The Perfect Movie Drinking Game

I have a deep love of drinking games. Really, what’s not to love? Drinking is great, games are fun, and combining those things results in hilarity. My family shares my appreciation, and as such many family events (including weddings) have been known to spontaneously erupt into Kings or 9-or-Not-9 parties. Even better though are movie drinking games. Those are my favorite by far.

In fact, I think movie drinking games are highly underappreciated. Disagree? Well, here are just a few reasons for why they’re the best kind of drinking game:

• They’re simple. You normally have a few rules and someone reminding the room when to drink. Games with far more complicated rule sets (like Kings) can be intimidating to drinking game newbies.
• They make up for crappy movies. Not everyone has the same movie taste. You may love The Departed but I hate cop movies and am overly fond of funny horror such as Cursed. It’s much easier to sit through a movie that you find otherwise uninteresting if there are drinking consequences on the table.
• They don’t require a lot of people. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve played The Lord of the Rings drinking game with a bunch of friends and that was a blast, but at the end of the day you can get away with only two people playing. Hell, if you’re comfortable with drinking solo, you can play drinking game movies by yourself (although I still say if you’re live-tweeting Sharknado with your friend and brilliant writer Erin at the time, it doesn’t count as being by yourself)

A good drinking game can make a movie. A bad movie drinking game doesn’t ruin it exactly, but they’re annoying nonetheless. While movie drinking games seem simple, I have come to the opinion that there is an art to crafting the perfect movie drinking game (MDG as we will call it from here on out). Since I’m generally a nice person I thought I would share my revelations with you, dear readers, so you can better suss out the best MDGs on your own.

It really all boils down to four principles. The ideal MDG is simple, virgin, consistent, and understood. That seems pretty easy, right? You’d be surprised. To further illustrate each principle, I will describe a MDG that failed at it. Bonus, I’ll even include links to the specific movie drinking game I played!

Simple – Speed Racer

I actually really, really liked this drinking game. We played it on a Thanksgiving morning and everyone had a blast. Of course, that’s because we modified it. The game actually has 13, yes, ***13*** rules. That’s far too many to keep track of! Especially once you’ve been drinking!

And actually, I think if you played with all 13 rules you might die. There is a ridiculous amount of drinking. The reason we enjoyed it so much was because we split the rules. So each person only had 3 individual rules they had to follow, and we all drank for the 13^th. A game doesn’t need to be limited to 3 rules, but I think anything with more than 7 is too much. 13 is excessive beyond all reason.

Virgin – The Room

Again, I had fun playing this one, but that’s because with The Room I didn’t really care about spoilers. Oh FYI, there’s about to be spoilers.

An ideal MDG should be okay for a virgin audience - not actual virgins, but people who haven’t watched the movie before. I had two large problems with this game. A lot of the rules state specific character names, such as “whenever Lisa and Claudette have a heart-to-heart.” Claudette is Lisa’s mother, but I don’t think she’s ever actually introduced with her name. At least not at first. To be fair, they might have said it later and I was too drunk to notice. The only reason I knew to drink was because my boyfriend had watched it already.

The other problem is that one of the rules is to take two shots when Johnny dies. Oh okay, we all now know that Johnny dies. Oops.

Consistent & Understood – American Pie 2

Occasionally you have rules that are tied to a certain scene, and that’s fine when they call it out. What doesn’t work is to have a rule that only shows up maybe 3 times in the entire movie, and you’re left trying to figure out if you missed instances, were playing it wrong, or if it was a stupid rule.

With the American Pie 2 game they either made a stupid rule, or didn’t explain it well. The rule is to take a drink when someone “mentions Tantra.” They literally only say Tantra 3 times in the entire movie. There are scenes that show things related to Finch’s Tantra obsession, but they don’t actually say it. Were you supposed to drink when anything related to Tantra happens? Because the rule says mention. Either they done messed up or it’s the worst rule ever. 3 drinks throughout an entire movie? Please, what is this a drinking game for your mom or something (note I said your mom, because my mom can crush any kind of drinking game)?

For the record, I fully support creating your own MDGs as well. I do it frequently. If you find yourself in a place where you need to make up your own rules, keep the simple, virgin, consistent, and understood requirements in mind and you are sure to succeed*! Success being measured by having fun and getting drunk, obviously. And while it goes without saying, you may want to make responsible decisions both on your drink of choice, and the number of movie drinking games you play in a row. Take it from someone who tried to do Jurassic Park right after The Room. Poor life decision right there. 

Have the perfect movie drinking game that meets all this criteria? Share it in the comments!

Little Bit Brad Pitt

Have you watched multiple Brad Pitt movies? Have you noticed yet that he has the obsessive need to have something in his mouth at all times? Whether he’s eating in a scene, chewing gum or whatever it is that men chew (is it called chew? Is that a thing? I could google it but I’m lazy), or sucking on a spoon, his mouth is always in use.

