Chelsea Marotta

In celebration of the new season of Arrested Development,...

Thu, 23 May 2013 11:34:18 -0400

In celebration of the new season of Arrested Development, I’ve prepared a few weeks of very important Owls. Here’s a sneak peek of what I inked this morning.

Tread

Wed, 22 May 2013 09:48:00 -0400

Described by a friend as, ‘not what I expected,’ Tread is a short story. Enjoy.

Once upon a time there was a girl who didn’t grow up. Not in a Peter Pan made a choice to suspend reality way but in a sad, tragically stunted way. She played the part of an adult well. Every morning she woke up on time for work, she paid loans, shopped for groceries, complained about her job, exercised moderately. She followed these routines in hope that she could build herself into an adult piece by piece. Still, she did not grow up. Instead of blossoming as she—and her parents—had hoped, she turned into a cartoon imitation of what she felt others expected.

She was not tremendously off-put by her stasis. During summer breaks growing up her favorite way to spend free time was in the pool. With her face towards the sun she could tread water for hours. The feeling of water moving against her legs with each kick was safe. Other kids prefered to race or scale the high dive but she was okay alone in the deep end. This is the type of person she grew up to be—treading, she was content.

However, her complacency wouldn’t last much longer. Two summers after college graduation, by accident, she would become an adult. The first steps in this journey began with death. Her family shipped out to Arizona to say their final goodbyes to her grandfather, who had been sick for too long. Although generally people frown upon picking favorite grandparents, this was, without question, her favorite grandfather.

Up to this point in her life she had only experienced death second hand: pets, the family tragedy of close friend, a classmate several years older than her. This was different, this time it stood next to her. The fact that death did not sit so heavy in her chest surprised her most. She expected a brick. Instead, it acted more like foam wall insulation. Weightless, it filled her completely. For quite some time she acted as a mirror. Everyone was sad, so she was ‘sad’ but, really, there wasn’t much room for fully saturated emotions.

Eventually she cried and washed away the feelings that stuck to her ribs. Despite the catharsis that came with her tears, something felt off, a little emptier than usual. She couldn’t pinpoint the problem so she decided to fix things around her. For the first time without her mother telling her to, she began to clean. It started with reorganizing, then tidying, dusting, scrubbing. Soon she felt like herself again. This had more to do with the passage of time than the compulsive cleaning but it was this cleaning spree that flipped a switch inside her.

A few months had passed while she cleaned and cleansed her emotional palette. As she found a path back to normal, she reestablished personal truths. The first and easiest truth to come by was that she hated her job. It was a deep, profound hatred that stemmed partially from not being challenged by her responsibilities but mainly from not being challenged by herself. 13 years of compulsory education followed by four years of voluntary education programmed her to wait for instruction. That summer she realized that the responsibility to challenge herself to grow personally, intellectually, or in any other way now fell squarely on her shoulders.

Certain that her brain would turn to water and spill out of her ears if she didn’t act quickly, she began with what she knew; she read a book she wasn’t terribly interested in and thought about it analytically. Next, she read a book she enjoyed. She thought about the themes in context to her life. Nothing tangible changed but it felt like progress.

For several weeks she did nothing but read books. She considered each character carefully and drew heavy parallels between their worlds and hers. She finally looked up when she ran out of room on her bookshelf. Then, for several weeks she did nothing but look at people around her. She considered each individual carefully and tried her best to draw heavy parallels between their worlds and hers. She saw holes in other people that cleaning alone wouldn’t fix. Some holes were shadows of lost people, places, and memories. Other holes had been eroded by personal dissatisfaction.

She refused to be lead willingly into this lifestyle by her own idleness. The fear of becoming hollow proved an ideal motivator. She examined the seams of her day to day routine for the small holes her unfulfillment had already torn. In order to mend these, she decided to make a conscious effort to do more. She was not exactly sure what more was but she knew groceries weren’t more, complaining about work wasn’t more, and loan payments, while essential, weren’t more.

