The Soundwich: Another IM Conversation

toro412: figure out a definition for the following word:
toro412: soundwich
MANDEL2002: a psuedo edible entity that feeds the body through the fulfillment of the soul via pleasing tones
toro412: give me some imagery, some context.
MANDEL2002: i don't have any man
MANDEL2002: maybe you inject it with a needle into your ear
MANDEL2002: a gaseous thing
toro412: sounds futuristic
toro412: maybe like freeze-dried ice cream
MANDEL2002: yeah i roll forward looking
toro412: cure world hunger with the ground-breaking soundwich

¡Independencia!

I have been pretty lazy and bored during this break so far. I mean don't get me wrong, I'm not sitting in a darkened room crying softly to myself for large portions of the day while listening to four Postal Service songs on repeat (yes). I mean I've been getting out, doing stuff, cool stuff, ya know. But anyways, I was perusing the internet when I came across the notion of a "micronation." Pretty much, micronations are imagined countries, modeled after the nation-state but they only exist either in the imagination of their creator or on incredibly small created islands, one of these is called Sealand, info is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealand and i'd make the links better but i can't so drew has to. Anyways, pretty much the notion of a nation is taken for granted as it is, but what is to stop us at the Monstrosity from declaring our own micronation. We would get to make our own currency (beer), and elect a president, this would probably be a bloody electoral campaign that would leave us all dead, therefore I'd probalby propose that we all submit to a benevolent dictatorship under the wise guidance of Olmstead. Other government officials in the micronation of Monstrosity might be:

First Knight of Technology: Drew
Prince of Corrections: Hans Bengtson
Head of Ministry of Distillation and Photography: Garrett Stiles
Twin Towers of Sport: Lane Aikin, Alex Carlson
Director of the Life Aquatic: Julian Trowbridge
Historian, Librarian, Documentarian: Daniel Baxter
Arborial Specialist, Long-Haul Transportation Coordinator: Gus Gustafson
Dude who invented this whole thing and posted it on a blog: Aaron Mandel

A man and his beer.

Today while standing in a convenience store waiting to pay for my horchata smoothie I saw a sharp-looking young fellow purchasing a bottle of wine (remember, convenience store) and a twelve-pack of Corona Light. This initially surprised me because the chap seemed more like a 30-pack of Bud Light and pass out type of guy. He had a fine golden bracelet and a fine golden necklace, with fine boots and a fine pair of jeans and a fine spiked haircut with a fine Abercrombie and Fitch shirt on. I am sure he had a fine raised Jeep with fine floodlights in the parking lot. At this point I realized that you can accurately predict what a person is up to based on the type of alcohol they are purchasing. I needed to know nothing more about what this man was doing this evening or who he was doing it with. The answers came through his choice of alcohol.
Let me say again that he was buying cheap wine and Corona Light. The wine suggests that he is attempting to impress someone of the female persuasion. He is making a rudimentary attempt at class by bringing along a bottle of wine. The wine suggests dinner, and the beer suggests that they will be spending the evening in somewhere. He wouldn't need a lot of beer if they were headed to a bar. He chose a bottle of white wine, which combined with the Corona Light tells me many things. First, because white wine is sweet, it is harder to drink it in quantity. However, he was tailing it up with 12 beers. This says that while he is trying to impress his date with the wine, he knows that she is an experienced drinker and therefore must also bring beer in order to get her to a satisfactory point of inebriation in order to accomplish the goal of this date, which seems to be sex considering the amount of booze he was buying. This girl, she is obviously someone worth of impressing with the wine, or we would not see it. She is also a party girl, or he would not need the beer. She is also not willing to have sex with this man without the use of alcohol, or he wouldn't not be in the convenience store spending $30.
All the "clues in the booze," as I like to say, do not bring about the "sauciest" conclusion of whether or not this man accomplished his goal. If the girl is truly classy and is just giving the guy a shot, he will undoubtedly crash and burn. If she couldn't tell a wine bottle from a jug of laundry detergent, then his trip to the QuikTrip will have been a success.
Try this little game the next time you see someone purchasing alcohol in public. It is a fun way to pass the time while the person in front of you fishes around in their urine-soaked blue jeans for that last nickel to pay for the 40oz.-er.

ho ho ho

umm, this is so true.

_____

Grandma gives me socks for Christmas.

