raging out at... shots

I hate Christmas. I genuinely despise nearly everything about this stupid holiday. I don't know where the wonder and magic of December 25th went, but wherever it shipped off to, it certainly bought a one way ticket. The only reason I even still celebrate Christmas instead of converting to some religion where tradional Christmas is banned is, it's a great day to get drunk with my favorite family members. But as tonight ended with me letting loose a shrill war cry in the direction of my brother and his girlfriend banning them from speaking to me again for the remainder of the night, I seem to have lost what was left of my holiday joy.

Today I walked into a home filled with family I haven't seen in over 9 months, since I picked up and moved cross country. I was welcomed by my dearest cousins with whipped cream shots of 43. Right down the hatch they went and thus the drinking commenced. I attempted to slow my pace down with an only slightly pinkish cranberry and vodka, but my cousins were having none of that.

My internationally renowned champion drinker cousin Peg entered the Ring O' Christmas bearing shot glasses that were actually MADE of candy canes. Being that "no" is probably the least used word in my vocabulary, this was just catastrophe waiting to happen.

Now I would like to state for the record that I am NOT, in fact, raging out at the candy cane shot glasses. I am in fact applauding their very existence and brilliant power to make vodka taste much like a liquid Starburst of goodness. And it is not their fault that their variety of flavors caused me to throw back a shot from each glass; that would be my own stupidity. But, come on, look how cute they are. It would take will power of pure wrought iron to resist.



What I am angry at is shots in general. There has never been a time in my 10 years of drinking where I have woken up the next morning and been like, "Well, thank God we did those shots. The night surely would have been entirely doldrum without those Patron shots." Never. I would imagine no one ever has. Shots are without fail always a terrible and ungodly mistake, but again this very basic life truth has yet to stop anyone from partaking in a round or 12.

Shots have been the cause of a good chunk of the pie chart of my life's tribulations. Because of shots, I have endured headaches sent straight from hell. Because of shots, I have kissed boys whose hairlines receded to nearly the back of their necks and ignored boys who may have been Prince Charming. Because of shots, half the pictures of me in existence look like the one above.

Oh, and of course, every year there is the Christmas tradition of the picture of all the cousins to be framed and displayed for the next year. Here is what this year's looks like. I'd like to thank the many, many candy cane shots for ensuring my classiness and low alcohol tolerance be one for the books. [Note: Stars is the drunken pile passed out in the corner.]



Which reminds me... Orion, you and I have a special shot to take that's been years in planning. I have not learned my lesson yet.

-stars

grievance: annoying children "actors" ruining my christmas

Why does the romanticization of Christmas necessarily produce the most annoying breed of children possible? I pose this question to you not only because I have no possible explanation. I pose this question to you because I am personally offended.

Annoying Children - Instance 1: I went to see "Wintuk," the new Cirque du Soleil which is posed more as a cohesive story than their traditional stagings. There are feats of acrobatic wonder, of course, but they are streamed together via a young boy whose intense (and absurd) facination with snow has caused me to name him "gay for snow." He spends the entire two hours of the "play" saying "wow, that thing you guys have trained to do for years is pretty cool, but there's something missing!". "Where's the snow?" "I want it to snow!" "Snow, snow, snow!" "I want to make love to a snowman in a snowbank with Bing Crosby singing 'White Christmas,' while snow falls all over my gay-for-snow head!" (Fine. He didn't say that. But he may as well have.)

This kid was so offensive that I actually no longer like snow. When "snow" fell on the audience, I was disgusted. Get over yourself. You're not Mother Nature. It will snow soon enough.

Annoying Children - Instance 2: I watched a movie called "A Grandpa For Christmas" last night (which was followed by a movie called "A Boyfriend For Christmas" - gag). Note: I did not watch this lame ass holiday-movie-for-lonely-chicks.

This total brat was the main character. And later on, she sang and danced... So my only theory to reconcile this awful casting is that they chose her based on THOSE abilities. However, in a holiday movie, it's pretty much a hard-and-fast rule that you've gotta at least empathize with the main character.