She created a new rule. Before she did anything she thought about why. She became conscious of her own intentions. She cycled this awareness back into her routine and modified her everyday actions. These modifications, compounded, made her grow. Summer came and went. The work was slow but she noticed the shift and welcomed autonomy. She could not afford to leave her job but this didn’t tie her brains into knots the way it used to. Sometimes she worried about loss and emptiness and dark things like that, but for the most part she focused on progress and like a shark, she moved forward.

Everyone in this episode of The X-Files is Professor Quirrell.

Mon, 20 May 2013 23:21:00 -0400

Everyone in this episode of The X-Files is Professor Quirrell.

From the Archives

Mon, 20 May 2013 14:55:00 -0400

I cleaned my Word files this weekend, an adventure during which I found this list. It was written during the whole 50 Shades of Grey phenomenon; I heard the book was based on Twilight so, naturally, I spent some time brainstorming and here’s a list of hypothetical erotica based on classic literature instead of vampire chick lit —

Without further delay I present to you “Classic Literary Erotica”

(nsfw? idk, probably depends where you work)

The Lord of the Cock Rings
Her Treasure Island
The Island of Dr. More-O
A Midsummer Night’s Wet Dream
Wuthering Loins
Pride and Penises
Hard With The Wind
Moby’s Dick
The Stranger
For Whom the Bed Tolls
The Old Man in the Sheets
On The Road Dome

It's a story! Parts I and II

Mon, 20 May 2013 10:17:00 -0400

This is a story I started writing a few months ago. While working on writing super simple short sentences and ideas I ended up with something that might be a children’s story. I’ve decided to share it in serialized blog posts. It’s still a work in progress and it doesn’t have a title yet but these are the first two sections. Enjoy!

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Irene. She was 9 and her feet were tragically large. She lived in Kansas and did not like it. A lot of her classmates spent recess thinking of ways to make fun of her, which Irene did not think was very nice. She dreamed of dinosaurs in her spare time.

Her best friend was Ursula. Ursula was also 9 and her classmates made fun of her because she shared a name with an evil cartoon sea-witch. For this reason Ursula did not like Disney movies. Ursula wasn’t an enormous fan of dinosaurs, but she learned a little about them because Irene liked them so much and that’s what friends do for each other.

Irene and Ursula were working on a plan, a plan to escape Kansas. For the nine years they’d spent in Topeka nothing good or exciting had ever happened. They were going to go to the Mississippi River because that’s where adventures happen. Also, Irene once read that you can find fossils near riverbeds and she had come to terms with the fact that fossils were the closest she was going to get to a real dinosaur.

Although they were far from the smartest in their class—a mouse-faced girl named Olivia proudly wore that title—the girls certainly weren’t stupid. They knew they would need money and friends to help along the way. They did not have money. They did not have friends. With this in mind they took their first step in beginning their journey.

Ursula created a timetable because no plan succeeds without proper preplanning and organization and Ursula did not want to fail. Her little sister was always calling her a failure and Ursula wasn’t going to create another opportunity for what her mother had recently called in a phone conversation ‘playful sibling ribbing.’ One day during recess, while the other children put their heads together to find more words that rhyme with feet, Ursula laid out the first leg of their plan.

*** **** **** ****

It was decided that their first order of business would be money. Irene and Ursula looked similar enough that Ursula supposed they could get away with buying one train ticket and share the seat or something. She’d work out those details later. A train ticket would be fifty dollars, which was exactly forty-two dollars more than they had. Irene’s older brother had a job at the local supermarket. He made fifty dollars each week. Unfortunately, the girls knew they couldn’t work at the supermarket because of child labor laws. Being nine was hard. So they started looking for work.

The first person Irene went to was her brother. Sam was 15 and very important. With his job at the supermarket he could buy almost anything he’d like but he was nearly an adult and understood the importance of saving. For this reason Sam saved forty of the fifty dollars he made each week. He had been working for almost a year now. Irene didn’t feel like doing the math but she knew it was more than her twenty-two dollar share of the ticket.