I get it, Brad Pitt. I do. It’s called an oral fixation, and you are not alone.

But for those of you that think oral fixations are all memes and blowjob jokes, it’s more than that. Let’s start with the facts.

The oral stage is a Freud thing. Do you remember Freud? He’s the guy that thought your personality was developed through psychosexual stages.  An oral fixation occurred when one was weaned too early or late, and could lead to issues with eating, drinking, smoking, or nail biting. Now that’s an awkward conversation to have with your mom (Happy early Mother’s Day, thanks for weaning me early because you popped out another kid right away, amiright??!).   

Unless you’re trying to get free drinks at a bar, you probably don’t want to admit to an oral fixation. You can’t move forward until you recognize a problem though, so let’s talk again about my on-again, off-again relationship with Diet Pepsi.

Some of you may have wondered why I have such a hard time giving up Diet Pepsi. Why I can’t just switch to coffee or some less toxic form of caffeine, and move on with my life. Well, I’ve decided it comes down to three things:

1.     Similar caffeine amounts

2.     Ease of access

3.     Hydration issues/Oral fixation

I actually tried recently drinking coffee instead of Diet Pepsi in the afternoon. What I very quickly discovered is that there is a HUGE difference in caffeine between them. I thought I was pretty baller when it came to caffeine because I drink a ridiculous amount of pop and it doesn’t affect me. I ordered an Americano at Starbucks because I didn’t know what it was but saw that it didn’t have a lot of calories. I wasn’t bouncing off the walls per se, but I was literally bouncing everywhere I walked and talking like a crazy person for the rest of the afternoon.

So when it comes to caffeine, I find tea or iced tea a better substitute, until you start talking about ease of access. We don’t have iced tea that I like at work. We don’t even have regular tea that I like at work. So if I want tea of some sort, I either need to bring it or go run and get some every day. I don’t always have that kind of extra time in the workday to make a caffeine run.

But the real deal breaker is my hydration issue, which stems from my oral fixation. See, drinking is how I keep my mouth occupied. You can’t snack all day without gaining weight and I’m not a huge gum fan because I don’t want to necessarily be chewing, so I drink something.

I drink more in a day than you. I am absolutely confident in this statement. Because not only am I drinking Diet Pepsi all day, I’m drinking water too. Oh, and I normally start my morning with shakeology for breakfast, so I’m also drinking that. And maybe a glass (or two) of wine in the evening.

Let me put this in numbers to make this more understandable. I recently read a Thrillist article about a man drinking a gallon of water every day as part of a challenge. I read it and laughed, because I was pretty sure I already drink a gallon of water a day.  So I tracked my intake for a few days, and guess what, I drink around 130 ounces of water EVERY SINGLE WEEKDAY without even trying. Weekends I do drink less, but I’ve only been out of bed about 3 hours and I’ve already had about 35 ounces of water and 20 ounces of Diet Pepsi, so there’s that.

The thing about drinking so much is that it’s a self-perpetuating cycle. You get thirsty far easier than your dehydrated friends. If I’m not given something to drink for a 2 hour period, I almost die. Forget hangry, thrangry is the real struggle. You’re also hitting the bathroom constantly.  I’m always convinced that people think I have a bladder problem. I don’t, I swear. If you drank the same amount of liquid you’d be in and out of the bathroom all day too.

That’s why I like Diet Pepsi. It doesn’t go through me as quickly as water, so if I have a long meeting I can focus on drinking Diet Pepsi and don’t need to run out to the bathroom halfway through. That doesn’t work with coffee because the cup quickly runs out, and then I’m drinking water. When I don’t drink Diet Pepsi, I find myself drinking EVEN MORE WATER THAN USUAL. Surely there’s a point at which you get overhydrated (I’m purposely not googling this one because I don’t want to make myself paranoid)? 

So I feel you, Brad Pitt. People may laugh at your oral fixation, but I get it. If you read this and want to have our own private support group, I’m totally in.

24 Symptoms of a Fitbit Addict

I realized something. I have well and truly become addicted to my Fitbit. I was walking to the breakroom and hit the button to see how many steps I already had, when I saw the alert. The Fitbit was DEAD. There would be no tracking of steps that day. There would be no heart rate monitoring.

I went into a full out tizzy.

Now thankfully it happened that one of my coworkers had their charger on them. I immediately sat at my desk, stopped all movement, and plugged in my Fitbit. Then I thought about it. I couldn’t tell you the last time I didn’t wear my Fitbit other than the 30 minutes each morning when I take it off to shower (yes I am aware that I take long showers) and charge it. The only reason it was dead was because I am in the midst of moving and kept forgetting the charger at the wrong apartment.

