<![CDATA[CHUD.com - A Movie Website and SO MUCH MORE. - Blogs]]> http://chud.com/articles en-us N/A nicknunziata@gmail.com Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:16:44 EST 20 <![CDATA[GASH WEDNESDAY #28: Scrabble Nirvana]]> http://chud.com/articles/blogs/2132/GASH-WEDNESDAY-28-Scrabble-Nirvana.html
Occasionally I find something that I think is the best thing in town and then I decide to write about it for you. It's also been a while since I've embarrassed myself on this forum. In the past, I proclaimed my love for cramming handfuls of Jelly Belly jelly beans into my face. Now it's something else: 

Some months ago, my best friend and I discovered and immediately fell in love with Scrabble on Facebook. It allows us to have about twenty games of Scrabble going on at a time, and we can title them the most politically incorrect and messed up things we wish. The i-Phone gods decided to create and gift us with an app that allows me to play the Scrabble games that are linked to my Facebook profile on my phone. Instant mobile Scrabble. And I'm lovin' it.

   
Scrabble Nirvana

Whenever either of us are taking a nice poop or waiting in line at the post office, we'll send the load of them back to the other person. Sometimes the line in Target will allow me the time to send three back, but it keeps me from looking at grandma's fat, sweatpanted ass in front of me for five minutes.

  

I enjoy the remote and jagged sense of friendship it allows. Occasionally, I'll get a scrab request via text and I'll interrupt what I'm doing to send a batch of them back to a friend in need. I make sure he has the entire batch before he goes to sleep, and I make sure I send them back so they're waiting for him in the morning.

We have our rules for fair play. No dictionary allowed. You can't use the word unless you can already define it. And we play with a two-letter word list that has redefined the game for me. I have games going with a limited number of other folk, and I can tell when they use the dictionary. Not kosher. An idiot can use the dictionary. I have no opinion on this.

  

What's more than the games is the fact that we can title them whatever we want. Here is a random sampling:

Spartacus crapped!
Catching the faceload seven days a week
My butt is salty from insertions
Cyborgs can't cough
Ralph scorched his rolodex!
Finding poops under traffic cones
Jesus just lost at soccer
Bigass Black Balderdash Bash
Joshua hid a peppermint in his underwear!
I had my butt chromed
Speed Jew
Carla lost her tampon in the parlor!
Leather dicks and musicals

We share a love for words, and Scrabble lets us be that kind of nerd. I feel a case of bad-ass mixed with luck when either of us create "Scrabble Nirvana" as he calls it. This is when we get to create word combinations that include "poop" or "incest" and the like, maturity be damned. We feel a surge of pride.

Now it's your turn scroll up, point at my seaweed crotch, and judge me for being a nerd and for devoting an entire blog to what is damn near an inside joke when I could have talked about more art, my past, or even films. Is this a confession? I'll stand behind it. I like my leather dicks and musicals.*









*have fun with that.


]]> no@spam.com (Andrea Rothe) Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST http://chud.com/articles/blogs/2132/GASH-WEDNESDAY-28-Scrabble-Nirvana.html <![CDATA[GASH WEDNESDAY #27: Beth's Jeans]]> http://chud.com/articles/blogs/2108/GASH-WEDNESDAY-27-Beth039s-Jeans.html
I met Beth my first semester in art school. She was seventeen, and had moved from Texas to be with my boyfriend's twenty four year old roommate. She didn't have anything in common with the group of us that hung around the apartment. We were frantically investing in our futures, tapping away at computer keyboards and brushing away at paintings at night. But Beth was simply waiting until she turned eighteen so she could dance at the Cheetah and hung around the apartment chain smoking and baking frozen pizzas in the oven. It didn't bother me. I liked her. She was an interesting addition to the mix and I started hanging out with her. She brought her cat from Texas and colored him pink with a marker.  We ate lollipops and I listened to her talk about cocks. We pierced her navel with a safety pin when I got home from my Human Resources job. None of it made sense, but we lived in the moment and many things we both did awkwardly traced back and forth over the line from childhood to adulthood.

Since we crashed at the same apartment, we'd both slip out of our boyfriends' beds at night and talk while huddled in plastic chairs on the porch.  In a deep, low voice between puffs from her cigarette and over the sounds of frogs and crickets from the nearby bayou, she'd tell me about her life in Texas. About the girl they beat until she lost her baby. She said that's the way they took care of things in Texas. About running away from home and her miscarriage at night at age fourteen in an anchorage up north. About how it felt to swallow blood at night down a swollen throat from being beat. About being so drunk that she'd walk along the roadside with a milk jug full of vodka yelling at passer-by's. She smoked pot. She'd done harder drugs. She was on lithium for some mental problems. All signs should have pointed me away from her, and yet I fell in love with her.