I did not empathize with her.

I wanted to light her stupid pigtails on fire and slap her in the face with them.

I would much prefer to actually LIKE the character whose journey I am on and have the producers find someone else' track to which she can lip sync. Nobody sings live anymore anyway.

So, essentially what we have is a kid who is gay for snow and a brat who can sing and dance, both of whom I hate.

Good luck to the children I will someday have. If they act up, they may end up buried in snow with their grandpa.

Merry Christmas.

-moon

grievance: friends and hardware

One-Question Survey:
Is it acceptable to have friends who call you at 4:15 A.M., to tell you that they are stuck on a Manhattan rooftop?

See "raging out at... unacceptable locking doors."

-moon

raging out at... drunken camera work

Wouldn't this have been a much better video if the Camera Ginger hadn't had 90 drinks of assorted varieties?


-stars

raging out at... unacceptable locking doors

So I suppose there comes a time in every blogger's life where you have to give up a little too much personal information in order to properly make your point. And I suppose that time for me has come now.

Being back home in New York for the holidays should be a time for friends, family, warmth, love and giving. For me, it is a time to be trapped on a rooftop in TriBeCa at 4:30 in the morning. I'm slowly developing hypothermia as I write this, and drinking the half a beer that I had to pretty much channel my inner Jet Li to obtain, so please excuse my normally impeccable rationality as it slowly spirals into psychosis. God, I feel like the guy from The Mist slowly writing his way towards his impending doom. If the last of my memoirs is this tale, I suppose it is only appropriate that this be the legacy I leave.

One of my very favorite people in the whole world (although he is losing points by the minute as he taunts me with his full beer and the other one I KNOW he's got in his pocket; Either that or I chose the absolute right person to be trapped with) lives in this beautiful apartment in downtown Manhattan. I decided to bundle up like an Appalachian hunter and trek in to spend the night playing cards and drinking beers with this lovely man. Fast forward to a few hours later, we are both long past a light buzz and someone is wearing a feather boa and someone else has donned both elbow and knee pads. I will leave it up to you to determine which one is my outfit of choice. Both are very good guesses.

So in our not at all inebriated states of mind, we decide that we should go have a few drinks on the roof to enjoy the view. Now packing for the roof was an episode in and of itself. We could (and should) have gone to Tahiti for a week with what we took up here. We made sure we were plentiful on brews, blankets, Tostitos and for reasons I'm still unclear on, a laptop. Someone's a workaholic and if you guess me, well then you haven't been paying attention.

So let's fast forward to a little later. More drinks in the hole and we're downing them cuddled under a fuzzy blanket. It's sort of sweet, actually. But then comes the Stars catastrophe. Being that my quitting smoking went swimmingly, I panic when my lighter falls over the edge of the roof (even more so than I panicked when a hoodie I lived in for a while went down). I get up and walk over to the stairwell where my purse had dumped over on our way up, praying some matches went renegade and were laying abandoned on a stair somewhere. No luck, of course. On my way back up, I successfully drop my cigarettes behind me and go to pick them up without moving my legs. Why? I don't know. I truly wish I did but I do not and am sure I shall regret it for a long time to come. On my super graceful return, the door slams shut and locks on its own by virtue of nothing I've done wrong whatsoever. (Popular retelling of this tale will tell you that I kicked the door shut then slammed against it and laughed uncontrollably for 10 minutes, but this is why I'm clearing it up now.)

So after 20 MORE minutes, the doormen arrive to rescue my drunken companion and me. But now the door is jammed. So I sit here writing my blog, nursing what may be my last beer ever and I'm still laughing through my rage.

Why do the doors have to lock from the outside? We are a million damn flights up. If someone's spidey skills have enabled them to make it on top of this building, let them on in, I say. They earned it. And to be perfectly frank, I'm sure If they can scale 26-story Manhattan buildings to land on the rooftop, I have no doubt in their skills to pick a lock to get into the building. Have you ever known a criminal to concoct a lever and pulley system to soar through the air and perform professional level acrobatics to land unharmed upon a rooftop to then look at a door and be like, "Oh crap, it's locked. F this." Yeah, neither have I.