Yet I don’t have many of the typical signs of Fitbit addiction. You see, I have given up on my step goal. Most Fitbit addicts plan their life around hitting that 10,000 step high each day. While I fell into this category when I first got my Fitbit, the past two years of struggle with my freaking busted knee of death and pain have completely changed my perspective. Somehow though, I’m still addicted. How do I know? Here are some signs of Fitbit addiction that have nothing to do with a step count:

1. You recognize other Fitbitters by their gear.
2. They recognize you too, because you never take your Fitbit off. Step count > fancy parties.
3. You can both do this, because even if they don’t have the same Fitbit as you, you have eyed up the other options on the website so many times that you can recognize any Fitbit model at a glance.
4. This is why you are also prone to long conversations with other Fitbitters about why you each choose your specific model and the pros/cons of each.
5. You actually open every email you get from Fitbit. Every. Single. One.
6. Because you NEED to know what new models and/or features are coming out.
7. Even if you’re not planning to buy a new Fitbit anytime soon, because remember, YOU ALREADY OWN ONE.
8. Actually at some point, you may have owned more than one Fitbit when you made the life-altering decision to switch models.
9. You’ve also have tracked your water intake.
10. You’ve tracked food too.
11. You have even logged exercises when Fitbit doesn’t recognize them. Cleaning DOES count because it’s an option.
12. You have planned your life around when you take your Fitbit off to charge it.
13. You do this to make sure the Fitbit NEVER DIES.
14. Because you know that if your steps/sleep/stairs weren’t getting registered, there would be no point to the day.
15. Which is why if you ever forget to put your Fitbit back on after charging, the whole day is ruined.
    
16. EVEN IF this was during a lazy day when you weren’t getting in a lot of activity. It doesn’t matter. You still want to know. Because charts.
17. You have used said charts as evidence that you didn’t sleep well and people should give you more caffeine/stop sucking at life.
18. If you have heart rate monitoring, you have used said charts as evidence that people are STRESSING YOU THE F*CK OUT.
19. Which speaking of f*ck, you have totally checked your charts to see if sex registers on them.
    
20. And if you have heart rate monitoring, you have looked to see if particularly noteworthy experiences have higher peaks. Giggity.
21. At least once you’ve shared a milestone on social media. To be clear, one of the badges Fitbit awards, not a sex-related-tracking milestone.
22. You get unduly excited when friends then get their own Fitbits.
23. You then proceed to judge them based on their weekly step count.
24. You also identify which friends you refuse to do challenges with, because those bitches would always win. 

1.      

37 Signs You May Love Books A Little Too Much

1. You have books stacked in front of books and are still running out of room on your shelves.

2. You are also running out of room on your counter.

3. And your table.

4. You are slightly in love with a fictional character.

5. You have cried over the death of a fictional character.

6. Pretty much all of your #friendshipgoals come from fictional characters.

7.  For that matter, most of your #relationshipgoals do too.

8. You have been known to lose track of time in a bookstore.

9. And in a library.

10.  And in bed when a good book is involved, which has probably resulted in more lost sleep than your entire sexual history so far.

11. You’ve ignored a call once or twice (or more) in order to finish reading the paragraph you’re on.

12. Two hours later, you realize you still haven’t checked nor returned the call because you kept reading.

13. Sometimes, you don’t even hear the call in the first place because you’re just so into the book.

14.  Several of your books have food stains from reading while you eat, because you can’t bear to stop.

15. They also have water stains, from reading in the bathtub.

16. One or two may also have lipstick stains because…. well that one is a long story.

17. You have ended friendships with people who refuse to return borrowed books.

18. You have ended relationships with people that say reading is “a waste of time when you could be out there, living life.”

19. When visiting friends, you have been known to become so intrigued with books you find at their house that you have to borrow them.

20. That’s the best-case scenario. You have also been known to visit a friend, find an interesting book at their house, and start reading then and there.

21. Three hours later you realize it’s three hours later and you’ve been completely ignoring your friend.

22. They may have even gone to sleep at this point. You don’t know until you start searching for them.

23. Amazingly enough they are actually okay with this, because you’ve done it before and they’re awesome enough to be understanding of your book problem.

24. Almost everyone you know has gotten you a book for a present at some point.

25. Or a gift card for a bookstore.

26. All of your good friends know there is at least one book (if not more) that they should never, ever mention unless they want to hear you rant about it for hours.

27. Actually, several of your coworkers know that too.

28.  In fact, so do some of the random people that you see every day on your commute.

29. Your ideal vacation is going to the beach, because then people are cool with you spending most of the day reading.

30. You love rainy days for the same reason.

31. Also winter… basically anything that can be an excuse to stay in with your books.

32. If you didn’t need to get food and more books, you might never leave the house.

33. You legitimately like books clubs.

34. For the book discussion, not for the food and wine.

35. You love jokes about how much people love books.

36. You also started a blog mainly to convince people that reading should be a sport.  

37. And to give you an online forum for all of your book rants.

#WritingDate Part 2 - Bust a Rhyme

So today was National Writing Date Day! My friend Erin and I decided to do a #WritingDate together, and it was everything I wanted and more. You can read an explanation of what we were doing here on Erin's blog. We had decided ahead of time to share the results of our writing prompts, so I'm sticking to that bargain. We did prompt #12 together, but then I decided to do prompt #5 - rhyming. It starts out okay and then gets a little crazy (or cray, if you'd prefer. I now have to pretend it's a real word since I used it).