Two redheaded young boys walked into my dad's house today, said not a word as they walked past me, and began examining the presents underneath our Christmas tree. One was too young to read and was asking his older flame-headed brother who every single present under the tree was for. Upon finding a gift that provided the appropriate Christian name, they plopped down on the ground and waited. I didn't know what to do with them because I had never been trespassed by two young children. I had also never been burglarized by young children, so I stood baffled. Then my stepmom walked around the corner and referred to them by name, bumping them up from the category of being "strange unknown children" to the "step-cousin strange unknown children." Having legal relation to a complete stranger does in no way ease any sort of apprehension you have about them entering your home and pillaging your Christmas tree, let me tell you.

We was robbed!

I awoke last saturday a happy happy man, finals had just finished and a long break lay ahead. I scratched sack and ventured downstairs to see what eatings there were to be had. When downstairs I realized that I had left my laptop downstairs exactly where I had entered the monstro to joyous post-finals cheers. I couldn't find my laptop and went upstairs. Then I told Drew and he scoped it out with me, in the process noticing that all of our other electronic equipment from the living room had gone missing too. "fuck, we got robbed," Drew said. "yeah," I agreed. In between the hours of 3 and 8am some coked out bastards had the good sense to be strolling by our house and stopped in for a little christmas shopping. Now they took our stereo, dvd player, n64 +games, and the spongebob remote. THE SPONGEBOB REMOTE (not to mention super smash bros.)??? What kind of cold, heartless bastards are you? Those items are worth less than my calcified toenail! The annoyance at losing my laptop with thesis notes and such pales in comparison to the utter bloodlust revenge urges I am feeling at the loss of the brown n64 controller and the 2nd season of chapelle's show (they took that shit too). So watch out Walla Walla a bunch of extremely inept thefts are on the lookout for easy to pilfer extremely cheap electronic devices.


I'd be on the lookout for that guy. Shady motherfucker.

In other news, some observations on drugs made collectively have been that one of the scariest/coolest things ever would be to have a mutation such that you posessed a tooth in your belly button that could be used to

a) scare the shit out of people or...
b) open beer bottles as a really sweet party trick

Also, me and another friend are considering a show of solidarity by tailgating outside our third friend's jury duty at the courthouse.

and...Garrett tried to microwave two potatoes but went upstairs and fell asleep. I found these in the morning looking sorta like the ancient testicles of a petrified elephant.

Here's to the holidays!

Ghosts in the fog.

I was driving back to Boise today and the fog creamed across the roads like cream. I couldn't see further than about twenty feet in front of the car, so if there was any sort of roadblocks or herds of rhinoceri in the road I would have surely been engaged in what the pig latinos call a "ar-ca rash-ca." I was determined to not pull over as the other cars had done. A light billboard over the road told me to be warned of fog, and to be sure to turn on my fog lights. I decided to try a little experiment and ignore this warning and instead engage in Hyundai's bonus feature on their Elantra sedan aptly titled "Stealth Mode." Without headlights on, I had even less visibility than before but I had a clearer sense of my metaphysical presence within the fog, which allowed me to navigate using my mind's eye. My mind's eye navigated me right into a ditch, at which point I chose to disengage Stealth Mode and back my car out. At this point I began to realize that there hadn't been any other cars for quite some time, and an overwhelming sense of loneliness filled my heart. I looked around and the world had been reduced down to the several thousand square feet surrounding me in the fog. My world was tiny, and I was alone. My mind naturally began to wander, and I thought "What if this is what hell is like? You're just alone and cold on a tiny patch of dirt and you can never leave it." That's when I saw the great beast emerging from the fog. A dark shape was coming towards me on the other side of the road and it wasn't shaped anything like a car or truck. The only thing I could think of was that it resembled a bullet train, but it was moving mind-numbingly slow so I ruled that out. I actually took my foot off of the gas and had a moment of temporary panic trying to figure out what this apparition was. My mind started filling in the gaps and I became convinced that the thing coming down the road was not rolling but rather WALKING and the fog had actually drawn out some great mythical beast from its long slumber and it had wandered down this patch of highway. I slowed down to almost 20 miles per hour to try and gauge the speed of this massive phantom. Finally a headlight blinked into view. It was a vehicle, but shaped like nothing I have ever seen. Then a bright yellow tint and a space-aged cockpit in the front. As I stared in a mix of embrassment and awe, the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile rolled slowly past me on the highway, undoubtedly on a lonely quest across the Pacific Northwest to spread the good word about the superior flavor of Oscar Meyer weiners over other, lesser brands of weiner.

And just like that it will be done.

