Our pal Stella Quinn is back to share some sage advice and sympathy. When life throws you down in the dumps, you can’t be worried about that shit. Or rather, you can. And in fact maybe you should throw a tantrum. The trick is to acknowledge (and even enjoy?) the gutterballs. They’ll roll on by soon enough.

“When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.”

Something about that phrase always irritated me, though I could never figure out why until today, when someone very close to me had an epically crappy day. Not like the sort of day where you have bad hair and discover some new cellulite. More like the kind of day where the best laid schemes of mice and dudes go fucking awry and your life feels utterly derailed. On the phone today we were trying to bring some Zen back to the situation. I didn’t have any answers for today. All I could really do was validate the situation by acknowledging that sometimes life really, really sucks and there is nothing you can do about it.

It was at that point that my friend sarcastically repeated that weak-ass maxim about lemons and lemonade. I objected immediately, finally realizing what was so wrong about this way of thinking. Life does hand each of us lemons sometimes. But I don’t think the answer should be to simply accept what life happens to hand you, sugar coat it, and then dilute it until you can choke it down. What if you don’t like lemonade? What if you wanted a beer instead? When dealing with setbacks in life, should we really feel obligated to accept everything we are handed and attempt to mangle it into something we can tolerate?

The Tao Te Ching tells us to “be like water,” flowing into the shape of the path before us and not attempting to waste our energy on obstacles that will not be moved. The Dude exemplified this when his rug got peed on. He didn’t accept that he’d have to live with a lemon rug now no longer tying the room together in its pee-stained state. He threw it out, and then he took the matter to The Big Lebowski. Like a stone in a riverbed, The Big Lebowski refused to replace the rug. The Dude did not waste his energy trying to break his opponent down. He circumvented his obstacle, waltzing out of the room and telling Brandt that he could have any rug in the place. Like Lao Tzu promises, The Dude is able to overcome all things by flowing around rather than beating against the jagged stones that crop up on the road of life.

Life is strikes and gutters, ups and downs. Most of life’s plans tend to be easy to control. If something you planned doesn’t happen, such as getting your laundry done or making it to the grocery store, it’s usually because we chose to do something else or just plain slack off. But It is especially hard to abide when your careful plans are knocked down by an outside force. We’ve all been there. Getting dumped. Getting fired. But we have to remember to be like water, and keep on keeping on until we start throwing rocks again. Another way of putting that is to say that when life hands you lemons, you can tell the lemons to go fuck themselves and go get yourself a beer. Or a nice refreshing White Russian. You’re never stuck with what life gives you. There’s always a way to flow around every obstacle, reshaping your own path as you go.

Sometimes life is pretty crappy. There’s no getting around how frustrating meaningless misery can be. A Nihilist would see life’s setbacks as an excuse to give up or get angry. But the weird part about life is that sometimes when you look at those tough times when your path took an unexpected and painful turn, a whole set of options appear that you may never have considered before. The toughest period in my own life set me on a trajectory that led me to where I am today. It was fucking frustrating having to constantly replot my path when things weren’t going well. But while I didn’t enjoy a minute of the tough times back then, I realize that without them I wouldn’t have my present relationship, job, pet, friends, or most of the other things that now make me insanely happy. So I have no regrets about the gutters, because man did I end up throwing some strikes.

When life sucks, just let it suck for a moment. Acknowledge the hard times for what they are. Lose your cool. Listen to some angry music. Break something. Wallow. Then wipe off the dribbling mascara, take a nice hot shower, and begin your clean start as you go with the flow. Roll around the rough edges on your journey rather than striking against them. View obstacles as creative challenges in your life’s cartography. Wherever it is you want to be, you’ll get there.

I should begin this by admitting that I like the Eagles. Lots of their tunes rock, and the Eagles will forever have geek street cred as the authors of “Journey of the Sorcerer” which served as the theme song to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I’ll now try to get back in the good graces of my fellow Dudeists by saying that I dig Creedence way more than the Eagles. However, the first time I saw The Big Lebowski I was puzzled by the fact that one of The Dude’s strongest emotional reactions is to the fuckin’ Eagles, man. The Eagles literally wrote the tune telling us to “Take It Easy.” So why doesn’t The Dude dig what they do?

