not to beat a dead horse

not to beat a dead horse, but i think a follow-up to the sam-aaron mile duel is in order. Last night (SUNDAY) around 10pm brandon came over to the monstro with a slightly deranged look in his eye, demanding to race me in a mile. It should be noted that brandon has run with me a total of one other time in his life, as he mainly prefers the wheeled mode of transportation. Although I had been hungover all day and played 2 bruising IM football games over the weekend there was no way I was going to say no to Brando so we planned to head over. Just then Sam appeared at the monstro in an equally crazy mood and proceeded to grab beer from my room and chug one immediately. Clark was over hangin out too with annabelle and some cheese sticks. As we headed over to the track sam had two more beers and ate 6 cheese sticks. So 3 beers and 6 cheese sticks deep sam took the track with brandon and I, wearing no shirt in 44 degree weather and only boxer shorts. Something told me this wouldn't be quite the battle as on friday. Gus had taken a break from finishing his thesis to time us and started us off. Sam immediately jumped out to a huge lead but I was sure I was going to beat him as he just chugged three beers and eaten 6 fuckin cheese sticks. After one lap Sam led me by 4 seconds and was on pace to run a 4:36 mile. Brandon was 11 seconds back. After two laps, halfway through the race sam had only slowed down a little bit. I was hammering away at the same pace I was on last friday when I beat sam by one second with a time of 5:13 but Sam was not coming back. With one lap left it was apparent some other-worldly forces were in the air as Sam was not dropping back at all. By the end of the race Brandon had forgotten what he was doing and was imagining himself back in his halloween shower with all the girls and crossed the finish line in 7:07. I came through in 5:15, two seconds slower than at friday's duel with sam. And speaking of Sam...well what did he do? Sam, in nothing but boxers in 44 degree weather with three freshly drunken beers and 6 inhaled cheese sticks in his stomach ran 19 seconds faster than on friday, faster than he'd ever run before, and crossed the line in 4:55. No rational logic can explain this. The man is superhuman. Asked at the finish line what the hell had just happened and how he'd done it, Sam looked around crazy-eyed and said, "it was the beer and cheese man."

coming soon on the monstroblog...the 2005 halloween costume contest.

The results are in

Aaron Mandel reporting--

Sam and I approached the track at approximately 2pm where we were to do battle in a one mile race. Aaron was dressed modestly in a Nike t-shirt, reebok shorts, mismatched socks, and nike shoes. Sam was dressed in full body spandex as Ben Stiller of Globo Gym in "Dodgeball". For speed's sake, Sam removed his shoulder pads and inflatable penis padding for the race. As official race timer Brandon Weil counted down to the start Aaron freaked out and stopped the proceedings.

"Wait, wait," he yelled. "My bracelet, I can't run with it."

Aaron took off his english-hebrew peace bracelet and threw it to the side of the track for this was no peaceful endeavor, this was war. Sam had won every single other meeting and one more less might send Aaron into retirement forever. Sam was taller, fitter, stronger and looked way more ridiculous. Aaron carried the passion of a thousand defeats and two thousand years of oppression on his small-framed shoulders.

The race started and as had been the case in past duals, Sam jumped out to a lead in the first of the four laps. After one lap Sam led Aaron by four seconds. After two laps Sam still led Aaron by four seconds. While this deficit seemingly did not bode well, in fact Aaron was thrilled. In the past at this point in a race, Sam was usually 10-25 seconds ahead and pulling further away. Aaron smelled blood, Sam was flailing and tired and had failed to put things away early as was his usual method. At the end of the third lap Sam led Aaron by two seconds. With one lap left Aaron thought of all the people in his life that he loved, family, friends, blog-readers and dug deep. On the backstretch, with 300 meters remaining he pulled even with Sam. Sam's face was a distorted mass of pain, fake mascara mustache ran down his jowls like tears and around the final turn and straightaway Aaron made his move, accelerating to the thoughts of monstro pride and collapsing across the finish line in a glorious heap of sweat and tears, victorious by one mere second.

Please vote if you think this account is true or false.

an epic battle looms

in a mere 40 minutes, at high 2, sam johnson and aaron mandel will face off in one of their frequent duals at the track, racing by foot over the distance of a mile. Sam has never lost but Aaron is hungry for a win and in better shape than usual after a season of doing nothing but running himself retarded. Will an old champion remain on top or will a new hero rise? Stay tuned as the monstro blog covers the event from start to finish.

mouse tally

Alex "Mouse Hunter" Carlson recently tallied that we have killed 32 mice in the monstro counting a handful of kills over the summer.