Be warned, I decided to do no clean up whatsoever, so this is the madness of 1 hour of writing...

What is there to know about a neek?
Are they short? Are they sleek?

Do they stumble? Do they creak?

The answers below are what you seek!

A neek is one who is absurd,

A bit of a geek, a bit of a nerd.

They might obsess over the written word

Or memorize every song they’ve heard.

They love to share their love of things,

Whether it be candy or diamond rings.

They’re like a cat playing with string;

It becomes their everything!

A neek doesn’t care if something’s cool.

Or if people think they’re a fool.

You can even call them a tool,

They won’t stop saying that it rules.

The neek might own every CD released,

Or every comic, without a single one creased.

They might dwell on the living deceased,

(That means zombies, don’t be rhyme police!).

 If you ever get to meet

A neek, a nerd, or a geek.

Remember to be nice and sweet

Because you’re in for quite a treat.

As long as you don’t interfere

Or laugh at them, or start to jeer

At their obsession for that year

They’ll be a better friend than beer.

So in summary you should pray

You get to friend a neek someday

They’ll change your life a little each day

As they show you things other people call cray.

F*** the Beholder, You Are Beautiful

All of the recent press around Fifty Shades of Grey has been reminding me of one (of many) of the reasons I hate both that book and the whole Twilight series. Beyond the crappy writing and lack of personality for the main character, both books share this really annoying habit where the female lead has men falling at her feet but continually thinks herself unattractive. This drives me more insane than even the “Inner Goddess” crap (I mean really, your response to something is that your Inner Goddess gets in a lotus position? If such a thing existed, my Inner Goddess would be more along the lines of Inner Sakura. She’d alternatively want to beat the crap out of people and jump their bones. Maybe eat some chocolate too).

To me, this comes across as a really horrible manifestation of the pervading habit of girls to say/think they’re not as pretty as they are.

Let’s start with a common example. Go back quite a few years in your memory, and think of the movie Mean Girls.  Sure, it seems funny when Regina traps Cady into admitting she’s pretty and acting like it’s a horrible thing. I’m not going to lie, I laughed. The problem is that behind that funny scene is a truth. Women are judged for admitting they are attractive. Even if a woman is stunningly beautiful, she is immediately condemned in our minds. Saying you’re “hot” or “beautiful” is tantamount to having a huge ego. Thus women have learned to downplay how they talk about their attractiveness.

I was playing around on imdb.com the other day, and I found this quote from one of my favorite actresses, Gemma Arterton: “In comparison to many actresses I think I’m really average – when I got the Bond film Quantum of Solace there was this big hoo-ha about me not being hot enough, I have to say I agree – I don’t think I’m in that realm.”

BEAUTIFUL, DAMNIT

Personally, I find Gemma stunningly beautiful, but even she feels the need to negatively compare herself to others. This is a common response from women – maybe I’m hot/pretty/beautiful, but not as hot/pretty/beautiful as someone else.

There are two issues at work here. One, again, is the culture that women shouldn’t admit they’re crazy attractive. If you don’t believe me yet that this is a thing, I have more examples for you. We laud the girl that “doesn’t know she’s beautiful.” Not only are there songs about it (here’s looking at you, One Direction), there are movies, cartoons, and of course books. The whole idea of a book like Fifty Shades of Grey making the main character not know her own beauty worth is that then, as readers, we can “relate.” Because of course if you’re a girl, you don’t know you’re attractive, and that makes you hotter.

WTF WORLD!?

The bigger problem is the second issue in play – insecurity. A lot of times the reason women won’t celebrate their attractiveness is because they genuinely don’t believe it. They are falling into the trap of comparing themselves to others, and they don’t like the comparison. You’ll find people are much more willing to own up to being “pretty” than “beautiful,” because pretty is less threatening. And if you have even a hint of insecurity (which you probably do), saying you’re “beautiful” opens up the floodgates for criticism. Which WILL happen. We have tons of articles about all our beautiful celebrities, and then minutes later we’ll condemn them for bad makeup, poor clothing choice, or messed up hair. So for girls that don’t think they measure up to that level, how are they supposed to feel confident enough to declare their beauty?