Please use the comments section to send prayers for my blue extremities and to share tales of your own follies with things that lock when they aren't supposed to. Fingers crossed that someone has a chastity belt story.

-stars

shit that sucks - social networking overload

So I was an early adopter of Friendster, and I was obsessed with it. Then I transitioned to MySpace. Loved that, but it was totally crushed by Facebook, where everyone on the site is actually real, and you're not getting spammed by wannabe porn stars and getting comments about $50 Macy's cards. I am also a member of Buzznet, Twitter, VIRB, iLike, and Last.fm, mostly just to see what all the hype is about. And I'm glad all of that all of those millions of social networking sites exist, I guess. I mean they do no harm and if you want to join them and maintain 75 profiles and keep updating your status on each one, and uploading photos to all of them, and keep adding and inviting the same friends to them, more power to you.

My issue is this - every site needn't have a social networking component. Today Google announced the integration of their new social networking platform into their web apps, and Netflix asks me to import friends from my e-mail address to see their recommendations, and a=Amazon wants me to upload a picture. Why? This doesn't make my experience better. It just sucks.

-orion's belt buckle

raging out at... american driving laws

Why can I not drive a tank along the streets of Los Angeles, but everyone can drive their ridiculous SUVs which are just as much a death trap anyway? I would bet good money half the drivers I speed past on the daily have at least medium, if not heavy, artillery in their cars anyway. I would take an oath in front of good Governor Schwarzenegger to never load the guns and to plow over only people who really deserved it if he would just let me drive my tank.

Tanks are perfectly allowable in the UK. See you bastards in Europe.

Here is the tank I would like (in case you have me as your Secret Santa this year... no more problems figuring out what to buy!):


-stars

raging out at... my smart bank

For the last several years, every single time I deposit a check, I tack an extra zero onto the end hoping one day someone will fall for it. It has yet to happen and now I think they might be on to me. I plan on continuing this idiot tactic anyway.

-stars

shit that sucks - mainstream indie films

Zach Braff invented the Shins, and possibly also the mainstream indie flick. This is why I hate Zach Braff - that and the fact that Scrubs isn't really funny, and he hasn't really done anything else. Ever.

I just got home from seeing Juno; you may know it as the "sleeper hit of the season." Everyone's talking about how edgy it is - meanwhile I felt like I was watching a made-for-Lifetime movie on a big screen. Just because she's sixteen and pregnant doesn't mean that it's gonna be controversial, and just because she's like a live action version of Daria Morgendorfer doesn't mean it's gonna be edgy - see also Little Miss Sunshine.

But what pissed me off more was how everyone in the theater felt uber-cool going to see this art house film, which starred Jennifer Garner. The multiplex in Union Square is not the Angelica, and if you are seeing a movie there, realize that you're not in on some awesome secret.

Lastly - the soundtrack. Just because you have an indie rock soundtrack doesn't mean you have a real indie gem. Sonic Youth, the Kinks and Cat Power weren't just uncovered by your music supervisor. Face it - you just want chicks in legwarmers who just got off work at American Apparel to talk about how brilliant the soundtrack was. Face it - it wasn't.

Glad I got that off my chest. Feel free to use the comments section to list other overrated mainstream indie films.

-orion's belt buckle

grievance: attempts at clever plays on words

There is a store on 14th and 8th. A shoe store. It is called "Shoegasm."

Shoe doesn't sound like "or."

If it did, "Shoegasm" would be clever.

Dane Cook called his comedy tour "Tourgasm." Not "Showgasm." Because that's not funny. Nor is it clever.

Apparently the genius minds behind this shoe store are hanging out with Geoffrey Chaucer in 14th Century London...

