Under The Wagon

“You’ve got to be shitting me.  Seriously, put a video of your day on Youtube and send me the link.  ‘Cause I don’t believe it.”

That’s what my friend Rebecca (”Rebar”) in Chicago had to say when I described my new life as the species known as ”Domina Domesticatum Americanus.” 

I am a housewife. 

About 6 months ago Jay finally got the opportunity he’s been dreaming of his entire life.  Working from home, writing comedy full-time.  Cracked.com’s new owners dissolved the on-site office, allowing all the editors to work remotely, plus he was doing contract work for a video game company.  “That’s no fair!” I said when I heard the news, “I wanna work from home, too!”

“I bet,” Jay replied, “but what exactly would you, you know…do?” 

“I…I could take care of the house? Yeah, and I could start working out, so I’d be skinny again.  And I’d walk the dog every day.  And I’d be able to make you lots of delicious, time-consuming meals…” 

“Are you sure you just don’t want to not work anymore?”

“…and I’d do it all dressed as Wonder Woman!  Every day!”

Sensing a chance to quit my day job (Jay was working TWO jobs, so we didn’t need the money, right?) I began throwing out all sorts of ridiculous promises and crafting elaborate scenarios about how great life would be if I was home all day.  It wasn’t that I hated my current job, a long-term temping position at a real-estate office in mid-town Manhattan…it was just that I didn’t LIKE it.  And quite frankly, when it comes to employment, I’ve been spoiled rotten most of my adult life.

I never had a regular 9-5, Monday-Friday day job until I was 29.  This is the part where you start hating me, so now’s a good time to hone your pitchforks and pick out the best rotten tomatoes to throw.  I started working as a “Radio Personality” when I was 18, and spent the next decade with a 20 hour-a-week work schedule that allowed plenty of time to get into the type of retarded adventures that are so excruciatingly detailed elsewhere on this site.

However, after 10 years of radio I lost any passion I’d had for the field, and somewhere in there I fell in love with this funny Canadian fellow living in Los Angeles.  I quit the music biz, put the contents of my filthy apartment into storage, and made my way to sunny California.  From there we moved to New York, where I finally had to get the type of mind-numbingly boring, “yes, you have to wake up before noon and no, you can’t wear pajamas into work” office job that everyone else my age has.

Basically, I was a spoiled little whining monkey that despised everything the majority of the country puts up with to survive.  So when I saw a chance to stay home all day and sleep in as late as I wanted?  Hell yes, I wanted in on that gravy train.  But Jay was naturally (and rightfully) suspicious.

“Are you SURE you’re not just trying to stay home and sleep all day?  Because I’m actually gonna be working, you know.  Two jobs.  You can’t sit on the couch eating cheetos and watching soaps the whole time.”

“No!  I promise!  I hate television!  I’ll clean the house, and do…stuff.  And things!  It’ll be awesome.  If I don’t stick with it, I swear to god you can plop my ass right back on the street corner.”

Jay finally agreed to “the experiment,” as I referred to it.  It started out great.  I got up every morning and took the dog for a walk.  Came home and made Jay a hot lunch (not a euphemism).  Washed dishes and went to the laundromat.  Researched delicious recipes and made wholesome dinners every night. 

That lasted about a week.

Lovingly crafted lunches of homemade soup and freshly baked bread quickly devolved into baloney sandwiches and finally ”I’m catching up on my webcomics, but I think there’s a little bit of peanut butter and some mostly not-too-stale saltines in the cupboard.”  Jay had his doubts about our arrangement at this point, exacerbated by the growing realization that two people and a dog spending the entire day in a 400 square foot New York apartment tends to get just a teensy LOT smothering at some point. 

Luckily for me (and I guess Jay), soon after that the video game company offered him a full-time gig, and we headed off to Seattle.  Jay now works in an office where he’s not bothered by his wife coming in every ten minutes to ask “Soooo…whatcha working on?” or doing the “Look at me!” dance (it’s exceptionally annoying, I’ve been told), and I’ve got the apartment to myself.  A night owl by both nature and 10 years of job-related conditioning, I’ve solved a couple of problems by forcing myself to stay on East Coast time.  With my body convinced it’s really well after 10am, I wake up at 7:30 every morning, make Jay coffee, pack his lunch (still not a euphemism), feed the dogs and start cleaning up the house.  I do laundry and dishes, and then around 10:30 take Orwell and Edison to the park for a couple of hours.  The rest of the afternoon I have to myself.

I’m a fucking housewife.  And it’s AWESOME.

