Screw you, World Bank

I watched a film for my 3rd World Poverty class called Life & Debt that basically details how the WTO and the World Bank screws over 3rd world countries. It's all done in the the name of "free trade," though really what it amounts to is big companies hiring cheap labor to drive down prices so local markets can't compete.

The film focused on Jamaica, where tourism is a major industry. A lot of the hardships that the Jamaicans go through has to do with the fact that a lot of these tourist resorts aren't locally owned, and don't utilize local products, so none of the money goes into the economy of Jamaica. The money comes in from foreigners and goes back to to foreigners. With this in mind I thought it would be pretty cool to open a "Fair Trade Resort."

The resort would hire entirely from the local job market, and all of the services in the resort that could be provided by the local economy would be. That is, the resort would buy things like food, alcohol, and linens from Jamaican manufaturers, but if the resort were to provide something like jet skis they would obviously have to be purchased from a foreign manufacturer. Initial construction would be contracted to local companies. Even the band playing in the lobby would be local (You'd be surprised to hear that most performers at all-inclusive resorts aren't locals, but rather acts that are brought in because tourists can more easily associate with their music.)
All this would ensure that the money coming in from tourism would go back to Jamaica, and at the same time provide good jobs for locals and give you, the tourist, a warm fuzzy feeling inside knowing that you're part of the solution.

I think I'm onto something, so don't be surprised to hear that I've moved down to Jamaica after I've graduated and started this little project.

Evils of Modernity and goddam intellectual inertia

I think I learn in cycles at Whitman, or rather bunches, each semester here has seemed to me like a group of classes that are bunches of fruit from a tree, each different but similar in structure in taste. Fall of freshmen year I learned how to drink beer. Spring of freshmen year I was in social problems and politics of mass media among other things. This taught me that cultural norms were destructive and should be pushed against and rebuked. Fall of sophomore year I took alternative core and politics of africa among other things. This taught me how bad european and american missions are in the name of civilizing and colonizing. Spring of sophomore year I took birdwatching, starwatching and us history and learned that I was a slacker. Fall of junior year I went to DC and learned how to tie a tie. This semester I am in international politics, politics of ethnic conflict and third world poverty among others. This has taught me that there is no solution to anything and I should either be smarter so I could figure it out or just tweak fully and braid pubic hair all day. My point is, I'm not sure if it's me, or the courses but I can draw very close connections between the classes. Maybe I subconsciously register for these things in bunches or maybe the lord works in mysterious ways.

Now, if you've made it this far I'll get into the topics I promised in the title, but this is no slick, well-written blog post so you'll have to put up with occasional detours and scenic routes. Society in its modern form has made our lives very easy compared to what it used to be. In the old days a covered wagon got you across the country, but only at the risk of diptheria, measles, cholera, and dysentary. Now we have airplanes that take care of it in less than half a day...or more than that. See I got super delayed in the oakland airport on saturday and took the opportunity to engage in some people watching sitting right by the counter for the 7 hours of down time while they fixed our plane. I noticed one lady, mother aged (but not MILF) who was very distraught waiting in line. WHen she got to the front she was near tears and said she had to get to spokane. SHe then went on to explain that her son was on an outdoor semester with some program, but the program had just gone bankrupt and called her, saying she had to come get her son within 24 hours at some place in bumfuck nowhere, Idaho because they were pulling all their staff and closing up shop. As I said our flight got delayed 7 hours so this lady missed all possible chances to get her boy. Now as I said, modernity usually makes our lives easier, but here was a woman, a mother and mothers have a very natural, primal instinct to protect their young and it was clear from this woman's raw emotion that that is what she was trying to do, only to be stymied by this aforementioned modernity. After a few angry hours of pacing around, making phone calls and crying, she gave up, slumped down in a chair, defeated, a mother who could not even through her best efforts act out her natural urge. It was truly heartbreaking, I heard the boy was consumed by wolves, re-introduced to idaho to recapture, nature.

In other news, I'm in a huge intellectual rut after spring break, can't do any work, can't think intelligently, just wanna become a professional masseuse so I can rub sarah dawe's butt.

Also, a new sex move, The Monstro, has been invented, that is all.