I’m not saying that everyone falls into the traditional “beauty” standards. I’m also not saying they should. The whole issue with beauty is that it’s a question of perception. What I find attractive is not the same thing you find attractive, EVEN WHEN COMPARING TRADITIONALLY ATTRACTIVE EXAMPLES. Get past the idea that you should be thin, blond, big-eyed, and pouty-lipped.

What I am saying, is that women shouldn’t be afraid to celebrate their own beauty. I know it’s hard. Trust me, I know. Some people suggest things like picking favorite features and feeling confident in those. That’s not a bad idea, depending on how you go about it.

When I was younger I decided I really liked my lips because everyone told me that plump lips are good, and if nothing else you can absolutely say my lips are plump. In a world where beauty is subjective, that seemed like the easiest, concrete reason to like a feature. Then one day I was hanging out with a then ex-boyfriend in the middle of the night, and we randomly got on the topic of my good features, and to my shock my lips were not one of them, because, as he told me, “they’re not that great.” That was a huge blow to the confidence scale for awhile. Since I had picked this feature because of other people’s opinion, suddenly having a bad opinion threw me for a loop. If people didn’t like the features I thought they should like, how could I be confident about any of them?

So trust me when I say I know the struggle. It feels like it should be better to underestimate your beauty than to overestimate it, and have people disagree.

But that’s stupid. You need to remember first of all that your beauty does NOT determine your worth as a person. And second, since beauty is subjective STOP trying to live up to someone’s standards. Figure out what you like about how you look, and for the love of all that’s holy, BE CONFIDENT IN IT.

I think books like Fifty Shades of Grey and Twilight teach us to not believe in our own beauty. They tell girls to base their confidence solely on what some guy (Edward, Christian) says about it, when they should be teaching them to celebrate their beauty no matter what.  I’d rather teach girls to be confident in who they are, and yes, their physical appearance is part of that. You should know you’re beautiful in some way, but you should also know it’s only one part of what makes you, you. Beauty should never be your everything, but you also shouldn’t downplay what you like about yourself just because of other people’s opinions.  

For the record, I like my lips again. Not because I think I should like them, but because they’re soft, expressive, and I love that I can wear almost any lip color and still work it. I’d like them more if they wouldn’t turn blue so easily, but that’s another matter. And maybe there are people that think “they’re not that great,” but I don’t see how that changes the things I like about them. Maybe they’ll never be as plump as Angelina Jolie’s lips, but I don’t see why I should care about her. In fact, I don’t see why I need to even give you reasons for why I like them or anything else about myself. I don’t justify liking my car, or my excessive love of Taco Bell, so why need to justify what I like about my appearance?

 

I want you to know what things about yourself you find beautiful and rock it with the same confidence and faith as anything else you truly believe. It might not feel easy, but the more you can declare to yourself “I’m hot/pretty/drop dead gorgeous/beautiful” (feel free to use your preferred descriptive) the more confident you’ll feel saying it, and that is its own kind of beauty.

Your Special Snowflake Sucks

This week there was a whole spiel on the radio devoted to whether a parent should let their kids know when they suck at something. The debate was whether it was better to be honest with a child and crush their hopes and dreams early on, or to give them an inflated sense of self but avoid breaking their tiny hearts. I missed the end decision, but lordy do I hope we decided to be dream crushers.

Personally, I realized very early on in life that my mother was completely biased and I could not trust her on anything. Heck, until recently I was convinced she had invented the compliment “doe eyes” and bribed relatives/friends to say it to me. It’s only been the past few months that I realized it’s actually a real phrase. To be fair, this is the same mother that claims I’m a fast runner (I’m not), that both her children are beautiful (and she maintained this through our super awkward phases, which were super awkward and unfortunate), and that I’m a good singer (she’s tone deaf, how would she even know?).

I didn’t think my mother was purposely lying to me, but rather that she was blinded by love. I looked to my father to be a little more realistic but didn’t entirely trust him either. I started relying on friends until I realized that unless they’re pretty much your best friend in the world, they too will lie to your face about how awesome you are and you’ll end up with no real sense of your limitations.

It’s a very interesting time of life where on the one hand we’re plagued by unrealistic images and expectations, and on the other we’re told to cherish and recognize our uniqueness as being something to celebrate. But is it really?

Now some of the messaging I can agree with and in fact super love. It is fabulous to be reminded that no, I’m never going to look like Megan Fox in a bikini, but that’s okay. It’s good to know no one expects me to sing like Christina. It’s extra wonderful to find out about problems that great people had. Not that I want anyone to be depressed or an alcoholic or anything, but it helps keep their greatness in perspective (#HemingwayWasADrunk).