With the vigor of youth, the man had written a blog post from deep inside his soul. He gazed into the abyss, and when then abyss gazed back upon him, his mind could not handle the revelation. But just as every terrible nightmare must end with a sunrise, so this young man's night is quickly becoming memory after only shortly being lived. As he said, it will be something that he will remember for the rest of his life. Living on the edge of sanity is a line many are not willing to walk, but there are others, like this man, who run screaming to that line and stop short with the momentary hesitation of an unsure suicide. Instead he will walk the line for a few short hours and quickly succumb to sleep. He will awaken to find the world as it was before last night, and the nightmare will quickly fade. Some say that you always remember the bad dreams and never the good ones, but you don't learn anything about yourself when you dream about clouds, but you do when you dream about death.

Friends and beer can calm the most terrifying of nightmares.

the last of days

a broken, beaten man, bearded from lack of ability to move razor over face sits in a fragrant stench of senility and immobility. Warplanes can shoot at my chest but don't cut open my heart with your smiling bullets or you'll drown in a sea of chocolate oil. Spontaneous combustion of rags is not common but frequently warned about and if this library is my prison then the tea I am drinking in great quantities to make myself pee every 20 minutes is my savior-canary. Wind sprints outside to awaken the soul but the wheels turn in a low gear and you realize you forgot to upgrade to 1 million speed, just smart enough to know you're not smart enough is the worst place to be on god's good gangrene earth, and then the flick of some keys, some useless observations to be read by one or two people at most and freedom is here, mass consumption of beer and the sickening thought that I will never publish this post and I have another final in 2.5 hours and 5 pages due at 4 and nothing really matters that much because it is warm as fuck in the bathrooms and I feel a kindred spirit connection to the night lady in the library and sunrise is a placebo that keeps us alert and alive and young. I have a small mole on my arm that changes color quite frequently and maybe if I look hard enough into it I can make a few wishes, none of them would be whiny, i have too much work make it go away wishes because quite honestly I am a fucking masochist for all time, or if enjoying your own pain is another word then I meant that. We are only young once, staying up all night doing 15 pages of work and then taking a final is memorable and if it lowers my grade in a class from a plus to a minus then watch me give a fuck because when the dawn breaks I will have lived a life less ordinary for just a moment and taken some pleasure in that while I still can because I know I have to wake up and mow the lawn and change the diaper of my mind because like my lips, my brain is chapped, it's a reaction to elements, but not the kind on a periodic table, elements of lives and the balm is not blistex but the comfortable slide back into a routine that is preprogrammed and accepted, like not even realizing you are on drugs but being really fucked up we are programmed to receive and maybe we gain strength from the deviations. I don't have worry about getting attacked by a rodent right now because my body odor is creating the kind of permanent force field around me that first person video gamers only dream about. Earth cry in the keyholes of doors that open to nothing but chairs and paintings but where the last line never should have existed and a yearning for more may be inherently place -based and needing to be done away with. mommy.

More.

Yup, that time 'a year.

Good morning!

it's that time of year ain't it?

Please hold.

One of the most dreaded requirements of our modern technological lifestyle is something called Technical Support. Like it is some shocking surprise that people have trouble navigating 2000-page manuals written in Mandarin, the final page of these giant wastes of treelife is a small line that says "If none of these printed solutions work, you may call Technical Support." They tell you you "may" call Technical Support. What they're really saying is "you know how big of a pain in the ass our manual is? If you call the helpline it's more like a cancer in the ass, in that it will most definitely fuck you over."
Calling a helpline is like being taken back to 2nd grade. Upon being taken immediately to hold being told that there is "unusual amount of call volume" the recording will proceed to make you second guess all your reasons for calling the line in the first place. "Did you make sure that all you devices were powered on and plugged into a wall outlet?" The calming female voice chimes over a cheesy elevator tune that will, in about 45 minutes, make you want to murder a family of midgets. What is amazing is that this voice will actually make you think "Did I plug in the computer? Maybe that's been the problem this whole time. Maybe I forgot how to use a wall outlet." The questions for the voice get increasingly specific, but they are all attempts to get you off of the help line. "Did a raccoon or other woodland creature become lodged in you hard drive? If so, please refer to our website section titled "The proper removal of animal carcass and/or human waste from the hard drive of your Hewlett-Packard laptop computer." Anything and everything they can do to get you to hang up will be attempted. Sometimes the voice will come back on and managed to assume the most sarcastic tone I have ever heard in a voice recording by saying "We're sorry you're still on hold, our technicians are busy helping other valueable customers. You can stay on the line, or you can visit us at www.blahblahblah.com for more assistance." I know the technincal assistants are in the back of the cubicles huffing glue, because when I finally wait 3 hours to get on the phone with one of them, their brain capacity is below that of the woodland creature who perished when it mysteriously thrust itself into the bowels of my laptop. The technicial will act as a strange echo of the recorded voice, assuming you know absolutely nothing about the computer that you use EVERY DAY and ask you questions like "Have you checked to make sure your monitor cord is plugged in?" It's always the default move to blame it on the cords. Or, to tell you that your warranty is expired. Or, that the Lord Satan has occupied your piece of modern technology and that the best way to fix it is to find a virgin youth and have them bathe in rosewater and using the bath runoff the cleanse your laptop as the full moon waxes and 12 white leopards circle the ritual counter-clockwise.

