Great minds think...and occasionally interact

MANDEL2002: we should seriously learn to sail
Toro412: its ratha easy

Auto response from MANDEL2002: i'm going to stand guard like a postcard of a golden retriever

MANDEL2002: and just vanish
Toro412: before gradeyatin?
MANDEL2002: probably after
MANDEL2002: but i'm openminded
Toro412: yeah well I bet we can find sweet jobs working on a charter boat.
MANDEL2002: i smell like a combo of b-o and shit, i don't think i could beat off right if i tried
MANDEL2002: not to say i haven't
Toro412: ha ha
Toro412: take a fuckin shower
Toro412: self-respect my brother
MANDEL2002: ah the life of a bachelor
Toro412: you should want to smell good
Toro412: or at least not smell.
MANDEL2002: it's not high on my list of concerns
Toro412: you'd be surprised how other shit falls into place when you get your life organized.
Toro412: like cleaning your room and being a groomed person
MANDEL2002: nonsense
MANDEL2002: the only great things of this earth have comem out of chaos
MANDEL2002: such as the BIG FUCKING BANG
Toro412: speaking of nonsense, i hear screams from the street.
MANDEL2002: that is the benefit of overlooking the driveway from my room, i just see the deadbeat dude every now and then
Toro412: screams of lunacy from the sound of it
Toro412: ha ha
Toro412: at the mute woman
Toro412: and
Toro412: not at
MANDEL2002: i honestly think being a motivational speaker would be the easiest job of them all
MANDEL2002: you just stand there and say whatever you want
MANDEL2002: "dream of things that never were"
MANDEL2002: "shoot for the moon, even if you miss you'll land among the stars"
MANDEL2002: i mean seriously
MANDEL2002: speaking fees are good these days, that is a good job
Toro412: have you ever dreamt of just living, and been tired in the morning?
Toro412: that is me right now
Toro412: i dreamt all night about talking, and eating, and going to class.
MANDEL2002: my dreams have been fantastical lately
Toro412: my sleep has been shit lately
MANDEL2002: my urine turned into a huge river and then i was in a tree that fell down and i surfed it down my own river
Toro412: that's a dream to write down.

My theory of the internet

There is a new phenomenon emerging on websites like Facebook.com where people can post their photographs and reference the people in them. What this leads to is the ability for one to reference all the photographs of their friends and relatives that they appear in. It is rather exciting to see what turns up when you click on your name and, in my case, 65 pictures pop up that involve you in some way or another. In many cases, these photographs are posted with two objectives in mind. The first objective is to reference a particular event, like the baby shower you crashed with your fraternity brothers high on mescaline or the monster truck rally at which you met your future wives and adopted polygamy. The other objective of these pictures is for comedic effect. I tend towards this category. People will post pictures of you getting arrested, being surprised at the sexuality of your dancefloor partner, or getting personal with a stripper pole. Both objectives are highly entertaining, so looking at the pictures you appear in is like having a semi-biographical reference of your own life as seen by the people around you.

Now lets take this concept and merge it with the method that Google uses to determine the links you see when you do a Google search. The magic of Google is that is doesn't actually SEARCH the entire internet for what you're looking for, instead it ranks sites by how many OTHER sites link to that one. So when you search for "Pokemon" it will provide you with the site that is referenced to the most by other, less popular sites dedicated to the capture and maintenance of fictional fighting pets that live inside pill balls. What would happen if you did this to Facebook.com's photo galleries? Imagine the ability to reference how many of your friends have posted pictures of you invovled in a particular event. Let's say your friends reference you in the picture and at the same time list the event and when it occured. If this was adopted on a large scale, you would be able to determine what events your FRIENDS viewed as the most important parts of your life. You could do a search and see what pictures you appeared most frequently and when those pictures were taken. It would be like having someone write your biography while you were still alive and having absolutely no say in what the author was writing about.

I'm taking back my life. From now on, nobody is allowed to take pictures of me. It's officially against my religion.

You Want Funny? I'll be your monkey! and part two.

try to ignore the picture for now. try harder.


