Monday, May 16, 2011

Rud's Going Away Party 2011

Do you remember how I said it would be an awesome way to make a living being a rock star that got to go on stage wearing tight pants and act like a crazy person while playing good music? Well let's add my affinity for wearing make-up, and female attire in general, to the list of reasons I would make an awesome rock star.

Also, do you remember when I told you how my roommate was moving to Japan? Well, he is. So we had a Japanese themed party fit with 200 pieces of sushi, 18 liters of sake (on a related note if anyone wants some sake we have about 15 liters of sake for the taking), 4 cases of Sapporo, and one geisha--the latterest of which was I.

Why the affinity for weird clothes/cross-dressing? I will tell you what it is: see, I am not the biggest fan of who I am as a person--which, incidentally, is why I am so OK with not having a heart because if you don't like me I'm all like "yeah, you're a little late for that. i haven't liked me for like 20 years now."--so any chance I get to be someone else (a lady geisha, for example) I take it. There was a party once where a friend asked to switch clothes. I was wearing skinny jeans and a polo and she a nice summer dress. We went into some random person's room at this party, where we didn't really know too many people, and came out cross-dressed. I can't explain the reason for that occurrence too well, but I used to have a nice lady body. Anyway, 15 seconds of moderate to very uncomfortableness and several disapproving looks later, we changed back. So I hear Japanese themed party and I automatically commit to being the requisite geisha. All you other girls can be the slutty Japanese school girls if you want a female role in this party.

No one I know in the DC metropolitan area owns a feminine enough kimono for me so I figure I will just go and buy flowery bath robe at the local Target. Well, the person who set up the women's section in Target must have just watched Silence of the Lambs or something and was thinking "We are not trying to have any creepsters like that guy that kept the woman in the well in Silence of the Lambs coming in my Target looking for a woman's bath robe so I am going to make it as awkward as possible for someone even thinking about it by putting the robes in with other women's "intimate" apparel." Touche Target store organizer. I am that creepster and I was uncomfortable.

For the ladies, if you are looking for anything other than a plain bath robe from Target or Bed Bath and Beyond you will be unsuccessful. But they are located with the other ladies' garments in Target though, FYI.

My last chance was Marshall's. No luck with the bath robes. HOWEVER. I did find quite the flowery and soft throw blanket and a matching pink scarf to boot as a belt. Throw in some kids face painting pencils and safety pins and you have yourself a geisha. Although I would say a more accurate description would be the Joker from Batman on a cold, wintry night as the "face paint" was merely uneven crayon markings on my face while being wrapped in a kitschy, feminine blanket. Whatever, though, I didn't see you dressed up as anything. Maybe that's because you like who you are. What's that like?

This night also happened to be a little tryout for potential roommates. One girl, one guy, and another guy that I was unaware was coming so did not know he was in the running until it was awkward a little later. Well, long story short, the girl is real cool, the guy threw up on our steps. So Alexander Rud is being replaced by a girl and Jared has competition for the most feminine in the house. I know what you're thinking: "How can someone be more feminine than you who just words ago mentioned an affinity for women's clothes and make-up?" I don't know, I didn't vote.

So I go to bed and at 330am I remember I need to hydrate myself because we have a touch football game soon. So I get up to get some water and I hear a roommate and friend playing beer pong. The friend has a wife on an extended stay in Israel right now from where he just came and hookahs are quite common. He says he hears I have a hookah. I tell him I do and ask if he wants to go play with it. Hookah is lit and we go out for a session and then another roommate and gf come out. Next thing you know grilling out hot dogs is mentioned and, boom, 5am grill-out and hookah session ensues.

Needless to say, we didn't make it to the touch football game in time. But we did get there in time enough for the other team to want to just play off the record, which we won. So we have that going for us.

Then I came home and took a 5 hour nap because it was raining and I can.

Here are my thoughts on eating animals because this is about me not you: I believe that we, as intellectually advanced human beings with the ability to domesticate and care humanely for animals as well as kill humanely said animals, have the right to do just that. Factory farms, from which most meat and dairy comes nowadays, do not comply with the above philosophy. I do not believe we have a right to torture animals, which factory farms are doing on an enormous scale, so I rarely buy meat products unless I know they were not tortured. [But I have a weakness for chinese buffets so sometimes I make exceptions/turn a blind mind towards my convictions.] Yeah, you're thinking "So you don't believe in torturing animals but you do believe in killing them? And isn't 'kill humanely' and oxymoron" Yes, I do and not to me. The cessation of life for creatures does not concern me, it is how that life is lived that concerns me. Granted, I couldn't kill an animal (remember that silly groundhog that crossed the highway, or at least I hope it did?), but I also couldn't perform surgery on a human being because vomit in a wound is probably not sanitary, but I wouldn't recommend doing away with surgery. Do you follow? Whatev. It makes sense to me.

Anyway. So I thought, "I'm not doing anything tonight [Saturday] so I am going to go down the the organic food store and buy some truly organic meat and cheese and have me a nice dinner." So I did and, well, it started pouring as I went to go and grill. Maybe the jesus was trying to tell me something. Probably not though, so I grilled out anyway.

Speaking of the jesus, I was in bed by midnight because I had to go to church on Sunday. And this time I am telling the truth. It was a unitarian universalist church where believing in god is optional, but an early Sunday morning church adventure nonetheless.

Once upon a time, a unitarian universalist church in Arlington, VA sponsored me to be a human rights observer in Guatemala for six months. Well, this church asked me to come back on behalf of these human rights observers they sponsor. When I first started working at the Treasury I remember sitting in my cubicle literally asking myself, "How did I get here? This time last year I was hiking through the mountains of central Guatemala checking in on survivors of a genocide campaign." Well, I came back to the US when the economy was on a swift course downhill in which nonprofits weren't hiring much, I had (have) no real tangible talents/skills to convince an employer I would be a valuable addition to their place of work, and I just so happened to have an aunt and uncle that knew someone in the Treasury that was hiring. So when people at the church asked me what I was doing now expecting something that would follow logically from an experience as a human rights observer, I lied and told them I was the Deputy Ambassador to Honduras because after the coup there no one wanted to go, so I, given my experience in Cental America, volunteered my skills of borderline fluency in Spanish and love for street vendor tacos.

Just kidding. I would never lie in the house of god, even if believing in god in this version of his house is optional. Really I told the truth and added the caveat that I would be going to law school soon to be a public interest lawyer so they wouldn't feel they wasted their money sponsoring me, and because it's the truth. (Times are tough out there still though, so, believe me, I am very grateful for the job that I do have.)

Then, after church, because I was awake and there is always stuff like this going on in the city, I went to the International Vegetarian Food Festival to cleanse my guilt of the steak I bought the night before and ate until I was extremely uncomfortable for the second time this weekend, the first time being with the sushi platter Friday (who knew you could get full off of sushi).

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