I helped her pick out her first stripper outfits when she turned eighteen. I drove her to her audition and watched her slide her dress down over her boots and dance under the lights for three songs and felt like a proud mother. Weeks later, I saw her come home with wads of money bulging in her back pockets. We drank together. Slept in the same apartment. Hung out on lazy afternoons when the boys were at class. We went to the park and smoked my first joint. And sometimes I'd wander to the fridge at night and hear her whimper through the closed door to her bedroom--the only vulnerable sounds I ever heard come from her. No doubt, I admired her. She was everything I never would or could be. She'd lived three lifetimes by the time I'd met her. She had freckles and a tomboy sexuality. She seemed to be able to network to get her hands on anything she wanted. When I hesitated in climbing the roof to smoke with her, she told me not to worry, and I implicitly trusted her. Forget school for her. She just made things happen somehow. She survived in an unconventional way.

Things weren't great between her and her boyfriend. One night someone I didn't know called the phone in my art studio. It turned out to be a good Samaritan neighbor of hers calling me from the hospital. They said they were returning her to the apartment, that her boyfriend was in jail, and that she could really use a girlfriend right now. I remember sitting on my boyfriend's air mattress next to her, her forehead at least an inch thicker than it should have been from repeated head butts, and her upper body coming to rest on me. The first tears I'd ever seen from her poured out. She'd never needed me before. Perhaps I'd secretly wanted her to. The bad-ass vodka drinking bitch became a broken hero to me, and she went from irresistible to legendary in that moment. She could barely talk because her throat was so swollen from him choking her. I coddled her, and my crush became complete.

In subsequent months, we survived a potentially fatal drunk driving episode together, another unwanted pregnancy which found her throwing up in front of me beside the road. I'd pick her up from the back of the Peek-A-Boo Lounge, her second strip adventure after being fired from the Cheetah. I'd come to the back door and ask for her by "Viv." She'd come out with her dance bag, smelling of smoke and perfume and hug me really hard. The fact that she was thrilled to see me melted my heart. I remained fascinated. And then one night, my boyfriend and best friend at the time called me from the car on the way to the airport. They were dropping Beth off. Her boyfriend had threatened to kill her, and had just gotten out of the hospital after being Baker Acted (mandatory incarceration in a mental ward of a hospital, a police action that can be called upon if you think the person is an immediate danger to themselves.)

I said goodbye on the phone. I'd made my last memory with her and hadn't known it was over. I never saw her again. It took me a long time to get over her.

But I had a pair of jeans from her that I'd borrowed for a night of watching shooting stars at the beach with the whole crew of us. And you know what? I kept them for years, folded up in the top shelf of my closet. They moved with me wherever I went. I couldn't let them go. I could never get a hold of her or find her again, although I've tried. Because of the direction in which she was headed, I wonder if she is even alive today. Maybe she is in jail. Maybe she's a crappy mother. If she's alive, I hope she is okay. I wasn't a good judge of character back then, but it allowed me the experience of being deeply in love with a fallen star. To this day, I still do a double-take when I see someone like her. The jeans were very much my memorial to her when I had them and every time I took them down I was always very gentle when I folded and unfolded them afraid to hurt the spirit of someone who I knew couldn't use any more pain.

I'm seriously over her now. I've grown up. I threw away the jeans when I moved up here a couple of years ago, but it's funny how much I used those pants to hang on to her.  I've held on to pieces of other people like gum wrappers and undershirts the way my friend hangs on to that clock. When I called her to ask if it was okay to mention her story of Walter's clock, she told me she felt it honored him, and added, "Oh, and I still have my dad's old raggedy bathrobe! Can you believe that?"

These aren't so much admissions of guilt. Or the revelation that we have quirks. They're admissions of love. Of a deeply personal and private commitment to the past. Of the fact that sometimes our raw feelings need a memorial object to help blot the wound a missing person leaves. It's perfectly noble.
]]> no@spam.com (Andrea Rothe) Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST http://chud.com/articles/blogs/2108/GASH-WEDNESDAY-27-Beth039s-Jeans.html <![CDATA[GASH WEDNESDAY #26: Thanks, Chris Jordan.]]> http://chud.com/articles/blogs/2103/GASH-WEDNESDAY-26-Thanks-Chris-Jordan.html
They're dead birds.



Image by Chris Jordan.

The images were shot in September 2009 on small island in the North Pacific. They are the corpses of baby albatrosses fed by mothers who scoop up what looks to them like food from open waters and bring them back to Midway Atoll, which is a tiny protrusion of sand and coral in the middle of the ocean. According to the artist, "To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the actual stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world's most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent."