I am 21 and Drew and I were talking. I had noticed a downturn in the number of hits the monstro blog was getting. What was the cause of our tumbling popularity. We've started no illegal wars, smeared no honorable men (in the public reputation sense that is, I smear my shit on honorable men while they sleep at least 3 times a week) and faithfully posted at least once a week. Drew came up with the hypothesis that the stuff we write about is too weird or arcane for general consumptions, our similar philosophy on most things related to space, time, and the combination of the two just don't seem to fly. Drew seems to think that to attract mass appeal we need to turn to easily digestable comedy. No one wants to hear about our inner collegiate quarter life crisis angst or how we feel about the lady who crossed the street in a red pantsuit. You people want a smile to brighten your miserable day, a story about how I tripped on a banana and fell into a fountain in front of schoolchildren. Well for the most part, tough shit, but for now, digest this and if that doesn't crack you up then all hope is lost.

part two: sure to piss off those who agree with the analysis in (unlabeled) part one with just enough humor fix to keep you slaving back for more.

Tonight, in a fit of rare academic motivation, I went to the library to do some work. Normally I work at the monstro because from my desk I have pretty much everything I have at the library plus 1) peace and quiet 2)distractions galore for when work just isn't going so well (if i was more computer savvy the above picture would be here to demonstrate a time when work was not going so well). Well anyways, tonight at the library I sat down to read my book at one of the long tables on the third floor with a group of people. My friend Eden promptly and sarcastically said, "welcome to greek row" which I didn't make much of at the time. However, about 15 minutes later, the girl sitting across from me, who was in my opinion a completely normal human being, was visited by another girl and turned into something altogether terrifying. The two did the usual post thanksgiving, hey, how was your break shit and then the girl pulled out an US Weekly magazine from under her academic books and the two sat down and began loudly dissecting it.

A: Oh my god, she looks horrible in that dress
B: Yeah, did you hear nick and jessica broke up?
A: I refuse to believe that! I am not even going to listen. LA LA LA
B: God she looks fat in that dress
A: Maybe it's just the dress
B: I ate 9 cookies one day this break
A: (laughter, whispering) me too
B: Melissa Joan Hart looks weird pregnant

and so on and so forth. It made me wonder what I have in common with 99% of humanity if I cannot even relate to most other similarly well heeled white, middle class Americans at a 1400 person liberal arts college, am I the exception or the rule? What am I to people like that? A quaint, ruffian distraction when the "real world" gets boring? Meanwhile back in reality I sighed and dug in my bag for my computer which I planned to plug in and listen to music on to drown out the madness. After laboring right in front of the yak-fiesta to set my monster laptop up I realized I didn't have any headphones so I slowly, agonizingly placed the whole thing back in my bag and watched my body explode off that canoe and the pictures of presidents as my soul crept back to the monstro, where it peacefully rests now and forever.

Next stop 30.

I am 22 and I had a conversation with Aaron today about how the days fly by. Thanksgiving break is already an afterthought. I leave tomorrow morning to go back to Walla Walla and torture myself. Aaron then mentions his grandmother who is pushing 80+ if I recall correctly. She says the YEARS fly by. This is what I have to look forward to. I will be 30 before I know it. And you know what comes after 30? Mortgages I think. And babies. And car payments. I do not look forward to mid-life. I enjoy life as it is now, I miss being younger, and I can't wait to be a dirty old man. Maybe the years flying by will be a blessing in disguise. I can't wait to sit on my porch in stained underwear with a shotgun full of salt-rock and protect my peach tree from the neighborhood kids. Especially that damn Dennis. He's always coming over and stealing my peaches. I also hope that with age I manage to attain the mental acuity to pick up new technology. I don't want to be that old man getting passed by the car telling them to get a wagon. I don't want to be that old man who stares at the airplane and says "whazzit?" while sipping a bottle of whiskey. I want to be the old man teaching my grandkids how to use the new iPod while sipping a bottle of whiskey. Most old people spend their money on odd-smelling furniture or insurance scams, but I will be spending my retirement on cutting-edge stuff that puts hair back on my head and allows me to teleport to Indonesia on a whim. You know what they say about a retired man in Indonesia...

Monstro Blog- Bay Area Bureau

I wonder how many french words there are in the english language like "bureau" that have hella silent letters.

