"Going to mars is a problem. Falling in love is a mystery." - G.K. Chesterton

The time has finally come! Sound the trumpets! There shall be a great feast! Dancing, singing, and rejoicing shall commence. And you are all cordially invited. 

The World According To Chuck has moved! 

Think Mediterranean Avenue to Park Place. Don't pass go, but still collect $200.

All of the content on this site will stay for your archiving enjoyment, but from here on out - any more words that drip from my head and spill onto a blank canvas of the computer screen will be done on the new site. Go ahead. Enter it into your web browser! I double dog dare ya!

So, I guess that's it. You can stop reading this now. I already said that the blog has moved. What are you waiting for? You've got your motivation. 

I'm going to head on over to the new site. I'll see you there!

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www.AccordingToChuck.com

Media You May Have Missed: The Fray's newest album, self-titled.

A great way to explore new music, I find, is to listen to CD's all the way through while I'm reading or studying.

I'm one of those types of people. I enjoy having a musical backdrop during every activity I'm involved with.

When I'm driving: music. When I'm in the shower: music. When I'm going to bed: music. When I'm working: music. When I'm studying: ... you get the idea.

I hope to be able to find a contributing writer or writers that can help with this category of "Media You May Have Missed". We all like to be led to great music that we've never heard or movies that we've never seen.

Today - and very briefly - I wanted to encourage you to check out The Fray's newest album. It's self-titled, and equally as good as their debut album How To Save A Life.

I was listening to it all the way through while I was reading in the library for one of my classes.

In particular, I fell in love with the song: Never Say Never. 

Some selected lyrics:

Picture you're the queen of everything

as far as the eye can see

under your command

I will be your guardian from all that's coming down

steady your hand

It made me think very strongly about love and the concept thereof. It made me think about how I use to have a queen, and how happy this made me feel - to have someone to love and protect. To have someone to inspire my most poetic thoughts. To have someone who ignited my passion.

And yes, someone to fight a polar bear for - armed with nothing but this relentless passion.

Slowly I'm Fasting

Today at 7:00am I celebrated the end of another 36 hour fast with a double egg sandwich and a cup of coffee.

I feel great.

My New Year's resolution this year was to "become a better person", so somewhere in the sub- articles and sections of that extensive goal I wanted to complete a weekly period of fasting. The first few weeks I settled on a 24 hour fast to ease my way into it, and then I stepped it up to 36 hours once I felt comfortable. 36 hours - that's over 20% of the week if you do the math.

So now every Sunday night at 7:00pm I stop eating. I consume absolutely no calories. It's water, water, and more water until Tuesday morning at 7:00am.

My inspiration? Well, it occurred to me years ago that hunger was a feeling that I had been missing out on. I ate so frequently that I would bypass hunger all together. It was back then that the concept of fasting really started to interest me. And when you factor in all of the references to fasting in the Bible and various non-secular health literature, I was almost certainly sold on the idea. The tipping point for me was reading this article in Men's Health. And all the great benefits that this guy describes, I'm now feeling.

My appetite has been suppressed. My stomach gets full a lot quicker. I do get attacked by hunger pains and vicious tummy growls, but that's nothing that 32 ounces of water can't make go away. When I'm playing sports during my fasting periods, I feel light on my feet and strong. And at the end of the fast, an egg sandwich and coffee can taste like a trip to Ruth's Chris.

Do I recommend fasting? I think everyone should give it a whirl.* 

All I know for sure is that I hope to keep it up the entire year - and beyond - because I've been really feeling the benefits, and I feel wonderful.

*Disclaimer: The World According To Chuck does not hold a medical degree. Before persuing any change in your diet or exercise, please consult your physician first to achieve a program that is the most medically suited for you.

Nick & Norah's Infinite Suckass List

I know. I know. Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist has been out of theatres for quite some time, but it just came out on DVD in Blockbuster on the 4th of February. I couldn't understand why a Blockbuster new release would only have one shelf of movies. Usually new releases get an entire wall. Now I know, and I had to start writing quickly while all of it's "suck-ness" is still fresh in my mind.

Terrible movie. Where to start? I'll start with love. I love Michael Cera. Of course he hasn't ever played a role outside of "awkward teenager" in a coming of age tale. He plays them so incredibly well, though. It's like Leonardo Dicaprio in "What's Eating Gilbert Grape?". Who could have played a better Arnie? So with the exception of a very few lines from Cera in his typical fashion, the movie was horrible in many respects. So many, in fact, that I probably won't even be able to touch base on them all.