The paradox of the college degree.

There are two parts to this paradox. I will present each part in two sections, titled "Section 1" and "Section 2." Each section may-or-may-not be made up of sub-headings and perhaps a bullet point here or there. Or a bullet hole, if someone is trying to shoot you in the back.

Section 1: The paradox of posessing a college degree.
If you get junk mail like 99.99% of other people who use email, you have most likely been solicited by websites saying that you can get a college diploma in less than 6 weeks. Most of these sites do not even demand that you take any classes. What these sites do is sell you fake diplomas from your favorite institution of higher learning for a nominal fee, and it takes 6 weeks to print it out with your name on it and ship it to you. These diplomas, I am told, are almost indistinguishable from their legitimate counterparts. So it would seem that it is rather easy to acquire a college degree...compared to actually attending school. Here is where the paradox comes in. Why, if it is so easy to get a perfect forgery of a Harvard degree, do people bother with attending college? Why not just buy the degree and go get a high-paying job at Johnson & Johnson or Maersk Shipping? The reason is that while any Bob Streetcorner can buy a forgery of a Harvard degree online, he would have to be a college graduate to use the forgery competently. An employer would think something was up if he got a job application for Burger King Manager and there was a Harvard degree stapled to the back of it. Being a college student, I would know to research into what companies check transcripts and what companies do not. I would know where to flash the degree, and where to sit on it. Bob Streetcorner would fold it up in his pocket and whip it out at the movie theater trying to get a discount.

Section 2: The paradox of earning a college degree.
College students spend, on average, four years earning a college degree. It is generally assumed that over this time you gain more and more knowlege, and so you become "smarter." It is also generally assumed that if you have a degree, and you haven't bought one (see Section 1) then you are a "smart" person. People will come to you asking for good Scrabble words and to fix their computers. You won't be able to fix your car, but you will be smart enough to buy one that has the lowest probability of breaking down. So, in general, you are a "smart" person for going to college. You don't like to admit you don't know about something, but college taught you to bullshit. You either know about or can fake knowing about almost everything. This is an amazing gift for only four years of your life. Now for the paradox. You, college graduate, and Bob Streetcorner are both buying a hotdog at the hotdog stand, and Bob Streetcorner whips out his fake degree for a discount and you chuckle at his expense. Then a bright light flashes in the sky and colors flash everywhere before a giant tortoise drops from the sky and lands shell-down on the asphalt, spinning furiously down the street and out of view. You, college graduate, will look at Bob Streetcorner, and he will look at you, and you will both say: "What the fuck was that?"

a joke-story (reputations) and an observation (time)

(all attempts to read from here on to the next break should be done in a thick scottish-irish accent, don't worry it's not weird if no one knows you're doing it in yee head, now yee've started) ayyyy lads, me name is macduff and i am a buggerin upstanding citizen-resident of the yarbloke colony in the scottish highlands. I'm'boot 45 years old and I've had me a long and weary life. At age 30 I had ten wee lasses running wild round me loins. Ivvry buggerin one of thim got he or she a good education. BUT DO THEY CALL ME MACDUFF THE FAMILY MAN? NO. Ivvry night 'round aboot supper I invite me pals out to the pub for a few friendly pints. BUT DO THEY CALL ME MACDUFF THE FAMILY MAN? NO. And ivvry year my fields wield a harvest nearly as big as me dick. BUT DO THEY CALL ME MACDUFF THE FARMER? NO. I swear, yee feck wun sheep.

(accent can be discontinued if desired)

Drew and I climbed in his jet black hyundai 6 days ago and went down poplar st. to Hallett Cinemas with the goal of seeing the movie "Proof". The goal was easily accmplished with the help of $5.50 each and the movie viewed. All in all I found it a rather dry, mediocre movie, but not awful. However, after stewing on one of its main points for a while now it keeps haunting me. The movie is all about math geeks who try to advance the field by proving new things (olmstead should probably elaborate on this at some point) except that none of the big proofs are ever accomplished after any of the mathemeticians turn 30. It's like our brains just peak from like 20-23 and then slowly ooze into mush until by the end we are back in diapers. Maybe this is just hogwash, except, the other day was the honorable sarah dawe's 22nd birthday and she was online so i did something brilliant like message her "happy birthday sarah". To this sarah pasted a birthday greeting I had given her over the same medium last year into the window that she had saved for an entire year. It was an incoherently rhymed poem that nonetheless showed a level of risk and motivation that I don't find in myself anymore. I'm not sure how to finish this post.