So I hope everyone has been having a nice break. I am bored as I wait for 13 family members (this will be a terrifying day, just think of all the Mandel's) to arrive at my dwelling, so here's what I've been up to. On Monday night I was hanging out with some of my friends and we were messing around at my friend's apartment until like midnight at which point we decided to go out to a bar. The bar closed at 2am and we had walked there so we walked back to my friend's apartment but none of us could drive home and I would have crashed there but I was allergic to all the cat fur and would have done one of those slow death by asphyxiation sleeps which I hear aren't that tight. That being said my friend Josh and I decided to walk from the place we were at in Oakland to his house in Berkeley since it was closer than my house in El Cerrito. Closer was a relative term though as we set out, two men against nature, at 3am to get 6 miles to an acceptable bedding place. Drew and I once talked about what a nocturnal lifestyle would be like, and from this 2.5 hour trek experience I can say it would be cold, windy, uphill, dreary, desolate, and a bit boring. However, the eternal peace that settled over us as we crested a street in the berkeley hills and saw the sun rising in the east and reflecting off the golden gate bridge and the san francisco bay made it almost worth it. Then a night-demon slayed us and we woke up at 2pm wondering who had shaved our pubes.

I yearn for world peace.

I feel Thanksgiving is an appropriate time to slightly dent the hardcore edge of the monstro blog and give some sappy thanks to all the monstronauts for being awesome individuals in a mixed salad of a house. My college experience would be nothing without ye fuckers and for that I am eternally grateful. So with that being said, a happy and safe thanksgiving to all of you, even the mice who are shitting in my bed right now.

That old woman will KILL YOU for the last Beanie Baby.

Black Friday. Fingers greasy and that dulled, over-fed haze in the eyes, millions of people go to bed early on Thanksgiving. They set two alarm clocks. They go to bed in their clothes. Whatever it takes to wake up at 4 a.m. so that the best deals will not be missed. This day is the awful mutant offspring of capitalism. We have created a day solely dedicated to shopping. Not only shopping, but gladiator shopping. Like the frenzied warriors of ancient Rome, television advertisements will rile mothers into a frenzy with the announcement of a 3 hour sale spanning from 4 to 7 a.m. on Black Friday. They will prepare these mothers for battle by offering free coffee and doughnuts at the door. Once the doors open, generally friendly people will destroy each other for crappy gifts. Grown men will shove old ladies out of the way. Old ladies will scream at children. Children will scurry onto an overweight woman in an electric wheelchair and quickly pick her apart until a only fat skeleton remains and goes rolling into a stack of Barbie dolls, toppling the pyramid of boxes.

That being said, if you get in my way on Friday while I try to buy my sister a Spongebob Gameboy, I will net you and slay you with my trident.

That's a cute baby penguin, but I'm still hungry.

I went and watched March of the Penguins the other night. I sat down and was fairly entertained by the exposition (for those of you that don't know big words, it essentially means the part meant to pump you up for watching the movie.) Then the movie started and the crowd began to laugh and laugh and cry and laugh at the antics of the penguins on screen. Morgan Freeman narrated the story and made it seem like an epic quest for survival. These penguins survive the harshest winters on earth. Then I had an epiphany halfway through the movie that I was WATCHING PENGUINS WALK AROUND. The filmmakers had managed to edit hours and hours of footage of penguins into a story that would not only keep people in their seats, but absolutely fucking captivate them. I referenced in my memory the several visits I have paid to the SeaWorld penguin exhibit over the years. To my recollection, not a soul would spend longer than ten minutes watching the penguins walk around and dive into the water in their little room. The penguins were boring as hell. They did'nt DO anything. Watching another creature live it's life is pretty damn unentertaining. Somehow, these genius film editors were able to create a film out of hours of footage of penguins roaming stupidly around the ice of Antarctica.