Irene’s parents didn’t believe in allowance but they very much did believe in chores. Sam hated doing chores on top of his supermarket work but he did them anyway because that’s what families do for each other. However, Irene knew that Sam hated doing the dishes more than he loved his family. Armed with this knowledge, Irene proposed a deal—for a dollar a week Irene would do the dishes. After double-checking his bank statement, Sam gladly accepted. Irene was less than six months to her escape.

Unfortunately, Ursula did not have an older brother to extort. Instead she turned to her classmate James. James’ father was the town oil tycoon and James was rich out of his mind. People liked James. James didn’t flaunt his money but Ursula knew this was her Sam.

James was terrible at math. Math was the only thing Ursula felt she was any good at (on more than one occasion she beat Olivia in morning math drills). Irene suggested Ursula do James’ math homework for a dollar a week but Ursula felt it was immoral to rob education from James. Instead they sorted out an agreement in which Ursula would tutor James in math once a week after school at the back of the library where nobody would see them. The location was James’ suggestion.

Both girls were poised to earn their share of the forty-two dollars by the end of the school year. The work would be arduous and the money would come slowly but they knew what they had waiting for them. For Irene it was the fossils that kept her going and for Ursula a town where maybe the kids hadn’t ever seen The Little Mermaid.

An Idea for Science.

Sun, 19 May 2013 16:23:00 -0400

Situation: Someone you’re talking to says something awful. You can’t just walk away, that’s rude, but your brain will melt out of your ears if you remain an active participant in this conversation!

I make a motion that there should be a button you can press to eject out of your skin, leave your corporal being, and exist on a separate plane of reality until this person finishes speaking and you can leave the conversation respectfully.

example:

You: Hi, how are you?

Person: Great. Hey, shouldn’t the government kill all the —

You: *eject, transport to a beautiful, endless springtime where warm breezes run gently through your hair and you play with puppies and baby goats until you’re called back to earth at the end of the rant*

Person: —and that’s why federal law shouldn’t apply to me.

You: I hear my mom calling, I have to leave. Have a good night!

*you fly away on a pegasus* (also, pegasi are real/accessible in this situation)

Science can make my our dreams come true. Is there a kickstarter for this yet?

I wrote this two days ago because I needed to drain some thoughts onto paper before they flooded my...

Fri, 17 May 2013 11:02:00 -0400

I wrote this two days ago because I needed to drain some thoughts onto paper before they flooded my brain. It was cathartic, I was honest with myself. It isn’t comedy but I really like how it turned out and variety is nice, right? Real Talk under the jump.

I’m breaking my dependence on weighing myself

This week I challenged myself to do yoga every night. Mainly because I have a Tough Mudder in 16 days and need to work on upper body strength but also because I’ve been stressin’ lately and need to take some serious steps to chill out. In addition to nightly yoga I decided to add a bonus challenge for myself. Just for fun, just to see if I can, I am not weighing myself this week. The challenge sounds trivial but I have weighed myself nearly every single morning since sophomore year of high school. On any given day over the past 7 years I could tell you my weight to the half pound (and since I’ve upgraded my scale I know it to a tenth of a pound! Mathematical!).

It affects my mood and how I eat and act and dress. Even right now, writing this on the train, I keep thinking about how great it will be to just go home and weigh myself so I know what and how much I should eat for dinner. It’s unhealthy, I know. I would never stay in a relationship with someone who had so much negative control over my actions, so why let an inanimate object have that power?

I’ve milled over possible reasons that I am so preoccupied with this number every single day. Most obviously, I lost a good amount of weight over the past year and I am paranoid about regression. Another part of me thinks its because I’ve always been an academically focused individual and subconsciously I have decided my weight is a grade for my body. This idea is wrong, I understand that.

Mainly, there’s a certain comfort in the false sense of control constantly knowing your weight gives you. It’s a peculiar, number-based intimacy with your body. It’s not that I wouldn’t feel guilty if I overate, but I know exactly what to anticipate the next morning. On the other side of the coin, I know exactly how much weight I’d lose from fasting for a day. Numbers are quantifiable, easy to understand. By that logic, to know the numbers is to know my body. Without realizing it, I’ve become reliant on the ritual of weighing myself on the regular.