They make it too easy.

I like to read me news online. I use RSS in my email program, which is basically a system that emails you when a new headline appears on your selected news websites and then provides a link to the article. I wanted to read about how the White Sox had recently made it to the World Series for the first time since 1959, and I was treated to this picture:


There isn't a lot of question as to this man's intent. I've seen athletes give a friendly "butt-paddle" for a job well done, but I've never seen an athlete, shall we say, "scout the territory" before going in. It seems that he doesn't trust his aim and therefore must check out his teammate's ass in order to finish what he's started. First the man hands, now this...My job is too easy.

Comin' clean

Gather children for a story that I shall tell. This story is as true as my recollective powers will allow. I just finished doing my jewish duty and observing Yom Kippur which is the day of atonement where you ask for forgiveness for all your sins of the past year. However, for this story I shall have to go back a few years, to sophomore year in fact.

An old buddy named Wiley was applying to Whitman and came for a visit. I wanted to show him good times so we went to the corn-maze in the afternoon and got really high via the use of marijuana-drug. We came back to Whitman just in time for an acoustic concert at the Outhouse where vegan bread was being passed around. Wiley didn't understand the communal nature of the bread-pass and as I looked away at the music for a few seconds he devoured an entire loaf. We quickly escaped the angry vegans and returned to Marcus House where I was living at the time (with gus) to figure out what we were gonna do for the rest of the night.

There was a kegger at the condemned house so we met up with drew, hans, and julian and pre-funked a bit in marcus and then headed over. The party was cool, we all tucked in behind Drew as he cut a swath toward the keg. Then some sorority girls came and stole the keg so the party died down, but supposedly a new keg was on the way. We grew impatient and went back to Marcus House to smoke in the backyard. After getting pretty messed up we went back to the party at the condemned house, the keg had returned. After being there for a few minutes, Wiley came up to me in a panic and said, "Aaron, what's wrong with the big guy?" I looked to where he was gesturing to find the honorable Drew talking about trying to get to oblivion while attempting to dive head-first off the porch of the house. Me, Hans, Julian, and Wiley all pitch in to rescue the big guy. At this point, I decide that Wiley and I want to challenge some frat guys to pong at the then newly-built phi hog shack. We all stumble across campus over there and me and wiley get our asses kicked by some combo of hans, julian, and drew. Wiley claims to be blind and I myself am having trouble seeing and standing so I reckon that it is time we go home and crash, for he had to fly home and I had an IM football game the next morning.

We start making our way from the Phi shack to Marcus and things get interesting from here as I think I begin to black out because everything gets incredibly fuzzy so I will do my best to recount. We make it across the bridge by Prentiss where we encounter two girls sitting on the grass. We fall down near them and exchange some pleasant salutations. I recall telling one of the girls that I do theater, which she seemed to take delight in. I also recall her saying that I was short, which she apparently also was cool with. At a certain point I realized that Wiley and the other girl were gone, but the girl i was sitting with said they had gone different directions. It didn't occur to me at the time that Wiley was totally trashed and wandering around a campus he had never been to before. I honestly have no idea what I did or said but me and the girl (who is nameless for reasons that shall present themselves later) walked back to Marcus House. As we approached the door of Marcus House I saw the hulking, drunken figure of Wiley slumped against the front door. He had made what must have been a heroic, drunken journey and gotten himself all the way to the front door of Marcus House only to find out that to enter, one needed to know a punch code on the number lock. I let the three of us in, and Wiley informed me he needed to vomit. I started to lead him to the bathroom right outside me and Gus's room (gus had already gone to sleep-surprising?) but before he could go puke in the toilet, the girl i was with darted in and locked the door to pee. Wiley looked at me with helpless eyes and a tragic look on his face. He really needed to vomit and I respected that, since it was mainly my fault he had gotten to that point, but I was not about to let him vomit all over my room and the area right outside it so I reached into my past when I used to harass Wiley in high school on the cross country team and ordered him as his former captain to hold in his puke. Wiley, like a good soldier did his best, but forces of physics and gravity were too much to conquer. Puke came out his nose, for strong Wiley would not unclench his mouth. At this point I banged loudly on the bathroom door and told this girl to hurry the fuck up hella politely. She opened the door and I pulled her out and pushed Wiley in. At this point Gus woke up and noticed the girl had reddish-brown hair (which is important, as will become apparent later) as a brief flash of her went by outside the door as I swapped bathroom users. Gus put Wiley to bed on the floor of our room while I took a blanket and went out into the muddy pit that was the backyard of marcus. As far as I can remember I made out with this girl for probably about 3 minutes and then passed out. The next thing I knew it was really early in the morning, the light was just coming into the dawning world and i was laying in my boxer shorts in a pile of mud behind marcus house feeling hella drunk/hungover. I crawled back into my room in marcus but couldn't even get up to my top bunk so I just lay next to Wiley on the floor. A few hours later a guy from my IM football team came in to my room and felt really awkward about waking me up I think because I was passed out on the floor with my arm around Wiley for some reason.

