Party Philosophy

I don't know if the nature of a party invitation has fundamentally changed over the years or if I am just now becoming aware of the deep social implications that an invitation to a specific party implies. For whatever reason, a party invitation for my and the majority of the readership's generation has become less about inviting someone to have a good time than it is challenging them to prove their social worthiness. Take for example statements like "anyone who is anyone is going to be there" or "we invited 100 of our closest friends." The first is an exercise in redundancy that suggests that by being invited to the party, you are simultaneously proving your corporeal existence on the physical three-dimensional plane of reality while also proving that your presence provides a significant enough social step-ladder to possibly boost the party throwers' social reputation enough so that they can become too popular to continue inviting you to their parties. To call the second statement an oxymoron is akin to pointing out that someone rolling around in an electric wheelchair is physically impaired. I refuse to believe that anyone on this planet can acceptably maintain friendships with 100 people that would, by general consensus, make their efforts enough to call all 100 people that person's "close friends." By getting an invitation that says "we invited 100 of our closest friends" you are actually being told you are not a close friend. A close friend gets an invitation over a game of badminton or while sharing a pizza. You know, things close friends do together.

There is also language in party invitations that requires one to prove that they are, in fact, worthy of the invitation itself. This is easily achieved by tacking the words "don't be a pussy" at the end of your invitation. Say I want to invite Bob to my State Of The Union Address get-together with the other folks from our software engineering firm. If I say "Hey Bob, you should come to my house and watch the SOTUA and have some beer." Then Bob thinks that my invitation is open-ended; I will know he has accepted when he walks in the door with a six-pack of Sprite (Bob doesn't drink because he is Mormon.) If I say "Hey Bob, you should come to my house and watch the SOTUA and have some beer. Don't be a pussy." Then Bob has a decision to make. If Bob chooses not to come and to instead stay home and watch Babylon 5, then Bob is 1) choosing to label himself a "pussy" and 2) Bob is guaranteeing no further event invitations, because if Sixteen Candles taught us anything, it's that we don't want "pussies" at our kick-ass parties. Bob's only real choice is to renounce his faith and attend the SOTUA party, utterly guaranteeing his excommunication from a religion that provides support and aide in every aspect of his life in exchange for a fickle friend group that will undoubtedly stop inviting him to parties anyway because he can't hold his alcohol and he sucks at video games. By tacking "don't be a pussy" onto the end of your party invite, you can watch the rolling thunderheads of social suicide slowly crawl over a person's face, and you can walk away knowing that you have either guaranteed one more person at your Pimps n' Ho's party or you have successfully labelled an otherwise unidentified "pussy" so that others may see them coming in the future and cross to the other side of the street.

I want some freakin' SOUP, bitch!

I've been noticing a negative trend in the soup-making industry lately. If you can even call these new concoctions "soup" at all. I go to restaurants now and the "soup" of the day is Savory Steak n' Potato. Let's follow the logic process behind ordering a bowl of Savory Steak n' Potato soup for the average American:

"I am hungry, and I feel like having steak and potatoes for dinner. I will order that."
"What? I get a soup with my meal? What kind of soups do you have?"
"Savory Steak n' Potato? Well, for one thing I assosciate with the "n'" in the title because I'm a homegrown American and anunciation is for homosexuals and foreigners." "I wonder what kind of soup Dale Earnhardt would get? I bet Dale Earnhardt only eats steak and potatoes for every meal. I think I will get the Savory Steak n' Potato soup."
"Where's my three ugly kids and their substantially uglier mother?"

If you don't believe me that this is the logic line of the average American, come over to my house and I will plug you into my mind-reading device and I will fry your brains until you're watching reruns of Reading Rainbow all day and the biggest decision you have to make is whether or not you want to eat pudding or jello for snack.
For some reason the geniuses in charge of fine brewpubs and feed-houses nationwide have decided that what American wants in a soup is exactly what America wants in everything else: meat, cheese, potatoes, cheese, and maybe throw in a fucking gold coin for good luck. It is only a matter of time before you see "Bowl of Gravy" on a menu at some chicken shack. I don't think I've seen a soup lately that doesn't adhere to the sides of the bowl like freakin' clay. All I want is some quality french onion or tomato basil soup. I don't want to have to choose between Lard n' Baconfat and Sausage n' othern' Good Stuff soup. I will tell you now, my choice will be to burn the restaurant to the ground and build a trendy, overpriced Soupperrie on top of it.