Real talk, I’m three days in and this is way harder than I thought. Sure, over the past few years I’d wake up too late some days or be out of the house or just plain forget to weigh myself in the morning but even then I’d usually hop on the scale later in the day just to get a ballpark. Now that I think of it, this is the first time that I have consciously restricted myself from doing this since I started. What’s even crazier is that I immediately tried to get around this whole challenge. The first morning, in lieu of weighing myself, I took my measurements. Because that’s totally normal.

There’s a very zero gravity feeling to this exercise that makes me realize how strongly I define myself in relation to my weight. It’s the second step in my morning routine. Reacting to that number has been a very easy way to decide if I’m feeling glass half full or glass half empty in the morning. Without the scale I have to—hold on for some crazy talk—I have to decide how I feel about the day on my own.

On the whole, I have good self esteem; I truly believe I’m a seriously lovely person. What I hope to achieve by the end of this is to disconnect my self worth from my weight so I can measure my body as strong or sore or tired instead of thin or heavy. So I can accept my body as beautiful without asking for approval from the scale first.

I anticipate one of the most difficult parts of this will be getting back on the scale at the end of the week. What if I’ve gained a thousand pounds? What type of awful mistake would this have been? Conversely, if I lose weight I may try to meticulously replicate this week’s schedule in hopes of weight loss in the upcoming weeks. I don’t want to eliminate the scale from my life. I know that, for me, never weighing myself would be as dangerous as always weighing myself. Surprise surprise, turns out moderation isn’t an easy lesson.

For now I’m trying to focus on healthier things. This is where yoga week as been so good to me (full circle, folks! we’ve come full circle). The status of my weight may be in limbo but I can hold warrior three without falling down and my downward dog looks sick. There’s far more fulfillment to be found outside my bathroom than standing on my scale.

My sister’s favorite past time is to watch shitty movies on my Netflix so every recommendation...

Thu, 16 May 2013 22:39:00 -0400

My sister’s favorite past time is to watch shitty movies on my Netflix so every recommendation is about a quirky, young, independent career woman who ventures out of her comfort zone in hopes of self-improvement and, to her surprise, ends up meeting a man she could never love but then she realizes he’s the one.

For the last time, I don’t want to know about your zany decision to move to Spain and have a baby with your best friend’s gay roommate because you’re both ready and this is the right time but then he dies in a boating accident and you’re forced to do it all yourself and you end up marrying your landlord/male midwife.

What’s the name for when you’re afraid of birds but not just any birds, very fast low...

Thu, 16 May 2013 09:33:00 -0400

What’s the name for when you’re afraid of birds but not just any birds, very fast low flying birds.

Like when a bird is going so fast and then it runs into your leg and its beak gets lodged in your calf and you’re freaking out but you can’t quite reach it and the bird is freaking out and flapping its wings so you couldn’t really grab it if you wanted to and can birds cry? because you’re pretty sure this bird is crying. you’re definitely crying. oh god, why did this happen?

Anyone know the name for that?

The Department of Labor requires paperwork to be...

Wed, 15 May 2013 12:28:15 -0400

The Department of Labor requires paperwork to be displayed prominently in the office. On the wall next to my desk.

This is my Rita Hayworth poster. This is my Shawshank.

Mumford & Runs: A Speed Workout*

Mon, 13 May 2013 11:21:50 -0400

Here’s a fun new workout — it’s called Mumford & Runs. It’s a speed workout for all y’all who want to train hard but don’t want to stop listening to that hip indie-folk the kids are into now days.

It’s easy but I’ll diagram this how-to with gifs so I don’t lose your attention. Go ahead and open up Hopeless Wanderer in another window and let’s break this Mumford & Run down:

0:00-1:07 This part is mad slow. Keep it casual, warm up.

1:08-1:34 Pick up the pace. Mumford & Sons did, you should too!

1:35-2:04 Sprint!

2:05-3:32 Bring it back down.

3:33-5:00 SPRINT!

Keep going! Do as many Mumford & Runs as you want! Go for the whole album! or cardiac arrest! Whichever comes first!