When I first told my friend Abbie that I was quitting my job to be a housewife, her reaction wasn’t “How can you degrade your gender like that,” but total jealousy.  “Oh, man.  I’d LOVE to spend my day cleaning my house and cooking.  I never have time to do that.”  Which got me thinking.  Women of my generation were told from an early age how lucky we are to have more options than cooking, cleaning, and taking care of babies.  Which is true.  It would be awful not to have a choice other than that.  But at the same time, being a housewife is the original “Be your own boss, work from home” job.  And isn’t that what everyone allegedly wants?  Certainly seems popular according to all those Herbalife and “Make big bucks doing medical billing” ads I see.  Rather than thinking men are keeping us bitches down, I’ve started wondering if the dudes just don’t know what they’re missing.

I set my own schedule.  Sometimes I do the household chores first thing in the morning, other times I make Jay’s lunch then go back to bed for a couple hours.  I should state right here that for a lot of women, housewivery is HARD.  Depending on your situation, it can be a full-time, grueling job that would make my clock-watching at the real-estate office look like a happy, petunia scented vacation.  That said, I’ve got a dishwasher and washer/dryer in the apartment.  I order all our groceries online and have them delivered (Safeway.com is the BOMB).  We don’t have kids, so I don’t have diapers to change, or homework to help with.  My biggest chore is making sure the dogs aren’t ripping our furniture or each other apart, and maybe sewing them some Halloween costumes (Batman and Robin, most likely) if I’m feeling adventurous.  If I get bored, I’ve got plenty of time to do volunteer work or something.  I could go hold crack-babies at the hospital, or hand out orange juice at blood drives.

 Hahahahaha.  No, honestly, I could do that.

And trust me, I realize just how lucky I am.

Rebar and Abbie were shocked, and if you’ve gone through the previously mentioned archives of this site, I’m sure you are too, that drunken rock-chick Karla would end up so domesticated.  Hell, I’m shocked myself.

Women aren’t expected to be satisfied being housewives anymore.  We’re supposed to want more, do more, achieve more.  At the same time, we’re told to recognize that if we DO choose to be housewives, it’s a very difficult and worthy job.  And I agree with all that.  But at this point, I’m starting to think being a housewife might be this totally awesome secret women have been keeping from the guys the whole time.  Granted, I DO work hard.  And I’m lucky that I’ve got a husband who appreciates that, even before I give him overly prolonged, long-suffering sighs while looking at whatever coffee stains he splattered on the kitchen counter.  That said, once my work is done, I’ve got a lot of time to write meandering essays about how girls aren’t funny, and how video games are awesome, and how lucky I am to be a housewife.  Plus, I can finally catch up on all my webcomics. 

Being a housewife is awesome.

So anyway, those pitchforks sharp enough yet?

Tags: Essays, Manifestos, & Unsolicited Opinions by Karla Pacheco
7 Comments »

 

“In front of a full house of hardcore Potter fans at Carnegie Hall in New York, J.K. Rowling, sitting on the stage on a red velvet and carved wood throne, read from her seventh and final book, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” then took questions. One fan asked whether Albus Dumbledore, the head of the famed Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft,  had ever loved anyone. Rowling smiled. “Dumbledore is gay, actually,” replied Rowling as the audience erupted in surprise. She added that, in her mind, Dumbledore had an unrequited love affair with Gellert Grindelwald, Voldemort’s predecessor who appears in the seventh book.” - Newsweek, Oct. 19th, 2007

A flurry of shrieking bells echoed through the darkened halls of Hogwarts in the midst of a bleak and blustery October night.  Deep within the castle’s highest turret, a wizened hand reached for gargoyle adorned telephone.

“Hrmph…yes? This is Albu-”

“D!  We’ve got big problems, friend.”

“Who is this?  It’s the middle of the bloody night, you know.”

“D!  Big D.  Biiig daddy D!  It’s Larry, your lawyer.”

“I’m sorry young sir, I don’t recall enlisting a solicitor.”

“Solicit her?  I swear to god that girl was 15!”

“…”

“Hah ha, just jerking your beard there, Dumbly, I know that’s what you pudding munchers “across the pond” call us legal-beagles.  I’m Larry Goldstein, the lawyer the studio assigned to your affairs when that J.T. broad bought the rights to your life story.  Anyway, speaking of pudding munching…we got a prob, honcho.”

“I’m not quite sure what you’re talking about, but if you’re referring to Madame Rowland, yes, I allowed the lady in question to chronicle some of the more exciting chapters of our hallowed halls.  I enjoyed her tales most immensely, despite her rather fetching liberties (my premature death for one, ha ha), and found some of her insights illuminous en extremus.”

“Right.  Very extremus.  Anyway, she outed you about 45 minutes ago.”