Upfront it can seem baffling that Creedence would get the place of honor in The Dude’s car’s tape deck and the Eagles are so offensive as to warrant a protest that gets you ccr1kicked out of a cab. Both bands can fairly being accused of being, as Holden Caulfield would put it, phonies. John Fogerty was definitely not born on the bayou, and I seriously doubt that Glenn Frey ever stood on a corner in Winslow, Arizona with seven women on his mind. Both bands broke up due to personal conflict and creative control issues. So what’s the big difference between the two?

Quite a lot, it turns out.

Band origins were the first giveaway. The Eagles have an unapologetically polished studio sound. They were really more of a supergroup of seasoned session artists with specific business goals, much in the same way that Led Zeppelin was when they started out. It’s not that the Eagles’ decision to quit playing second fiddle and create their own band isn’t admirable, but the origins of Creedence feel more Dudely because the band began with friendship, not a business plan.

Fogerty wasn’t from the bayou, but he was from Berkeley, California, a place that was the epicenter of political thought in the sixties. (Now it’s populated by trust fund hipsters sitting at Starbucks using their iPhones to tweet about The Corporations, Man. Bummer.) The members of Creedence grew up in the same town and went to high school together. Every member of the original Eagles lineup was from a different state and didn’t meet until their careers as hired guns were well underway.

Like The Dude, John Fogerty was on the wrong side of authority figures. Creedence’s old record label ripped off record proceeds for years from Fogerty, even though he wrote almost every song the band ever recorded. They even sued him for playing his own song, claiming it sounded too much like one of his old songs. Which he wrote. Fucking fascists. For this exact reason, I’ll openly admit that I won’t pay for Creedence songs. As a method of protest I’ve ripped every one of them from a friend’s CD. If Fogerty ain’t getting paid then neither should the record company, as far as I’m concerned. And I’d like to think that The Dude would approve of principled digital piracy.

The Eagles, on the other hand, had an arsenal of lawyers at their disposal and never lost control of their music due to the naive belief that their record labels wouldn’t screw them over with bogus contracts. When they broke up they were still able to fulfill their contract obligations by releasing an album without ever being in the same studio together. That takes business acumen that a conscientious objector like Fogerty wouldn’t have wasted time on.

Most importantly to the themes of The Big Lebowski, Fogerty narrowly escaped being sent to ‘Nam by joining the National Guard. So when he wrote “Fortunate Son” he knew what the fuck he was talking about. “Ramble Tamble” gripes about fucking fascists of the sort that run Malibu. “Who’ll Stop the Rain” celebrated the power of numbers in the counterculture movement, and “Run Through the Jungle” protested the proliferation of guns in urban neighborhoods.

The Eagles didn’t write protest music. They wrote really great studio-polished pop songs performed in a rock style. While the members of Creedence were steeped in the political revolution of the late sixties, the Eagles weren’t around for any of it. Before 1971 they were touring as hired guns for Bob Seger and Linda Ronstadt. When they got together, they recorded their first three albums in Britain. They were making art, not politics, going so far as to compare their rock star lifestyles to that of Old West outlaws on their second album Desperado. Creedence stayed right at home in California, laying down every one of their tracks in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

I theorize that The Dude’s hatred of the fuckin’ Eagles is not overt. It’s more that their music offers nothing to The Dude’s ethos. Everything The Dude is just jives a little better with Creedence and isn’t reflected in the Eagles. Music can do a helluva lot more than a rug to tie the room together. The Dude didn’t steal the Big Lebowski’s rug and then go home and lie on it in silence. He put on his headphones. Sure, maybe he listened to the sound of the 1987 Venice Beach League Playoffs, but that’s got to be music to The Dude’s ears. Likewise, if I’m gonna light some candles and have a nice relaxing bubble bath, I’m definitely cranking up “Long as I Can See the Light” and not “Hotel California.”

