I quote, 'if you're not bringing some dude you plan on sleeping with, I'd rather have you just bring Gyna.'"

"Wait - I said that?"

Rachel defended me. "I definitely remember you saying that."

"Wow, I am awesome. But now I feel bad, 'cause I like Adam. You know I just want you to get laid."

"Awww, thanks."

"And if you're not getting laid, then I might as well surround myself with hot chicks with big tits."

Rachel closed her eyes and scoffed. "Do I know Adam?"

"I don't think so."

"How do you know Adam?"

"He's a friend. We're like each other's unofficial dates to everything."

"And that's it?"

"You know me. Plus, he can talk to anyone and he looks good in a suit."

"He's like Moby with emo glasses," CrazyLiz explains. "But like--"

"Like with a little bit of that guy from Crank," Phil adds. "And he always wears a long black leather coat, with a suit and like, combat boots."

I laugh. "He looks like he belongs in the Matrix. Like if Moby and Jason Statham merged in the Matrix. And were very clean and awkwardly quick-witted."

"Dude, EXACTLY."

"That is perfect."

"So," Rachel smirks, "why isn't he coming to the wedding?"

"Could you imagine Matrix Moby Statham camping? No. I don't really need a date anyway."

"Except to deal with the fucking crying," CrazyLiz laughed. She was being facetious. She cries way more than me. Because of the Crazy.

"Hey, I got an idea," Phil lit up, excited.

"What's up?"

"How about you just don't fucking cry at my wedding, you pussy."

...

MOTHS ARE HORSESHIT

2010-07-31T03:44:00.006-05:00

there is a moth. There is a motha nd I am drunk and usually moths are not freaky but this is one fucking mutant ass moth and THERE IT IS ARE YOU FUCKING KOIDNG ME I HATE EVERUYONE

There is some serious dr. dolittle lunar moth shit going down in the Rassles household and aren't cats sposed to catch those things? Get on that fucking ahahahahahahahahhhhhhhhhhhhh ACTION

I Am Allergic to July

2010-07-28T01:28:00.006-05:00

I can tell I'm becoming responsible because I stopped getting those hangovers where I spend all day moaning and sweating and bitching about Margot Kidder's Lois Lane eye make up. Haven't had one of those in months. There are several reasons for this, the main one being dread, the second one being I stopped watching Superman whenever I had a hangover. Superman used to be my official Lonely Hangover Movie, but lately I've been watching Stardust because it reminds me of a guy I barely knew before I started having shitty summers. Or was it the first shitty summer?

I hate remembering unrequited crushes, but I do it all the same. Remembering them is much better than having them, because I can jiggle my memories around to convince myself he really actually returned the feelings and was too scared to act upon them. Or something.

The current unrequited crush is a fucking doozy that's been on and off for like three years, and whenever I see him I act like an asshole. Last summer he came into the office to drop of some prints when my face was at its most swollen. Even though I swore to keep the more attractive profile facing him during our conversation, when he asked how I was doing I immediately cranked my neck around, pointed at my jaw and declared, "Well, I'd be a lot better if I didn't have this fucking goiter growing out of my face. Check it, from this side I'm Marlon Brando."

"Wild One Brando or Apocalypse Now?"

"Doctor Moreau."

And then he laughed a real laugh, not one of those fake ones. See, it's those conversations that make him so dreamy. Do I have the balls to ask him out at all? No, and I don't think I ever will.

The past four summers, I've had some fucking ridiculous health problem. One summer I developed an allergic reaction to my lotion, and my hands were covered in cracks and blisters for two months before I discovered the cause. I didn't have health insurance then. Last summer was the swollen face and the liver ultrasound debacle, which was a fucking hoot. The summer before...okay, it wasn't so much of a "health problem" as it was a "crying problem."

On Saturday my eye swelled up. There is a fucking stye. Was a stye. It's basically gone now, but I look like I'm getting over a wicked shiner, and I've been make jokes about spousal abuse.

Tomorrow, the crush will be stopping by the office. Of course.

This post started off as one thing and now I don't remember where I am anymore.

Okay, so I'm actively avoiding hangovers. That, my friends, is the equivalent of willingness to accept responsibility for my irresponsibility. And old age. And the fact that MoLinder isn't here anymore and I don't have a drinking buddy at home.

But CrazyLiz moved in today, whom I love dearly, and along with her a one-eyed cat built like a tank named Oscar and a pepper-faced chocolate lab named Harley. Harley will only be here for a month, but hot damn, I'm excited.

For one month I will have a dog. Things are lookin' up for ole Rassles.

...

Solitaire

2010-07-23T02:38:00.010-05:00

"No, don't eat anything," I say. "You don't need to. Anything. You are just refilling your water and that is it." I plunge myself towards the kitchen, swimming. "And getting ice. Be glad you don't live in a fucking swamp." Fill up my glass and open the freezer, quickly grabbing the top ice cube tray and spilling slushy, half frozen water all over myself. I sigh and look down.

"FUCK. That feels glorious. Leave the water on the floor. You don't give a fuck, no you don't. You know who gives a fuck? Doesn't matter. Not you. Get ice cubs," I crack a second, frozen tray, "and get the fuck out of here." I open the freezer again to put them back and my hand tickles a heavy sealed bag. "Unless you am eatin' them fucking ice cream diblets," I snatch the bag and slam the freezer door. "Them're acceptable. Spiritually and physically. In fact, might as well finish 'em. Ain't wrong with that. Your stomache's all grumblypantsy and you're a stupid bitch either way. Ice cream heals everything but heartache."

The bag won't open. "Fuckin sticky frozen horseshit," I say, and angrily gut it open with a carving knife and pop three of those little things in my mouth. "Okay. Don't do that shit again. And then tomorrow, you will ride your new bike. Clandestine bikes are no good, they must be ridden, you farthead. Even if it's hot. Yes, even if it's hot, because velocity craps wind. Seriously. If you don't there will be shmonsequences. Speaking of hot: do not dutch oven yourself tomorrow morning. That's for the winter." There aren't a lot of the ice cream dibs left in the bag. They're gone quickly. I stare at inside the empty bag and consider licking the chocolate lingering on the palm of my hand, and look around to make sure there are no hidden cameras in my kitchen. I stare at my hand and jam it under the sink faucet, convinced that someone in the world can see me. "Okay. Go back to the lazy boy. Don't forget your water. You will pass the Mystic Cave Zone on the first try, why? Because you are not a sally. You are...well, you're not sally."

I walk down my dark hallway, pausing at the closed door to the empty second bedroom. I have to work in seven hours. But first I have to beat Sonic 2, and before that I have important doorknobs to ponder.