Image by Chris Jordan.

Forget that you are looking at "photographs" because these are some of the most cross-genre photographs I have ever seen. I like to think of them as interdisciplinary works. Because most of the images are shot straight on with little or no perspective, it's easy to read the image as flat, abstract paintings--simply color and variation in texture, which is arguably what a painting is at its roots. The conglomeration of faded plastic pieces becomes a discovered palette. In context, what we're really looking at is an abstraction of both the biological and the industrial strewn together in one of natures most beautiful accidents on a picture plane excised from the ground somewhere on a remote island and brought to us by artist Chris Jordan.


Image by Chris Jordan.

And they're what the art world calls "assemblages:" sculptures or masses of found objects manipulated and assembled by an artist. In this case, the assemblage is a collaboration in which one of the collaborators dies. Ironically, the finale is that the birds themselves become nests, their bodies a single, frozen frame of a gastric explosion--the grotesque embodiment of our world's habit of over-eating, over-consumption, and excess in general. They simply needed to feed, and the objects they discovered were no treasures. No tokens. No trinkets. Of no significance to them. The tragedy is obvious.


Image by Chris Jordan.

I've used a lot of "arty" words and concepts. But I want you to know that the thing that works about these images is that I don't feel like I'm looking at art. In a world where we are constantly over-saturated with prepared images from advertisers and political figures, sometimes we are graced with things like this. We are quality-obsessed when we think we're looking at art. "Is it good?" we ask. But the real question should be, "Does it affect you?" Otherwise it doesn't matter anyway. They are pockets of silence in which we can realize that just the act of looking can change us. Thank you, Chris Jordan for reminding me of this.
]]> no@spam.com (Andrea Rothe) Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST http://chud.com/articles/blogs/2103/GASH-WEDNESDAY-26-Thanks-Chris-Jordan.html <![CDATA[GASH WEDNESDAY #25: Beating down the doors]]> http://chud.com/articles/blogs/2097/GASH-WEDNESDAY-25-Beating-down-the-doors.html
The online process complicates things beyond measure. I thought I might be able to sit at home and fire off a couple of resumes and cover letters a day to this and that company with open positions that paid within a range I require in order to survive, and move on with my day staying positive and waiting to hear something eventually from one of them. I started doing just that.  And then my emails bounced back. Some addresses didn't exist. Some are phishing scams that come back and say, "We're sorry, but that position is no longer available. You are, however, qualified for this new position! It only requires that you give us your home address, full name, social security number and bank account number so that you can receive funds for us. You will receive ten percent of all monies deposited into your account! I will be traveling overseas and will not have a chance to do this so I need you!" Reporting these scams to the proper channels takes hours of time that I'm not willing to give up.

Over half of the automatic replies I get from companies redirect me to the same canned website that wants me to upload a single .doc file of my resume--no room for two files if I want to add a tailored cover letter. I thought myself brilliant, and started combining the two as page one and page two of the same file so the company could still get both. And then I realized that the single file I uploaded was the same one that that database stored for every single one of the other job applications that redirected me to that site. I realized after a bit of time that I'd wasted hours rewriting specifically tailored cover letters and uploading them because the newest one replaces all other cover letter/resume files for the multiple jobs I've applied for. Numbers of companies now have a bogus cover letter specifically addressed to a certain open position and person that doesn't exist at their company.  I look like an idiot. I suppose I go into the trash pile for all my effort.

Most companies looking to fill a position will go the online route. It's a faceless way to receive numerous applications without having to field walk-ins or phone calls seeking positions. It protects their time and resources. This also means that the company name and location are nineteen times out of twenty, shielded from the general public. The paradigm is that you now apply to a job description and not a company. I live in Atlanta, an urban area with horrible nine-to-five traffic. I'd like to know how far away the job I am applying for is. Yet most open positions do not give you the courtesy of even listing a zip code. Something I take 30-45 minutes to find and apply for might be nearly two hours away in morning traffic and there's no way of telling. So I apply anyway. And so does everyone else. According to Accolo, Inc., a recruitment process outsourcing firm based in California, the average number of job applicants per open position is over 200. This includes executive positions. And it's no wonder. We, the general job-seeking public are forced to spam them with our resumes because a job description fits into a radius that some job website pulled up. According to jobladder.com's statistics earlier this year, 26% less jobs are being posted, and 11% more people are applying. That's 31% more people applying for every open job.