I don’t think that Dudeists are required to share The Dude’s dislike of the Eagles. That would be, like, dogma and stuff, which is super un-Dudely. But I believe we can all appreciate and respect the reasons behind his taste in tunes, and keep a special place in our tape decks for Creedence.

Recently some in the media have accused Dudeism of being “phallocentric.” This accusation will not stand! The Dudeocracy minds, dude! Rev. Stella Quinn discusses what it means to be a female Dudeist in this strongly imaginal article.

By Rev. Stella Quinn
High Priest of Zymurgy

So far Dudeism is a largely male religion. There are various opinions as to why this is. Some draw attention to the word “Dude” the cause, saying this implies a male-oriented way of thinking. I’m a native of The Dude’s blessed homeland of Los Angeles, and I can say that in my native dialect the term “Dude” is a gender-neutral title. I can say “Dude, let’s get a burrito” to anybody.

That being said, “Dude” does occasionally have more male connotations, but usually only when it’s specifically contrasted with a female word as in, “I know the chick who is dating that dude.” Still, I’m doubtful that the gender imbalance Dudeism is experiencing has anything to do with linguistics. I think it’s got more to do with the fact that because The Dude is male, it’s easier for men to identify with him on a superficial level. It’s going to take a little bit of work to help special ladies look past the beard and find their Dudeliness.

Maude In feminist circles — those are folks who dig strongly vaginal stuff — it’s often said that you can tell if a movie is sexist or not based on whether or not there are (a) two or more female characters (b) who speak to each other (c) about something other than a guy. The Big Lebowski doesn’t quite achieve this. The female characters all seem segregated by the men in their lives. The two most important women in the movie represent the far opposite ends of the spectrum. Maude is cold, overly formal, and wants very little to do with men. Bunny is a selfish nymphomaniac bimbo. All we know about their relationship is that Maude despises Bunny. Admittedly, this is easy to understand but it doesn’t help that the only relationship we see between two women is a hostile one.

There are only a few other females in The Big Lebowski. Karl Hungus’ girlfriend, who has no name, allows her man to mutilate her. The uptight coffee shop waitress, who has no name, and doesn’t stand up for herself when Walter gets out of line. Walter’s ex-wife Cynthia is never seen but her invisible emasculating presence seems to be the root of a significant amount of what is wrong with Walter. The flick could easily be construed as being deeply misogynistic.

But let’s be fair. Although there isn’t really what I’d call a positive female role model in The Big Lebowski, the male characters aren’t admirable people either. Walter is abusive and unpredictable. Donny is a wimpy doormat. The Big Lebowski is a manipulative crook. The Dude, Walter and Donny are bound together as friends apparently only because of their shared love of bowling, because they don’t seem to have much else in common. With the exception of The Dude, every character in the film abuses or manipulates everyone else.

It’s The Dude’s ability to transcend the chaos with grace and patience that makes him the hero. These characteristics have nothing to do with his gender or what-have-you. His ability to float past the rough edges on the people around him allows him to, literally, “abide.” This is the great lesson of The Big Lebowski; all of us have parts that are broken and some of us are sociopaths. The sooner we just accept that, the sooner we can coexist with those who are capable of coexistence and sidestep those who are not. So while The Big Lebowski is set in a predominately male world, the genders of the individual characters matter less and less as you manage to accept interesting, dysfunctional people for who they are. That’s the essence of abiding.

It will be, at least in the early years of Dudeism, problematic that The Dude is a male figure. Chicks have been screwed over by patriarchal religion for over 5,000 years now, and the sorts of special ladies that might really have something to contribute to Dudeism might be wary of a philosophical icon that might at first glance look like just another incarnation of The Man. After all, the maleness of all the dudes who started pretty much every other religion out there has been used as an excuse to exclude women from leadership and full participation. We’ve got to transcend gender and shift our thinking so that we don’t look at The Dude as being defined by a pair of testicles.

Dudeism represents an opportunity for a fresh start free of the harmful gender constructs that our society is still dragging around like a smelly old suitcase. When the most admirable character in The Big Lewbowski is a guy and all of the women are less than likeable, it taps into some deep problems in the way we’re trained to think about who we identify with. Female Dudeists shouldn’t be forced to compromise by identifying with Maude or Bunny. They aren’t the hero; The Dude is.