The Tribesman Theory

First of all, a major backbone or something that supports my internet has been eaten through by rats or something so it will be really slow for the next few days. I'll still try to post but bear with me while they patch the hole and hunt down those damn rats. It never ceases to amaze me how technology, as advanced as it is, always ends up being vulnerable to the most primitive of elements. Take the space shuttle for example. We put people in space all the time, but if a tiny piece of space dust were to fly into it the shuttle would implode and kill all the astronauts on board. I have actually developed a sort of developmental theory for humanity based off of this concept, and I call it the "Tribesman Theory."

Essentially the Tribesman Theory was based off of a conversation I had with my friend Colin. Colin is one of those friends that you meet once in your life that happens to have their brain running exactly the same speed as yours; so Colin is really good to brainstorm with because we practically complete each other's sentences. Anyway, the Tribesman Theory can be described fairly simply, but it's implications are widespread:

The most powerful country in the world is the United States. We have the best trained and funded military, and we spend more money on defense than any other country on the planet. Our military is the most technologically advanced as well; we can shoot nuclear missiles out of the air thousands of miles away from our own shores. For all intensive purposes, we are the most difficult country to attack and invade or even engage to engange in combat with. Yet, for all our training and advancement, there is a finite number of tribesman that could succesfully attack and overwhelm our entire military. This number would indeed be very large, but I focus on the word finite. It may take 20 billion Zulu tribesman attacking along the entire northern border from Canada, but they could eventually take us over despite our highly advanced military and defense technology. This is the Tribesman Theory. Any technological advancement can be unraveled by the most primitive of forces as long as that primitive force has the determination and numbers to dedicate to bringing down the technological power. The rats chewing the internet cable is a perfect example of this. The Tribesman Theory dictates why riots are so effective; sheer numbers, however unorganized, can overwhelm a small number of well-armed and trained defense forces.

The Tribesman Theory also explains why in science fiction movies an overwhelming number of alien threats to humankind are mindless bug-like creatures that reproduce quickly and have no sense of fear and no value of life. As our society advances, we are subliminally aware of the threats we are opening ourselves up to, and those threats are being illustrated in fiction, but in fact if we were to be faced with such a threat we would no doubt eventually collapse, be it alien bugs or Zulu tribesman.

* You spend a lot of time thinking shit like this up when you're significant other is on another continent. I highly recommend it if you're trying to write a book or do a 100ft. tall sculpture of Moses. *

Adventures in sailing

I have the most glorious of memories from my times spent on the islands that my cruise ship visited. I have plenty of pictures that I will post online once I get back to Whitman so that you can all see how beautiful these islands were. That being said, I have some really horrible memories of being aboard the ship, with the exception of eating my meals which were delicious...the crew aboard this ship manages to produce 14,000(!) meals a day for the guests and the crew, and they are all 4 course masterpieces. It makes a certain chef I know who bitches about cooking for 40 seem like he isn't doing his job...

The last night on the boat just kind of hammered it home that a cruise ship is not the place for someone older than 20 or younger than 30. It's odd being in this "dead" age group, but it's true that the boat itself doesn't really offer you much if you fall in between. If you're under 21 it's glorious because the drinking age (for beer and wine only, unfortunately) on the boat is only 18, and even younger good little boys and girls can visit a sketchy island liquor store that will be more than happy to look the other way for a few extra dollars. You gotta hand it to these kids though, they get pretty creative when they sneak their booze onto the boat. They buy 1 Litre water bottles and fill them with the clear alcohol of their choice. Then they make sure everyone else on the boat knows they are drunk and are obnoxious about it. It really baffles these 16 year old guys when the girls their age don't find their drunken stuttering very flattering, and they react in the way any reasonable man would and simply conclude that they have to go try to hit on older women, who simply laugh them into a far corner of the boat where they continue to consume alcohol alone together in some sort of homoerotic coming-of-age ritual that involves being piss-drunk in front of your parents and their wealthy friends.

To go upwards past thirty...all those folks are married. You'd get really fucking annoyed (even if you didn't have a girlfriend who was abroad) really quickly if you saw these young married couples having a blast during the day, drinking and partying into the night, and then cooly strolling back to their suite for a night full of awesome sex under the stars on their private balocny. I admit I am a bitter and envious man after returning from this cruise, but I feel like Allah will reward me for my patience soon enough.