I'm having a hard time staying positive when the process is this confounded. I'm thankful for the internet and the information it makes so immediately available. Yet it's causing companies with understaffed human resources departments to have to protect themselves from the onslaught of applicants who'd beat down their door and blow up their phone lines if we had an address or telephone number.  It's murky out there. At the job level for which I'm qualified (receptionist and administrative assistant), companies have been known to receive 500 applications in an hour, causing them to pull down their job posting. I even read about a company receiving 1,500 applications in 46 days for a receptionist. Holy hell, it's brutal.

We're not beating on the doors of specific companies most of the time. We're beating on the system, trying to unravel something we can't control. Consoling is the fact that I'm not the only one beating against the confusing doors of this system. I'm also lucky enough to be gainfully employed during my search, and I feel most aren't. All this written, and I have no answers--no conclusion outside of the fact that it's a clusterfuck and I'm not the only one dealing with it. No martyrdom here. Optimism, however is waxing and waning. I suppose I am to just repeat the mildly painful process over time with minimal complaining to the few that support me lest I completely alienate them. Something will eventually happen. What else can I do?]]> no@spam.com (Andrea Rothe) Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT http://chud.com/articles/blogs/2097/GASH-WEDNESDAY-25-Beating-down-the-doors.html <![CDATA[GASH WEDNESDAY #24: Barlow's Case]]> http://chud.com/articles/blogs/2088/GASH-WEDNESDAY-24-Barlow039s-Case.html
On Monday, I am loading six weeks worth of dirty laundry into the backseat of my car for a trip to the laundromat. I hoist the last heavy bag of dirty clothes onto my shoulder, lock my door, and head for the stairs happy to be finally getting this project underway as I'd been putting it off at least two weeks too long. Yet on this day I wasn't meant to do laundry. On the way up the stairs creeping toward me was a small dog. He'd obviously followed me. He had no leash and no owner in sight, obviously an early morning tragedy for someone, whether they'd discovered his absence yet or not. I set down the bag of clothes and knelt down to meet the lost pup. He'd followed me and I felt like he needed my help. Perhaps I'm the biggest sucker I know for helping people and things. I just feel responsible if something like this falls into my lap, or creeps up the stairs as it did in this case.

Ignoring the laundry in my car, I tied the dog to the bannister outside my home and a compassionate neighbor and I began making phone calls and sending out emails with his picture to local apartment leasing offices in hopes that someone had seen him or would call inquiring about him. His picture is up on the local lost animal website. I drove him to a local vet and had him scanned for a microchip. It's been 48 hours and no luck so far. So I have an adorable, demure, spotted beagle mix roaming my house, infesting my home and my other dog with fleas.  I didn't want to take it to the pound for fear it would be destroyed. I didn't want to take it to the SPCA yet because they'd turn around and put it up for adoption making it nearly impossible for its original owner to find him.

He's kind of an asshole--barks all the time when I'm not in sight. He follows me from room to room and rests at my feet. I named him Barlow (after a song my friend made about a vampire who steals shoes) because I was tired of calling him "Hey Animal" or "Hey Fucker." All he wants to do is sleep and ignores my other dog who tries incessantly to play with it.  Since he's come to my house I've been in limbo. I'm not used to having a third being around. I have a hard time tuning out his presence. I wonder if I'm really holding someone else's best friend for a few days or if I'm supposed to bond with him and let myself like him or if I should make a cut-off date for his stay at my bed and breakfast and tote him down to the SPCA to put him up for adoption. All seem equally possible.

I imagine keeping him and introducing him to my future family. He'll be a friend for more than just me. I'll learn to deal with two dogs. I'll eventually look at him and looking back at me will no longer be an interloper, but a friend. My current dog, Inca, will learn to trust the extra dog in the house and stop looking at me for an explanation. I imagine caring for him through his life, training him as well as my other dog, making him even more pleasant to be around. I imagine toting both dogs around town on short errands.
 
I also imagine taking him to the SPCA tomorrow and forgetting about him. I'll be no worse  
for the wear. I'll know I still did the right thing. He'll be a planned and welcomed addition to someone else's family. He doesn't like to  play with my current dog anyway. He has fleas and balls. He'll be an additional financial liability which is nerve wracking since I'm moving to a fixed income soon. The neighbors are calling to complain about him barking nonstop when I'm gone. I'm perfectly happy with my current dog who is so well-behaved and so intuitive.
 
And I imagine him being reunited with his owner. He'll get to sit in the familiar front seat of his owner's car again. Pee on the same bushes. Right now there's a chance he'll never hear his name again. There's a half-eaten bag of dog food in someone's garage or kitchen that he'll never return to eat. Someone's window seat or spot on the couch lined with his hair is empty. Someone has lost a friend. Was it a family? An older man who lived alone? A young married couple? Did the dog live among curry and rice or oven-baked pizzas for the family's Friday dinner? Does he have a yard somewhere? A street he's used to walking up and down on a leash? I'll never know. He's being currently reprogrammed with a new name and every day that passes wipes away his old home and chances of being returned to his past.