March of the Penguins is essentially the mutant child of reality television. It's the eyesore that everyone is refusing to recognize. The elephant in the corner. Filmmakers were able to take something completely uniteresting and with careful shot selection, editing, and a narrator, they could make a story out of it. Penguins hobbling around on the ice and puking up their food suddenly turned into "a story about love." The same is true for reality TV like The Real World. If you paid a visit to these people during the day and observed them, the thought would slowly creep into the back of your head that 1) they were boring and 2) you did not give a rat's ass what Chloe's relationship with her boyfriend was like. You would talk to Chloe and realize Chloe had an IQ of 61. Chloe, while fashionable and gorgeous, can not legally operate a power tool because she's a danger to herself and those around her. The Real World spends a week filming 8 boring-ass people and distills it into an hour of nail-biting reality television. Granted those 8 people are absolutely insane, but most people spend their days sleeping and eating, and crazy people are no exception.

Though I must say, given a choice, I would watch penguins over the dumbasses on The Real World any day of the week.

and a good morning to you

welcome to my mind, the morning of friday, november 18, 2005.

3:00 sleep
7:00 wake up
7:01 sleep
8:40 wake up, head towards class
-on the way to class the word roistery popped into my head, it's not a real word, it's a place where roosters go to live, or roost, a roistery a roistery a roos-ta-sha-sha, roosters roost in the roistery where they live, a big gaggle of chickens, roosters, yum, bird flu pandemic, a pandemic, whoo whoo a pandemic, a pandemic in the roostery, fuck, it's a roistery.
9:04 enter class still thinking about above topic, shivering due to sub-40 temperatures and announce, "it's frickin cold" only to then realize that discussion had already started. I was still drunk and mainly sat there shaking and drooling.

Now it is 1226am on the very opening salvos of a new day and it is nearly impossible for me to finish and recreate my post from 12 hours earlier. This is a big problem of mine, I can't maintain a cohesive (or coherent) thought process over the course of more than one sitting. This is scary when thinking about writing my thesis, since I usually just crank out all my papers in one sitting so I can avoid losing trains of thought. Whatever, everyone loves the sound of a train in the distance, everyone knows it's true, and conductors for these trains are important. Most people have departed Whitman like ghosts into the night, leaving the school and the monstro eerily quiet and cloaked in a thick, physical fog. I went to see "walk the line" tonight with hans and gus and it was very much like "ray" but well done, if a bit depressing. Now I sit silently at my computer, eyes fixated to the monitor, and ears allowing david gray to pierce the still night air with songs of love and loss. It's a wonderful and strange world we live in, I wouldn't want it any other way.

A response fit for a pauper

Mandel's opening statement:

pauper- and by that I mean pooper but I do say I have slurred my speech a little too much because I had seven man-shares of the gentleman ale and fell into the deep south. We all gon' go fishin' with poles made from plant-life, the critters will bite if you jest get some good bait, bait from earth, earth my place from birth where I'm proving my worth to sustain this curse, a curse of the over-civilized who can't relate, relate to the fish bait cuz everybody has gone fishin, the daddy, the mama and the baby, he even gone fishin too.

Formal Complaint filed by lawyer Johnnie Cochran on behalf of Mandel

--to ask a half-breed to respond to a gentleman's challenge in kind is similar to asking an American genius to prove himself once and for all by taking a test in Cantonese. The playing field is not even, a dog of superior character will never beat the scuzziest of homo sapien in a game of monopoly, even if he can salvage his master from a burning building. At this point, my client, against my wishes and sound legal counsel has asked to propose a duel of his own. I must now yield to my client.

Duel Proposal by Mandel

Ya know what a gutentag is motherfucker? I think the word is kraut but as far as I'm concerned we're talking about some softened driftwood with scrap metal stuck into it for it be brandished as a weapon. SEWAGE FART. We each get the drift wood presented to us by my friend Cletundtrus and we git 1 hour to fashion our gutentag. The winner is determined by whomever gets the guts not leaked out of them in duel, a duel like this cept without all the biotch-padding. After that one of us is bound to have the advantage of not being almost dead so we move on to the next phase. Phase two gun be a good ol' fashioned poop contest cuz whether you rich or poor you still gotta dump. We get 18 hours to eat the most greasy, starchy, fiber-ous foods possible in hopes of laying the king deuce. Somethign like this will not even get you close to my colonic glory. In my shanty house by the swamp I have three toilets stacked on top of each other just to accomodate my droppings. You my amigre are fuck-ed. We can move on to phase three, which I'll defer to you: the gallon challenge. I say you can drink whatever you want, milk, water if you think that'll help, but my beverage of choice will definetly be what has always gotten me through hard times, raw sewage . After I am done with you in this duel you will be lucky to look this good . In closing as the educated lawyer folk end with, the press will be running stories about this event for years to come, until the union crumbles, and the inbred rule the earth. you sir, have been challenged.