The flight home was freakin' miserable, and I should have known it would get off to a bad start when woman in the ticket counter in Puerto Rico hadn't even heard of my final destination. She said "You are going to...Boise?" with an odd look on her face as pronounced the city "boys." Long story short after 9 hours of wonderful air time (they showed Bridget Jones' Diary 2 from Miami to Houston, Joy!) I get to Boys only to find that my luggage must have gotten off a few stops too early. So now I have to sit around and twiddle my thumbs (read: masturbate.) and hope that the airline gets my bags here in time for me to jet back to Walla Walla and finish some shit I have been neglecting while drinking rum in under the Caribbean sun.

I'm bringing back some really delicious rum that none of you can have but maybe I'll let you look at it for a dollar, and you can sniff it once or twice if you wash my car. I've gotta buy a shitload of paint supplies when I get back to school, so hopefully my charge account for the bookstore is already warmed up because I'm gonna ride that baby all the way to the bank.

divorcing friends and other mental battles

i just spent 30 minutes crafting a sweet blog post that then failed to post and wasn't recoverable so fuck you, fuck your mothers, fuck the internet, and if your spring break has been just "so chill" then check this out. Peace out.

St. Maarten and Antigua

First off, seems my bro has taken a liking to that cheerleader I mentioned earlier and bought her a drink in a glowing cup at the bar and then actually wheeled her back to her room last night. He's pretty lacking in the wooing skills...I must have sucked the well dry so there is none left for my younger siblings.

St. Maarten was really awesome...I got to sail on a 1986 America's Cup yacht. I was the main grinder, which is basically a way of glorifying a job where you turn a crank when the captain tells you to. It was fun and a workout; some fat British guy who was in a group of four primary grinders (smaller crank, more guys) and he just stopped and started wheezing and I was pretty sure he was going to fall into the water, which would have been awesome because I think the loss of that weight would have put us ahead of the other boat we were racing. As a result of the crew's lack of commitment, we lost by about a boat length. It was chill because it turned into a booze cruise back into the bay...even the captain knocked down a few Miller Lites after saying something about how he hasn't won a race in twelve years.

Today in Antigua we had to fight our way through street vendors immediately upon exiting the boat. We eventually made it to the beach where a bunch of friendly locals sold us some really cool paintings AND rented us jet skis. These islanders really have the tourist trade mastered. I got a little cocky on my SeaDoo and almost went sailing into the ocean when I tried and aerial 180 off of a wave crest; I didn't fall off but I'm pretty sure I threw out my back. Antigua is probably the most "Caribbean" of the islands we have been to; that is, its what you imagine the Caribbean to look like from all the pictures and movies. Palm trees, crystal waters, and dreadlocked locals smoking dutch and chilling on the beach. Apparently flying to Antigua isn't that expensive either...Spring Break 2006 anyone?

Jailbait and Flaming Democrats

I am currently on the Serenade of the Seas cruising at a comfy twelve knots en route to St. Maarten. In the meantime, I thought I will fill everyone in on the wonderful atmosphere of the ship and the locale, as well as the utterly horrible company I am keeping aboard.

First of all, this is a much younger cruise than I had expected. There are tons of young people here with their families. When I was boarding the boat, one man asked me my age, and when he heard he said I was in the "vulnerable" group. He continued by saying that I was vulnerable because of all the "jail bait" on board the ship. I didn't think of it much at first but upon boarding I knew what he was talking about. There are literally hundreds of teenage girls trying successfully to look much older than they do. You can pick them out because the run in packs and never carry more than a Coke around the ship with them. Still, I can see men with less perception succumbing to these girls.

I was in the cigar bar tonight and I overheard the only other people in the bar talking about "flaming Democrats." They proceeded to rate each other based on their "cylinders;" that is, they counted how many cylinders the various cars, boats, planes, etc. they owned had and whoever had the higher number won. Then they talked about how hard it was going on cruises because they didn't trust their mexican gardeners around their multi-million dollar homes. I eventually got sick of it and went over to speak with them. The first thing I said was "Hi, my name is Drew." They looked a little shocked that someone a 30 years younger would want anything to do with them, but they entertained me. I started to ask them very "Whitman-ey" questions about why they thought they needed all that shit, and it was surprising to hear these rich Bush supporters stutter over their words when they actually had to defend themselves in front of someone with opposing viewpoints. They were used to preaching to the quoir about how hard it was to be rich, it would seem.