I stare at the doorknob. "You are not a sally. You are stronger than Dr. Robotnik, you will free woodland creatures and collect the chaos emeralds, and you are not as lonely as you think you are."

I look away from the door and start walking back over to my lazyboy. "Also, while you're at it? Talk to yourself more. It's extremely sexy and all the rage in France."

...

I AM INCEPTING IDEAS INTO YOUR MINDS

2010-07-22T12:52:00.015-05:00

So I've decided that I need something, anything, to distinguish my blog from others. Somehow. Basically, I need a header image.

And as bullshit as it sounds, I want you guys to help me. Please. I have zero confidence in aesthetics. Mostly because people are constantly telling me ridiculous shit like, "you like weird, ugly, gnarly things."

I disagree.

I like things that are bad ass.

What I really want is something no one else has. Because I have individuality issues.

Schmee had a brilliant idea at one point, that I should ask all of our friends to drunkenly draw on napkins at the bar, and use those for an image. The problem with that lies in actually getting people to do it before they're distracted by Jager bombs or something.

So I mocked up some header images to give you guys an idea about the kind of thing I'm looking for*. I am neither artiste nor digital genius. I only have MS paint and a crappy scanner to work with, here. You guys, I'm sure, have all sorts of niftly gadgets that make your lives easier and more arty.

Will you, will you, will you help me? Fuckers? Please? Draw something on a napkin and email to me or something. You're writers, you're creative, you can come up with ideas. Paint me a sonnet. You can do it, right?

Of course I am right. I am always right.

Do I want a sign like that, or like a forest of out-of-focus beer bottles? But I like movies better than beer (I can't believe I just admitted that) so yeah. What about like, a film reel? No, too overdone. I could get a tattoo with the blog title, take a picture of it, and use that as a header. I'm just trying to incept some ideas here, people. Work with me.

Speaking of inception...I am all up in that movie. Nolan and I aren't fighting anymore, which is a good thing, because I was really worried that we would have to break up, and he's so dreamy. Anyway, all is right with the world because his dreams are way different from my dreams, because I have like, Trojan horsebirds with doorknobs, and it's like this Russian doll of worlds - which is similar to Nolan, but different enough. Next up on things that I'm worried will ruin my book even though they came out in 2006? Special**.

* If you're familiar with Chicago...do you recognize the second one? Because it's modeled after the greatest sign in the city.

**Michael Rappaport seriously needs to be in more movies. If I ever get to pick all the actors I want in the movie that I'm writing in my brain, he'd be in it. Him, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Harvey Keitel, Jack Nicholson, Jeff Bridges, Elliot Gould (I am obsessed with Elliot Gould), Sam Rockwell, and Chris Pine. There. It's like a fucking dream. Can Jackson Publick act? I want him too. All I need is women***, but I don't want to think about that right now.

***Okay, I got my actresses in my fake movie that I haven't written: Sigourney Weaver, Summer Glau (in my head, Summer Glau is young Sigourney. Don't fight it.) Frances McDormand, Rosario Dawson, Claire Danes, Joan Allen, Freema Agyeman (bitch needs to get off British TV and into movies where more people can be in awe of her), Katee Sackhoff, and Emily Deschanel.

...

Now I want your dream cast. GO.

...

What Happens In the Oreo Lounge...Happens Every Day.

2010-07-07T14:00:00.006-05:00

(Scene: An office. Friday afternoon. Three twenty-something girls are chatting in the "break room," but none of them call it that. About two years ago one of these ladies (that means me, a-holes) changed the room's Caller ID to "The Oreo Lounge," no one else in the office knew how to work the phones to change it back. She considers this a personal victory. Back then, there were fuckloads of Oreos, like, all the time. Which is weird, because back then she was thinner. She is now considering an all-Oreo diet. She remembers how well the Oreos softened when she dipped them in her coffee (The Oreo Lounge was always out of milk). Those were some delicious fucking Oreos. Perhaps a trip to CVS is in order. Oooo--and white cheddar Cheez-Its. Those need to happen.)

Nat: I just like, you know, being spontaneous. Like Howie is way more down to earth about stuff, but I'm like hey, you know, let's go out to dinner, let's see a movie, let's do something! But all he wants to do is watch baseball.

C-Bird: Same thing with Eric, but instead of just like, going out, we've got team conflict.

Rassles: Why'zat?

C-Bird: (she rolls her eyes) He's a Cubs fan. (the co-workers nod in understanding. Nat sucks in a breath)

Rassles: (taking a sip of her coffee) I like him.

C-Bird: You would.

Rassles: You guys are so brave. You're like a sixties bi-racial couple. Will your children be raised to be snobs or racists?

Nat: What's that? Cubs or Sox?

(Rassles nods, gravely)

C-Bird: I can't even think about that right now.

Nat: I think she'll teach her kids to be more open-minded about which team they choose. Things aren't always in Cubs or Sox. Sometimes you gotta hit that-uh-Bear middle ground.

(The three girls laugh a little, and do that thing where they simultaneously sigh out "yeah," and then they politely laugh again.)

C-Bird: Still, getting him to go out with my friends is like herding cats.

Rassles: I love that phrase. But I like to substitute "cats" with "hamsters." I support alliteration.

C-Bird: (completely ignoring her) It's like we're settling into this routine.

Nat: Yeah. Come home, work out, eat dinner, watch TV, sleep.

C-Bird: Lather, rinse, repeat. Everything gets so boring. Let's shake it up a little, you know?

(A man sticks his head into the Oreo Lounge)

Thomacz: Ladies! I've just been off the phone with Action Man. He has given us permission to leave work around two this afternoon, provided the mail has arrived.

C-Bird: Thanks!

Rassles: Thank you, sir.

Nat: I knew it.

Thomasz: You ladies are very welcome. (he pops back out to go spread the news to other co-workers)

Rassles: Yeah buddy. (she turns to her co-workers) We should totally celebrate and grab a drink or something. An off-work-early drink of awesomeness.

C-Bird: Yeah, I prolly should just get home. I told Eric that I thought we were getting off early, and we were gonna grab an early dinner.

Nat: Yeah, I can't either. I gotta work out.

Rassles: You work out every night.

Nat: Well, if you've got a schedule you stick to it.

So much for fucking spontaneity.

...

Is that Dave Coulier?

2010-06-28T15:45:00.007-05:00

This is bad ass. Even though if it were me creating slow-crackling lightning vimeos, I would have squirreled some Lou Christie in the background just to be obnoxiously literal. Just like whoever makes soundtracks for basically every romantic comedy ever. Or whoever made all those literal videos last year. Only the funny ones, though, not the unfunny ones. Those are dumb.