“What the…”Outed?”

“Listen, have you ever heard the term “in perpetuity?”

“Certainly, “Ano Perpetuitum” while rarely used, is an impressive spell which may extend an avatar, that is to say a likeness or embodiment of the user for centuries, coming from the old Latin for - ”

“It comes from the old Latin for “We own your ass, and we’d like to protect it.”  So I need you to be up front with me.  Just how many little wizard robes have you looked under?”

“I BEG YOUR PARDON!  This is an outrage sir!”

“No, what’s an outrage is some snarky bitch on a book tour telling the whole world which way your wand waves, especially when we’ve still got two more pics in production.  And we were banking on Dumbledore being all man, baby.  We had plans.  “Dumbledore vs. Snape: Final Countdown,” “Dumbledore and Jackie Chan vs. The Death Eaters: This Time It’s Personal.”  Incredible, right?  We’ve already got action figure prototypes on Mattel’s desk.  And there’s a lot more where that comes from, I assure you, but not for somebody the American public thinks might be a little light in the magical…whatever magic shoes you people wear.”

“By the sword of Gryffindor, I simply have no idea what you’re talking about, young man.”

“Oh yeah, you were part of that whole “sword” frat.  A bit too phallic for my taste, I’m more of a Hufflepuff man, if you get my drift…huff that puff, am I right?  Hooya!  Anyway, we gotta spin this thing and fast.  It’s already been rocking the AP for an hour now.  By Monday this is gonna be outta control, unless we get lucky and somebody bombs U.S. soil over the weekend.  Say, you don’t have a spell for that do you?  Some sort of Terrium McMassive, say?” 

“Terrium McMassive?  The spell to build large bodies of land quickly?  It’s quite an advanced piece of magic, I’m not sure -”

“Forget it.  What we’re looking for here is damage control.  What’s the deal with this Grindywalk?”

“Grindewald?  Gellert was my dearest friend for a time, a bright and shining young man.  So charismatic.  We thought we were going to take over the wizarding world, until that terrible day when he betrayed all that was most precious.  I don’t think I ever quite overcame such a traumatic loss - ”

“Right, betrayal and all, that sucks.  So were you two doing it or not?”

“Doing…”

“IT.  Were you waxing his cauldron?  Poking your wand into his goblet of fire?  C’mon, if you’re straight with me, and I use that term lightly, I might be able to make this all go away.”

“I refuse to sully the deep, albeit ultimately tragic relationship Gellert and I shared with these base accusations.”

“Listen, D, we’re about two hours away from some pissed off mudblood crying that her freak kid got brainwashed into a school that said it was training wizards when it was really converting fairies, so let’s deal.  Whatta ya’ got on the Potter kid?  He come on to you first?”

“I…my god.  What is wrong with you?”

“No god about it, or whatever it is you pagans worship.  We’re in some deep fucking shit here, and I’m trying to make sure you’re a sustainable investment for the next four years.  Let’s talk deep cover.  The McGonagall chick, is she down?”

“Professor McGonagall is an exceptional teacher, and Hogwarts is privileged to have her.”

“That’s great.  Will she take 20 large to claim you’re an excellent lover and a hippogriff in the sack?”

“Minerva would never…”

“Okay, right, fraternizing with the troops, no good.  Any other witchy types willing to pony up that your robe isn’t really pink?  No?  What else do we have going here?  Whatcha working on right now?”

“Well, I’ve been talking to some fine gentlemen from the Southern Continents about expanding my efforts into the field of acting.  They said I’d be a natural for a role they had in mind.”

“Mmm, little fruity, but doable, if it’s something with lots of explosions and titties.  What’s the project?”

“Playing Gandalf in “The Hobbit.”

“Oy vey.  No.  We can’t have you prancing around with a bunch of furry little kids, not now.  This is me, Larry, your trusted attorney, saying you can not do this thing.”

“Again, sir, I must stress that I have never met you, much less heard of you, before this most unexpected, and might I say, unwelcome conversation.”

“I hear what you are saying, Albie, and I respect the place where you are coming from, but I need you to understand that you…being that way…is a non-starter for anything that shows you tenderly guiding anyone under 18.  Much less hairy young boys called “Pippin” and “Merry Candyfuck.”

“From the script I was messengered, I do not believe there are any characters by those names in the moving picture you are referring to.  Also, whether or not I am, as you ever so charmingly put it, ”that way,”  there is no connection to being “that way” and being a paederast.  In fact, it’s proven that far more heterosexuals have inflicted that type of utterly unthinkable affront than-”

“Okay, listen D.  I will fix this.  I KNOW things about Rowlings.  Awful, dirty, horrendous things.  We have people for this.  We can make this go away.”