Last night in the late-nite club a Long Beach State cheerleader who broke her ankle came up and introduced herself to me. Upon hearing that she was a Long Beach State cheerleader, I was a bit skeptical of where our conversation would go. She seemed pretty cheery and intelligent at first, until I asked her what she was going to do with her free time since her ankle was broken. She told me she was going to lay out by the pool. "Are you going to just read some good books?" I asked. "Books? No way." was her response. I felt bad for literally laughing in her face, but this girl is the norm of the people my age I have met on this boat so far. State-schoolers who enjoy nothing more than getting fucked up and chasing tail. Hopefully I'll meet some people who are interested in browsing the islands for cool art and chilling and listening to the piano in the cigar bar.

I've racked up about $10 of internet fees typing this, so I'm off. Expect another post in a few days.

Puerto Rico!

Right now I'm in the shittiest "fancy" hotel on the planet. We arrived around 11:30pm and there was nowhere to get anything to eat, and the one place that was open was charging around $20 for a cheeseburger. They really know how to bleed tourists dry around here. My first impressions of San Juan are pretty scattered. The city itself looks like a more run-down Los Angeles, with everything packed in really close but nothing of substance, just Burger Kings and liquor stores. Everything is packed really closely together, but you get an odd sense of community that isn't present in cities like L.A. There are many open-air pool halls and bar/discos that have people actively milling around on the street, which you don't see in the states. It's hard to make any solid conclusions about the financial situations of the people living here, because on the way to the hotel we passed cruise ships and natives driving Mercedes-Benz, but we also passed places that could be defined as nothing but a ghetto. In Puerto Rico just like every else it would seem that the wealth isn't exactly spread out evenly among the population.
What was strange was that on my flight to San Juan there was mostly Puerto Ricans and a few Americans, while on my mom's flight it was almost exclusively tourists. I guess the cruise lines book up entire flights and pack them with fat families (this isn't me exaggerating, there was a startling number of overweight tourists on these flights.) Tomorrow we get on the cruise ship for seven days, so I guess I should get used to seeing these people.
I'm gonna take a lot of pictures and post them online, and it turns out internet on the boat isn't as expensive as I thought, so it's possible that I'll be able to post while I'm aboard.

Kaylin is also going on a trip to Madrid and Barcelona, so hopefully she'll take some good pictures of that trip too. We're officially over the mid-point of our long-distance relationship, so that is cause for a bit of celebration. I think I will make use of the free drink card on the boat tomorrow.

Spring Break Thought Potpourri

Greetings from El Cerrito, California, home of sunny hillside homes, shitty car dealerships, good salvadoran and vietnamese food and the Mandel family. The Mandel family is interesting because I am really hyperactive and always need to be doing stuff like how at school I take a shit-ton of classes and do lots of activities. Well in that vein I can't just sit around the house for a whole break, let alone half a day. For the most part my sister is the same way but my parents are a whole other story, they can, and in fact enjoy doing nothing or doing menial or mundane tasks about the house. I realized I could not lead a more different life, which makes this house not quite feel like home anymore. Since I've been home I've been out to see friends every day or night and spent the last three days in Santa Cruz chillin with some summer camp friends at their house and at the beach and at some local bars and restaurants. Their house was inspirational, the ceilings were only half as tall as those in the beloved monstro, but it felt like a home, I think our downstairs needs work on that. My friend Meghan who you may know from around the monstro told me that if I write about her here then she'll give me her uber-secret blog address so I'm doing that right now! Meghan Carlson hails from the exotic locale of Walla Walla, WA but she's no ordinary townie, she is also a freshman or first-year residing in the hallowed halls of Anderson along with some of the Monstro's other favorite gals. I for one like it when she wears pig-tails, but then again I'm weird. I was swimming in the ocean in Santa Cruz which was warmer than it should have been but still hella cold and the waves were lousy when suddenly a seal or sea lion popped up next to me, looked right at me and then swam away; shortly thereafer (yeah i used a fuckin semi-colon, I heard some ads about colo-rectal cancer medicine) some huge waves began to push me around like dirty underwear in the kelp-strewn laundromat of the ill-named Pacific waves. It was nice. I'm off to the other part of my state, LA and San Diego tomorrow for a weekend of partying at USC with friends and boogeyboarding at the beach in SD near my grandparents who will load me up with all the tuna sandwhiches I can handle. After that, two blog worlds will sorta merge, reconnect, as gus and brandon journey northward to my house for a few days on the way to their season opening cycling race at Oregon State in Corvallis, OR. Hope everyone's spring breaks are going well, we Whitties are unique in having two weeks so hopefully you are making the most of it and getting as drunk as Olmstead.