"Rede in his almageste, and take it there.
Dame, I wolde praye yow, if youre wyl it were,"(The Wife of Bath's Prologue [the meaning of which I have NO idea])

... because while they seem to think "shoe" rhymes with "or," Mr. Chaucer has rhymed "there" and "were." Thank you Great Vowel Shift. (1200 to 1600 A.D. must have been a WILD time for miscommunication.)

The "ooh" (like "moon") sound in Modern English sounds very much like how it would have in Middle English. The "oh" sound in "orgasm," however, is traced back to having sounded like "ehw" (as in "new"). I find it senseless to use IPA here; this blog is already technical and gratuitously erudite enough. Thus "shoe" and "or" would have rhymed as well as "there" and "were" did.

That said, Shoegasm owners: if you were alluding (VERY backhandedly) to pre-Great Vowel Shift pronunciations of English, I laud you. I will begin buying "shores" at "Shore"-gasm immediately.

What's my point? If you're trying to be clever, appropriating 14th Century pronunciation for the name of your West Village shoe store ain't gonna fly.

Sub-point: I'm going to name my shoe store (that I now have to open solely for the purpose of PROPERLY effectuating cleverness) "Chaucer." His last name comes from the French word "chaussier." What does it mean?

Shoemaker.

-moon

raging out at... people who take away messages seriously

Obviously with the infiltration of IMs, texts, and e-mails in our daily lives, communication has gotten a little muddled and there are all new sorts of life etiquette rules to be learned. I've gotten into more all-out wars with people I love (read: "the idiot men I date") than I can even recount because of someone taking the cyber-written word the wrong way. But today I learned that cyberspace has figured out a new way to make my already handicapped relationships eligible for the Special Dating Olympics... the away message.

I've been laid up feeling pretty sick the last week or so (and don't worry, there's a rage on my unnecessary need to have an appendix in my body coming) and I've had away messages up more than usual as I've been more unavailable than my norm. So in putting these things up, 9 times out of 10, they're bitching about something or in direct correlation to something a friend and I had recently been laughing about. Now if I were to write "Doing crossword puzzles with Dick Cheney" as my current status, a normal logical person could probably ascertain that I am not, in fact, engaging in word games with our jackoff Vice President. However, if you live in Hollywood and have a slight history of the occasional non nun-like behavior, well then let the rage and accusations fly.

So I'd like to clear up a few things.
1) Almost backing over Shia LeBeouf with my car and having to have him guide me out of a parking spot so he can remove himself from the deathtrap I nearly put him in does NOT mean he was inside me at any point during the day. He did not offer his services. I would have accepted.
2) If you know me well enough to be obsessively checking my away messages, you should know my behavior well enough to know when I'm being tongue-in-cheek.
3) Again knowing me that well, you should know (and by you, I'd like that to again read: "the idiot men I date") that sometimes I write these things to make you angry. It isn't rational or acceptable but this is what I do.

So the point here is this: don't take what I say to be serious. It most likely isn't. And please know if ever I do have Shia inside me, I will take out a full page in the New York Times to announce it. News of that nature is worthy of something more grand than my away message.

-stars

grievance: converse without laces

A couple years ago Converse started making All Stars that look exactly like their originals, but without laces. From what I understand (which is only a conjecture, as I have never owned such atrocities) the tongues of the sneakers are in some way adhered to the rest of the shoe, creating a faux-slipper situation.

I'm cool with it if you want to go out of your way to wear shoes that slip on. I really am. You're a lazy fuck. But I am.

But then wear shoes that actually are intended to slip on. Don't wear shoes that USED to need to be tied that have been SEWN or GLUED (again, just a conjecture) together. These shoes still retain the SAME EXACT structure of their lace-conscious counterparts. I remember learning in AP Biology about homologous structures: some structure in a living thing that came from the same ancestor as another; one uses the structure for something (a tail, or some shit) and the other doesn't use it for shit but still has the stupid thing. What if we started sewing fake tails onto animals that never had them? That's the closest comparison I can think of that best exemplifies this insanity. (Great analogy, right? Except... what the fuck was a tail used for in the first place? Viz. "The author's reasoning is flawed in that she... A. fails to acknowledge that a tail may have been useless in the first place. [Whoops. I already wrote a blog about the LSATs. Shucks.])