“I must insist that I do not have anything to apologize for.”

“Of course you don’t.  You just accidentally converted a bunch of mentally unstable pre-teens to some voodoo philosophy fraught with illicit symbolism.  Rocket powered broomsticks, limber willow wands, golden snitches, and all that.”

“I must again state that I have done nothing wrong.  My personal life is my own, and I truly resent these insinuations, Mr….”

“Goldstein.  Larry Goldstein.”

“…Really?  Is that Jewish?  Because you should know I totally hate Jews.”

“Ohh boy.”

“In fact, my editorial on the evil that is Israel is coming out in next week’s “Goblin Times.”  It should be the very thing to expose those money grubbing big-noses for the charlatans they are!”

“Okay, could you hold on a sec?  Hey, Cheryl?  Can you make up some coffee?  This is gonna be a long night.”

Tags: Filthy Lies & Fiction by Karla Pacheco
2 Comments »

About 3 weeks ago, Jay got the following call at 10:15 am.

Karla: “Hey, I need to come down to your office and get some money from you.”
Jay: “Uh, okay.”
Karla: “Cool. I’ll be there in half an hour or so.”
Jay: “Alright. What’s it for, anyway?”
Karla: “We’re getting a puppy dropped off at noon.”
Jay: “…”
Karla: “See ya in 30!”

During our one year wedding anniversary dinner in September, Jay and I enjoyed celebratory cocktails on a patio overlooking a beautiful Puget Sound sunset. Soft music played, candles were lit, we exchanged sweet nothings and a couple of toasts to how fucking awesome we are (seriously, we rock). As the evening progressed ever so romantically, Jay leaned in and asked the one question that can change a married couple’s life forever:

“So, are you ready for another dog?”

To which I replied, “Fuck no!”

Our Rat Terrier Orwell is a year old now, and has taken to life on the West coast like gangbusters. Seattle is the most dog friendly city I’ve ever seen. Seattle: Take your dog on the bus for free! Take him into stores and restaurants! Enjoy our six million square miles of verdant dog parks! We found it all a little unbelievable, coming from Astoria where you’d get dirty looks for walking a dog down the sidewalk and the only off-leash area was a 10 foot dirt-run encircled with a rusty chain link fence. Just to see if we could, we took Orwell into the “Bed, Bath & Beyond” downtown, tentatively strolling the aisles, waiting for someone to come screaming “WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?” and perhaps accusing our dog of shitting on the duvet covers or something. Instead, nearly every clerk and cashier oohed and ahhed over the O-man, stopping to pet him and coo over how adorable he was. One rather spacey blond store manager even started dancing with Orwell while we were at the checkout line, which was a bit much, but still (Seattle’s love of dogs is second only to its affection for hemp-wearing, patchouli drenched hippies).

So when Jay mentioned getting a second dog, my first instinct was “don’t need one, don’t want one.” I was spending a couple hours a day with Orwell at Regrade Dog Park - a pleasant acre or so of trees, inviting benches, and a tiny doggy swimming pool just two blocks from our apartment building. Regulars at Regrade frequently complain that it’s too small, and that the other dog parks are much nicer. I tend to respond to these complaints with an expression of slack-jawed befuddlement. Luckily, drooling idiots who don’t appear to understand human language (or hygiene) blend in pretty well there, as it was previously nicknamed “The Crack Park” before the city made it a dog park.

See, Seattle went about its urban gentrification a little differently than most cities. In New York, when poorer, homeless-ridden and (most importantly) “brownish/foreign” neighborhoods became hot-spots for condos and yuppies, all the poor, homeless, and brown people were strongly encouraged to move along, aided by skyrocketing rents and in Manhattan’s case, Rudy Guiliani arresting all of the above. Seattle, with its peace and patchouli loving ways, built the condos around the YMCAs, methadone clinics, and homeless shelters. We live in a very nice, completely safe, fairly upscale neighborhood…and it’s swamped with meth-heads and the homeless. On one hand, they’re all harmless, and you can even set your watch by the guy who screams at the alien Jesus messiah every morning at 11:23. On the other, it’s hard not to think “Guiliani would have these fuckers cleared RIGHT the hell out” when a schizophrenic wearing a urine-stained cape wants to talk to your dog about how the whores are keeping him down. It’s odd to be on the other side of gentrification for the first time in my life.

