Noishenvantengutencastlestein v. Hitler's Casino

This is Part 3 of the Wir Gehen Nach Deutschland series, which is, apparently, a series now, because I just called it a series, just now, and there are eleven of them, which is bonkers.

Part 1: Fashion Scarves in Fucking Charge

Part 2: Predictable

Part 3: Noishenvantengutencastlestein v. Hitler's Casino

Part 4: Beating Hitler at His Own Game

Part 5: Inhale

Part 6: After the Fox

Part 7: Like Mountain

Part 8: But You Know. Sweden.

Part 9: It's Fine

Part 10: Kiss Off

 Part 11: Red Man Says Nein

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

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

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

"We could go to Salzburg," MoLinder suggested.

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

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

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

"Well yeah, but I wanna goooooo."

"And I've never been Austria."

Katsisch piped in.  "Me neither!"

"And it's supposed to be awesome."

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

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

"Duh."

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

"Mur."

"Sound of Music tour..."

"Meh." 

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

Katsisch  perked from her book.  "Casino?"

"Oh yes."

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

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

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

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

"HITLER!"  She crumpled with giggles.

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

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

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

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

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

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


But I think MoLinder put it best:


MoLinder
April 1 near Giesing, Bayern via mobile

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

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

...

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.

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.

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Mimickry and Intelligence Are Two Different Things

Let's get one thing out of the way right now: I get more annoyed by the fucking Olympics every time they start up again.

Shut up. Don't argue. For a whole month no one has any opinions about anything, they just regurgitate what they read online about the Olympics.

Now this is important, because even outside of Olympic eventing, very few people have their own opinions at all. Most of them just repeat bullshit they read in an article online, and when I ask some derivative of, "So how do you feel about that article? What does it mean?" my conversational nemesis will be all, "fucking right on" because they have no substantive deductive reasoning skills and are most likely an African Grey Parrot.

And I'm accused of "looking into it too much," but all I can think is, you aren't looking into it enough.

Here is the thing: you want to talk about the Olympics? Fine. I will pay attention if you give me an original assessment other than a variation of "that was cool" or "that was not cool."

Otherwise, every single fucking person tries to have the exact same fucking Olympic conversation with me, one they heard someone else talking about on the fucking news, and I just say, "Yeah, I heard that same exact thing." Hopefully that response will rightfully give them impression that don't I care about their mimicry skills. Skills as a mimicist. Mimicksist? Mimicker?

But no, they will keep talking. Suddenly everybody in the world is a fucking luge expert after reading some article where Shaun White says, "the luge is totally dangerous, bro " and then they wikipedi for two hours until a rabbit trail leads them to the entry on parity transformation, and then they overload and update their Facebook with “Just spent two hours on Wikipedia. FML.” And then all these grammatical geniuses respond with “ur to funny!”

Fascinating, I know. I'm a snob.

Sure, Olympians deserve some recognition. They work hard and make their bodies do crazy endurance business. They are fearless, which is incredible. But there's no rush watching people get a rush. It's just frustrating reminder that I have never been bobsledding. Which must happen someday.

Actually, if the Olympics were full of people like me, you wouldn't be able to tear me away from the television. Because believe you me, my grace is peerless. Like strapping skiis on a triceratops.

...

Pilgrims are Gangsta.

I am quilting my ass off right now. Drunk.

Not really. I am in my brain.

Yeah. Quilting. This year, everyone's getting a fucking quilt. And they're gonna fucking like it. Probably just my dad. Whatever. I think I'm going to cut up one of Poppy's old suits and use that fabric. At least I want to, but I don't know how well that's going to work. We'll see.

I've never made a quilt before. This is some intricate shit. It's harder than that one time I made a New York Times-ish crossword puzzle about M.E. for her birthday, and that took weeks. Everyone was all pissed off. Jesus, Rass, why did you make it so hard? Shut up Sallies and deal with it, I can't help it if I'm a way awesomer present-giver ergo friend than all you guys.

Thanksgiving is a good day for white russians. Much like the day the spetznaz beat the green berets. Also: turkey exists, and that's pretty cool. So thanks.

Other things that I am thankful for: my dog, the "Be a Man" song from Mulan, my parents' washer and dryer, alcohol, and my Double Dare sweatpants. Best Thanksgiving ever. Oh, and you guys. Don't you be thinkin I forgot.

By the way, my cousin's wife strolled on into my parents house with a diamond necklace, and I was all drunk and , "Bitch, where'd you get that platinum chain with them diamonds in it?" and she just looked confused and said that it wasn't a real diamond and it wasn't platinum, and I tried explaining to her that me and MoLinder have been listening to a lo-hot of Ludacris lately and she was like, "Ohhhhh, I get it." But I'm pretty sure that was just so she could eventually segway into something far more relevant, like cornacopias or organic turkey something, neither of which are disrespectful to women nor straight up gangsta. Pilgrims are gangsta, though, because they will get all up in your shit and steal the fuck out of your land.

