I Can Go Twice As High

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.

...

Luckery and Astrology

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."

...

Love Gun

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.

...

Here's the Thing: When in Rome

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."

...

Spontaneous (Something Intelligent and Relevant)

This was inspired by Rachel over at Diary of Why. I was going to leave her a comment, and then I realized that I wasn't talking to her. I was talking to myself. Therefore, it became a blog entry.

I'm going to offer some unsolicited advice. Personally, I hate getting advice, because I feel like people are just telling me shit I already know. The only advice worth hearing, in my head, is the stuff that feels like religion and math and blood, and so few are able to appeal to all three of those things, as much as they might try.

But being me, one who embodies hypocrisy and embraces with zeal, here's my advice, to anyone who wants it. But mostly, I say this to myself:

I don't believe in destiny or karmic retribution, and I sure ain't no precog, so I can't offer reassurance that “things” will get better, although I hope they do.

I don’t see any evidence that your life is so bad, so unsuccessful. Your life, my life, our lives.

You know what’s easy to change, and completely free, and only requires action on your part and no one else? Your mind. Just change your mind about the definition and degree of success.

Because success can't be measured; this isn’t the fucking metric system. There can’t be a standardized scale to grade something so multidimensional.

It’s actually impossible. I promise. Stephen Hawking couldn’t do it. Go ahead and ask him. Call him up and say, "Hello Stephen Hawking, how do we measure success?" and then Stephen Hawking will generate a big "ummmm" with his vocal synthesizer, because let's face it: Stephen Hawking totally doesn't know. And if Stephen Hawking can't measure it, then...okay, you know when people discover dinosaurs and name them after themselves? Stephen Hawking discovered the theoretical collected radiation of subatomic black hole particles and named those fucking things after himself. And he uses that to figure out how to measure the gravitation of one thing to another, which is the only consistent type of interaction between every single thing that exists in the universe. Ever.

To put it another way, for all of you Christians out there: Stephen Hawking is theorizing how to measure the effect of God.

His job is to discover how to measure ridiculous shit. That is all he does.

So if Stephen Hawking can't measure something like success, well...fucking no one can.

Because success isn't theoretical physics. Success unraveled is legacy and happiness, and both of those are built up by time, love, energy, audience, failure, contribution, risk, and most importantly, the reactions to all of those factors that filter through your own brain. So, to be considered a success, here is what you need to do:

Do not listen to me. I make shit up as I go along.

...

Points to be Pointed Out.

Point the First:

Muffy: Going to see Frank Black at Wicker Park Fest on Saturday! You in?

Me: Totally.

Muffy: YAY Snowwhite is in town

Me: Awesome. Oh, and also, the hipsters are going to dress up like zombies and do the Thriller walk down Division tomorrow night.

Muffy: Nice. Why?

Me: I dunno. Because they're hipsters, and they're starved for individuality. So they gather en masse and dress alike and walk with synchronized dance moves. I'm thinking about dressing up like a gang banger from "Beat It" and getting in a knife fight. This would prove four things: (1) I ain't no fucking follower, (2) I ruin lives, (3) blades don't need reloading, and (4) zombies are sooooo 2008, while I live in the future.


Point the Second:

The zombie craze is boggling. I mean, yes, blood/violence/brains/yar. It's not like the vampire craze, diligently resurfacing every couple of years, fading away slowly, only to be shoved back into the spotlight by some new book or television show.

Zombies were dead for a long while (you can't kill the undead (Double parentheses! (Triple! (If it's not math, should I still use brackets? (I have decided no))))), with the exception of the occasional resurfacing of George Romero, but then that goddamn 28 Days Later came out in 2002, and then The Zombie Survival Guide, and all of a sudden it's BRAAAAAIIIINNNNSSS and so on, and they just won't go away.  I got no probs with the zombs, I guess.  But I'm really, really getting sick of it. 

It's the wierdest genre trend ever (from the standpoint of cultural shifts - because zombies are totally not wierd) seven years strong, and getting stronger by the minute.  I just want it to fade away like when everyone was annoyingly obsessed with pirates.  Let's make cowboys cool again, huh?  I know, I know.  Cowboys are jerks.  Whatever, you guys are jerks.


Point the Third:

Oh, the hipsters. Every single thing about myself that I don't like (that yearning to be unique, getting angry when people assume I'm a johnny-come-lately, a distaste for average, talking about doing instead of doing), they assault to the extreme. It's nice having them around.