But I also think we go too far sometimes. We’re told that because we’re unique, everything we say/do is meaningful. I FINALLY joined the Twitter world today. I did it mostly so I can keep up on my favorite celebrity boyfriends, but I’ll probably tweet too. Why not. The whole idea of Twitter though kind of boggles my mind. From the brief amount of time I’ve spent scrolling on it, it seems like people took the most superficial parts of Facebook (selfies, posts about every little thing they do) and just constantly send that out. I suppose deep life revelations are not always simpatico with 140 character limit. But do people really want to know I’m drinking yet another frappuccino? Do they want to see my new mani every week? Do they really care about my thoughts on the #Hercules movie? Is it really meaningful just because I’m unique and I said it?

If this seems a little hypocritical from a girl that writes a blog and has totally added frappuccino pictures on Facebook… that’s because it is. I engage in this exact same behavior all the time. Even before the days of Twitter, people were doing this to a small extent with texts, and phone calls, and letter writing way back in the day. We feel the need to share the details of our life. We feel like people should care. I guess what has changed is that before, we only made that assumption of our family and close friends. Now, you use a hashtag and expect the rest of the world to retweet and follow.

What our generation has the most trouble accepting is the value of uniqueness. Yes, you are unique and that’s all well and good, but what does it really mean? Does it make your thoughts any more important than mine? No. The thing is, you’re unique because of the sum of your parts. Someone else in the world totally has your same mani. Somebody can write better than you. Someone came up with that inside joke with their friends like a decade earlier. SOMEONE WAS ALREADY ON THE MOON. There is very little you can do that is well and truly original against all the people in the world, all the spans of time. That especially goes for your little 140 character tweets. There are a finite number of unique tweets. I mean it’s a freaking huge number and we’ll probably (possibly? Most likely?) never hit it, but nonetheless it exists.

So yeah, celebrate you. Because you are awesome. Just keep in mind: you’re NO MORE AWESOME THAN ANYBODY ELSE. It is wonderful that some people find you clever/amusing/super sexy and want to follow you, but don’t expect everybody to do so, and don’t build your happiness around whether or not people care about your unique snowflakeness. They’re probably too busy with their own unique snowflakeness of being awesome.

Now I’m going to go tweet this.  

Soccer Saves

In case you didn’t realize from all the Tim Howard memes (not that I’m complaining, I kinda want him to father my children), soccer is finally starting to be more of a “thing.” I am, of course, specifically talking about here in America. We’re a little late to the soccer bandwagon. Of course the majority of us are going to jump back off the wagon, wait four more years, and then climb back on. It’s a bit ridiculous.

Personally, I like soccer. I wish it was more popular here. I’m not saying I don’t like football, because you know I do, but I hate how much people hate on soccer. We used to go to professional soccer games when I was a kid, and I can honestly tell you I enjoyed them more than any time I’ve been talked into watching baseball, hockey, tennis, or golf. And I’m not even talking about watching on tv, but going to an event.

But I’m not here to trash your favorite sport; I’m here to talk about soccer. Back in the day I used to play a little. I don’t really remember why I started playing. With ballet, for example, I specifically remember dying to be a ballerina. Trumpet was an attempt to escape piano lessons since my parents insisted on being musical. But soccer? No idea. It might have been a decision by my parents to give my brother and me some social skills since we were homeschooled at that point. It might have been us asking to play. It doesn’t really matter; the end result was I LOVED IT.

We used to play all year round in various leagues. Winter was the worst simply because it sucked playing indoors, but I’d bet my poor parents appreciated the respite from sitting in the heat all day long. I’m pretty sure at some point I even did some soccer camp thing that involved practicing for literally hours every day for weeks, and I loved that too.

Maybe I needed different glasses...

Still, there were a few things I didn’t like about soccer. I never was very good at hitting the ball with my head. Generally, when I tried, I managed to knock off my glasses. Try being in the middle of a game and having a Velma moment – it sucks. Once I even managed to knock myself out. No brain damage (says me), but I distinctly remember waking up and trying to figure out why I was on the ground and what was happening. I stopped trying to head bunt it for awhile after that.

Another thing that sucked – they generally made us rotate positions. This did nothing but piss me off. Especially when they made me play goalie. The entire reason I like soccer is that my hand-eye coordination is crap. So yeah, let’s put me in the goal to catch/block balls flying at my face. Brilliant. Luckily this didn’t happen too often (lucky both for my team, and for my stress levels), but one of my coaches was very insistent on me playing forward somewhat regularly. This made absolutely no sense to me. I liked playing defense. Why make me play offense when you know I hate it (and trust me, I made sure everyone knew my feelings on the matter)??

One of my biggest life regrets is that I stopped playing soccer. I’ve mentioned before that quitting is one of my worst habits. Soccer is a little odd in that I actually rather support the reasoning behind why I quit. It stopped being fun, and I think you should do what you enjoy. But it wasn’t because of the game itself, but because of people’s reactions to it.