Anyway, Orwell and I both made plenty of friends at the dog park. I’ve not only met successful entrepreneurs and young professionals, but also batshit insane psych cases who spend their disability checks on dogfood (hopefully only for their dogs). I made a few good friends in the process, plus I finally have somewhat interesting stories to tell Jay over the dinner table. “Well, I mostly did laundry all day, but it did get pretty funny at the park when Hose-Lady tried to spray all the dogs down with water “because they’re unclean,” and then Screaming Bob got into a fight with Super Loud Screaming Bob!”

Most importantly, Orwell was loving it. He’s been the most popular dog at Regrade from day one. In New York, Jay did a great job making sure Orwell was well trained and socialized. Little dude will play with any dog, any time. Dogs that never played at the park before became happy, chasing puppies in the presence of ours. I don’t want to sound conceited, but I assure you I am not abusing hyperbole when I say Orwell is fucking magic, and pretty much the best, most likable dog in the world. With all this, we received multiple invites to other people’s homes for doggy playdates (shut up). I started hosting a weekly “Doggy Party” (SHUT. UP.) at our house, a whole afternoon of tiny dogs running around our apartment having a blast, while I sat out on the patio in the sunshine drinking wine (er, boxes of wine) with totally cool people. Orwell and I were having the time of our lives. We didn’t need another dog, and I didn’t want to house train another puppy (especially as picking up dog crap became my chore after I begged Jay to let me quit my job and become a housewife).

Right before the aforementioned anniversary dinner, Orwell made friends with a 5 month old Rat Terrier pup, a completely adorable miniature Orwell. Jay started getting all googly-eyed, remembering how cute Orwell was as a wee lil’ dude. I started considering getting a second one, but doubts kept creeping in. “What if the new dog isn’t as cool as Orwell? Are we gonna have TWO dogs sleeping with us? Do we get a second Rat Terrier or something completely different? Will Orwell be happier with another dog to play with, or prefer being an “only child?” What if the new dog SUCKS?” and a million other soul-searching queries. I put more thought into getting a second dog than I ever have wondering if Jay and I should breed.

Jay left the question at “Hey, I don’t think we NEED another dog, and I know all the responsibility is pretty much on your shoulders, but if you want one, it’s okay with me.”

However, he was still pretty taken aback to get that call a few days later. Out of purely innocent curiosity, I’d started casually browsing for dogs on the net, and found a 3/4 rat terrier mix that was pretty much custom made for us…and of course Orwell. This dog would eventually be the same size and have the same energy level as Orwell, but he’d look totally different, so I would be slightly less likely to get them confused (when drunk), or compare them to each other (also when drunk) - “Orwell would never do that, inferior second dog!”

But still, I wasn’t even sure if I WANTED another dog. So I looked at more dogs. Looked at every local dog available for adoption on Petfinder.com. Emailed a few breeders with new litters coming up. Thought about it some more. And kept coming back to the picture of this one little black and brown puppy. Twelve hours later I shot the owners an email and had Edison wrestling with Orwell by noon.

Jay was naturally a bit perplexed. “Christ. You certainly move fast once you make your mind up, don’t you?”

Ultimately, my decision to get another dog wasn’t exactly that I wanted a second dog, but that I’d found our second dog. Orwell was a bit of an accident himself. We’d planned on getting a dog eventually, but the moment we saw him we both knew “THIS is our dog.” I had the same lightening strike with Edison. And turns out, rightfully so. The two little guys adore each other. Orwell, in typical big brother fashion, constantly tries to sit on Edison’s head (in my sibling experience, to better facilitate farting on him, but I’m not sure how dogs handle that part). Edison, in typical little brother fashion, likes to yelp and look at me with a “DID YOU SEE WHAT HE JUST DID?” expression when Orwell’s not even touching him.

So we’ve got two awesome dogs, which is great, but unfortunately the addition of the second means we are now officially “Dog People.” Owning two dogs makes it nearly impossible to avoid anthropomorphizing them. “Orwell’s acted out a lot today, I think he might be jealous.” “Edison gets so sad if he doesn’t get to play with the green plastic lizard toy.” For the record, dogs don’t get jealous. Dogs don’t get sad. They’re fucking tiny wolves we bred down to convenient apartment sized animals that we let live with us. If I passed out on the couch for more than 4-5 hours (my usual “afternoon nap with box-wine assist”), I have no doubt I’d wake to find Orwell and Edison feasting on my tender, delicious calf muscles and fighting over who gets first crack at the bone marrow.

But once you get two dogs, they start feeling more like part of your family rather than just your pets. It’s not “the dogs,” it’s “the boys.” We refer to them as brothers even though they have no immediate ancestors in common. From there it’s a short step to dangerous “what should we dress them up as for Halloween?” territory (Batman and Robin, most likely).