Here's the thing: what makes people unique is not saying, "I'm kind of unique." You must just be unique. Telling me you're unique proves nothing, because you give the impression that you're just like everyone else that thinks they're unique. Drives me nuts. Same thing with "free spirit." People who say they're free spirits rarely, rarely are. They're too preoccupied with trying to be a free spirit, negating the entire mindset behind spiriting free.

Calling yourself a nerd or a free spirit or a princess doesn't make you those things: you must just be them. More importantly, why do you have to be one at all?


Point the Fourth:

This is the type of stupid bullshit that keeps me up until four in the morning on a Thursday, furiously painting my apartment and trying not to focus on Die Hard. I always watch the Die Hard movies when I'm doing things that take hours, like Orange-Glowing the floor or painting the walls harbor blue. Kind of like how I always watch Star Wars when I'm sick, and The Last Unicorn when I lose something. Dude, and I am not gonna lie, I am a big fucking fan of harbor blue. Also, I can't believe I just actually googled and linked the paint code. It looks much brighter and darker than that on my walls. Wow, I am a douchebag.

...

The Cheek

It is St. Joseph's Day, so everyone celebrate the other half of my heritage and listen to Louis Prima all day.

Oh yeah, remember how I did that interview thing like a week ago, or two or whatever?

I had to turn out some questions for Brian over at The Cheek of God. I think my questions were crap, and have officially cemented my standing as someone who should never be given a talk show, but he managed to make them interesting. Prolly because he's an interesting guy.

And you know he's interesting, because he wants to go to the Creation Museum, and anyone who's down for that gets a thumbs up.

...

When You Stress to Impress

"I'll tell you what's so great about it," I looked at her, "it's that desperation is the hardest emotion to convey without falling into self-indulgence and pity."

"So," a co-worker is laughing at me, "you like it because it's desperate."

"Well, partly, yeah. But no," I'm furrowed now. "It's just good."

"You read weird things, though," she turns another book over in her hands. "So there's no like, superheroes in it, right? You're not trying to trick me?"

Sigh. "No. That book," I gesture towards my book that she's holding, "is like, mid-eighteenth century Brit lit. Like it's written by Jane Austin's like, favorite author equivalent of...I don't know. Some clever female feminist author that's popular right now but I've never heard of. I don't know. That book is nothing like Watchmen. It's just fun."

"I can't ever tell with you. You've got that one book that looks like a comic book, but it's not. You know, it's like, pink..."

"Three Musketeers."

"See? You read weird things."

"What the fuck? How is the Three Musketeers weird? It's classic."

"Don't you have anything, like, normal?"

"Dude, you asked if you can borrow a book from me--"

"But you know," she flips through the pages of The Adventures of Arabella. "I was thinking like, what was that one? You were talking about it a while ago and then one of my guy friends told me about it the other day, and I was like, 'Yeah, I've totally heard of that.' The one about the haunted house, and it's like the book is haunted too. Can I borrow that one?"

"House of Leaves? You think Three Musketeers is weird and you want to borrow House of fucking Leaves?"

"I don't know, my guy friend said that it was good," she smiles all sheepish and shrugs backwards, blushing.

"Fine, I'll get for you, but...dude: you thought Kurt Vonnegut was weird. I don't know if you're going to like that book."

"But it sounds interesting! And...scary. I like, like...you know, scary books sometimes."

"Good. That's awesome. I mean, it's fascinating and all, the story elements and how they're woven together, but, I mean, I didn't even get half of it..." she's looking me straight in the eyes and cannot hear a word I'm saying. Or at least, she temporarily walled up her ears. She's a very smart girl, really, way smarter than I am. Most people are. Then again, I kind of live in a different world than everyone else, because I've got this raging awesome ability to eclipse over the immaterial, which is anything that doesn't relate directly to me (Jennifer Lopez has children? How did I just learn this?).

And then I remembered what it's like when you're trying to impress some guy with your knowledge and opinions ("Oh, I looove Henry Miller" and "I always listen to NPR" and "Through a Glass Darkly is totally in my Netflix queue as we speak, I want to see it soooo bad, Bergman is amazing" - are you fucking kidding me? Bergman is. a. fuck., and I know that War of the Roses is next), and I feel like a total douchebagess (you know--like a shepherdess but a douchebag) because I am guilty of lame-o-ness and then I judge everyone else for doing the same thing.

"Yeah, of course, sorry. I'll bring it tomorrow. But I'm warning you, it's a stressful book."

...

The Crux

Yeah, of course, I'm going to write about the Watchmen, although not very well.