He was adorable, but crazy

If you think I’m crazy, talk to my brother about soccer. It’s getting to almost 20 years since we played, and he will still go on a rant about that championship game they lost because “the refs were bribed.” Seriously, he was a little 8 or 9 year old running around SCREAMING because he was convinced the refs were working for the other team. The sad thing is there were a LOT of people like that. Not my parents, thankfully, but other parents on the team, parents from the other teams, even the other players would all go bat-shit crazy about things. I didn’t like it. While I personally wasn’t getting yelled at too much, I started playing in constant fear that if I did make mistakes, someone would flip out about it.

My coworkers and I were comparing soccer stories as we watched the USA match, and one of the nicest guys there told us about one of his last games as a kid when the other team’s families kept yelling to “take out that little fat boy!” (him being the fact boy). That’s awful, and that’s not even the worst example I could come up with. We can pretend words don’t hurt all we want, but they do, and when you’re a child they shape your perception of yourself. Is it so surprising that he quit that year?

So I understand why I quit, but on the other hand I really wish that I had stuck it out for two main reasons.

1. People are jerks. While it’s appalling that we treat our children this way and I am in no way excusing the behavior, we have to learn to expect it. By continuing to quit activities when they turned stressful and had too many expectations, I merely learned to avoid stress and negativity, not how to actually deal with it. This is why I had no good stress busting habits until in my 20s. 

2. I like how I felt when I played soccer. In a word, I felt empowered. You may not believe this (no one ever does), but I was a defensive TANK. I once managed to even knock my coach down when he tried to get past me. Clearly, it didn’t happen. I was a very aggressive player on defense. I was confident on the field at an age where I otherwise felt awkward and ridiculous. I miss that feeling.

And that is the main moral to this otherwise rambling post. When I think about quitting soccer, I still understand my reasons, but I am ashamed that I let people take away my joy without at least trying to work through it. Don’t give up on what really makes you happy. But don’t expect it to always be easy either. Sometimes we need some growing pain to actually, you know, grow.

Perfume: Not for the Weak

In case you didn’t know, later this month is National Celebration of the Senses Day. As a Taurus, known lovers of sensual pleasures and luxuries, I will be honoring this holiday to the extreme. For those of you that are a little less inclined to overindulging your senses, I offer a guilt-free alternative. Watch Perfume.

What, you’ve never heard of this movie? I’m not surprised. It’s entirely possible the only reason I know about it is that in college we made a habit of looking up Alan Rickman movies (for Alan Rickman movie night, duh). The full name is Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. It is based on a book, but I only brought myself around to reading it some time after first seeing the movie. I didn’t particularly care for the book. I believe my friend Jenn prefers it though, so don’t take my opinion as a reason not to read it.

Perfume is an interesting movie. I shy away from terms like “good” for this one, but there are things about it that I find very compelling. There are also parts that are a total mind screw, just to warn you. I happened upon a post the other day that notes Perfume “both suffers from and subsequently plays with the fact that film is still a medium that cannot engage all of our senses, such as smell,” which I consider both remarkably accurate, and one of the main reasons I (somewhat) enjoy the movie.

The main gist of Perfume is that there is a character, Jean-Baptiste, who has such a heightened sense of smell that he experiences the world in an entirely different manner from the rest of us. He fears losing wonderful smells, and becomes a perfume apprentice in order to learn how to capture scent. His goal evolves to try and create the perfect perfume.

While this is an interesting premise, I can’t say the storyline is the draw for me. That’s probably why I didn’t really care for the book. What I find fascinating is the way the movie tries to get the viewer to experience what Jean-Baptiste experiences. Obviously, we can’t. We can’t smell things through the tv. What they do instead is use visuals and audio to pull us into the same mindset. This is what I so thoroughly enjoy about the movie.

The other interesting aspect of the movie is the ending. While I’m not going to give away any spoilers here, we used to make people watch Perfume just to see how they reacted to the end.

This is a movie that I feel like everyone should watch at least once, and then I’d enjoy discussing it with them, but there’s a good possibility you may dislike it or be morally offended. So since I like lists, here are some reasons to either watch, or not watch it.

Reasons to Watch Perfume

5. Dustin Hoffman wears a wig. What, that’s not a good enough reason for you?? His scenes are plenty great without the wig, but it’s nonetheless a source of delight.

4. The dark humor is amusing if you like that type of thing.

3. The visuals (in my opinion) are stunning.

2. If nothing else, it raises tons of great questions about life, meaning, beauty, sociopaths, and so on and so forth.

1. Alan Rickman portrays potentially the fictional world’s best father (Liam Neeson is probably winning that contest); very appropriate as Father’s Day is also coming up.

Reasons Perfume May Traumatize or Offend You

5. There’s violence.

4. There’s nudity.

3. There’s a casual disregard of humanity.

2. There are religious references and some religious figures involved in unseemly behavior.

1. The ending, pardon my French (that’s a joke by the way, since the movie is based in France. I knew you didn’t know that so I was nice enough to clarify), is a total “what the f*ck” experience.