So after a delicious dinner of turkey, stuffing, and that green bean shit with all the crunchy business on top of it (I fucking love that green bean shit with crunchy business) me and the sisters were talking about how Katsisch's least favorite thing in the world was iPhones, right after asymmetry and cheese that is not parmesan. And I hate long fingernails and pretentious fucks who snootily say the name of a city in the accent that is local to that particular city ("Have you been to Pareee? We stopped through there on our way to Moon-chen, which is of course Deutsch for Munich." Really, skunkface? You smell like day-after-Thanksgiving toilet.)

And my Uncle Dick folded his arms and was like, "You girls should go on television. You all talk like those kids on TV, you know, the ones that you watch and you think, 'No one talks like that.' But you DO. You girls really do. This is wild."

...

Blogwatch.

I'm working on my carpal tunnel this week and typing double-time, because Ginny over at Praying to Darwin asked if I could blogwatch for her while she was on vacation.

Should be fun.

...

Emanuel.

So last night I get this text message from Xtine:

"I bet you have fallen madly in love with Rahm Emanuel."

Damn you, Xtine, and your uncanny telepathy. How could she know?

The single factor holding me back from pulling out the stone tablets and creating a religion dedicated to his face is the fact that I still need to Wikipedi him, and I have to be sure about this. Orthodoxy is not a toy, despite all that ecumenical patriarch shit they pull in Constantinople. Luckily, he shares a last name with Christ, so this shouldn't be too hard.

If George Clooney, James Carville, Al Pacino, and Seth Green were playing Survivor: Johnny Depp's Island, Pacino would get completely fed up with his islemates' bickering over the political influences of celebrities and pundits, grab Clooney, tie him to a palm tree, and beat him like a Turkish carpet with Carville's limp, unconscious body while Seth read excerpts from the Torah.

What I'm saying is, Rahm looks how George Clooney would look after a strict forty-day diet of rice, sand, Judaism, and James Carville. He'd be the jaded, trampled, smirking, cocky, little-boy voiced bastard that we know and love.

I feel a little C-Span coming on.


...

Dragons are real.

Wearing a knowing smirk much like the Archangelic Mike and Gabe, I would like to picture Heath as looking at us from heaven saying, "Is no one going to comment on the size of my massive man-parts? I'm the fucking Joker, that's me naked—right there—and that's my giant dick. Even in death, I fucking rule." And then River Phoenix glances sideways at him and says, "Shut the hell up, Heath, at least your last movie wasn't Silent Tongue, you've got goddamn Batman. I'd even take Ned Kelly over Silent Tongue, jackass."

But isn't it kind of odd that Heath and Brad Renfro died a week apart? I'm not saying it's murder, or that they're even connected…but if I were Joshua Jackson, Tobey Maguire, or Hayden Christensen right now I'd watch my back and start reading pill labels in grave, painful detail.

Of course, speaking of Archangels, went to Kentucky on Tuesday so I could check out the Creation Museum, which I've only been talking about for several months.

Everything I ever dreamed about and more. The Men in White (Mike and Gabe—like if Michael and Gabriel were superChristian alterna-hippies circa 1992 who talked like surfer dudes) told me about how Darwin was a douchebag and that the world is only 6,000 years old instead of 4.2 billion years old. How did they pick 6,000? Well, they counted back the generations in the line of Jesus all the way to Adam, and realized the world was created in 4,000 BC. So, the dinosaurs are that old. And lived in Eden.

Ah, but do they have scientific proof? Of course - Helium leakage in zircon, of course. And then Mike and Gabe further prove their point by sitting in the back of a classroom wearing skullcaps and drugrugs, making fun of their square science teacher for teaching about isotopes and Darwin, who is nothing compared to the big JC.

The Creation Museum is basically about the fall of man and how Darwin is evil. See, Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden with the toucans and the lambs and the cougars and the dinosaurs and the dragons (what? No unicorns? I call slander) and everyone ate pineapples and carrots and Adam and Eve would walk hand in hand beneath a silvery moon on a path lit by the firebreath of the lamb-gentle Eden-dragons.

Then the treacherous snake peer pressures them into eating the Fruit of Death, and then they realize they're naked and start slaughtering sheep so they can wear their skin per Buffalo Bill and Eddie Gein.

All of this, by the way, is exhibited using morbid and painfully detailed mannequins all around the museum.

So they get locked out of Eden and the begatting begins. They make some babies and some of their babies' babies kill each other very evilly, and dinosaurs start eating meat instead of pineapples and dragons kill people and everyone is just constantly fucking with the lambs. Sin enters the world.

And then eventually Noah builds an ark to avoid the upcoming worldwide flood, which totally happened, and we know this because of vertically floating logs. The ark is a boat that is, according to the Creationists, 510 feet long, which is enough space to house two of every species INCLUDING the 50 or so types of dinosaurs and dragons, all of which behaved themselves like little sacrificial sheep. There was an entire exhibit on how Noah fit the dinosaurs in the ark.

Then, see, after the waters dry up, the plants that the vegetarian dinosaurs eat don't grow as frequently, and it starts getting really cold and muddy. And the dinosaurs die.

Dragons, however, may still be around today, hiding up in the Scottish Highlands or Tibet or something.