I relate to the ladies at the park who talk for hours about the consistency of their dog’s bowel movements, and discuss the best food for delicate puppy tummies. I hear the phrase “puppy tummy” and don’t punch the utterer in their stupid, stupid face. I don’t know the names of people I see everyday, but when I say “Mitzi’s mom,” and “Cooper’s dad” and “Toby and P.J’s dad’s husband,” everyone knows who I’m talking about.

We had Edison neutered today. I wasn’t too concerned when we had Orwell snipped (Jay was a little upset), but this time I’ve been stressing all week about whether or not to make him wear one of those retarded lamp-shade collars, or if “bitter-bitter” lotion will do the trick to prevent him from chewing out his stitches. Picking him up from the vet afterwards, I was a bit of a mess, seeing the little guy all glassy-eyed and whimpering. Even though I’ve already been through this before, and know he’ll be racing around like a demon by tomorrow morning (despite my best efforts to somehow keep two terriers to stay calm, relaxed, and not playing, biting or jumping for the next week).

I’m gonna try the bitter-bitter first, but Toby and P.J.’s dad has a spare lamp-shade thingy I can use if I need it.

I’m officially dog people.

Tags: Essays, Manifestos, & Unsolicited Opinions, General Musings by Karla Pacheco
2 Comments »

I think Jay and I lost approximately 36 hours this past weekend.  Not because we were drunk (we were, of course, it’s the weekend, right?), but because we have a new XBOX 360 and a used copy of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. 

 The game is fucking crack.

I’m an old school adventure gamer.  Monkey Island, Sam & Max, those CSI and Law & Order games…that’s my gaming poison of choice.  I hate playing games that require any manner of hand-eye coordination on my part, however I’ll happily spend hours watching Jay play Marvel Ultimate Alliance, or Crackdown, or anything else that lets him jump over buildings and punch hookers in the face (his two biggest fantasies brought to life!).  I like to assist with helpful suggestions such as “I’m pretty sure that secret key is two screens back, you know, right before the huge abyss with the skull-fucking zombies that took you 45 minutes to time out the jump across.” or “It’s left bumper, right trigger, X and then B! But do it faster!”  When Jay tries to thank me for all my help by tossing the controller at my head with an exasperated “FINE!  Why don’t you try it if it’s so goddamn easy then?” I naturally demur, reminding him that if I can’t point-and-click my way to victory, or if there is the slightest chance my character could die in any way…I just don’t want to play.

 Which is why Elder Scrolls IV is pretty much custom made for a happy Pacheco-Pinkerton household. 

 The first few days we had the XBOX, I actually spent more time on it than Jay did.  He had a huge stack of “research” to play, but I’d discovered the facial customization section of Elder Scrolls, and spent about 12 hours painstakingly crafting every vector to make my character look exactly like me.  Which led to even more scintillating discourse:

 ”Jay, does my nose look right?”

“You know, most people try to…how to put this delicately…make their character look better than themselves.”

“But I want it to look like me.  How big do you think my nose should look?  Do I need to make it bigger?”

“…Fuck.  There’s no way out of this for me, is there?”

Despite realizing I’d just forced my husband into a marital minefield, I compounded the issue and handed him the controller.

 ”Here, YOU do my nose for me.”

 Poor Jay.

Eventually I declared my character close enough (Imperial Bard under the Lady’s sign that TOTALLY looked like me), and Jay stopped sweating and swearing quietly under his breath.  I played for about 20 minutes before calling it a day, as the box of wine I’d been using as “inspiration” was getting dangerously light.  The next weekend Jay created his own character, a custom job “Thief Mage,” because Jay wanted to steal a lot of stuff and do magic (his third and fourth top-rated fantasies).

Jay took about 3 minutes to customize his character’s face, mainly because I convinced him he needed to use the cat thing, since they make really good thieves.  I think he just slapped a beard on it or something.  We assured each other that this did not make us Furries.  We also soon realized we made the perfect Elder Scrolls team.

“Jay!  Press “X” to take all the contents of the crate!”

“That crate only had an onion and some yarn.”

“I KNOW!  You might need that.  You can at least sell it.”

“The onion is only worth one gold, I’m already over-encumbered, and the yarn is useless.”

“You don’t know that.  What if there’s a knitting quest coming up?”

My obsessive adventure gaming experience had me convinced that EVERYTHING you find in a game will be essential at some point.  And my tight-fisted, money grubbing ways convinced me that anything non-essential could be sold for fabulous piles of gold.  Meanwhile, Jay was smartly slashing, stabbing, and spell-crafting his way through assorted trolls, bandits and pirate ghosts, racking up enormous amounts of expensive loot.