Differentiating between “Dudes” and “Dudettes” or “Chick Dudes” doesn’t seem to help much with this problem. The terms “Dudette” and “Chick Dude” places women in the category of “other.” It reinforces the idea that the default gender is male, and women are lumped in as an afterthought. It’s hard to truly abide when you feel like an exception to the rule.

This is the new shit that needs to come to light: we’re all just Dudes. We can make the word, in the parlance of our times, a gender-neutral term. Dudeism has a lot to offer to everyone. The more we work to be sure we don’t use a subtle language of exclusion, the better.

[NOTE: One of the articles accusing Dudeism of being "phallocentric" here. Plenty of good discussion in the comments section. And our forum thread concerning the topic here.]

What a boring question. Why would Orwell use satire? Why would Mark Twain use sarcasm? Why would Jim Carrey rely on his flatulence to carry an entire film? Because it works, ya lazy English teacher. Duh. How about a worthwhile question, like asking students what they think about the merits and pitfalls of trusting authority figures? But no. We’re stuck with this. It may as well have been one more lame-ass essay about irony. Oh, well. Let’s tackle it.

Why does Animal Farm employ satire? How about because it would have totally sucked if he didn’t? Satire, with its stock characters, simple, allegorical plot structure, and extensive use of mockery, allows for really complex political ideas to be boiled down into something the average person can understand, and makes it fun to boot. By using fiction, you stand a chance of telling a story somebody wants to read. Nobody goes home from work and thinks, “gee, I’d like to read a lengthy PhD dissertation on the inherent dangers posed by totalitarian power structures.” Bo-ring. Animal Farm without allegory and satire is just the three pages in a high school history textbook where they gloss over the Russian Revolution. With the allegory and satire, it’s funny, thought-provoking, and has the ability to be applied to many scenarios beyond Stalin and Trotsky.

A big plus of using fiction rather than history to make your point is that it’s easier to keep readers hooked. Fiction allows for a compact story, a manageable cast of characters, and a little mystery about how it’s going to end. History can’t (and shouldn’t) provide any of that. The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism wouldn’t have been interesting if it were about a real country. I plowed through that part of Nineteen Eighty-Four because it was a new tale, and I wanted to know what was going to happen next.

Using real people to discuss complicated political theory is a bad idea. Human beings are flawed, and there’s never a purely “good guy” or “bad guy” in real life. Orwell was interested in exposing bad ideas, not people. By leaping into a fairy tale he could show us that in any society, there are sheep who go along with whatever the leaders say, workhorses who can be duped and exploited in their honorable efforts, and pig leaders who will tell you that your opinions matter when they really don’t.

Animal Farm is deliberately simple to keep Orwell’s message from getting muddled: totalitarianism is the worst system of government possible, as it creates the most opportunities for those in power to abuse those who are not and leaves no way for the people to correct bad leaders. You can’t get that point across with a complex, nuanced history of real people. You need characters that represent ideas, not reality. That’s why when Orwell revisited these ideas in greater detail in Nineteen Eighty-Four, he still stuck with storytelling rather than some preachy work of political non-fiction.

So when writing your Animal Farm essays, kids, remember that its simplicity is its strength. The allegory makes it easy to understand, and the satire keeps it entertaining. Although come to think of it, an essay about irony probably would be most appropriate for a high school paper on Animal Farm. After all, classrooms tend to be totalitarian states, and the sooner you learn to chant to yourself “the teacher is always right” and “I will work harder,” the sooner you can grab your A+ and escape to the sunnier pastures of college.

I’m going to read the entire Twilight series. All of it. And I’m going to watch the movies that have been made so far. Yes, it will be painful, but in the end I hope to come out of it a stronger person, armed with the truth and a no-holds-barred comparison of Buffy Summers and Bella Swan. I’m unapologetically apologetic when it comes to Buffy, and by Zarquon I will prove why she is better.

Wish me luck. I’ll need it.