peace,
Aaron Mandel

Saw

I watched the movie Saw tonight, and it must tell you it got me thinking. For those of you that haven't seen the movie, it is about a serial killer who doesn't actually kill his victims but manages to find a way to make them kill themselves or each other. It's a pretty twisted idea but the movie was pretty well done. But I'm not here to write a review of that flick, because you can go to Rotten Tomatoes and read about five hundred reviews for it from guys who make a living off being pricks about movies. I'm going to write a bit about the concept behind the serial killer's motives. He wanted to find ways to make people kill themselves, and the methods he used was by placing them or their loved ones in danger and making them make it out of some sort of trap that most of the time ended up killing them. I feel like this was very non-creative and quite violent. All this guy really had to do was a bit of homework and he would have been able to get these people to kill themselves much more creatively:

1) Make them listen to Celine Dion looped over and over again. I think even hardcore Celine Dion fans would realize after a few hours of that shit that they were really listening to the demon-harp of Satan himself.
2) Stock all the video rental stores within 1000 miles of their house with hundreds of copies of Kid and Play's House Party trilogy.
3) Trick them into thinking Taco Bell is good for them, and that they should eat it for every meal.
4) Convince them that Allah will grant them 1000 virgins if they blow themselves up.
5) If they live in a major city, take away their cell phone.
6) If they live in a first world country, take away their internet.*
7) Make them watch that old show from the 80's where that old lady type-type-types away at her old typewriter all day and somehow manages to solve fucking mysteries. I think she was married to that old lawyer who also solves mysteries, Matlock.

This is just a small list of things you could do to make any number of sane people contemplate suicide. I only got in an argument with a friend of mine while we were in Florence, Italy about whether or not I could convince him to kill himself despite the fact that he knew I would be attempting to do so and he actively did not want to commit suicide. After a couple hours of discussion about global warming and how it would mutate his children, he almost killed himself. Then we went and got pizza and he decided I was an idiot. We'll see who's an idiot in 30 years when his kids are all mutated.

*Note: Ocupants of Third World countries are extremely resilient and probably the bravest people on the planet. People commit suicide in Japan and the U.S. over shit like not making it into the right college, but people in poverty go through SOME SHIT and never think about taking themselves out of the game. That's what's fucked about about imperialism...we want to basically take these people from having the will to survive despite shitty conditions to wanting to die in overly abudant lifestyles. That's why movies like American Tail are so fucked up, because its basically about how America is really just trying to convince poor immigrants to commit suicide. It sickens me.*

Disgruntled Gamer

My friend Nate just started up a website, The Disgruntled Gamer, so if you like video games you should check it out. He currently spends most of his days writing articles for video game websites and he is actually cool enough to get to go to E3 for free. He has offerend to host my blog on his site, which is really awesome because I get my own special email and everything. Don't worry, my blog won't suddenly become about video games or anything, though he did offer to let me write reviews for his site as well. I don't get new games nearly often enough to be a legit reviewer, but I did just make some trade-ins for Fight Night Round 2, which is a boxing game that I pretty much bought to play drunk with the other guys in the Monstro, considering it has slow-mo knockout punches and controls so easy a baby could play it and probably beat you.

To continue the pitch for my friends' websites, if you're addicted to blogs written by Whitties and are upset that Sarah Dawe's and Sara Lozito's aren't funny at all, then check out Brandon Weil's temporary Spring Break blog. He is going to be detailing the road trip he and Gus are going on over Spring Break, and I have no doubt that there will be some interesting stuff that goes up in the next two weeks.

I'm currently checking to see if the cruise ship I will be on next week has internet access. It will most likely cost about $8 a minute if there is, so if I post you all better be grateful and click some damn ads or something.

Sorry, it's Spring Break.