This is just for self-gathering, but I want to get it out before I read any articles, just in case someone sways my opinion. I never read movie reviews or pre-release predictions and stuff, because I'd like to go in there as uninfluenced as I can. Which is hard and damn near impossible, but you know. I'm fucking dying to read what people thought about the movie, so I'm getting this out now.

Feel free to disregard this post.

1. When it's good, it is GOOD.

2. When it's not good, it's awkward, hollow, and unnecessarily violent.

3. The Comedian and Rorschach were spot on. Brilliant, even, painted perfectly.

4. Both Silk Spectres were piles of crap, and I like Carla Gugino usually. Night Owl could have been better if he didn't have to act opposite Malin Akerman the whole time.

5. Focused too much on the hero, not enough on the human. Not desperate enough. Needs more loss, more uncomfortable emotion in response to the story. I don't want to feel uncomfortable with how they're telling the story.

6. Horrible, horrible, horrible soundtrack. Very distracting.

7. Glossy. Pretty. Shiny. Panel-for-panel, glorious colors etc. Just beautifully shot.

8. Cannot decide how I feel about Dr. Manhattan. Good voice. Odd syllabic timing at points which works sometimes and sometimes does not. Mars is cool except for Malin Akerman. Overabundance of dick.

9. Fucking seriously, they couldn't have fucking cast someone fucking other than fucking Malin fucking Akerman?

10. Stretched out violence for violence sake, and added like forty-five minutes on to the movie which would have been far better spent focusing on dealing with and overcoming the crippling normalcy of being human, not super, whether or not you wear a mask.

Crux of fucking novel.

11. Every single character at one point had to jump from a great height and land on their feet all dramatically. Subtle, Mr. Snyder. Also, next time stick with original score because soundtrack was bullshit. Again.

12. Dialogue is excellent, pulled nearly straight from the book.

13. Most ridiculous sex scene of all time.


That's all I got.

...

Even in the Face of Armageddon I Shall Not Compromise This.

Gaaahhhh Thursday night. Or Friday morning, whatever. Tickets have been purchased. I am shaking. Kevin got me theme-appropriate goody bag full of plastic cups, a t-shirt, and condoms, which will probably just sit there on my dresser, untouched. Because I'm the type of person that gets excited about movies like this.

Not that I mean to get my hopes up or anything, but the fact of the matter is I've been writing this movie in my head for twelve fucking years and to see it actualized onscreen is just very exciting. It could suck. It could dominate. What if it's as horrible as X-Men: The Last Stand? What if it's better than Batman Begins?

Life is getting to the point where previously steadfast friends are reconsidering their Rassles allegiance. I can tell, because they keep on saying things like this:

Patrick thought it was hilarious that you were so excited for the Creation Museum, and I was like, "Wait til the movie. Do not. Sit next. To Ross. I will be as far away from her as possible. Maybe in a completely different theater, I don't know."
- Gyna

There is no way I am sitting near you. You're just gonna punch me the whole time.
- Kevin

I'm just afraid that you're going to be sitting there by yourself, alienating the world and hitting strangers with your fist.
- Xtine

I am so not sitting next to you during the movie. I do not want to get hit, man. It's crap.
- MoLinder.


Fuck. Yes.

...

Are These Stories Real?

Strange things are afoot.

About an hour ago I left work to meet up with people and make fun of M.E., who is currently standing outside the Thompson Center wearing a white spandex onesie with a blaring iron on transfer image of Eliza Dushku. She's wandering amidst a sea of snowy mannequins and other unitarded models, handing out chocolates for an official Fox promotion for the opening of Dollhouse tonight.

So we pointed and laughed. Took pictures.

"You couldn't pay me to do that," Sookie shakes her head.

"Dude, she's getting paid a lot to do it, and you know she's gonna walk out of all this with a new girl to mess around with. Because if anyone can pick up chicks in a silkscreened spandex onesie, it's M.E."

"I don't think I could pick up anyone in a white spandex onesie."

Rob just laughs. I think he's uncomfortable, after hearing Gyna and I talking about how ridiculous things are right now.

According to Gyna, "Dude, you and I had the wierdest conversation last night. I can't imagine what someone listening in would have thought. Threesomes gone terribly awry, cripples being nice to us, shocking heterosexuality. She was holding hands with a boy! I was freaking out!"

"Well, we did suspect that she was trying to be straight now."

"I know, but still! So wierd. I have Teen Wolf scratches all over me from crazy car make out. We're going to spend Valentine's Day at the VFW--"

"Yes: VFW Valentines. Surrounded by men in mullets, fanny packs, and fake white trash teeth. Best. Saturday. Ever."