Formal Closing by Johnnie Cochran

sorry for offending most decent monstro blog readers.

Your sir, are a BRIGAND!

I am writing this as a formal CHALLENGE to Mr. Aaron Douglas Mandel to compete in a duel of gentlemanship. I have long stood by, tight-lipped, viewing travesties and sins committed against all types of decent men and women, and I can stand silent no longer. You have displayed your genitalia to small babes and new mothers, you have spewed terrible vulgarities at old women gathering in the park, and you have generally run about un-shaven with your naked figure for all the decent world to see. You sir, are brigand, a vagabond, and a ne'er-do-well.

I call on your, Mr. Mandel, to accept this most proper duel of gentlemanship. The first form of competition will be in attire. Whatever man is judged to be dressed in the most appropriate of fashions upon arrival at the salon or the polo club (by our peers) will be granted one point per occasion. Additional points will be granted to lavish collars and the most ornamental rapiers and pistoles.
The second form of competition will be in performance of the equestrian arts. Every Tuesday we shall gather at the greens to run a course with our chosen steeds. Only a steed of pure bloodline is allowed to compete, as this is a competition between gentlemen and not common cow-boys. If you cannot provide yourself with a horse, you must run the course yourself. You will be provided with the proper amphetamine supplements and horse tranquilizers so as to compete on the level of a purebred steed. Upon your request, you can also have a jockey mount your shoulders, so that you may focus your attention on the course.
The third and final form of competition will be in the most sacred and traditional art of the Gallon Challenge. We shall use whole milk with proper snack supplements. Whomever completes his gallon first without vomiting out of the mouth or nose shall be declared the winner.

I hope to hear from you soon.

balance

a: heyy
b: hyup
a: nurp
b: guh?
a: mmmf
b: brew
a: h'up
b: burp
a: brup
b: burp
a: haha

My Mind!

I have often contemplated the circumstances of insanity. I often wonder if there is a point, an event horizon, at which you have enough of your sanity to realize you are going insane, but there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. I often wonder what someone would say when this realization is upon them. I can assume some people would try to hide it, like they just crapped their pants. They would get a sort of pleased-yet-nervous look about them, like they were simultaneously satisfied and scared that something has gone horribly wrong.

The WINNAH

Is, as you can tell, Thomas Kost. Nice costume Thomas.

Halloween 2005 @ The Monstrosity Kostume Kontest

The party this year was amazing, and the attendance was unbelievable. That being said, we now must choose the winner of the costume contest so that they can collect the prize, which is 2000 tickets. Tootsie rolls are 1 ticket each, but if you want the remote control monster truck that is 10,000 tickets, so you have to win a couple of our other competitions, like the caber toss and the goat jumping.
Just kidding, they're gonna get a gift basket with some lotions and potpurri and some yule logs and shit like that. Maybe there will be a shirt that says "Winner" on it or something. Perhaps we will just forget about any prize whatsoever. Regarless, we live in a democratic society, so we must stage a mock vote so that when we pick the winner it looks legit.

*** TO VOTE FOR YOUR FAVORITE COSTUME, PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT ON THE PARTICULAR POST THAT THE COSTUME PERTAINS TO. THE VOTES WILL BE TALLIED ON MONDAY AND THE WINNER AND CAMPUS NOTIFIED THAT EVENING ***

Sam Johnson: White Goodman, owner of GLOBOGYM

*Sam's costume included an inflatable crotch, an extra touch from Dodgeball. *

Rose Ryan: Ear

Brandon Weil: Shower Man

Clark Blumenstein: King of all Cosmos

* As a point of reference, Clark based his costume on the character from the video game Katamari Damacy. The character is pictured here to allow some comparison for those of you unfamiliar with the game. (99.9% of you)Also, Clark's lights on his head required 15 lbs. of battery pack. *

Thomas Kost: Windswept Man