It's amazing how things change in a day. One morning he woke up and ate breakfast with his owner. Fate planned his lunch with a good Samaritan and every meal thereafter, possibly. I'm not sure I'm ready to have my life changed, but his presence isn't killing me either. I didn't expect this. I'm trying to do the right thing in a situation where it will never be apparent what that is. He's alright for now. Really soft. I'm thinking maybe.
]]> no@spam.com (Andrea Rothe) Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT http://chud.com/articles/blogs/2088/GASH-WEDNESDAY-24-Barlow039s-Case.html <![CDATA[GASH WEDNESDAY #23: Confessions from my DVD library]]> http://chud.com/articles/blogs/2071/GASH-WEDNESDAY-23-Confessions-from-my-DVD-library.html
Original Sin. I can't tell you how in the hell I have hung on to this for so long, but I fell in love with this movie back in the years when I was reading Madame Bovary (a symbolic period novel about an oversexualized heroine.) I suppose Angelina Jolie's character struck a chord with me at this time, and having a background in making costumes for operas, I can't help watching period  movies without at least a little bit of guilty pleasure. At this point, I'm over the angst her character possesses as she is torn between both lovers. I'm almost over the sex scene. I've seen enough of the costumes. But it's something about the way the movie keeps changing directions that keeps me hooked just enough. We see the good become bad, the bad become victim, and then the victim be saved by love. I love the cadence of time in the movie... perhaps it's me slowly becoming aware of the act structure, but being mildly aware of it allows me the luxury of experiencing it like a novel. I can feel the pages turning at the end of the chapter. I feel a new chapter beginning. It is a love story in some chapters, feels like a crime novel in others, and ends in redemption. When I feel like a literary ride that changes directions on me at will, I pick this up again. This is the only hook left, but it's still worth something to me.

The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Think 1982. It's a musical about the Bunny Ranch, and it's got Dolly Parton, Burt Reynolds, Dom DeLuise, Jim Nabors, and a hell of a lot of singing prostitutes dancing around in dated teddies and feather boas. I don't care what you say, but this is a jewel. I grew up doing musicals. There are a lot of crappy ones out there, and a lot that have never survived their shift to film structure. But this one just keeps giving. The songs are great. Even the love songs.  The choreography (cowboy-football player hybrids and prostitutes) has me shaking my head in a combination of shame and laughter as the cowboy hats and skirts come flying off to reveal teddies and leotards. The costuming is just enough fluff and color pallette to make you appreciate its roots (the stage!). It's packed full of nostalgia and sweetened, yet unapologetic sexuality. I have to be in a certain mood to watch this, and when I do, I end up in an even better mood.

The Game. Love it. I will never forget the first time I got to the ending, and he falls through the glass to the giant stunt air pillow. I was suspended. And then it gifts you with Sean Penn tentatively emoting in only the way he can, and we breathe again. Then we are rewarded just as Michael Douglas' character was with answers as we see every character we thought we knew now in the ballroom. I suppose it's the true meaning of suspense because I am literally suspended the whole film on the edge between being unsure, and convincing myself of what must be real and logical. It is a trip. It's other-worldly, but it's not science fiction. How the hell can it do that to me? But it does it every time. I will never get rid of this film.

The Mirror Has Two Faces. This one is admittedly embarrassing, but I love Barbara Streisand. This is not one of Jeff Bridges' best roles, but I suppose I keep forgiving him for it in order to enjoy the movie. The movie is trite. What can I say? But it's got Barbara's comic goodness throughout it, as well as her classic quirky femininity... always rewarding. But it is this scene that keeps me coming back: the reveal of her new body after she loses the weight and dresses like a woman of her times. Not only is the reveal shocking and rewarding every time, but it deconstructs itself into something different. Kitten's got claws! I just enjoy seeing her unwrap twice--first as a believable sexual being, and again in the same scene as a meaningfully strong person. I guess I'm like everyone else... I love those moments that make me want to crawl through the screen and high-five the main character. There you go. I can't get rid of it.

25th Hour. Holy shit. I am rarely seriously moved by films, but this is one of them. You make it through the whole film with them. The whole thing. You wait with them. You understand his dilemma. The film seems to operate at a certain level of tension, and at a certain level of emotional awareness... and then I am ravaged at the end. I find myself with tears rolling down my cheeks as the father's heartfelt words for his son are spoken over what is either Edward Norton's possible or real future. I don't laugh much during even really funny movies, nor do I have a hairpin trigger for tears, but damn, this one completely arrested me. Thank you, Spike Lee. What a journey. What a sucker punch. I'll ride that train again and again because it's noble this time. Best emotional sucker punch. Ever.