"It is going to be so hot."

"You know it."

"But still. Our lives are weird. Aren't our lives weird? That this is the norm?"

Thinking about it, I am in the middle of trying to reconcile our friends' love lives using naught but the awesome power of my thumbs and witty, deprecating text messages. And we're going to be in the worlds largest pie fight. Ideally, pie fights should be impromptu, but this will have to do. I get paid to save children and sometimes to sing with a karaoke band (March 7th, bitches).

I'm riding a train to New Orleans to work at a soup kitchen and maybe sneak into the Tennessee Williams literary festival which should be bad ass (because I am broke, and a dork, and just want to wander up to a strange gorgeous man and gasp with gloom and hunger: "Straight? What's straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the heart of a human being?"). I've really been having crazy dreams lately, which means things are normal, because my dreams are usually fucked up.

Gorilla-centaurs and eating the sun and the like.

Now, reading that, it doesn't really sound fascinating. Maybe it was just the conversation that we had. Anything sounds interesting when you say it with enough gusto.

...

Mad World

Can anyone explain why I've had goddamn Tears For Fears constantly running through my head for the past two weeks?

And if anyone says fucking Donnie Darko I will find the old workroom of HG Wells (I don't care what anyone says, The Time Machine is totally autobiographical), steal his time machine, traverse to your father's thirteenth birthday and castrate him, so that way neither you nor your comment will exist via the most commonly-accepted theories regarding the space-time continuum. Predestination paradox, bitches.

Extrapolate that.

(Let it be known that I have no ill feelings towards Donnie Darko, other than the fact that I was at a bar about a month ago that happened to have two movies playing, one of which was Donnie Darko, and the second was a movie whose title I couldn't remember, so I asked like every single person in the bar, "Hey, what movie is that? The one that is not Donnie Darko?" and pointed to the television that was not playing Donnie Darko, and every single fucking person told me it was goddamn Donnie Darko. I was about ready to go all fucking Donnie Darko on everyone.)

...

The Definitive Home Jersey

At the keen age of eleven my family took a vacation to El Rancho Stevens, a kitschy kickin' dude ranch in Gaylord, Michigan. That's right. Sink it.

Other than the fact that some genius befitted this place with a superior moniker, El Rancho Stevens was excellent. Ponies, canoes, swimming, poker games, fucking tetherball...easily my favorite family vacation spot.

But the coolest thing about El Rancho Stevens wasn't just being completely captivated by a Tennessee Walking horse named Babe or eating bacon every morning or the ranch-wide nightly Ghost in the Graveyard game or participating in their "Dudeo Rodeo," or you know, fucking tetherball. You see, at El Rancho Stevens, I obtained the best sweatshirt ever.

It's been through a lot, my sweatshirt. I wore it all throughout junior high, where I was probably ruthlessly mocked. Then in high school I became all unsure and self-conscious, pulled in the sleeves and reversed it, afraid to be labeled because of the imprint galloping across my chest.

Once I hit up college I decided to see if I would get the stares for wearing it, and instead my friends shook their heads and laughed. "You are such a fucking dork," they'd say. I still turned it inside out sometimes, when I was particularly lonely and ashamed of the illustration.

Then came "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia" and "Flight of the Conchords." All of a sudden, my sweatshirt is now the coolest thing anyone has ever seen.

It's amazing, really, how the tables have turned, how easily television shows can change a cultural perspective. Perhaps, just perhaps, they could have recognized my sweatshirt's awesomosity having never seen the show. But the fact of the matter is, whereas before I would get, "I cannot believe you are wearing that, you are such a fucking dork," the comments have turned into, "That is the most incredible thing I have ever seen in my life. Where did you get that?"

El Rancho Stevens, bitches.

This sweatshirt is peerless, nearly perfectly rendered and loveworn in all the right places. When my eyes glance downward at the label on the corner, I remember, fondly, those days at El Rancho Stevens, and how graciously this sweatshirt epitomized my personal essence and evolution, from adolescence to, like, second adolescence. My gothic shield of arms, my home jersey, my Sunday driver, devoted to my character until I've passed from this world into the next.

And etched upon my tombstone, instead of the usual years, the adopted measurement with which we limit our life, or even my name, given to that which cannot be summed, I choose this permanence, this last effort at eccentricity, my personal glow within the murk and the gloom--

"On a field, sable,
rearing-palimino-stallion-engulfed-in-wicked-ass-lightning, pink."

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Edit: I was going to wear it for the picture, but I decided against it. Boobs fuck up the silk screen. Booyah.

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