Bonus: Use songs that get gradually faster (Below My Feet) to pace negative splits!

*I have no idea what I’m talking about

Listen up — Second Dam just released Swimming. Everything...

Sun, 12 May 2013 12:47:12 -0400

Listen up — Second Dam just released Swimming. Everything about this band is fantastic, put them in your ears and love them.

Remember when you signed up for Netflix and you got a month for free? Take that $7.99 you saved and buy this album. You can thank me for managing your personal finances so well later.

Clark Kent: I need to reinvent my look. So much so that nobody can recognize me from what I look like right now.

Thu, 09 May 2013 15:14:00 -0400

Clark Kent: I need to reinvent my look. So much so that nobody can recognize me from what I look like right now.
Salesperson: You want a complete and total change.
Clark Kent: Yes.
Salesperson: A great start would be these glasses --
Clark Kent: Here's my card.
Salesperson: Sorry, what?
Clark Kent: Wrap 'em up.
Salesperson: Well we have more.
Clark Kent: Just the glasses
Salesperson: That's not really gonna --
Clark Kent: Just. the. glasses.

I spent 20 minutes tonight imagining what life would be like for my hypothetical child if I named...

Tue, 07 May 2013 21:51:03 -0400

I spent 20 minutes tonight imagining what life would be like for my hypothetical child if I named him/her Buttface. An actual child named Buttface and how all through school teachers would try to pronounce it in a way that wasn’t Buttface and this kid would have to correct them again and again every single year and same goes for substitute teachers and coaches.

I laughed so hard I cried. Baby Buttface has already brought me so much joy.

the weather is getting nice, and that means you can start...

Wed, 01 May 2013 20:53:00 -0400

the weather is getting nice, and that means you can start logging runs outside. but just because you’re starting to squeeze in some vitamin D on the weekend doesn’t mean you necessarily have friends.

THANKS, MAPMYRUN. I GET IT.

(this whole post is a humblebrag about the three times i worked out this month)

‘Scary Doodle’Chelsea Marotta

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 22:16:39 -0400

‘Scary Doodle’
Chelsea Marotta

NetiPot 4 Beginners

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 21:37:00 -0400

Yesterday was my fifth day of battling the flu for the second time this flu season. Turns out by Day Five you’ve abused your nose so much you develop anosmia. Tragically, this is also the day you begin to get your appetite back.

I have never used a NetiPot before today — because I am afraid of willingly funneling a torrent of water into my lungs — but I value my ability to taste food more than I fear death by drowning, so I decided to challenge myself.

Nobody told me that a NetiPot was just self-serve waterboarding. You try to sort out you sinuses and end up revealing you deepest darkest secrets about yourself.

That’s a lie, I don’t have secrets (double lie-tons of secrets, only secrets). However, after today I have the beautiful and unique ability to breathe again.

I won’t get into gross details but I will tell you where I ran into my biggest snag: My nose is pretty much broken from overuse from the flu. Getting to the point where this process sort of worked was a struggle. At one point I had saline leaking out of both my eyes instead of the other side of my nose. Some people call this crying.

It worked, though. Soon after long it worked. And, hot damn, I can breathe, smell, taste, and do all those other fun things having a nose affords.

Achievement Unlocked

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 21:46:11 -0400

This weekend I cleared out an entire room of a party by mentioning the Cannibal Cop at the wrong time. Conversation to isolation in less than 30 seconds. Good thing you don’t need anyone else around to be impressed with yourself.

If I’m ever in charge of hiring someone and subsequently touring them about the...

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 12:42:00 -0400

If I’m ever in charge of hiring someone and subsequently touring them about the brownstone-turned-office my tour highlight will be, ‘Here’s our bathroom, hope you’re not bladder shy! It’s nestled between the President’s office and an open conference room so it will without a doubt every time feel like you’re peeing in an echo-y cavern and disturbing the work of everyone on the floor.’

my new headshots, obviously. [many thanks to doodletome for...

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 23:26:00 -0400

my new headshots, obviously.

[many thanks to doodletome for inspiration]