Spring Break has officially started. Gus and Brandon are doing a cylcing trip for the two weeks we have and they stopped at my house overnight for some home cooking and to ride up a mountain this morning. Last night when we got into town I was promptly invited to my ex-ex girlfriend's dad's 50th birthday party. With nothing better to do, we decided to go ahead and go. My parents are good friends with these people, and so I didn't feel as awkward as a college student might at a gathering of 20 people with an average age of 57 or something. The party was pretty foreign to the three of us considering there was actually guest entertainment planned. We were to play some game called "Bunko" that apparently requires minimal skill to play and is a somewhat social game. The perfect selection considering the hosts had bought about $1000 worth of booze with the expressed intent of giving it away. Not a single bottle of Pancho Villa Tequila in the whole place, just classy stuff like Beefeater Gin and Gentleman Jack. Gus and I were tickled that it was also an open bar for the evening. After about 300 games of dice-rolling madness, the birthday gramps opened his presents. Most of them were gag gifts. I didn't get a lot of the jokes, because they were old people jokes, about not being able to get it up and stuff. There was actually one about the guy's wife sucking his balls or something, and both of their children (college-aged) were in the room. Pretty much all the guy got was joke stuff and then a "serious" present of some form of alcohol. Obviously all the guests interpreted this man's needs to be a short list of alcohol and sex, the first of which was in massive supply and the second of which I didn't stick around to figure out. Gus made an acute observaton that after the party these people were going to "fuck for about five minutes." It made sense to me, considering it was about 11pm and these folks were ready to call it quits.
Gus created an interesting bond with the birthday boy which mainly circulated around their affinity for strong drink. The long and short of it is that the guy got Gus wasted. Gus really wasn't that out of place because my ex-ex girlfriend was also equally wasted, and I figured it was more embarassing for the hosts to have their boozed up daughter propping herself up on the wall than for some guy with a beard to be stumbling around talking about bicycles.
After the party we headed back to my place to get into the hot tub. Brandon stayed sober and drove home, and I was quickly becoming clear-headed. Gus, on the other hand, was chocking me from the backseat the whole ride home. When we got out the car I made one request of him, and that was to act sober in front of my brothers. He said he could do that, then walked in the house, took his pants and boxers off in front of my bros, and began looking for his swimsuit. I guess it could have been worse, but showing your balss to two people you have never met before isn't exacly an ice-breaker. After the hot tub Gus almost walked into my parents room because he thought it was the shower, but I mangaged to steer him to his sleeping bag.

The man woke up this morning with a smile on his face and he said "that was the first day of Spring Break."

Sketchy People

I don't know what it is, but there is something about Walla Walla at times that can really make my skin crawl. I don't know if it's because I now live off campus or what, but more and more lately I have been seeing a lot of really sketchy people around campus. Now what do I mean by sketchy people? I mean dudes who are over 50, not professors, not walking their dogs and listening to headphones, limping and talking to themselves while pacing Whitman's lushly groomed grounds. In the last week I have seen many many different incarnations of that person I just described. I also see tons of these people when they show up to Monstro parties and I don't quite know what to make of it. Where they around freshmen year and I was in too much of the bubble to actually notice or are they somehow growing, multiplying, spreading? All I know is that it used to be rare to see non-students laying on the Reid side lawn and now it is hard to pass by during the day without seeing bearded men in sweat pants swaying slightly.

In other news, our landlord's dad came over the other day to investigate a flaming wire that was protruding from the house (he fixed it bros). I was enjoying a breakfast of Smart Start Healthy Heart when he came in and nearly fainted when he saw how clean the house was. He looked at me and said, "I thought this was a party house" and then wandered into our living room, returned to me with an even more puzzled look on his face, pointed, and said, "And I thought that was the bottle room!" ahahahahahahhaah, fooled that sucka with our cleanin skillzzzzzzzzzzzzzz////when is spring break coming///////zzzzzzzzzzzcali sun shine///zzzzzzzzzzzz////////zzzzz

The Book of Drew, chapter 1 verse 11

11. God did cast Adam and Eve out of the garden of Eden, and he sayeth unto them "Thou hast forsaken my trust and my love. You must be cast out of my garden of paradise, never to return. Thou will wander the lands for food like beasts, and your lives shall be mortal." Then God, thinking that this punishment still did not suit the crime which Adam and Eve had committed, sayeth unto them further "Thy children shall also be punished for thy sins. Thy children, when they reach the age to bear children of their own, will be forced every season to take tests to prove they are worthy of my forgiveness. These tests shall be called midterms, and their distribution I shall deem the business of Lucifer, my fallen angel who hath corrupted your souls and who will forever punish thy children with tests that are long and painful." Then God did go into the clouds and cast Adam and Eve into the desert, for God did not want to miss Alias, which was showing at 9. Had Adam and Eve only known to buy God a TiVo, they would have been granted a holy pardon to forever chill in Eden.