Luckily there's no need for me to tell you which literal videos are funny, because everyone who reads my blog obviously already has highly sophisticated comedic gumption and can smell the difference between crap and funny-ass crap instead of just taking someone's word for it. Right?

Right.

...

Like A Dream I'm Flowin' Without No Stoppin'

2010-06-24T16:43:00.011-05:00

Yesterday morning I woke up with the Mighty Mighty fucking Bosstones in my head, which is obnoxious because I have never, ever, ever in my life enjoyed their music because it all sounds like blaring Kraft singles and growly, chain-smoking hamsters. That's the impression that I get.

But for thirty five seconds I had this lyrical couplet skittering through my brain--I'm not a coward, I've just never been tested, I'd like to think that if I was I would pass--and for thirty-five seconds I found them lyrical geniuses. Genii. Every single time I think of the plural of geniuses, I wish it were genii. Is this the appropriate spelling? Confer and report.

Then I showered singing Tom Jones (because you gotta sing Tom Jones in the shower, people. I been really feelin' Tom Jones, lately). Went through my usual morning routine of creaking across the hallway in my towel seven hundred times to retrieve forgotten bathroom items, got dressed, made my hair look a little bit pretty, missed the bus, drove halfway to work, missed another bus, sweated through the hot wind, pulled my hair up because it didn't look pretty no more, got on the next bus, became absorbed in my book, missed my bus stop, walked two blocks back to work, entered the office half an hour late and all the morning sweat froze directly to my trembling body because it is fucking freezing in my office.

Someday I will live in a world where this every morning scenario will result in a meet-cute between me and my future not-husband (marriage is a gimmicky trick), who will hopefully have the rich, virile purl of either (a) Tom Jones or (b) MCA.

So was sitting at my desk, imagining myself traipsing around the heat-sensitive Predator-vision forest with lumberjack gangsta MCA (this is a go-to personal fantasy - if you try to knock me you'll get mocked), when it started storming outside and everyone in the office freaked out.

My phone rang. I answered. "So what'cha want?"

Co-worker Amy hyperventilated into her end of the reciever, "It is like thunder and lightning out there."

"Whoa. Superscary."

"It is. You need to come back here and see this."

"Gimme a few."

"Okay." She hangs up.

Phone rings again.

"Dude, are you looking out the window right now?" Co-worker Natalie rushed out before I can even come up with a interesting greeting.

"What window? I have no window."

"It is like thunder and lightning."

"Thunder and lightning, huh?"

"Yeah, it's like Thunder! Lightning!"

"The way you love me is frightening. Shit, what song is that?"

"What song?"

"You know. It's like thunder (thundah!) lightning (lightning!)...the way you love me is frightening!"

"I have no idea."

"Yes you do. Like a million people sing it. Goddammit."

"Whatever, just come look out the window."

"Fine." We hang up. The phone rings again, and I just pick it up and sing, "It's like thunder (boom!) lightning (crash!)."

"How'd you know from all the way over there?" my boss asked, laughing.

"This storm is all the rage."

"Yes it is. I need you in here in five seconds, JJO's got a question about the Floyds' Patron gift."

"Yessir." I hung up the phone and booked over to the corner office, watching the dark wind through the windows on the way, trying to remember that fucking song on the way, recalling details about the Floyds on the way.

Action Man has JJO on speaker, who's saying, "We need to get the Advisory Board to approve of that funding, knock on wood."

AND THEN I FREAKED THE HELL OUT.

...

Explanatory Links:

"The Impression That I Get" by Mighty Mighty Bosstones (check out the microphone that guy is rockin - it looks like he's singing into a giant fucking Smith & Wesson)

"Knock on Wood" by Eddie Floyd

...

LATER EDIT: Just so you know, we have thunder and lightning. We have it in spades. But this was thunder and lightning with limited rain and a cloudless, yellow sky and 40 mph winds - where lightning spidered across the sky - the entire sky - and thunder lasted for twenty seconds at a time. This was some near tornado weather shit.

...

In Which I am a Super Brat

2010-06-22T10:41:00.009-05:00

The first time I went to Ireland, it was an adventure. I met up with a friend from college who'd been playing rugby in Newcastle all summer (I love saying that. It makes me feel bastardly urbane). We went to the pony races and drank and gambled, we tried to hitchhike across the countryside in Kerry (we failed). We stripped while running into the ocean on the Dingle peninsula and fought a group of raging Irishmen at a bar in Dublin because they called me a "feisty filly" and basically had a brilliant, drunken time. It was very tense and masculine and obnoxious. Very Hemingway.

Okay, I didn't strip running into the ocean, because apparently my recklessness chokes on puritanical horseshit. But he did, my friend. I rolled up my pants like a fucking champ and took pictures.

This time around I was with my family instead of friends. First vacation the Rossi Family has taken, just the five of us, in ten years. Sure, we did Vegas when the Yellavitch turned 21, but that was like this big fat extended family thing, and the grandkids all split from the older generations for most of the trip.

So when my parents decided that they wanted to take us to Ireland, we were excited because you know, fucking Ireland. I felt spoiled at first, being 29 and having my parents take me Europe, but I justified it eventually with a thick list of trembling excuses that basically added up to one thing: who cares, you're going to fucking Ireland.

Okay, so I'm still a little uncomfortable with the fact that my parents took me on vacation. I offered to pay my way. They refused.

Last year, my parents left the US for the first time in their lives and took a tour around Italy. It stirred this deep, tour-obsessed Goliath within The Dad, who declared he would never travel without a tour ever again. I spent weeks explaining that Ireland was different from Italy, Dad, you don't want to be constrained on a tour there...it's an exploring kind of place, not a museums-and-monuments-and-art kind of place.

But being the adamant financial backer, The Dad insisted that I did not know what I was talking about. A tour, he said, would be easier. We wouldn't be responsible for blah and blah and blah, he said, it would all be decided for us.

I accepted. Because fuck yeah, Ireland.

Previously within my family, I was the one who calmed people down with a lame joke or something, because I'm as close as a Rossi gets to the soothing waters of lazy, pastoral relaxation nation. This of course sounds ridiculous to my friends, who all know that I'm neurotic and insecure about everything.

For the first several days I was okay. Even though I was slightly annoyed at being held inside when I wanted to explore, we were let out periodically to stretch our legs and spend money at pre-arranged restaurants and touristy stores. Granted, we probably would have ended up at some of those places whether or not we were on a tour, but that doesn't change the fact that I had a burning, itching yen to pluck my own destinations on whim.