I'll get this one out of the way real quick. Kat Dennings - the actress that played Norah - is incredibly unattractive. That's shallow. I realize this, but it's bad. I seriously almost didn't rent this movie at all based solely on the fact that I didn't want to have to look at her. It's her pale skin. Her big forehead. Her hair seems to lack health. Her breasts are so bulky and without good form. Her lips have a mind of their own and are way too bright with that lipstick. And finally, her teeth are unfortunate. And she's actually been able to get into some pretty big movie roles. She was in Down in the Valley with Edward Norton, she was in House Bunnys, Charlie Bartlett, and she's going to be in a minor role in a new Jeff Daniel's indie flick that I'm looking forward to called Arlen Faber.

They really should have gotten Ellen Page to play side-by-side with Michael Cera again. She's attractive, quarky, and they seemed to have some great on film chemistry.

 Now onto the actual character's flaws. Wait. Actually, I'll point out some "in general" things wrong with everyone's character in the movie.

All of the kids in this movie are supposed to be in high school, however...however they have stayed up all night in New York City just drinking alcohol, getting into underground night clubs, driving all over the city, making out with anyone and everyone, and you can't forget the scene where Nick's ex-girlfriend is doing a striptease for him in his headlights while he is parked down by the Hudson River. I've been out of high school for three and a half years and I've barely experienced any of that kind of shennanigans - and I've done some shit - let me assure you of that. Again, another blog for another day.

There were just so many things in this movie that just aren't right for high school kids - let alone anyone. This includes the large amount of homosexuality that appeared in the film. Nick's bandmates weren't only gay, but they were treating New York City as a smorgasbord of homosexuality - which I guess it is - but highly inappropriate.

I didn't like that Norah said that she had dated "Tall" for 3 years and she's supposed to be playing a 17 year old in the movie. That's sick. Norah told Nick that that night was her first time kissing anyone. And she kissed two people. Nick and "Tall". I'm guessing that the point they were trying to make with all the "friends with benefits" talk between Norah and "Tall" was that her father was a big shot record producer and "Tall" was using her to get to her father. 

And the thing I severely didn't get was how much of a bitch Norah came off as. Generally in a movie like that when it starts to wind down and get to the end you start to feel some kind of sympathy for the situation and you'd want the lead girl to end up with the lead guy. This wasn't the case for this movie. It was a pathetic attempt at a love story. Even a crappy high school love story. Norah was just a huge bitch. She crashed Nick's car into a fire hydrant. She was always getting onto his case about stupid things, etc., etc. The movie didn't make me want her to end up with Nick at all. 

AND ANOTHER THING that angered me. The scene where it is being implied that Nick is fingering Norah in the studio. Horrible! Just horrible! I can't believe they would put that in there. The writers must have been trying to destroy any kind of innocence that could have stood in the movie. You got the ex-girlfriend stripping, Norah getting fingered, the bandmates hooking up with other homosexuals, the many references to Nick's ex cheating on him, and it's all very appalling.

And I think the last thing I'll mention is "what the hell is up with Where's Fluffy?" First of all, that is the stupidest band name I've ever heard. If they wanted to go with the theme of rabbits, then naming the band The White Rabbits or The Lucky Rabbit's Feet could have been pretty good, I think. Not only was the band name dumb, but why didn't anyone know where the band was playing? With such a stupid band name how were they deserving of being part of a huge riddle spread across the entire city of New York? I really didn't get it. And then it was like 6 o'clock in the morning when Norah was done getting fingered and then got that text about Where's Fluffy...so what? The band wasn't playing until like 7 in the morning? Sheesh. Talk about a shitty script and movie.

How in the world did this movie get a 72% on RottenTomatoes.com?! For crying out loud, Love Liza with Philip Seymour Hoffman only scored 54%! That's enough to make me want to shout out loud.

When the main joke of the movie is following the life of a piece of gum around, you know it can't be good.

The only line that I thought was clever was when Nick's ex-girlfriend says "You don't have to get over me when you can be under me." Again, though... I don't think it's good for high school-ers to be saying that to one another.

*sigh* . . . 

I was really hoping for something better. I hope Michael Cera starts branching out and doing different roles. I've heard the rumor that there's going to be an Arrested Development movie - oh boy!

The [insert an intangible here] was so thick, you could cut it with a knife.

The other day I saw something similar to this:

At first glance my instinct is to think "how cah-uuuuute" or "My, God. That's A-dor-ABLE" in my best falsetto. Or my best "valley girl" impersonation. Is that still a meaningful phrase? Valley girl? I feel like that term may have died sometime in the mid-90's and I never got the memo. Either way, you understand. That's my first impression of seeing a dog in a sweater. I can remember with one of the dogs I owned as a very young Chuck, I was always trying to tie a handkerchief around its neck because I thought it looked cool, but that dog would always take it off. Come to think of it, I really loved that dog. If only I had saved some DNA from it. But seeing something like a dog wearing a sweater could really get you thinking about just how crazy people who are fanatical about pets are.