The thing about Oblivion, it’s fucking huge.  With Jay working in the video game industry now, we’re both gaining a new understanding of just how much work it takes to craft a game that has a few hours of game-play, much less a completely open-ended world with seemingly limitless quests and possibilities.  I really can’t even begin to comprehend how the hell they made this thing.  You’ve got an entire continent to explore (plus add-on packs), and every time you say “hi” to a beggar on the street, or talk to some Orc in a tavern, you get a new quest you can go on.  You pretty much get six new quests just in the course of completing ONE task.  And we haven’t even started tackling the main story quest.

“Ooh, Jay, you wanna go find those six bottles of rare wine in the old abandoned forts?  That lady at the inn said she’d give us a good reward for them.”

“Um, actually I’d rather go kill that vampire monster that’s been haunting the old abbey, and then ascend to a higher thief level by robbing the castle.”

It’s pretty mind-boggling.  The game lets you be whatever you want, do as much or as little as you want.  Wanna fight?  You’re set.  Wanna live quietly and start a store, or buy a house, or wander the countryside looking for rare mushrooms?  You’re set.  We take turns playing Jay’s character now (I quickly abandoned my painstakingly crafted “Wago the Wanderer”).  Jay does all the hard stuff, and when he takes a bathroom break or needs a smoke, I swoop in and do all the things he finds mind-numbingly boring.

“Hey Jay, I totally upped our personality level by talking to that priest for 20 minutes!”

“That’s great, honey.  I’ma go slaughter some trolls now.”

On Friday night we went to bed early - long day of work for Jay, long day of drinking and playing with the dogs for me (my life is hard).  While laying in bed, I suddenly realized that if we equipped the “Eye of Fear” as a hotkey, we could totally get past the corrupt merchant and legionnaire that were camped out in the old abandoned crypt.  I tried to wake up Jay to let him know, to which he responded “zzyeahthatzgreatmmphzzz.”  But I couldn’t stop thinking about it.  So I finally got up, snuck quietly out of the bedroom, and totally whomped said merchant and legionnaire.  Then I decided I’d go back to all the houses and stores that Jay had already been through and clean them out of all the penny-ante crap Jay thought he was too good steal the first time around.  “A box full of pick-axes worth 5 gold that takes up half our inventory?  YES GUY!”  “Quest to wander aimlessly all over the massive countryside to find 10 roots that will make a potion that’s totally useless for our character?  I’m IN!”

 Eight hours later Jay wandered into the living room in search of coffee, and found me staring at the T.V. screen, meticulously harvesting shadow-stain root caps, or some such nonsense.

“I’ve leveled our alchemy stats up to 15!”

“That’s…good?  Don’t you need to, you know…sleep or something?”

“Just as soon as I’ve found six more slaughterfish scales!  I’m pretty sure I can collect them all if I just search the river bed for another three hours!”

After that, everything got a little hazy, and apparently I stumbled blindly in to bed, still muttering about going back the Cheryodil and getting that last box of yarn. 

Anyway, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.  Good game.

Tags: Essays, Manifestos, & Unsolicited Opinions, General Musings by Karla Pacheco
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Girls aren’t funny. We’re not. Really. Everyone knows this. It’s canon.

Jay and I spent the weekend playing video games (we HAVE to, he says, “it’s research”), but we managed to tear ourselves away for a couple of hours to watch the first season DVD of “30 Rock.” We were late to the party on this one, but holy crap, what a great fucking show. When “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” came out at the same time…on the same network, with the exact same concept…I pretty much pooh-poohed “30 Rock.” If I was gonna watch a behind-the-scenes comedy sketch show, I was betting on Sorkin. Then it turned out that Aaron Sorkin was a massive, ego-wanking douchebag. Ragingly masturbatory, preachy rants didn’t seem so bad on “The West Wing,” as politics naturally lend themselves to preaching, rage, and masturbation. However, if you make a show that’s “saving” television through the magic of comedy, you might want to make it, you know, funny. We deep-sixed the thing two episodes in, it was just that painful, but apparently we’re a little more prescient than the NBC programmers who let the crap-fest quietly finish out a good 13 episodes of self-righteous, audience loathing doggerel. Suck it, Sorky.

Anyway, back to “30 Rock.” Everything Aaron Sorkin did wrong, Tina Fey rocked out of the goddamn park. Absolutely brilliant. It’s a pitch-perfect show, top to bottom. If you’ve worked in entertainment (me), are a comedy writer (Jay), or have ever lived in New York (Jay, me, our dogs, couple million other people), “30 Rock” is like looking in a painfully real, utterly hilarious mirror. Even if you haven’t done any of those things (you’re a better person because of it), the show is still the smartest, funniest thing on television right now. And it was created and written by a GIRL.