This will take on a whole new meaning...

If you do watch it, or have watched it before, please find me (that can be virtually, we don’t need to get into a stalking scenario) and tell me your thoughts! I will say this, the movie left such a strong impression on me that I spent several subsequent days with trash cans placed in front of my door. This is actually my friend Jenn’s top reason for why you should watch Perfume, and it will make more sense once you do!

Baking with Wry

There’s a common misconception that I’m a nice person. Even people that have known me for awhile get confused on this matter. Someone at my current job said that I don’t “have an angry bone” in my body, which is super untrue. Another friend at my previous job told a coworker that I am “the nicest person ever.”

PB & banana muffins

I think what confuses everyone is the baking. Possibly also my face, but mainly the baking.

I love to bake. My first attempt was in college, when my brother was coming to visit and I wanted to surprise him with cookies. Then when my friend Erin moved to California, I took up the mantle of office baker. Initially I stuck with cookies & cakes. Since moving to Austin I have experimented with breads, cake balls, and one time I tried making a pie. I then distribute my baked goods to neighbors, friends, and coworkers. This apparently gives people the impression that I am a kind person, and baking for their benefit.

Generally, that’s not the case. Don’t get me wrong, there are instances (like birthdays, or when someone’s sad) where I’m baking for the other person to give them delicious goodies, and thus happiness (remember I’m a Taurus, we equate food with pleasure). The majority of the time though, I just want to bake, so I do. Then I’m stuck with all these stupid cookies/muffins/scones/whatever and don’t want to eat them. Giving people the food allows me the pleasure of baking without having to eat it. So in reality, it’s kind of a selfish thing. Don’t believe me? Let’s look at my top 5 reasons to bake:

Cookies!

5. Bored-baking

4. Baking to eat cookie dough

3. Baking to dance around the kitchen (baking/cleaning justifies it)

2. Happy-baking

1. Stress-baking (depending on the stress level, sometimes rage-baking)

Given that I still can’t jazzercise because of my knee (over 4 weeks and counting, I’m having withdrawal), I have been baking up a storm. Everyone at work is getting spoiled. However, I found myself in the midst of a dilemma.

Bread basket (THAT WAS HARD!!)

I do own a hand mixer. My lovely mother got it for me a Christmas or two ago. Prior to that, I never used any sort of mixer when baking. I normally make do with a fork. When I first brought my mixer home I was a little intimidated by it. So to make it more approachable, I named it Ryan, quickly shortened to Ry. This worked to get me to use it a few times but the thing is, if I’m truly stress-baking, I prefer to use the fork. Especially with making bread… it is so amazingly satisfying to beat that freaking dough into submission.

With my knee hurting though, I wanted to bake, but I also wanted to severely cut down on my standing time. I think I’ve used Ry more in the past 4 weeks than I have the entire last year. And you know what? He’s handy. I like him. I think moving forward I’ll be seeing more of Ry for happy or bored baking, but maybe stick to my trusty fork for the rage-baking.

I can’t honestly say I’m a “good” baker. To be fair, the only things that turned out “bad” were my first few bread attempts. I was estimating at my water temperature at first and apparently I’m a horrible estimator. Once I got a baking thermometer my bread started looking like bread instead of scary dough lumps.

Watermelon cupcakes

My problem might be my perfectionism. I constantly think the final result could be better. Just last week I made some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies that I didn’t like at all, but they were DEVOURED at work. Of course, I don’t even like oatmeal cookies. I can’t remember the last time I had one. Which brings me to my top 5 baking challenges:

5. Making things a consistent size

4. Spreading anything evenly (I rarely if ever use my rolling pin, so that could be a large part of the problem)

3. Judging whether or not fruit is properly ripe and should be used

2. Chopping any type of fruit (although apples are the worst. There’s a good chance I will lose a finger making apple cookies one of these days)

1. Attempting to make things that I don’t even know what the final result should look/taste like

I like to expand my horizons and try new things that people request, but half the time I’ve not only never made it before, I haven’t eaten it in years, if ever, so I’m not entirely sure if it really turns out okay or not.

SO MUCH BAKING

Actually no matter what I’m making, even if I’m made it multiple times before, there comes a point in the baking process where I’m convinced it’s going to end horrible and I’ve messed it up beyond repair. So I shrug, maybe take a sip of wine, and carry on. Worst case scenario, it’s inedible, and I can live with that. That may be one of the other reasons I like baking. I know I’m a perfectionist. I know I stress out constantly over stupid little things. I know very well while baking I will become convinced that I’ve done it all wrong and it will be nasty beyond repair. On the other hand, I know I’m having a great time attempting it, and even if something does turn out bad, it’s not the end of the world.

So does baking make me a nice person? I’m going with no. Totes no. If you really want to think I’m a nice person, that’s fine, but let’s all accept that the baking has nothing to do with it.