The hook

My friends and I often find ourselves at parties. These things happen. As students of life, we are constantly observing what happens around us. We have identified a particular component of the partying atmosphere that should shared at once, and that is the hook. Now, in songwriting jargon, a "hook" refers to the part of the song that sticks in people's heads, that brings them back to the radio hoping to hear it again. In the context of a party, a hook is whatever it is that gets people to stay. On a given Friday or Saturday night, a college campus has a party circuit. With myriad events to go to and different social groups to provide different atmospheres, it can be tricky to keep critical partying mass at your event. That's why you need a hook. Often times, the hook is the dance party mix that is being played. A party that wants people to dance needs to put some effort into their dance party mix. Establish a mood, give people an excuse to release their pelvis and start moving, then BAM hook 'em! Another form of the hook is people. Last night the presence of me and a couple buddies was demanded at a particular party. Indeed, we were to be the hook. If people arrived and saw us all having fun, they'd stay. And indeed they did until we began scattering. It's an interesting thing, party sociology. Probably be an easier field of study if we weren't ourselves the subjects...

Do it! Do it NOW!

Monstro radio hits the earth like a meteor in less than 20 minutes. Put the dog to bed and put the kids to sleep and crowd around the radio for some good, old-fashioned bullcrap and hullaballoo. Go to Whitman radio's website, www.kwcw.net at 6pm and listen to us talk about the 4th spacial dimension, hot celebrities, and fruit juice purges. Plus some music from some musicians.

MONSTRO RADIO: How often do you get to see the birth of a media giant in the making?

Music.

Ask me why I like music.

As I drive down the freeway the storm warnings don't make things look good. I had a late departure from Walla Walla and as it got later in the day the weather kept decaying in pleasantness. Two-hundred miles lay ahead of me and as far as my eyes could decifer it was going to be snow the entire way. A sign saying "Caution: snow blowing across the road." Waving goodbye with its harsh yellow flick on, flick off, flick on, flick off the sign dissapeared into the fog of my rearview mirror and I flicked it up as I would if there was a Dodge Ram coming up behind me with its brights on. I wouldn't be using it anyway in this weather. The fog isolated my car in a miniature world, trapped in a snow globe filled with road, ice, snow, and my single vehicle moving forever on clock-wound wheels as some divorced mother placed my reality on a shelf next to elementary school pictures of her lonely children. At this moment of clarity "Waking Up" by a forgotten downtempo band called Saru came up on my iPod, the trusty sidekick for roadtrips that makes a dog or a best friend seem like just more baggage. I had never heard the song before. Suddenly the fog extended my visibility and I began to see the snow dancing across the road in sheets. The shifting winds made the dry, powdered snow glide slowly and erraticly across the pure black asphalt. It was literally the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my entire life. At this moment the world seemed to move to the beat of the music. Every snare hit cued a shift in the wind, every slow droan of the synthesizer marked a flare across my windshield evenly timed with the slow beat beat beat of the wipers. The word "harmony" comes to mind.
Everything in my tiny snow globe made sense. I had beauty, solitude, pleasure, and most of all, a clear mind. I thought of nothing but the music and the snow. I did not believe that someone could live a life in a moment, but I did that day.

Ask me why I love music.

Snakes on a Plane

Ok, the following post is a public service announcement. It has come to my attention, as many things do, that next summer a movie will be coming out in America. This film is called Snakes on a Plane and will... HOLY SHIT! Did I read that right? Snakes on a Plane?!? SNAKES? On a fucking PLANE? Alright, settle down. The plot has something to do with snakes being let loose on an airplane to kill someone. Sweet! The movie features Samuel L. Jackson, Byron Lawson (who some may remember from his thrilling turn in Lighting: Bolts of Destruction), and Kenan. Kenan, right? The guy from Nickelodian who was on, like, two episodes of SNL. IMDB also mentions a "puppeteer" who, I assume, operates the snakes (unless of course the puppeteer is a sort of Being John Malkovich dude who gets eaten by snakes in the first act.) So, right now I'm just hoping that this movie is really going to come out. I mean, it could be a joke, which would be pretty intense. It could also just never get released, which based on its title is completely possible. I want the following dialogue exchange:

Pilot: "There's some disturbance in the cabin. Could be terrorists. Air Marshall Samuel L. Jackson, go check it out."

Samuel L. Jackson: "ok"

(he exits and returns)

Samuel L. Jackson: "We got snakes"

Pilot: "What?"

Samuel L. Jackson: "Snakes Motherfucker!"

Pilot: "Snakes?"

Samuel L. Jackson: "We got Snakes on a fucking Plane!"

So yeah, basically this movie has the greatest potential of any film ever concieved. Except for Brothers Grimm. That could have been sweet, but instead it sucked.

my soul began to rise

I'll write of things with help from Bob Seger.