Anyways, the thing that has consistently nagged me is that we all have done some silly drunk things involving the gender that we desire, but even in the fog of alcohol I have always remembered WHO THE FUCKIN PEOPLE HAVE BEEN, except for this time. The reddish-brown haired girl who was somehow seduced by a drunken neanderthal and left the mud-bed I had laid down in at 4am is most likely still walking this campus, although I honestly have no idea who she is. So I dare say, if a comment appears after this post, saying, "you asshole, it was me- sincerely Jane Doe, I will be glad, because time is a duller and it's time to come clean on this one, with a good chuckle of course.

The little fly.

I sit here wasting an unreasonable amount of time when I should be doing a number of school projects so as to accomplish graduation in an amount of time that is socially and professionally acceptable for the degree that I am purusing. Instead, I watch this little fly attempt to thrust it's body into the incandescent tube of my room lamp. The tube bathes my bedroom in a sick mild green glow that saps color from everything, but inside that tube the fly sees some sort of salvation, or satisfaction. I sit in my chair, prolonging my evening of work ahead, thinking about that fly. "Why does it pursue such a fruitless goal?" I ask myself. "Why does that little fly attempt to scale a mountain who's summit holds only death if it is reached?" This is a time when someone whose mental state leaned more toward depression and who posessed less sense would draw a parallel between their life and that of the little fly. They would sit and say, "Like the little fly, I too am trying to break into a world that would just as soon see me die in its overwhelming glow than see me shine along with it." There are people out there who would think themselves smart for observing this corrolary. They would think themselves creative for writing a short story or poem about it. They would think themselves accomplshed by publishing a thesis or speaking up in class.

I am not the person who sees himself in the little fly. I am the person who sees himself sitting in the chair, observing the little fly attempting its quest for the unattainable. I do not want to ruin the little fly's dream. I do not want to make its efforts seem worthless. But the little fly's constant assault on the lamp makes a "buzz buzz buzz" that nags at the back of my head.

I get up, and I turn the light off.

Fears

When I was a kid the most terrifying things were never created out of my own imagination, but were instead spawned out of the television set. I can remember being babysat by my older cousin when he decided to watch Alien. I sat behind the couch the entire time taking a slow peek now and again only to see something deeply troubling and terrifying and hiding hy face again. Alien spawned a fear of aliens that somewhat exists to this day, and my fear of aliens is the only fear that I can pinpoint the exact events that shaped the development of the phobia. I recall that before aliens I was afraid of volcanoes. I remember going camping and seeing mountains and getting sick to my stomach with fear that the mountains all around me would erupt into hot storms of rock and lava. I dealt with this fear of volcanoes by drawing pictures of volcanoes destroying entire villages, complete with rocketing fireballs and parachuting men (don't ask me why someone would parachute into an erupting volcano, it's just how I dealt with shit back then.)

After Alien got the ball rolling, I watched another film titled Fire In The Sky. The fact that it is supposedly a true story made me shit my pants to begin with, but then about ten minutes into the movie you find out it takes place in Snowflake, Arizona. I was living in Phoenix at the time so I practically had an aneurism before I watched the entire film. That movie sealed the deal and I've been afraid of aliens ever since.