I guess I just can't respect a belief system that bends the rules of science and treats theories as opinions to justify their own means. On top of it they built an entire museum which functions solely on a poorly constructed mockery of beliefs that differ from theirs.

If they ignored the concept of science and focused on Creation, their museum would be much more credible. You can believe what you want, but if you have to promote it by putting down others, who in their right mind should believe it?

So obviously, Creationists are not in their right minds. And they were all about over exclaiming things.

Imagine giant wall posters that say: WORLD VIEW - WRONG! GOD'S VIEW - RIGHT! They believe we were monkeys! Monkeys, I tell you! They are idiots and we are smart, because we know the truth about the Lord! Hahahahaha! Down with evolution!

At least museums that are dedicated to science show respect for Christianity, instead of laughing and beating it to a bloody mass. Science don't give a shit, Jesus. It has nothing to do with you.

Oh, that's why you don't like science. Because you're not in charge of it.

Because it's the atheist scientists, like Darwin, that brought all of the bad things into our world, like murder and rape and homosexuality and weed. Atheist scientists are also trying to suppress the truth about God and the Earth because they are aligned with Satan.

It's a world-wide century-spanning Godless scientific conspiracy.

And according to the Creationists, why does everyone in the world listen to Charles Darwin, anyway? He was just one guy who got stuck on an island with too many birds and was unable to understand that G.O.D. put a variety of species on this planet, including a variety of finches. Virtually everyone listens to Charlie boy because we are all immoral and barbaric and don't believe in dragons. What's so special about Darwin?

Yeah. Why would anyone base a major belief system off the teachings of one man?

They also have their facts all twisted and fucked. The theory of evolution did not originate with Darwin. He just gave proof. In fact, the theory itself has been around far longer than Christianity. Robert Chambers was far more controversial. He's the one who said we were monkeys. Lamarck came up with species transmutation. And that one Taoist Chinese guy who is not Lao Tse. He talked about it too. But his book is like, impossible to work through if you don't speak Chinese, and the translations are a little jarring. But still, that guy talked about it. Fucking Aristotle talked about it. Don't blame evolution on Darwin, crazy creationists.

It's so hard to take them seriously when they aren't taking themselves seriously.

But, sit on this: Dragons are real.

Living hidden dragons seemed like the most plausible of all the Creationist dogma.

...

Creationism, the News, and Why I Hate Wicked.

Rant, as usual. Ignore three and two if you will, but read number one.

THREE: I am so fucking sick of people telling me how good Wicked is. Shut the hell up. Wicked blows. It promotes negative female stereotypes and if you disagree with me you can go masterbate in the corner.

How is it a good story when two "best friends" betray each other for the love of a man who's kind of a douche? All this does is prove that women are jealous and treasonous and self-serving and will turn their back on you without a second thought, no matter how exemplary their actions or independent minded they may seem. In the end, all of that strength turns into BitchCrazy when they don't get the man of their dreams.

There is a reason people think that girls are backstabby and evil: Wicked is that reason. Every single positive and powerful female role in that book has been twisted around in the play to a woman who makes drastic mistakes and deep betrayals due to an inadequate romantic life. Read the book and avoid the musical.

It's all so clear now: you can only be successful in life if you're properly loved by a significant other, otherwise you're wicked, heroines be damned.

Hopefully, I can fall in love one day and fuck over one of my best friends so I can steal her boyfriend, or maybe I can force some guy into submission and keep him under lock and key to be my little man-slave. If only. And I can proudly and enthusiastically sing about my selfish decision-making skills.

I understand that there are other stories that deal with friends betraying friends for romance, and it's not always about women, and this is not the first one, but this is one of the few ones that glorifies that behavior instead of punishes it.


TWO: I've been saying this for years, but I feel the need to reiterate: I hate local news. I hate celebrity gossip. Lately it seems like I've been arguing with people about this more and more...like, I've had this conversation about fourteen times with fourteen different people (almost all of whom I love and respect) in the past two weeks.

I understand that to some people these things are important, but I don't care. I really fucking hate it. I do not think you are a bad person for placing value on these things, I just think it's stupid and not my business. My opinion really shouldn't matter when it comes to your personal preferences for entertainment, and if you ask me, the news is just that--pure entertainment. Does it offer an educational value? Definitely. But so do Kevin Smith movies. But mainly, you watch it because it's something that amuses, absorbs, or diverts your attention from your personal life. Education is entertainment, and entertainment is education. Which explains why certain forms of education are not for everyone, since everyone is captured by different forms of entertainment, and every form of entertainment educates in different ways.

Doubtful I'll change my mind on this, too. Bring school into it: You choose your education depth and level based upon what you find the most entertaining about your day, inside or outside of school. If math is interesting, you'll spend more time on math homework than history homework. If certain gym classes are entertaining for you, you'll participate in those after school sports or intramurals. If you hated reading Dandelion Wine, there's no chance you're going out of your way to read more Ray Bradbury outside of school. You decide how to further your education.


ONE: I'm about 95% sure that in January I'll be taking a weekend field trip to the Creation Museum in Kentucky. Can't wait to educate myself on scientific proof of those Jesus Horses.

...