This is a fully functional space station

I'm sure people could think up some pretty fancy words to describe the residents of the Monstrosity. Some might choose "degenerates" or "heathens." Whatever word you may choose to describe us, you can't deny that we have a good time. Here is a list of things that have already occured or will occur to prove my point:
1) We ordered a DVD from the Maharishi University of Transcendental Meditation. I said I was a student "looking to transfer" so hopefully they won't see through my ruse and send me some crazy DVD that will be a joy to watch.
2) Many of us have tests and papers due this week, but we still found time to kick back with a beer and shoot stuff with a BB-gun from the porch. A cop even drove by and gave us a wave. We shot out his tail-light.
3) Thursday we are hosting a party that involves a performance by jugglers, an organ player, and at least one keg of beer. Not root-beer, real, live beer.
4) We offically labeled our empty room in the house the "Sex Room" by setting up a mattress in it and making a fancy sign with Tiki men on it.
5) There is contemplation of kidnapping a child and raising him as "the only son of the Monstro."
6) Aaron is naked. A lot. Once he put a doughnut on his penis when he was naked, and then he ate the doughnut. It was a powdered doughnut, for those of you who are curious.

I realize this post is rather self-glorifying, but there has yet to be a post that fully encompasses the majesty of the namesake of this blog. For those of you idiots that read this, that big house on the background of the page is the Monstro; I'm not talking about the whale that eats Pinnochio and Geppeto.

A New Era

So Drew was feeling a little overwhelmed by having to blog more than once every two days because he has a lot of other commitments, like winning the world cup on his new video game. Therefore, I, Aaron Mandel will also be posting. And I say it's about goddam time "themonstro" blog became a little more democratic. Not everyone who lives in the monstro is absolutely enormous, hairy, 25-50% mexican-american, and named Drew.

So we had a party on Friday, and after the townie-fest the week before we thought we could keep them at bay by having a costume theme (cowboy/old west), but one of the first people to show up was a 40-55 year old man who we told had to have a costume or leave. He left and returned with a bandana around his neck. On one hand I wanted to let him have what would probalby be the only good night of his sad sad week but another part of me wanted to be able to hold up a mirror in front of his face and have him realize that he should leave. More and more showed up and all the whitties got scared off so we will probalby have some more private/closed functions in the future.

Today Julian and I went to Walla Walla College to run in a 5k fun run put on by some student organization there. Julian proved he is quickly becoming more beast than goober by the day by smoking my ass by about 15 seconds for a stellar time of 19:55, even though I have serious doubts the course was a full 5k he is still a stud worthy of being given a dowrie for rights to his seed. Then I went to draft my fantasy baseball team with my same friends I have done it with for the past six years and I made a few mistakes but I think I gave myself a shot. We are such dorks we have our own website at www.blunks.net/fbc to celebrate our nerd-dom. Then I went to the admissions office for my job their as a caller of prospective students. We were calling diversity students and I had a pile of pretty much primarily hispanics and american indians. Almost all of them had never heard of Whitman and wanted to be either in the medicial field or get an engineering degree. Is it right that Whitman clearly forcibly calls these students to push some sort of upstairs agenda? Why do minorities primarily from lower class backgrounds want to go into lucrative fields like medicine and engineering while I want to fuck myself over by being a journalist or something? Calling a sociologist! Why is my ass so hairy but there are two distinct spots on my face where no hair grows?