]]> no@spam.com (Andrea Rothe) Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT http://chud.com/articles/blogs/2071/GASH-WEDNESDAY-23-Confessions-from-my-DVD-library.html <![CDATA[GASH WEDNESDAY #22]]> http://chud.com/articles/blogs/2065/GASH-WEDNESDAY-22.html
I'm the one that makes friendly suggestions for the trusted cab drivers which are lined up outside the bar throughout the night. I tell them that a cab ride or doubly expensive "safe ride" where they bring both you and your car home is far more prudent and less expensive than a DUI. And then what? They logically convince me that they live close by and will be fine. Or that they are fine to drive. Or that they do this all the time. They're dumb shits when they get to this. Don't get me wrong... I'm empathetic. I know what it's like to think when you're underwater, floating somewhere in the bottom third of the Dewar's bottle. Things make their own kind of sense. It's you against the world... like the chaos in yourself is what is real and present, fully known, and transcendent. Still and suspended. The rest of the world is out of order. You try to manipulate the chaos outside of you because you are smarter than this alcohol. You wonder that the chaos becomes aware of you. Or that the real world in which it's contained knows how intoxicated you are. Yet you imagine that the cops won't find you on this night. That you're really good at looking and speaking sober. And it's that fucking rat race--you staying ahead of the alcohol--where you're always woefully behind. It's the same reason that "drunk" gets old. You realize it's a race, and every trip around the track looks the same.

I know what it's like to be separated geographically from home, the best place to be legally drunk. You'd be fine as long as you were there. And you only need to negotiate between here and there to be legal. So you might risk it to get to home base where your drunk ass belongs. And fuck yourself. You fucked up if you're at this point.

But the right thing is to not get to this point. Or to plan accordingly. Because what could be more adult than planning ahead? And yet I see even high powered business professionals who've worked good and hard to get to where they are fuck this up all the time. They are people you'd expect to have their shit together. Yet the longer I live the more I realize that just because someone is a certain age or wears a certain suit to work doesn't mean shit. It's not indicative of the kind of person they are. Why? Because you're always on trial. You need to keep making the right decisions. You never arrive.

One of the most important lessons in life is this: Know thyself. And if you're drinking? Plan accordingly. If you know that after the third drink all subsequent drinks are bottomless and you stop caring, then choose a designated driver for the evening before you go out. Or stop at two. Know yourself well enough to not succumb to putting yourself in a position where you will choose as if you have a superman complex. Everybody knows better than to drive drunk.  Just not many do better. I've met people that have had three DUI's. I get tired of seeing it. I get tired of poor decisions. Life lessons are repeated until they are learned.

The problem isn't with alcohol. It's neutral. It can be enjoyed one drink at a time. It can be overshadowed by the amazing company you keep and can rest comfortably in the background the way good music can. But if you know it can become more, then seriously... need I say more? No one's got alcohol figured out. No one is stronger than it. If you've had a problem or have chosen poorly in the past, then just like every other situation in life... like the sign on the desert road trip that says "Last Gas Station for 150 miles", do what a sane person would do. Realize that you're not a badass.  Realize that the rules of life apply to you. Decide at step one that you will do the right thing. Like deciding beforehand that you will never cheat on you wife and not waiting to decide when someone's wet and pulling on your zipper, because you're not gonna make it at that point.

Alcohol may seem to fuel your fantasies, but there are enough people that get DUI's and kill people every year to state that you can't go undetected by life's radar. Shit catches up to you. So plan ahead for oblivion--for the music pumping and the alcohol you let flow over the rim of your cup into your gullet. Fuck it. Stretch this a little further and learn from others' mistakes. You're a fucking hero if you come into my bar with a D. D.. Oh... and you're an adult too, if that means something to you.


]]> no@spam.com (Andrea Rothe) Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:00:00 EDT http://chud.com/articles/blogs/2065/GASH-WEDNESDAY-22.html <![CDATA[GASH WEDNESDAY #21]]> http://chud.com/articles/blogs/2058/GASH-WEDNESDAY-21.html
The hookah. Such an intimidating, yet beautiful contraption. Foreign to most. And now I'm hooked. It's almost upsetting how many people are afraid to try it. It's probably the safest way to smoke tobacco, as almost all of the impurities are left in the water. I don't feel bad smoking it inside the house because it smells aromatic like potpourri and not smoky. There are so many awesome flavors available to hookah smokers, like acai berry and double apple, and grape and cherry... the list goes on. I haven't found one I dislike. And it's a good shared experience. Set it up on the coffee table. The table on your deck. The floor. Unfurl the hoses and you have a great interactive centerpiece for those that don't mind hanging with this strange item.