For awhile, I distracted myself by counting cows and befriending some of the senior citizen stocked on the tour bus, but they were only chatty for so long. Eventually all conversations meandered towards my fidgetty eyes, and they would mention offhand that I seemed anxious. As politely as possible, I'd tell them that I wanted to stop in places the bus was tearing through, and they would nod. I'd change the subject. We passed through towns and ruins of towns, and all I wanted to do was jump the hell off that fucking bus and get lost out there.

By the fourth day, when I discovered that we were not going to Skellig (which is on my list) but in fact watching a video at the Skellig museum, I had a minor breakdown. With quiet tears. I tried to keep it in, I really, really did, but holding me captive on a tour bus in a land of cool green hills and beer is like building a cage of lambchops for a muzzled terrier, with a whole lot of whimpering and growling and general pathetic impotence.

So I was on the bus, staring out the window, sniffing.

Katsisch started without looking up. "You okay?"

"I'll be fine." Sniff.

"Obviously you're not fine."

I didn't want her to see my eyes. "I do not want to talk about it."

"You're being a brat, you know," she stated calmly, flipping a page of her book.

"Which is why I shouldn't talk about it."

"Why can't you just enjoy yourself?"

"I am not going to be able to if you don't drop it."

"Why are you acting like such a fucking baby?"

"I'm sorry." I turned and started counting cows out the window. Counting cows was calming, distracting. It kept my brain busy and focused on observation. To properly count cows, you must be moving constantly, scanning the fields. This was the positive side of riding the bus: better for cow counting. Landscape, animals, and math always lead to daydreams. It was a releasing distraction.

Twenty seconds later, Katsisch interrupted my counting. "You know, it's not that big of a deal. So we don't get to go to a stupid monastic island. World's still here."

"Please, I'm embarrassed enough right now." I wiped under my eyes with my sleeve.

"Do you realize how much you are insulting Mom and Dad?"

I snapped. "Do you fucking realize that I am trying to get over this as quickly as fucking possible, and you are not diffusing the fucking situation?"

"Okay, you need to stop being a fucking brat right now. You are completely overreacting, and this is totally inappropriate."

"Maybe if we were actually doing stuff instead of watching the world go by, I could enjoy myself."

"See, this is what I'm talking about," Katsisch hissed, finally glaring up from her book, "you think you're superior because the rest of us don't mind just riding to the next destination that has been chosen for us. Because we do not care. We all know that by complacently sitting on this bus we are not relinquishing our control over destiny. This is a vacation. This is not a metaphor for life."

Awestruck. I opened my mouth, cracking my jaw sideways. "What the fuck are you talking about?"

"I know that you think you're too 'free-spirited' and 'different' to be willing to just do something so 'mainstream' but you need to get over that insecurity. No one cares except for you."

So apparently the issue at hand, always, in every disagreement I have with anyone, is my distaste for all things 'mainstream.' Do I really come across like that? I tried to explain myself. "I am upset because I've dreamed of Skellig for seven years, and I've been imagining it in my brain and looking forward to this trip for fucking months."

"I've always wanted to go to Greece, and we're not going there."

"But you didn't have it dangling in front of you. I thought that I was finally going to get to go to one of the impossible places that I never expected I would actually be able to see. And then the day I've been waiting for gets here and I find out that it was never on the itinerary in the first place, but here's a fucking video. We are twenty miles away. I am twenty miles away and I can't get there." This was killing me.

"Yeah, well, this isn't about you."

"You made it about me. I was trying to count cows."

"You were feeling sorry for yourself, because you think you're entitled and oppressed."

Arguing was pointless, and I was too shocked to respond. What the fuck? I felt snotty and unappreciative, and have I always been such a fucking gremlin without realizing it? I had no idea that people had such a negative impression of me. Does everyone really feel that way about me? Or is it just my sister?

I decided my behavior must change. I reminded myself that I was being horrible and ridiculous and batshit crazy, and no one likes self-loathing. But when the time comes to prove to myself that I've grown, I will probably revert back to being a whiny, frustrated bitch.

Didn't talk for a long while. Counted cows again.

The tour ended the next day and we spent a couple days in Dublin on our own, and that was excellent. The Dad and I went to about seven million bookstores and had a couple beers while my mom and sisters went to the Guinness Brewery (I'd already been there, and Dad said, "You've seen one brewery, you've seen them all."). We all fell in love with the long room library at Trinity College and I added "bind a book by hand" to my list of things to do before I die. I convinced the family to see the dead zoo at the Natural History Museum. Mom wouldn't go inside, the sisters did a quick walk through, called me a "creeper" and got the hell out of there, and Dad thought it was awesome. It's still one of my favorite museums of all time, because it's rugged and packed with insanity.

So...that's how Ireland was.

...

Awesome By Proxy

2010-06-15T13:33:00.005-05:00

With MoLinder out, because she moved way...I'm sorry, for one second we must focus on MoLinder's raging malcontent. I'm a malcontent to begin with, and she is doubly so because she threatens my established order, which is the most important Order there is.

We must focus on the fact that she left me. Snapping fingers, blinking briefly, a flash of yellow cat eyes in the trees and she's gone. I lost an important password-laden post-it note at work around the same time and that was nothing compared MoLinder leaving, because post-its do not choose to unstick from places of import, unlike MoLinders. Post-its also don't snatch cuddly cats away like sticky catsnatchers, unlike MoLinders. Three cats, by the way. There were three cats and a MoLinder and now I have none of both.

I'll be okay.

(Distracting Explanatory Exercise: I want all of you raise your hand, palm facing the computer screen. Do it. Press your thumb to your forefinger real hard. That is how close I came to getting a dog, because I was lonely and dogs are better than most people.

Now, take your allied thumb/finger business and lick it. Do this very sexilly. Use those same two fingers to touch the tip of your nose with it. Take a big whiff. Do not remove your fingers. Look down your nose at what you're doing. Look back up here.

Do you feel smart? No, you don't. You feel fucking stupid. This was a futile, ridiculous idea for an exercise. It was about as good of an idea as me getting a dog.)

By the way, MoLinder, you don't just up and leave your fucking roommate. Unless you are offered a job across the country in the town where your guts were rooted and it pays double your current income. That is the only excuse for unsticking. So...well played, MoLinder, and yes, you can use me as a reference for your Department of Defense clearance, and I will explain that I am much more suited for the position because I used to play a lot of Stratego so I'm real good at hiding bombs.

Of course, I can just beck right and there's an arsenal of Potential Roommates, waiting to be drafted. Because let's face it: everyone loves me. Everyone loves me and they want to be me and since they can't be me they must live with me so they can be awesome by proxy. So MoLinder moving out was like flipping a steak on the grill, and now the Yellavitch, my little sister, is my roommate for the duration of the month. Either way, I get steak.