Okay. So we've (and by "we" I, of course, mean "I") come to the conclusion that the lace-holes are not necessary. Now to address my other issue: Converse are already slip-ons. I've had the same pair of Cons since I was 14 and haven't untied them once. Thus, the laces are not necessarily an OBSTACLE to slipping the shoes on and off.

Conclusions:
1. If you are going to remove laces from a shoe's design, remove the lace-holes as well. Velcro anybody?
2. If you are going to design a shoe that is more conducive to ease of removal than the original shoe, make sure the original shoe's design isn't INHERENTLY slip-off-able.
3. Don't sew and/or glue tails to animals.
4. Don't reference AP Biology in a blog about sneakers.
5. This shoe is so fucking ugly I could cry.



-moon

grievance: the lsats

"The reasoning above most closely conforms to which of the following principles?"
"Which one of the following most accurately expresses the conclusion of the dietitian's argument?"
"If Malpighi's delivery is first and Leacock's delivery is third, then which of the following must be true?"
"The phrase 'scholarly monographs that sap the vitality of history' in passage A (lines 6-7) plays a role in that passage's overall argument that is most analogous to the role played in passage B by which of the following phrases?"

Read that garbage for 2 hours and 55 minutes straight. And then write an ESSAY. You've just taken the LSAT.

How did our society allow us to get to the point where we, as a whole, are administering, and taking, this test?

The Law School Admission Test is just that. "Admission" being the key word. It doesn't purport to measure "aptitude" as the SAT does. Its pursuit is that of admitting people based on some criterion decided by the LSAC. And apparently that criterion includes "logic games."

What?

I'm sorry. Is the LSAT a test you take to go to school to become a detective? Didn't know that.

After taking my test, I had a conversation with a gentleman who had also taken it. In discussing logic games, he argued against my claim ("logic games blow and I want to punch them in the eye") by saying that he honestly thought that it made sense for that to be something that is tested for aspiring attorneys. His premise for this argument was that "you've gotta be able to think on your feet in court if someone brings up some shit you've never heard before... you gotta be like 'oh if M can't be HERE, L must be here.'" This theory is crap. You can't be surprised by the opposing side in court with surprise evidence. You can't withhold shit and try to surprise your adversary in court. So that theory is complete junk.

However, that is the most valid explanation I've heard. My issue is the fact that the LSATs shouldn't be testing stuff for which you need to learn a technique to be successful. My LSAT tutor told me to "stop fucking thinking" about a hundred times. Apparently I'm supposed to turn into a machine for those 2 hours and 55 minutes and throw rationale out the window. So what is this test really even testing? Your ability to make yourself completely and utterly brain dead? If that's the case, I should have taken an LSAT before I took my LSAT. Nobody should be asked to concentrate on an excerpt about strawberry mites after 2 hours and 45 minutes.

Fuck strawberry mites. They're a bunch of assholes and I don't want to know about them.

Yes. I did study for the SATs as well. But differently. I learned vocabulary words. And now I have a bigger vocabulary. And that helped me in college. Is law school going to be about figuring out how many possible line-ups there are for clowns exiting a clown car based on a specific set of rules that some random person made up? If so, COUNT ME IN! (That was sarcastic. But only because clowns scare me.)

This test makes me angry about the law.

-moon

Comment worth posting from my friend Steve who is an attorney: "I can't tell you how often I'm standing in Court, doing oral argument on a substantive motion and have to say:'Your Honor, with the Court's indulgence, I'd like to draw a diagram, illustrating how Mr. Green, Mr. Red, Mr. Blue and Mr. Yellow typically line up when taking turns fishing in a canoe with only three seats.'" (He, too, is being sarcastic. But only because he hates canoes.)