Gus and Drew and a bunch of the rest of us spent a good deal of yesterday watching "Wild Boyz" on mtv2, unfortunately I happened to miss what sounded like the funniest segment of all time where an orangutan gets wasted and trashes a motel room, keep yer eyes out for that one!

and long live the monstro crew, we tryin to grow the blog, so tell your friends until everyone in the world checks this site

Fundraiser

My girlfriend is currently abroad in Spain, and it is just too expensive for me to make the trip. Considering I have a friendly community of supporters out there, I decided that it is time to pay your dues! Just kidding, I actually am just offering my services in any imaginable way to earn money for the "EuroTrip 2k5" fund. I will take my laptop with me and blog from the tip of the Eiffel Tower! I'll blog from the canals of Venice and from the beautiful meat gardens of Bor in Serbia.
The easiest way for you to contribute money is by just clicking the hell out of the ads on this page. Also, if you're around Whitman and you want someone to do your bitch work all day, you know where I live. If you don't go to Whitman AND you don't have the time to click a bunch of ads(which is preposterous) then you can just mail me a bunch of money in an envelope. You know that change you get from McDonalds that is a crumpled up dollar tangled with a reciept and a bunch of annoying coins? Just drop that in an envelope and mail it to me, I'll even throw away the reciept for you so you can pretend its not charity.
I can even paint you a fancy picture, or design your wedding invitations. I'm also very skilled and making baby kitty calendars, which make excellent gifts for the grandparents.

If you still don't have the heart to dish out your cash, I'm afraid I have no choice to but to send my friend Joey after you. Joey didn't graduate high school because he killed a street vendor in the Bronx because the vendor put too much mustard on his hot dog. Joey has a talent for making people pay up when they don't wanna pay up. Usually Joey dedicates his time to settling gambling debts, but I beat him at tetherball and he is my slave for two months.

It's either a calendar full of baby kitties or Joey knocking on your door with a pool cue and smile. What's it gonna be, wiseguy?

Bigger Blogging

The pressure is on me from a lot of different people to try and update my blog more frequently because a lot of people say they check it every day. They are being selfish and not thinking about my feelings, but that's okay, God will pay them back in the afterlife. I'm all about turning the other cheek, so what I have decided to do is bring in a guest author that will post his own rants from time to time. This new poster will be my dear friend Aaron Mandel. I can't be held responsible for the things he puts on here; they may make your cry with laughter or sorrow, I don't know. All I know is that sometimes the only way he can keep his head from exploding is to spew long rants of senseless theory every once in a while, and I am giving him the opportunity to record and share it with everyone.

If anyone out there has any useful and creative stress relief techniques, that would be great, because I'm kinda goin' crazy lately, so please share.

Mascots!

So Whitman College is trying to get a new mascot. Many people on the sports teams here believe that a Missionary just doesn't unify teams like it should. A more widely accepted "unofficial" logo has just been a W and C interwoven. Many people have been trying to think of new mascots to submit to the school for a vote. If students are allowed to vote for a new mascot, then the winner will be accepted as the school's official mascot and a design will be created to go on all the sports team apparel as well as all future Whitman gear. A lot of people have been promoting names that are equally idiotic. People want to get rid of the Missionary because it sounds corny and we're not a religious school. People want to change it to the Sweets because Walla Walla is famous for its sweet onions. Give me a break. People want to call the team the Blues because we live at the foot of the Blue Mountains. First off, they are more like snowy hills, and secondly, the Colorado Rockies tried that already and they suck consistently.
I have decided to take this into my own hands and determine a mascot for the school. After much deliberation, I have decided that our mascot should be the baboon. Baboons are chill primates, much like humans, MOST OF THE TIME. Every once in a while though, baboons will just freak out and rampage all over the savannah. If you have ever been to the zoo, I'm sure you have seen at least one baboon totally freak out. Their fangs are about 3 inches long and they have wicked manes. If that isn't intimidating what is? Teams playing Whitman will never know when the beast will emerge, so they'll play conservative and we'll always win. They won't want to tick us off because they know that we will most likely freak out and bear our bright blue rumps as a sign of dominion.

If you attend Whitman, please support the push to have the baboon elected as our official mascot. I have begun to make a few shirt designs to be worn to sporting events; the first one is a shirt that simply says "Baboon Vs. Man" on the front. A lot of people won't get it because they don't attend Whitman and they don't associate themselves more with a baboon than another human like we will. But that is how it will be if we have this sweet mascot. If you actually want one of these sweet shirts, check back because I will put them up on CafePress soon enough.

Visit the Monstro whenever you fucking want to!

I just found out I have an Atom feed for my blog, so you if you use a newsreader or have Atom capability in Outlook or Thunderbird, you can copy http://themonstro.blogspot.com/atom.xml into your accounts and you can get my updates emailed to you or they'll pop up in your newsreader. It's pretty sweet, but I don't know if you like me that much. If at all.