I was at work last week, I believe, when we had a customer come in with a hideous little dog. In not so many words it was more like a larger and more furry version of a rat. I wouldn't have been surprised if it WAS a rat. The customer came in by herself - carrying this lame excuse for a dog. And she set the dog down on a chair and for the next few minutes petted it and reassured it that she would in fact be coming back.

This infuriated me.

To describe the woman to the best of my memory, she was mid-30's I'd suspect. She was chubby - which included having a spare tire and a second ass where a vagina is supposed to be. She was fairly tall - probably around 5'10" or so, and I might be making this up but I'm pretty sure she had a bad perm. And I'd put money on it that she played the online game "Second Life".

Back to the infuriation. I've only as of recently discovered just how cynical I really am. I use the word "hate" a lot. Almost as much as I use the word "pizza" or "Blue Bell Cookies and Cream Ice Cream". And this woman, I hated. She treated her ugly mutt like it was her child and this is 1) sad and pathetic to watch and 2) ridiculous. 

I hate fanaticism. I can't stand when people are overly excited about any one particular thing. Don't ask me why. It's just how I'm wired.

So after watching this woman talk baby talk to this ugly dog for a few minutes I was hoping that she would spontaneously combust on her way to the cash register.

I'm sorry. Let me backtrack a tad because first of all what the hell is this woman doing coming into a mediocre-at-best pizza place with a dog? I asked the manager about it. Apparently, they had inquired about it in the past. [The woman is a regular customer. Hence the ass in front that she has.] Apparently she has a card that she carries around that says the dog is a service dog. It's a "therapy dog". What a crock of shit.

One thing that I never understood is pet food. There is an entire aisle for it at grocery stores. There's dozens of different brands. And I don't get why the labels are so competitive with one another. They've got photographs of happy pets on them. Bright colors. And here's the thing that really chaps my ass: some of the descriptions of the pet food, if didn't know any better, would sound like a tasty meal for a human. Just who are they trying to impress? Certainly the pets themselves don't give a damn. They'll eat anything. If it were up to me, all pet food would come in a can with a brown label that simply said "Dog Food" or "Cat Food". I think it's crazy to watch people struggle over which brand of pet food to buy as if their pet is going to be happier or sadder depending on what you pick. That would be a funny thing to watch, though. To see a dog throwing cans of dog food against the front door and yelling about how pissed they are about the selection. And telling the owner to get their ass right back in their car and pick up some decent food "for crying out loud".

On the subject of fanaticism and pets, I wanted to touch base on two more points of interest. And at this point I've got to apologize for the length of this post, but when I've got the "coffee house playlist" on in the background and I start to think about pet fanaticism, I can really go off on a rant. So two more points: veterinarians and cloning.

If your dog has a broken leg, then by all means please take it to the vet and have a doggy cast put on it. If your dog is suffering from some crazy disease that requires a lifetime of prescribed medicine and therapy that adds up to enough money to put a kid through college, then have that dog put to sleep. That's all I'll say about that. And I think you get the point I'm trying to make.

I was reading the headlines from MSN and came across this. A couple that lives in south Florida had their yellow labrador retriever cloned after it's death for $155,000! There's lots of things wrong with this. First and foremost, $155,000 would be enough to turn around my miserable excuse of an existence and help me accomplish my life goals - or anyone for that matter. That's a shit ton of money. And the part that kills me the most is that every fucking yellow labrador looks the same anyway! What the hell? These people make me sick. 

I read another story about this same couple and cloning and all where the interviewer asked them how they felt about spending so much money on something like this when the economy right now is putting a lot of people out of work and in dire positions. And the answer that the guy gave made me want to hit him over the head repeatedly with a hammer - or just something blunt. He said that they "didn't worry about money at all and that he had in a way hit the lottery being as his grandfather was one of the founders of NASCAR". First of all: NASCAR is fucking stupid. That's a different blog for a different day. And second of all, what a total piece of shit to be so unsympathetic to the situation that our country and economy is in. A hammer would do nicely.

I don't want anyone to read this and think "Chuck hates pets". That wasn't the point I was trying to make. I love pets. I love dogs, I should say. Cats are another story. I wouldn't say hate, but I certainly wouldn't say "like". Pets are great, but I don't ever want to be fanatical about it. There's actually people out there who value "animal's rights" (which is an oxymoron ) over human rights. And that makes me angry as well. Stupid PETA. Stupid hippie assholes. But again, that'd be another blog for another day.

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I went in to work today a dough-boy. I went home a dough-man.