Tennis shoes. I used to think that one wore these (in spite of their name) for only the purposes of running or serious walking. I'd poo on them for everyday wear, thinking they weren't real shoes and just utilitarian pieces of footwear. Flip-flops were it for me for over a decade. And then I worked on my feet for four years straight, ruining and horribly disrespecting the parts I amble around earth on. I've found myself reluctantly needing and appreciating tennis shoes, my tired feet unable to walk comfortably atop the centimeter of "cushion" that flip-flops provide. (Never mind that I have about twelve pair of them that get rarely worn now.) I'm entering a new phase where I don't give a shit what is on my feet as long as they are comfortable, and I might love my tennis shoes more than the Bible. (Just kidding, dear six Baptist readers.)

Hummus. I'm not afraid of a little mashed up and seasoned chick peas. It's not a foreign food anymore, in case you haven't noticed. I've been to many sports bars where they now carry this delightful creamy item on their appetizer menu. It's inexpensive. Healthy. Vegetarian. And you can put it on anything. It's always in my fridge. I can't remember what I snacked on before I discovered hummus. If you havent' tried it, go for the plain stuff first and get used to that. Then go nuts and try the roasted red pepper and egg plant varieties and branch out. It's grand stuff, this bean paste.

Watching television by the season on DVD. I won't pay for cable. Watching TV wastes too much time, and I can't be bothered to remember what time which show is on. I can't plan my life around the boob tube. I got other things to do! So when I want to enjoy some television, I do it commercial-free and I binge on it in the form of disc after disc one season at a time. I've caught up on so much stuff that I've missed, and it takes me sometimes a week to do so, enjoying a couple or three episodes at a time. I spent one week with Arrested Development this way. I also watched and re-watched The Office (American version) more often than I care to admit. Whether it's a TV binge, catching up on past seasons, or navigating all the way through an unfamiliar series, I'm sold on watching TV this way.

Bourbon. After years of Bud Light and Captain and Coke or Captain and Diet Dr. Thunder, (thanks, Walmart!) I have discovered what I feel like is the real stuff. I know that everyone's tastes are different, and that not everyone is a drinker, but this stuff is what changed drinking for me forever. I like the hard stuff because I have to respect and slowly enjoy it, much unlike the drinking I did in my college years. A few of my favorites are Woodford Reserve, Bulleit, and Maker's Mark. Hell, whiskey in general is great, but the bourbons are where it's at for me with so much nuance hiding underneath the bite. I feel like I've been freed from boring and pretentious drinking with this great stuff.

These are just a few of my recent favorite things I don't care to live without. They keep my status somewhere between content and thrilled. I'm sure I'm still a crappy person, but I'm full of jelly beans and proud.

]]> no@spam.com (Andrea Rothe) Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:00:00 EDT http://chud.com/articles/blogs/2058/GASH-WEDNESDAY-21.html <![CDATA[GASH WEDNESDAY #20]]> http://chud.com/articles/blogs/2048/GASH-WEDNESDAY-20.html
After the time span of a single episode of Little House on the Prairie, I returned to the sidewalk and kneeled on the rough surface before the container. Would I find him warm and at peace the way I'd observed babies tucked into blankets? Had I created a transcendent moment for him, marrying the comforting bake of the sun with his delicate black skin? Was he rested and sun-drunk the way I liked to be when I found myself standing still with eyes closed in the field behind my school while it expanded away from me on all corners like a picnic blanket, mine because I imagined it, crunchy grass beneath my tennis shoes? Had he napped better than ever before, safe in his incubator?

I peered down through the lid and focused on the tiny black form. He didn't move. I shook the tub. To my horror, what had been the most delicate creature I'd ever gotten to know slid like a dried scab across the diameter to the other side. And there on the sidewalk on a sunny afternoon I realized I'd cooked the innocent in a chamber of my making. The reality materialized inside me, expanding one slow, dreadful heartbeat at a time. I was no longer zoo-keeper, but curator of a dehydrated body. Dread drummed low and slow in my abdomen as I faced the permanence of what I'd done. I was responsible for death. I was capable of creating horror. I'd ruined something irreversibly.