And then in July, CrazyLiz is moving in. I have good friends.

...

Maybe I incepted Inception into Christopher Nolan whilst HE slept.

2010-06-04T15:30:00.009-05:00

You guys, I'm sure, have seen trailers for Inception.

Well, fuck. There goes my book. I have to change it. Again. Dreaming is going to be the new It Overused Plot Device. Like time-travelling zombie vampires with only short-term memories with a multiple-personality twist at the end (oh, Jesus, I hope not. I hope people take this movie and let it stand alone and DON'T FUCKING WITH THE DREAMING.) because I mean, seriously? You know how long it takes to try to write a book, and create and imagine new devices from goddamn scratch?

(I am not going to talk about it, by the way. The book. Any questions you ask will be graciously ignored. I didn't tell anyone I was even working on one because I don't want to be fucking pestered all the time. "How's your book? What's it about? Am I in it? How much have you written? Can I read some of it? When do you think you'll finish it? How does it start?" All that shit does is stress me out.)

You know how long it takes? A long time. That's how long. I am such a fucking idiot. I am way too insecure. No way am I going to be accused of copying anything, whether I did it or not. Must start over again. Luckily I can keep the same characters, but gee willikers. I have issues.

Obviously, I know, there have been stories about dreams for years. Centuries even. It's nothing new. But you know how lately pop culture takes one successful plot device and just goes fucking bonkers with it, hammering out like forty movies in two years with the exact same plot until it becomes spoofed in a Wayans brothers movie? And then you're like, "Seriously? Another movie about dreams? Fuck you, Hollywood."

I am stronger than my issues. Right? I am stronger than dreams. Keep on telling yourself that, me.

...

I leave for Ireland tomorrow. Everyone have a brilliant week. Go Hawks.

...

FOUND

2010-05-24T03:09:00.001-05:00

LOST is ridic. There is all of this arguing going around, and I am a drunken asshole. It. Is. Amazing. I would like to say I was half right, and in thinking outside temproral lines which is HARD when you're durnk by the way, because it's all like, you know, people are all fucking dead and shit and they make out and punch people and then there's a light, it's all about the fucking lithght. WHO WERE THE OTHERS? WHY DIDN'T THEY BRING BACK THE GIANT PENDULUM THING? I lorved that thing, it was like the Museum of Science and Industyr.

Because here's the thing: People die, people stay, people get off the island and make it home. Hear me? THEY MAKE IT HOME. And then after their deaths, they all meet up before moving on to the light, which was fucking douchey by the way, because time only exists because someone said so one day and decided to measure it, and that person, the one who invented time? Fuck that fuckin guy. So the show is the real shit, and the splintered timeline is the fake shit (DUH) and Jack is right for the first time ever because homeboy is retarded.

I love that show so hard, and you people, anyone who reads this? don't care. But I care and the writing shall commence.

Whatever, all I'm saying is, Pub Chugga Chugga Choo Choo 9 was on sadurday and ?I have relinquished all control of shit, but I am incapable of relinguqishing control because of (1) I am a jerk and (2) I consider myself important, apparently. I never realized I thought I was important having lived under the assumption taht I am wortheless for about, like, 29 years, so this was a goddamn revelation. I do not know if this is good or bad. I think it's also important to note that I ruin everything, and everything is my fuckllnmg fault, and I am the opposite of photogenic and I think I have a double chin. WHAT THE FUCK. I will tell you in the morning.

and what's the deal with all of you fuckers writing blogs all the time? Don't you know that I am a busy person and I don't have time for thta shit, and then I feel guilty because I care so deeply about the emotional repurcussions of ignoring people ON THE INTERNET? That sentence was a legitimate question, by the way, because it began with "don't you know" which implies query. I am for serious.

This weekened I was told to start doing stand up and to start writing LOST fanfiction, and I'm all like, thanks. Fanfiction. Seriously? I am fucking insulted. I will create my own characters, thank you. Still, I feel entirely incapable of either. This depresses me. I am a poorly narrated limerick with an irritating punchline, and that is the life that I lead, youknow?.

I leave for Ireland on June 5. With the fam. It is very werid.

AND SCENE.

...

Rock My Adidas, Never Rock Fila

2010-05-19T12:25:00.003-05:00

"Rossi! Donation from Sieman, huh?" My boss, The Action Man, calls from down the hall. (Is there a word for like, powering up so you can properly snap into action? I might have to invent one. Actually, I think it's ackshinackshinackshinackshinackshin.)

I snicker. "Khkhkhkhkh - semen." (Okay, so khkhkhkhkh is my weak attempt at properly spelling out a snicker. In live oration, I am a professional Snickerer, and one never mistakes my snickering for anything, but on the internet it just looks like the call of Cthulhu. Also, I am twelve.)

Sure enough, Action Man steams around the corner like fucking turbine and points at me with a ferocious grin. "Rossi! Are you kickin' the new K-knowledge?"

I stop my snickering to gasp as he chugs past. "Sir! Did you just drop the science like Galileo dropped the orange?"

He turns at the door and winks. "I believe I just did."

"I can't believe you're all up in the Beastie Boys."

"Saw 'em in '88!" he yells from outside, and as the elevator dings onto our floor I can hear hammering out, "Right up to your face and diss you..."

My boss is excellent.

...

"It is well that war is so terrible, or we should get too fond of it."

2010-05-17T23:58:00.009-05:00

So Sunday afternoon me, Slinger and CrazyLiz are at a bar for the Blackhawk's game.

More accurately, Slinger is there for hockey, I am there for chili and beer, and CrazyLiz is there for moral support.

In walks a gentlemen with heavy wool pants, a shmancy-frocky-lookin' men's dress shirt, fucking riding boots and these bad ass double-leather goldenrod suspenders. He looks amazing. I mean, he's not amazing-looking, but you know. Double-leather suspenders.

"How's the battlefield today, Terry?" calls a patron.

"Union won," Terry grunts as he seats himself at the bar.

"Bastards always do."

"Only on Sundays." Terry and the guy to his left keep on talking slightly hushed, but happily, and then the bartender delivers my potato skins so I temporarily forget about yellow suspenders because there's bacon in front of me.

"So where can I get a pair of suspenders like that?" Slinger asks him after we all exchange little zingers during a commercial break or something.

"You gotta fight for the Union." Terry doesn't look up and gulps his pint.

"And how do you get to do that?"

"Well, I got myself kidnapped as a Rebel and was forced to fight for the North."

"I woulda just been a double agent," Slinger giggles.