Tina Fey is my new girl crush. I can’t make her have my babies, of course. But I’d like my husband to knock her up. Knock her up real good.

Thinking about how great “30 Rock” is, I found it really sad that when a Vaginal-American does something that’s legitimately hilarious it shocks the hell out of me. I mean, the whole “girls aren’t funny” thing should have gone the way of “black people hate swimming” by now, right? It’s a blanket statement, a stereotype. Surely there are plenty of exceptions. But goddammit, if it is just a stereotype, then why do so many female comedians (I refuse to say “comediennes”) suck? REALLY suck. And even if you find a chick that is funny, she’s just not as funny as a guy.

Sarah Silverman is funny. Or she can be. You’ve got this super cute but not traditionally gorgeous chick saying completely awful things. I don’t want to denigrate the act she has, because it really is good. Her show is awful, and she’s best in small doses, but Silverman is legitimately funny. I like Sarah Silverman, but Tina Fey is a fantastic writer and has the kind of comedic timing that makes me want to stab her in the throat from pure jealousy. She’s that good.

And those are the only professionally funny women I can think of off-hand. Oh, and maybe that chick who started “The Daily Show,” but even that didn’t get really good until Jon Stewart came in.

The thing is, girls don’t have to be funny. I think that cuts to the core of the issue in a nutshell. We got vajay-jays. We’re judged by other standards, we don’t NEED to be funny.

Think back to high school. Think of the guys that were athletic, good looking, and had loads of personality. Those three guys got laid. Everybody else had to be funny. It was the only way they could get someone to pay attention to them.

Girls don’t have that. Think of the ugliest, dumbest, most hideous woman you’ve ever met in your life. That woman, should she so desire, can get laid any time she wants. It won’t be pretty, but she can get some. That is the power of the vagina. We don’t have to be witty, interesting, intelligent, or by any stretch of the imagination attractive…by merely possessing a squishy pink wet thing between our legs, we can make some guy out there toss us a high hard one.

Dudes don’t have that advantage. So guys developed humor. Smart funny, dumb funny, weird funny…all of it came about because somebody sucked at football and needed to get laid. You might not be the strongest or smartest, but you could be funny. And sure, a couple girls needed that coping mechanism just as badly. In high school, I was a 4’10” brace-faced four-eyes with a limp - you bet your ass I’m fucking hilarious. But fewer girls had the type of experiences (wedgies and swirlies being a near exclusively male domain) that create the roiling resentment, cynicism, and burning frustration that is the creative cauldron of really good comedy.

And guys value that comedy over everything because they EARNED it. If I tell Jay I have a smoking hot fantasy about Clive Owen whisking me off to a magical sex island, he won’t blink an eye. If I told him another guy made me laugh really hard at the dog park, he would freak the fuck out. Now I think my husband is incredibly attractive (and I’m not just saying that because he will read this and Christmas is coming up and I want some big ass diamonds), but my insistence that he’s the funniest guy in the world is what keeps him married to me.

Sure, women value humor, too. The most common response to “What the hell do you see in that guy?” is invariably “He’s really funny!” rather than “He’s got a trust fund and a dick that looks like a baby’s arm holding an apple.” Girls like to laugh. And they like to THINK they’re funny. “All my girlfriends say I’m hilarious after my third green apple Cosmo-tini!” In the end, though, we just don’t have the same appreciation, or need for humor that guys do.

So unfortunately, when a girl decides she does want to be funny, we tend to end up with either Erma Bombecks (“Oh when will these kids pick up their laundry, am I right?”) or girls who act exactly like guys (“Look, I said “cock” and I’ve got tits! I’m AWESOME!”). The cunny crowd seems to have major difficulties developing something that is legitimately unique AND funny. Most of the female comics I’ve seen tend to stick to the gender equivalent of “Black and/or White people be talking like this.” Men are helpless imbeciles, gynecologists have cold hands, babies poop a lot. Even the “edgy” lady comics just cuss more when talking about tampons and how stupid their boyfriends are, what with their dicks and all. And it makes me sad.

Which is why Tina Fey is my new girl-crush. “30 Rock” isn’t chick humor, it isn’t guy humor, it’s just plain funny and smart and interesting. If we can get a few more like her working their way up the ranks, the bitches might have a shot. But I think it’s gonna be a bit of a wait.

In the meantime, I gotta go get me a green apple Cosmo-tini. I hear I’m hilarious after a couple of those.

Tags: Essays, Manifestos, & Unsolicited Opinions by Karla Pacheco
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