In some ways the tragedies of six year olds are far greater than those of adults. You have a limited ability to cause car accidents, start fires, and fire a gun. But at six, in your own home, you annihilate and don't mean to. Your grandest intentions go wrong. The things you hope to create sag into horrible forms or get glued to your hands. You lose your most precious belongings. You wash Barbie's hair, tie her to the fan blade to dry it, set it on high, and watch a friendly household appliance, angered and awry, spin out of control. You burn things the way Hitler would. You forget to tell your mom the important thing your teacher told you to because you can't wait to get home and see whether filling a whole page with red crayon will use up all of the stick or not. Your curiosity about the properties of things like ice, melted wax, lipstick, and tempera paint end in messes too epic to hide, your furious moments of discovery lingering long after they were intended as embarrassing monuments--stains on wallpaper and hard dried knobs of glue in the carpet. Somehow you're able to embrace the mad scientist. The engineer. The artist. But the first time you kill, it's different. It opens what can never be shut. It's your first inkling that although you might be capable of any great thing on this earth, that the opposite possibility is very true. You might be very bad.  

Over two decades later, the outline of the lizard frozen in death is imprinted on my mind--a mental tattoo of sorts. It was the first proof that my own great intentions can end in complete rubble. The tragedy of the irreversible has been repeated in latter years. It doesn't carry with it the original shock-wave of dread that it did that first time, but it doesn't feel any less horrific. We can screw up really bad. But somewhere between the lizard corpse and optimism is reality. Redemption is not necessary. But forgiveness is. Bury the mistake. Find a shady place in your back yard. Dig a hole in the dirt with your thumb. Lay the lizard's body in the hole. Gently sprinkle the dirt onto its silent form making a cushion between it and the living world. Pluck blades of grass and lay them carefully and dutifully over the place as a headstone of sorts. Know that you'll never find that exact spot again. What else is there? At twenty-eight, I feel closer to six than I ever thought possible, and the proximity surprises me.]]> no@spam.com (Andrea Rothe) Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:00:00 EDT http://chud.com/articles/blogs/2048/GASH-WEDNESDAY-20.html <![CDATA[GASH WEDNESDAY #19]]> http://chud.com/articles/blogs/2039/GASH-WEDNESDAY-19.html Full text here.

"I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try."

He addressed our youth, but in doing so, he really addressed our nation's underlying beliefs about work, success, and failure. In a world where we are numbed by a steady precipitation of commercials for the lottery, and turnkey systems for ambiguous wealth, we forget that success requires repeated hard work. And what else? That we are rarely successful alone. Open a book and read the credits. Watch the Oscars. We all have people to thank when we look back. But in the present, young and old, we all need moments where something pricks us and wakes us up. People that remind you that there is either a better, cleaner, more integrated, or more meaningful way of life. People to perform emotional CPR on you when you have not a breath of oomph left to see it finished. It is so easy to drown in the here and now. In bills. In life's stresses. We can get used to not contributing. It is easy to stop dreaming. I see youth as well as adults starve for lack of mentors and inspiration. We need to be addressed sometimes, if even by a public figure.

My best friend often performs the CPR I need to stay alive and keep building my dreams. And a few days ago, I found higher ground outside of that support system. From my President! I immediately found myself wishing I could thank him for his words and wondering how he would ever hear my thanks. And then the bottom dropped out. I found out that parents didn't want their children to hear it. School districts in six states -- Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin -- opted out of showing the broadcast of the speech to their students. This decision was prompted by parents in most cases. Why? Because they don't want politics in their schools. They worry that their children will be indoctrinated by a subversive socialist agenda. And there his words were posted on the White House's official website for all to read and  be inspired by, should anyone give the words a chance. 



And that's just the thing. We're so afraid to be affected. So afraid to be influenced.  Although President Obama is a political figure, politics are nearly absent in his address. It is just good common sense full of encouraging examples and reminders. It is something that we all need to hear because life doesn't get any easier just because we grow up.

We shouldn't listen to someone just because he is our president. His title alone shouldn't garner our respect. And I'm not trying to play the rebel card here either. It's just that one shouldn't be a leader by title, but by words and actions. And we ought to judge accordingly which means listening first. We are afraid to be led. But we are also afraid to listen.

The parents are crying "ear muffs!" to protect their children. They also apparently want to separate politics from school. They've asked for God to leave. And now our President. So what happens to our history text books? Economics classes? What about learning to discuss and think critically about current events?  The fact of global warming? Better burn the science books too. Sociology? Nevermind. Let the parents explain to the children why the word "race" shouldn't exist, and what the difference between someone's ethnicity and nationality is. And you can forget school elections. Why bother sending them to school? Because they might get affected.

If we must be jaded and contrary and negative, then let's please leave our kids out of it and not stifle what is good on its way to them. We are starving for mentorship and inspiration, and the parents are pinching the feeding tube. For shame.


]]> no@spam.com (Andrea Rothe) Wed, 09 Sep 2009 00:00:00 EDT http://chud.com/articles/blogs/2039/GASH-WEDNESDAY-19.html