You would not believe the insane dribble drabble that goes on in the dish room of a "mediocre-at-best" pizza place. Your ears would be ringing if you heard the conversations that go on there. The late Andy Kaufman would be doing somersaults in his grave if he only knew the kind of benign, mindless garbage that was being uttered and echoed all the way to the dry goods storage area.

This of course is misleading. When I'm in the dish room manning the helm of sterility and wielding my faucet hose like an unstable sword - a sword powerful enough to remove caked-on marinara sauce with one trusty "swoop" - when I'm in the dish room, I'm all by my lonesome. I think. And I think about everything. For example:

Regular pizza sauce has no additional steps. It comes in clear plastic bags. "Buffet sauce" is a combination of 2 ounces of sugar per aforementioned clear plastic bag of pizza sauce AND approximately 12 ounces of water all stirred in homogeneously. "School sauce" gets the sugar but not the water.

Mix garlic powder with a big bag of "artificial butter flavoring" to produce garlic butter sauce which can and will be used on everything edible that comes out of the kitchen and placed under artificial heating lamps.

Maybe crystal meth really IS the answer.

People never fail to fail me. Over the years I have grown quite cynical. It is very easy for me to criticize others. This is both good and bad. I think that it means that if I'm being complimentative, then you can rest assured that I am genuine.  There are times when I say to myself, "Chuck - who exactly do you think you are to point fingers at people and say that they are worthless, mindless, bad company, douche bags, assholes, faggots, etc., etc." But I am resilient. I bounce back quickly. Because I am reminded too quickly about how great a judge of character I really am. I can spot a douche bag from several hundred miles away.

Today I learned how to make pizza dough.  List of ingredients include (and are limited to) : 1 ounce of dry yeast, 3 ounces of salt, 6 ounces of sugar, 25 pounds of flour, and then approximately 11 pounds of warm water (you weigh the water on a scale - weird concept - why not just measure the water in volume, I say? "Shut the hell up, and don't ask any questions," They say. - but not really. I just made that up.)

So you take all of those ingredients and give them a meet-and-greet inside of a large commercial mixing bowl. [On my first day of work I was told not to get my arm caught inside this machine. Apparently the results would be less than desirable. Unfortunate, even. Then, again - they have $2 million dollars of liability insurance in a cloud above the business, and I am a bit down on my luck - but I digress.] You mix them all up with a push of a button and time it for 8 minutes. Everything is 8 minutes around there. Pizzas cook in 8 minutes. Dough mixes in 8 minutes. Two people should be able to make a rack of pizzas in 8 minutes. I would expect that if the name of the business were "Godfather's Pizza - and Blowjobs" - then blowjobs would be 8 minutes as well.

Here's the good part. The guy training me. Bless his heart. He's like a lot of people. He gets too caught up in specifics. He can't really improvise. He can't "go with it". All he knows is what was shown to him and anything that strays off the beaten path has got to be viewed as some sort of sin. The perpetrator shall be condemned by stoning. It's THAT serious. Here's what I mean: As I put all of the ingredients into the mixer I did so in this order - yeast, salt, and sugar mixture - then the flour - and THEN I was about to put in the water. "Hold the train!", "Stop the presses!" - apparently you can't do that. (huh?) Yeah. For some reason unbeknownst to me - you can't add the flour before the water. I'm sorry. THIS is the good part. The poor soul of a person training me then proceeded to take the next 10 minutes - or maybe it was 8 minutes - to scoop out all of the flour I had just put into the mixture, so that we could add the water and then the flour. And this whole time I just felt worse and worse with every scoop he took out. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Logic would tell me that whatever the hell you put into this behemoth of a machine in whatever order you choose - it's going to get mixed, and it's going to get mixed up well. I guess that's not the case. And these are the things I'm talking about. These are the things that stew in my mind for days on end. I get real fixated on scenarios like that. And there's just so many. This one was fairly insignificant compared to some of the other "whoppers" I could share.

Now, a last word - if you will.

This is unrelated to all of this, but I must share because I think it's important to find the little nuggets in life that we can all relate to. Here at The World According To Chuck our aim is to make you feel like you are apart of something special and that you aren't weird or out of place - even if you did happen to be a slut in high school or one of the kids who hung out in front of BooksAMillion playing Magic: The Gathering.

This is me "keeping it real".

Today I had a very itchy asshole at work. This was a problem. At work you are confined to VERY light scratching when you turn a corner, or you are reduced to clenching your cheeks periodically to help reduce the itching. At home. At home you have all the freedom in the world. You can really "go to town" on that ass of yours. My personal remedy is to find a nice sturdy chair and do a real nice side-to-side motion. MMmm boy! That's how I spell relief - a nice folding metal chair.

COMING SOON: A GUEST BLOG BY ELAINE HODGES! I bet THAT got your ears all perked up, huh?