"They thought I was, sir," Terry continued. "After I was caught and taken across enemy lines, all I could hear was the click click click of cocked pistols and rifles aiming for me. It took 'em awhile to figure it out, that I wasn't a spy that allowed myself caught, and then they just...made me fight for the Yankees."

"How'd the Rebels feel about that?" I asked him.

"Well, they couldn't do much about it could they? Those Yanks are lucky I had a Union uniform as well." He chuckles to himself.

I glance at him. "So you have to bring your own uniforms?"

He still hasn't looked my direction, but he gives his beer a secret smile. "Well, when you've been doin' it as long as me you sort of invest in your own goods. Uniforms, pistols, horses."

"How long's it been?"

"Let's see, 'bout, ahhh," he licks his lips and squints while he counts in his head, "Bout fourteen, fifteen years."

"Hot damn."

"Yep, fifteen years. I've been in more battles than the soldiers in The War itself." He laughs. He finds himself brilliant. It's kind of mesmerizing. "Course, I'm dodging blunt objects and dry fire, with no worry for real bullets!" He roars again, having reckoned the secrets of survival.

"So you always get to wear them snazzy suspenders?" I tend to regress with my language, depending on the audience.

"Just today. That's what the yellow's for," he thumbs the yellow straps. "designates Union Cavalry. Actually it's mounted infantry when I fight for the South and then they're white, but--" he raises a finger "--Union's cavalry because they have the pistols as well as sabres, and Union's yellow."

"So you're on horseback?"

"Yes ma'am."

"That is awesome."

"I do enjoy it."

"So you got a horse for that?"

"Well, me and three of my buddies, we got him over at a Chicago police auction. We got lucky. 21-years old, doesn't shy at the gunfire." He takes a sip, and then corrects himself with a grin, "Well, fake gunfire."

"What's his name?"

Terry finally meets my eyes. "Sunshine."

I smile. "Nice." I slide my beer over to the rail. Neighbor's is the kind of establishment run on the etiquette of regulars. "So do you have a preference? As to sides?"

He smiles again. "Everyone wants to fight for the Rebels."

"Seriously? Come on. No one wants to represent the free states?"

"Now, we really just call them Yankees. Keeps things...well, we just call them Yankees."

"Damn Yankees."

"Damn Yankees."

I reach for the fresh beer in front of me and thank the bartender, whose name I don't know.

Terry starts up again. "Yeah, but I always fight for the Confederacy. You know, General Lee said he'd never fight against the Union unless it was in defense of Virginia herself." (All I want to do, by the way, is muscle into the conversation with stupid shit like, Robert E. Lee named his horse Traveller and Grant's horse was Jeff Davis and Traveller's original name was Jeff Davis but they were totally different horses but I'm not an asshole. Sometimes.) "It's more...almost important, representing the underdog. Not necessarily historically, almost emotion related. You try harder, even though we all know it's a reenactment...but it's always as if this time...this time we might win."

"But the Union always wins."

"On Sundays. Saturdays go to the Confederates."

I laugh. "So it's a weekend gig? How many battles you fight a year?"

"About, uh, twelve or so."

"How far do you have to travel for that?"

"Most're around here. But the Nationals last year were in Shiloh. That's in Tennessee."

"So not that far."

"Not that far."

I nod. "Is there anyone in your life liable to protest these getaways?"

"Not me. But I've been in it for so long...this is my family. My daughter, she's involved as well. She's got a whalebone hoopskirt. But I asked one of my buddies, I asked him--because he goes near forty these a year--he's a field officer for the Confederali --So how's it that Michelle let's you out on all these battles? and he says, Well, it's because I have no vices. I don't use tobacco, I don't drink alcohol, and I don't chase women and I don't play cards, so she let's me have this one thing."

"There you go."

"Ah, but then he says, he says ahhh, he says, But what goes after hours at cantonment she'll never know. And swear to god, that battle's over and there he is, smoking a cigar with a lady on his lap, dealing cards to a table of Yankees and swigging Jack right from the bottle."

"What a fucker," I smirk and take a sip of beer.

"Ma'am," he grins after a minute, all slick, "It occurs to me that you'd look mighty fine in a hoop skirt, if you'd be a willing participant."

I scoff and look down at my pajamas. Damn covered in grass stains and mulch smears from doing yard work with my dad. You know how every time you visit your parents they trick you into manual labor? I'm pretty sure I smell.

"That's very kind of you," I tilt my beer in thanks, "but if I can't be cavalry, I don't wanna play."

"You got a horse?"

"Nah, but there's gotta be one for me wandering around out there somewhere."

...

Here's the Thing: When in Rome

2010-05-10T16:01:00.003-05:00

MoLinder is leaving. Moving back to San Diego in three weeks. I am deeply distressed. I am mildly deeply distressed.

So now whenever it's just the two of us hanging out we just get fucking wasted and yell at each other about politics or something way less significant and way more tangled in bullshit and false, undeserved superiority. But we agree on everything so shouting is fucking futile, yet inevitable, and nothing ever makes sense.

Since both of us are tenacious, zealous, and wise as hell, mostly our conversations go like this:

"I just feel like such a...like, an asshole. Because I'm all like, yeah, I fucking read that book and it sucked. But I don't want to hurt people's feelings, but then I almost DO want to hurt them so they'll fucking learn how to discern good literature from crap. And the writing is awful, and the story is lame-"

"You know what? That's bullshit." MoLinder is mad.

"Why can't people ever give us stories we've never heard before?" I am drunk.

"Who says shit has to be new to be fucking quality?" We are both drunk.

"Do you know how hard it is to create a story that hasn't been told?"

"That's why I like Stephen King."

"It's fucking impossible."

"Because knows, he understands, that reading is for enjoyment."

"Yeah but, 'member when you were fifteen when all stories were new, and then you took all those crap lit classes that taught you archetypes-"

"Read because you love to read, not because someone found a fucking deeper meaning. Because you know what? Deeper meaning? Metaphor? Is CRAP."

"-but BOOM. Life ruined. You will never be original because now you know all about fucking rhetoric and tropes and shit."

"And I'm a Lit Major."

"Tropes ruin my life."

"You know why I like to read? Because it's fucking fun. That's why. And that's why I like Stephen King, and I don't give a shit if that makes me like mainstream or whatever."

"But I want to identify with it, I want it to mean something."

"So you won't read anything that isn't like, important. You're a fucking elitist."

"No, that's not it. Well, yeah, I'm an elitist."

"HA! See! Stephen King would spit on you. He sees through your lies."

"I hate elitists. Because they're all, 'murmurmur, fuckin' some French shit. Ohmygod, David Eggers and some author no one's heard of.' You want me to name-drop some shit? Because I will name-drop fucking elusive cultural references all over your ass. Not when I am drunk."