As you can probably tell I have a bitter taste in my mouth from having to rely on technical support when my own resources fail me. Luckily, if you threaten enough people when you finally are connected they will usually waive a bunch of fees and pay for your repair because they constantly want to stick to the mantra of "get this fucker off of the phone." If they don't get you with the wait time, the idiotic staff, or the references to Satan worship, they will actually throw money at you to leave them alone in their sanctuary of telephone headsets and speed-laced lattes.

For What it's Worth

this is a story I heard my friend Victor tell one night a few summers ago in the pleasant heat of a starry night:

There were two brothers who grew up in a house on top of a hill amongst the fields. Everyday they would go play at a tire swing by a river near their house. As the brothers grew older their lives began to take different courses but they still got together for a sit and a chat at the tire swing as often as they could. As they went off to college they grew more and more apart but when they came home to visit they could tramp off to the swing and it seemed as if no time had passed. As the years went on the brother's took wives and started families. After their parents passed away they were both back at their old house after the funeral and they went down to see if the tire swing was still in place, hanging from the tree by the river. It was there and they sat down and talked about their lives, their families and so on. After a few hours of talking their boyish adventurish spirits had been coaxed out of hibernation. They formulated a plan to build a sail boat and the older brother would sail for a year, returning to the tire swing exactly 365 days after departing. Then the younger brother would go out for the same amount of time. The brothers built a fine looking boat and after making family arrangements and what not, the older brother set sail from the nearest port. He sailed for many moons until after nearly six months had passed he spotted an island with buildings on the horizon. Setting a course for the island, the older brother pulled into port and was greeted by all the inhabitants. They had not had a visitor in hundreds of years and gave him the royal treatment which included a dinner with the king that night. As the older brother made his way through town he noticed some of the finest jewels he had ever seen in his life just lying in the gutters of the island's streets. The dinner the king had prepared was an extravagant feast, much like Prentiss Brunch. Servants prepared plates for everyone and the king watched intently as the older brother took a bite of chicken. "How is it?" the king asked. "It's okay," replied the older brother. "Only ok?" the king demanded. "It needs some salt, that's all," noted the older brother. The king got a puzzled look on his face and asked his servants if they knew what salt was. No one did. THe older brother then realized that the island probably had not yet figured out how to use salt on food. He quickly ran back to his boat and got some salt and put it on the king's food. The king's face lit up and he exclaimed, "this is the best thing I have ever tasted! How can I ever repay you?" The older brother thought for a moment and then asked, "what about all those jewels in your gutters, can I have some of those?" THe king looked puzzled and said, "you want our trash?" but granted the older brother his wish. The older brother loaded his boat up with the priceless jewels, showed the islanders how to take salt from the ocean's waters and then sailed off toward home and his rendevous at the tire swing with his younger brother. One year after he departed, the older brother arrived back at the tire swing where his younger brother was waiting for him. He told him of his tales and showed off his riches. The younger brother's eyes grew wide and he vowed to sail to the same island and find the same treasure. So he set sail, following his older brother's directions and after about six months arrived at the island. The island people once again gave him a warm reception and invited him to dine with their king. The younger brother noticed all the jewels in the gutters and fantasized about how rich he would be when he got back. At dinner the food tasted great, salted to perfection, but the younger brother had come prepared. He pulled out pepper and some seasoned salt he had brought and bid everyone to try it. Their mouths watered and they proclaimed him a culinary prophet like their visitor one year before. THe king asked, "How can I ever repay you?" The brother was prepared for this question and simply said, "Have your servants load my empty barrels up with all your valuables." That night the younger brother slept soundly in the king's castle while the king's men carried out his wish, loading up his boat. THe younger brother set sail the next day, vowing not to look upon his riches until he could show them to his brother and family. After a year had passed the brothers reunited at the tire swing and shared stories. Then they went to the boat and uncovered the barrels. All that was in them was salt.