Vol. 4: Lather, Rage, Repeat – Starshine Roshell

Diving into Cuddle Parties

Published on November 27, 2018

Is Growing Trend Truly Soothing Comfort or Just Sanctioned Groping?

Apocalyptic fires. Mass shootings. An executive branch of government demonizing immigrants, sexual assault victims, and the press. Lately it feels like our nation gets scarier by the week.

So I wasn’t surprised to learn there’s a cuddling trend sweeping the nation; sometimes jammying up, burrowing into a blankie, and going full-frickin’-fetal is the only way to cope with reality. But some folks aren’t just curling up on the couch — they’re snuggling up to strangers at Cuddle Parties. And they’re paying for it.

Told you. Scarier, right?

Bliss by Pavement Pounding

Published on November 14, 2018

For two years, I’ve been suffering from a strange, specific feeling: I’m in a hole in the ground and steamy manure is being shoveled on top of me as I lie there holding my breath.

I’d been counting on the midterm elections to offer sweet relief from this slow-death-by-dung sensation. But donating $10 to distant campaigns and sharing social media posts about voter rights weren’t helping me shake that feeling of being powerless over my own fate — of having to shut my eyes tight and just … acclimate to the aroma of excrement.

So when a friend asked if I would canvass door-to-door for a Democratic candidate in a tight congressional race two days before the election, I jumped at the chance to do something that might actually have an impact. I’ve never canvassed before, and in fact I loathe anyone coming to my door uninvited. But if I’ve learned anything since Election Day 2016, it’s that democracy is a full-contact sport. So I suited up in sunscreen and sneakers and got out the gosh-dang vote.

Camping Sucks; There, I Said It

Published on August 22, 2018

Done Apologizing for Detesting the Great Outdoors

I’m sitting 5,400 feet high in the Sierra Nevada mountains at the edge of a glassy lake that’s rimmed with fluffy pines pointing emphatically at the sky. I’m keenly aware that I’m supposed to feel blissish and perspectivey. But my legs brandish 13 bug bites of various dimensions and shades, there is dirt in my nostrils, and I’m dreading another torturous night on a foam pad punctuated by the random swish-swish of my son flopping around in his nylon sleeping bag.

I loathe camping, and I’m sorry about that. I really am. I’m comfy admitting that I hate other things I’m supposed to like: Green drinks. Michael Moore. Black Mirror. When you say you detest camping, though, people look at you like you’re broken, like you’re missing a crucial piece (the way your tent always is).

The Call of Target’s Toilets

Published on June 2, 2018

Do You Know About The Bull’s-Eye’s Bathroom Phenomenon?

A dozen years ago, despondent at the dearth of a Target in our town, I scrawled out a joke petition to bring the all-providing Bull’s Eye to Santa Barbara and emailed it to friends. Just for cackles ’n’ snorts. Turns out the entreaty expressed a longing that was shared deeply — and widely. Friends sent it to friends, and within a few weeks it had amassed thousands of local residents’ signatures, including the mayor’s.
For years after, developers tried in vain to bring a Target to town. This year, at long last, we finally get one! Well, we get a quarter of a normal-sized Target. Locals are all asplutter over the traffic and parking snarls they’re sure the store will spawn. And those of us who make pilgrimages to our merchant mecca in neighboring counties wonder how a 32,000-square-foot retail space can hold all of the throw pillows, jaunty Panama hats, diabolically soft jammies, decorative storage solutions, pink kettlebells, Boho goblets, chunky espadrille wedges, and Soap & Glory face masks with which a modern woman likes to deliriously overstuff her red shopping cart. How, I ask you!?
Even so, there’s another important issue that’s being overlooked as we ponder our new Target, and I want to call developers’ attention to it before construction begins: the bathrooms.

Theater Kids Save the World

Published on April 7, 2018

Drama Class Prepares Students to Lead a Revolution

Everyone who’s been to high school knows it: Jocks top the student hierarchy. They earn the yearbook’s Most Popular designations and dictate, by their mere arrival, where the coolest after-prom parties are.
But when a group of outspoken, articulate, enraged students galvanized the nation after last month’s massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, it wasn’t a pack of athletes. It was a ragtag troupe of theater kids.

Safe Table Talk for the Holiday Season

Published on January 21, 2018

Conversing Peacefully with Your Family at Thanksgiving It’s been quite a year, folks. Hell, it’s been quite a week. In the last few days alone, our…

Thank You, President Trump

Published on August 25, 2017

#45’s Frequent Failings Take my Mind off my Tween

It’s a phrase you don’t hear often. His chiefs of staff don’t say it. The terrified people of Guam don’t say it. You’re unlikely to catch any endangered species cooing it. But I’m gonna say it, and I’m gonna say it loud: Thank you, President Donald J. Trump! You’ve done me a solid, and I’ll bet you don’t even know it.

High Society

Published on August 9, 2017

Sunday in the Kitchen with Ganja

When you’re named Starshine, people expect you to be a pothead — and it’s not an unfair assumption. I was, indeed, raised in a cloud of skunk smoke, and cannabis is the national flower of my people. Many was the Sunday I spent rolling my eyes as my parents and their pals hissed on spliffs and cackled at things that weren’t funny as Pink Floyd warbled through our house. I would open a window, go back to playing Barbie, and think, “One of these goons had better have a plan to make me dinner.”

Even as a teen and adult, weed never lit my fire. The cotton-mouthed high that drags you down a rabbit hole of ungainly pondering with scheduled detours for jagged paranoia, slack-jawed lethargy, and wanton Triscuit-hoovering just isn’t my rapture of choice.

Which is why I was surprised to find myself plucking jiggly dollops of drug-infused gelatin from silicon ice-cube trays on a recent Sunday afternoon, rolling them in powdered sugar and plopping them into tubes labeled Fruity Pebbles.

Terror Schmerror: Five Reasons to Visit Europe

Published on July 12, 2017

Life Lessons Abroad During a Violent Summer All we wanted was an escape. A desperate respite from our nation’s political poo storm, and our own incessant NPR-quaffing.…

Trump Plump: Post-Election Stress Eating Is a Thing

Published on April 3, 2017

You used to be fun, they say. You used to make us titter with your escapist jaunts into the lighter side of life. What happened, a few restless readers have asked, to the ribald soccer-mom confessions and largely superficial rants about bass players and fallopian tubes?
Trump happened, you guys. He golden showered all over the fun.
I’m sorry if I’ve been weighing you down with ponderous political tirades. Now more than ever, we all need a moment’s respite from the political onslaught. And I want to offer you lighter fare; I do. But I’m just … heavier than I used to be.
See, I’ve put on a few pounds since Election Night from stress eating. And, okay, stress drinking. My husband deemed my new squishiness “Trump Plump,” and purely because I enjoy a good rhyme and a snappy hashtag, he is still among us. But I’m not alone in my plight. Though Lena Dunham claims election despondence killed her appetite and left her svelte, my friends and I have inhaled every last crumb of Lena’s untouched food and then some.

Category: Vol. 4: Lather, Rage, Repeat