I also remember hiding behind the couch every time the music video for Huey Lewis and the News' "Hip To Be Square" came on. My babysitter loved Huey Lewis, but for some reason the music video trouble me to the core. I remember absolutely nothing about the video, and I've tried to find a link to it to try and remember what about it gave me such terrible nightmares, but I haven't come up with anything. Perhaps someone out there remembers the music video and you can help me discover a long-lost fear.

Neuticles

avid readers of www.cnn.com such as myself may have noticed this article recently pertaining to Neuticles. Neuticles are fake testicles put into dogs after their real ones are removed in the neutering process. Neuticles, according to their website, increase a dog's self-esteem. Now I don't know about you, but there are definetly some over-aggresive dudes I know that could probably use this procedure. However, this really presumes a staggering level of stupidity in dogs. I mean if you woke up from unexpectedly falling asleep on a plastic cot at the hand of a needle to find that you no longer had much interest in humping a fire hydrant or the urge to do the one thing that your biological soul is inclined to do, wouldn't you question the existence of rocks where once your man-jewels had lain?

i am getting out-evolved

i can't fix anything or correctly use tools. In a play production class sophomore year I was the only one who failed the basic "tool test" required to work in the shop, so I had to get my credit operating a snow machine for a show. I think by the time I'm 40 there will be a monkey model of me that is bigger, smarter, stronger, faster. Or maybe that's actually RIGHT NOW! And I kinda like it.

Katrina Cash Cow Mice Madness

We at the residence of 314 E. Poplar St., more commonly known as the Monstrosity opened our doors and hearts to the thirsty students of Whitman College last Saturday night to raise money for Hurricane Katrina victims. With something like 8 other parties going on and a $3 cover charge to get in, we were worried. However, the allure of two bands and three kegs proved to be akin to white on rice as the evening raised over $900 dollars, meaning that for at least part of the night, 300 people passed through our house, one even left his ID card on our counter and retrieved it later. The next morning we all rose groggy and hungover to march onto ankeny to continue the hamburgerlurgers dominance in IM football and that dominance continued as Phi Delta Theta forfeited. This surely had nothing to do with the fact that their two best players happened to be playing for us. Then the girls Black Attack team, maimed, mauled and walked all over another senior team. Garrett took 140 pictures (actually) of the game so hopefully Drew can post some of those here soon. There is one of my ass that will make a grown man weep. It should also be noted that despite trapping and killing five mice in the last week, the sightings continue, and one trap was even dragged with captured prey in it from the third floor down to my room, where garrett found it and actually considered taking his shotgun outside and shooting it. WOW. Fortunately he could not enact his plan because one of the many neighborhood monstro-cats grabbed the trap, with slightly alive mouse still within and took off to a secret cat lair for a nice meal of feces and hair. I however, still maintain that there are no mice in the monstrosity as in two semesters of living here, I have yet to actually see a mouse, so don't believe the hype.

From a domino's pizza ad: "feed your mind"

The Standoff

Yesterday I had a moment that was out of an old western movie. I was riding my bike down the damp sidewalk rather casually. I wasn't in a hurry; I had to get to the library to print off a paper. The bell tower tolled 2pm, and I looked up the sidewalk to see an old woman in walker moving her way down the sidewalk. This woman was the epitome of cute old grandma. Snow-white hair with a sweater the same color, large coke-bottle glasses with a golden chain attached to the ends that sagged over her hunched back. She even had the sliced tennis balls capping the ends of the walker for ease of movement. Then I looked into her face. I saw not sweetness, but determination. The bell had just tolled, and it suddenly dawned on me: "This old lady is going to try and race me!" You see, we were both approaching a turn in the sidewalk, and I was making a wide approach to make the turn. It must have been obvious to the old lady that my intention was to get to the turn before her, and I shit you not this woman sped up. Not casually or sweetly either, she hit the NoS and was off. I was surprised by this old woman's acceleration, which set me back a few tenths of a second that could have made me lose the standoff. Then I remembered that I was on a bike. What I had constructed in my head as an even match of wits was actually as unbalanced as a midget fighting a lawnmower. I just pumped the pedals a few times and easily beat grandma Hortense to the turn, and in the process I sprayed her nice white sweater with a nice brown stream of street water.