"ELITIST."

"But I don't mean like, important to society, I'm talking important to me and my values which include but are not limited to ONE! movies. And TWO! beer."

"Ah, yes. Okay."

"So take something like fucking Twilight. I know, I know-"

"See, it's just fun, man, you know? Stop hating on it."

"I hated it so much I threw the book. But like, you hate East of Eden and that's one of my favorites."

"I fucking hate Steinbeck. No. No, I just fucking hate East of Eden. Fucking Cathy? Is a bitch. And the whole Cain and Abel thing-but you know what? You cannot compare the two, they are not the same type of book. Twilight isn't like pretentious classic literature where people are all, 'whoa, themes and deep shit.' It's just easy and fun."

"What, like your hatred of East of Eden has more validness or whatever than my hatred of Twilight? I read that book because I watched the movie."

"Well--"

"I didn't give a shit about Steinbeck, it was all, 'Oh, James Dean, you're so dreamy.' James Dean was my fucking R-Pattserbin or fucking whatever, except like, dead for forty years."

"Whatever, Cedric Diggory is hot."

"Plus, I promise you that more people have read Twilight which automatically makes it more culturally significant."

"That's just sad."

"It's true." I pause to drink my white russian. It is 4am. We both have to work in four hours. "So I am totally right."

"About what?"

"I have no fucking idea."

"Ahhh. When in Rome."

...

Standing Was Exhausting

2010-05-03T12:36:00.006-05:00

Man, I am not allowed to get drunk anymore, because then I send emails like this:

I haVE DEVELOPED THE BAD HABIT OF EMAILIN O=YOU DURING PERIODS OF INOTOXICATION. I ALSO CANNOT PROPERLY NEGATE MY CAPS LOCK. APPARENTLY.

To poor, unsuspecting souls.

More importantly, Furry Vengeance is the same thing as Avatar edited with clips from America's Funniest home videos. Also - no wearable robots with secret swords.

Yesterday me and Schmee got drunk at the Cubs game from the lofty confines of a luxury suite. They had shrimp. And I hit random speed-dials on the suite's phone asking, "Is this where we get more beer? No? Thank you." And Schmee was all logical and shit and, "Why don't you call catering?" And I explained that...I don't know what I explained, but I gave her a damn good reason for my decision to call every department but catering.

I also stole the uneaten blocks of cheese from the cheese plate and carried them around in my purse for eight hours while we struggled from bar to bar. I was all spinny. Standing was exhausting.

Neither of us know why we kept on drinking, meeting up with new people at each bar and just telling the same story over and over again (and I'm doing it now) (and then I called to get more beer! and then I put cheese in my purse! and Schmee sat next to the owner of the Brewers! OMG so drunk!).

Whatever. I WRITE BLOG.

...

Now It's Just Bathos.

2010-04-27T13:38:00.008-05:00

There are two kinds of laughter in the world, and both are responses to honesty.

There's the joy that we feel when reality is beautiful, which is the ideal expression of laughter. Opposed is a liar's discomfort at being confronted with truth.

The story of the bike is tragic because it does not end well. It ends with me draped in saggy humility and doing that thing where I try to make the story sound as amazing and hilarious as possible so I won't feel so goddamn embarrassed at the exhaustive bathos of my daily life.

Let us begin.

Scheming with fake identities and a script, I sharpied code the length of my forearm like a Holocaust survivor cheating on a history test. We chugged a few beers and strolled lazily through the preliminary reconnaissance. We had contingency plans. We had fucking contingency plans for our contingency plans. I sweet-talked the doorwomen into letting me explore the basement and bike room of the high rise before we called the Craigslist sellers and asked to see the second bike.

Because that's the thing, you see. These "bike thieves" were selling two bikes, in case you'd forgotten considering the time chasm between posts (I got shit to do) and after I sent them an email from "Phil M. Johnson" (imminently played by Phil Not Johnson) they responded within a minute. Maybe two minutes. Fucking promptly. But that is what led me to believe the other bike was my Atticus.

I mean come on. They don't respond to my email (that I sent about an hour after they posted the advertisement), pull the women's bike Craigslist, and then speedily reply to my fake email all excited about selling.

We agreed to meet up the next day. Phil pretended he was all into that men's bike. I pretended I was all into using their bathroom (so I could get into their apartment and see if my bike was hiding there) but I was thwarted by the Chicago architects who had the fucking unmitigated temerity to design a lobby with a restroom.

Yes, we tried to pry things out of them (using statements including but not limited to musing, "so, I heard you were selling two bikes" and perky queries like, "so, did you get many offers on these?" and "so...WHERE WERE THE OTHER DRUGS GOING?" and they were all, "I don't know, I swear to god" and I was all, "SWEAR TO ME" and I dropped their asses down a zipwire in the rain and pulled them back up for more growly accusations just inches before they hit the ground because my depth perception from great heights is nonpareil, which I believe is Portuguese for "awesome.")

Whatever, it was fruitless and boring and we didn't find my bike or catch any criminals, so we went to a bar and played UNO for an hour or two, which I believe is Portuguese for "sissy poker."

Fin.

If you're confused, let's agree that the details so boring that you'll just be angry with me for setting up an anti-climax, and understand that I don't have my bike. The entire situation was so boring and unfunny that we couldn't even make fun of ourselves properly, and it was all awkward attempts at self-derision that ended in half-puffs of forced chuckles. I mean, it took me two weeks to even work my way up to the hilarious discomfort of a liar.

(Oh, and if one of you is all, "you should have done this" I will fucking scalp you, because you're not giving advice. You're saying, "I am smarter than you because my way would have worked and you'd have your bike back, idiotface" to which I say, "Hey jerkoid, it's easier brainstorming workable ideas after having eliminated one already and why don't you shut the fuck up when grown folks is talkin.")

...

Addendum: They claimed to have sold the bike and then fake smiled their way into talking about themselves. It was two preppy yuppies, early twenties, engaged right after graduating from college. They probably belong to a gym and have all matching furniture and after they buy a house in an up-and-coming suburb with a good school district, they'll have a baby and get a labrador or a shih tzu and a car with good ratings in Consumer Reports. And their conversations will always be focused on those things: going to the gym, taking care of their house, babies, and articles from Consumer Reports.

There is nothing wrong with any of that, that's just the kind of people they are. Very safe. Not reckless. I doubt they had my bike. Unless they're in it for the big con or they're like Russian spies or something, in which case - well met, thieves. I will hunt you down.

...

Sometimes It Skips a Generation

2010-04-19T15:00:00.008-05:00

Last Sunday Afternoon. Not yesterday. The one before that. Whatever.

"Shit. Hold on guys, I need to take this," I'm shaking as I leave the patio table in front of the bar and answer my phone, partly because it's cold outside, partly out of fear, and partly because I'm a little hungover. Or a lot hungover. Whatever.

This is a big fucking deal, because I don't do that. I also don't use call waiting, and I won't talk on the phone while I'm hanging out with someone else. It's fucking rude. Seriously, if I'm constantly texting someone when I'm around you it means I don't want to be around you.

Exceptions to these rules include but are not limited to (1) giving directions to a third member of our party who has yet to arrive, (2) receiving directions for a destination to which we have yet to travel, and (3) my mother.

I do not idly chat with my mother. She is smart, exact, realistic, calm, retentive, genuinely polite and all business, which is why I answer her phone calls.

"Hey, Ma."

"Hi, hon. What's going on?"

"Well..." I don't want to tell her. I've called her twice today, and I don't want to tell her. "So...okay. So you know how I...shit."

"Honey."

"Sorry. Okay." Breathe. Breathe. "The bike got stolen. Atticus. Is gone."

"What? Oh no, honey, I'm so sorry."

"And I'm sorry, it's all my fault, I take full responsibility and I promise, I promise, I promise I will do my damnedest to find it."

"Well, bikes get stolen. How did they get through the lock?"

"See, it wasn't locked."

"Oh? Why not?"

"It was in the back hallway, and it's only accessible through one of the apartments. Unless someone left the back gate and the back door unbolted, which is unlikely. I think."

"Still, honey, you know you should always lock-"

"Yes. I know. Always lock your bike, always lock your car, always lock your door. I know this. I know." My mom doesn't understand things like this. Making little mistakes. There are rules, you see, and you follow them.

"Well honey, obviously you didn't know."

Gaaaaahhhhhhh. "Yes. You're right. I'm sorry. It was locked all winter, and I moved it last weekend and forgot to lock it up and some son of a bitch took the damn thing in that four day period of time and I'm sorry for screwing up. Again." I'd left my lock draped over the handlebar with every intention of putting it back on just after doing...something. Whoever stole the bike had coolly placed the u-lock on the window shelf. Tauntingly.

"It's not your fault," she assures me, with complete sincerity. "It's that other person's fault for breaking the law."

"Yes. I know." She says that now. But in four years I'm gonna do something stupid and she's going to be all, well, you need to be more careful. Remember when the bike got stolen?

"Did you file a police report?"

"No, not yet."

"Well honey--"

"That's why I called you. I need the serial number. I can't find my copy of it." Total lie. I never wrote it down because I never found it on the bike. Because I am a dumbass.

"Oh, I'm sure I have it filed." I am positive she has the original paperwork from 1970-whatever and everything. "I'm actually on the road right now, so I can't get it for you until a little bit later."

"Thanks. And you know, I think I found it on Craiglist. I'm sure I did. And I emailed them and they never got back to me, and then they totally just pulled the bike from the ad completely. Like it was never even there. They had to know it was me."

"How would they know that?" I wish she was being patronizing, because then I could blame her for giving me low-self-esteem or something while venting to my imaginary therapist. No, she is honestly inquisitive. Much more infuriating and harder to prove.

"Because I posted a note with my email address all around the complex and I used that same email address to contact those sonsabitches and I know that whoever stole my bike had to be friends with someone in the building. They had to be. Otherwise, I mean...yeah. They had to be allowed into that hallway by a person who lives there. So I'm thinking that the sonsabitches were warned that I was on to them."

"When did it become okay for you to swear?"

"I'm sorry." Shit.

She sighs. "I guess that's entirely possible."

"But okay, listen to this - so I set up a fake email address and I emailed them this morning and they got back to me within a minute. Seriously. I said I was Phil, and me and him are going over there tomorrow night and we're totally gonna steal it back. I'm talking stealthy, cloak-and-dagger shit. I mean business. Pretend I didn't swear. Sor."

"Please don't steal it. You should call the police."

"I know, you're right. I'm sorry, I just got excited and said 'steal.' I promise we will call the police."

"Don't say things you don't mean."

Fuck. "I apologize. I already talked to the cops and asked them if they would go with me. They said I had to verify it was my bike first, and that I should call 911 if I found it."

"Really--"

"And then I asked if finding my stolen bike on the property of another was worthy of an emergency phone call, and the policewoman said, 'Hell yeah, girl.' So I gots legal permission."

"Well okay, then."

"I'm sorry for interrupting you, before. I just want you to know that I'm taking care of it. I got this down. Seriously. Except for the locking-the-bike part."

"I'm glad. And now you know why we always remind you to do these things. One day, like this time, you might forget. I know you would never be intentionally careless. And you know, in the end - and you don't want to hear this - but you will learn from this."

I fucking wish that was some passive-aggressive shit, but I know it's not. It reads like some passive-aggressive shit. Believe what you will, but know this: you don't know my mom. You never have to ask her if she's mad. Ever. She tells you immediately. Granted, she hasn't been mad at me for years, not since I lived at home after college. Then it was constantly, you know, "I'm mad at you because you got drunk and skipped your cousin's wedding shower" (I WAS LOOKING FOR A MISSING SNOWMAN) or "I'm mad at you because of your secret tattoo" or "I'm mad at you because the dog ate your cigarettes and now there is tobacco in the carpet and when did you start smoking?" or "I'm mad at you because you quit grad school and didn't tell me and if you refuse to take any steps towards a substantive career you need to be out of this house by October."

"Thanks, Ma." Get mad at me. Why the fuck aren't you mad at me?

"Don't worry, honey, I'm not mad at you." Well you fucking should be. It's so much easier to give myself a hard time if I have a fucking reason to do so.

"Good. I was worried." Shit shit shit. Guilt.

"You can't blame yourself for this. I'll get you that serial number later, but I have to go now, okay?"

"Okay."

"Stop it. Do not blame yourself."

"I'm not."

"I don't want you feeling guilty about this. I know how you are. And don't do anything...silly."

"What, like stake out potential burglar addresses that I found on Craigslist? I'm doing that tomorrow night."

"Just don't. You know what? Nevermind."

"Thanks."

"I gotta go. Later, okay?"

"Later, skater."

"Bye, honey."

I hang up the phone and head back over to the table, shivering. It's cold outside. My posse has moved to an adjacent patio table in the sun.

"The Mom?" Muffy asks as I sit down again.

"You know it."

"Did she have it?" MoLinder jumps in.

"Filed away."

"I told you. Accountants, man, they save everything," Sean laughs.

"You know, I love my mom because she's the most responsible woman ever in the world, but I fucking hate my mom because she's the most responsible woman ever. In the fucking world."

...