It was a lazy sunday afternoon and Garrett was heading out for a drive in his car. I hopped along for the ride and we drove out of town with the tops down on his car, the cold air rushing in our faces as I tightened my faded baseball hat over my head and watched garrett man his vehicle into the mountains above walla walla. I had the good foresight to put on Bob Seger's Greatest Hits for the drive and with the soundtrack of men on the road journeying along the highways of life, the air roared in my ears and I fell into a trance.

And we rolled
And we rolled clean out of sight
We rolled across the high plains
Deep into the mountains
Felt so good to me
Finally feelin' free

I opened up my wallet and saw my 16 year old face staring back at me, I looked into the mirror and saw a bearded, older version of that same man staring at me. I have been in college for over three years now, my face looks different, my brain has been changed, clearly we are always remnants of our past selves, we carry a physical and mental museum of ourselves along with us everyday even as we change into things new and unforseen. Some people drag around more exhibits than others.

Garrett and I stared down from the mountains on this Sunday, a clear, quintissentially crisp winter day. The Walla Walla Valley spread out below us as we pointed out familiar landmarks to each other. Then we were in Oregon.

out past the cornfields where the woods got heavy
out in the backseat of my sixty chevy
workin on mysteries without any clues
ain't it funny how the night moves

What things are universal? Certainly not much beyond science. But if I myself am one universe then certain truths have always existed for as far as memory can hold. One is that if I can remove either symbolically or physically from a situation and be conscience of that, reflection becomes inevitable. Whether it's a hike up a peak to overlook a valley or a drive along some dusty country roads it's easy to ponder the things close at hand with just a hint of perspective. Soon my journey will depart from these parts, but a permanent exhibit will be erected in my museum of these times, as a face changed and a man grew (and regressed).

And sometimes late at night
When I'm bathed in the firelight
The moon comes callin' a ghostly white
And I recall
I recall

There is too much talk of ends and not enough of beginnings. I am 21 years old and god-willing I will live another 60 years if not more. So much is ahead of me that I cannot comprehend the days of true reflections, dead dreams, faded youth and beauty. I stand arrow straight, poised just like anyone who has ever lingered at the edge of stage before breathing deeply and plunging onward, points of no return.

There's no way you can hide
The fire inside
There's no way you can deny
The fire inside

My heart was singing roll me away as I opened my eyes and realized I had fallen asleep in the passenger seat of Garrett's car. "Man you must be so tired, you conked out," Garrett said. I wasn't tired at all, I just needed a break from the moment that I live in constantly and sadly or not, the use of this brain power required the loss of some consciousness. We cruised through the dilapidated streets of Milton Freewater, an odd evocation of the 1950's sung to me as the mountains faded away in the side view mirror I had been staring into.

Garrett parked back at the Monstro and by now Tom Petty was playing. The wind in our faces had died down.

livin to run and runnin to live
watch the young men running
I'm still runnin against the wind
let the cowboys ride

Let the cowboys fuckin ride.

Justice

There's this story by Franz Kafka called The Penal Colony. I was thinking about it tonight during class. We were asked to come up with a person, fiction or reality, who expresses a particular characteristic that we find impressive. So as usual when some stimuli enters my mind, I start thinking about Kafka. In The Penal Colony, this one guy runs all the executions on an island prison. Over the course of the story he realizes that his judicial integrity is corrupt and his method of execution is inhumane. So he straps himself into the old "It carves your crime into your body until you die" machine and has it carve "Be Just" into his flesh until he bleeds out his life. That's fucking hardcore! This guy accepts his fallibility and takes his own life to uphold some greater notion of justice. Kafka is some serious shit. So I was thinking about how that guy's persuit of justice is really impressive. I think I want to get a tattoo that says "Be Just". You know, just to remind me.

redesign

I know the links are screwed up but I am tired of writing the code for now, so it's a hokey version to start off. I took the idea from the movie "The Warriors." You might be wondering why it says "Blog & Radio." That's because on Thursday nights from 6-8pm PST there will now be Monstro Radio on KWCW 90.5 FM. If you're in the Southeastern Washington area you can pick it up on your radio dial, otherwise log into www.kwcw.net to listen to us on the web. We will be discussing a variety of topics, playing some good music, doing skits, and generally causing a ruckus.

In other news I added Matt Jumago to the posting list, so there will be more incoherency to deal with on the blog soon enough.

beware

monsters lurk in the night

The Speed of Pure Molasses

The internet in the Monstrosity is ungodly slow for how much money we pay ($100) per month to get as much bandwidth as possible. It was going along perfectly until some mysterious cursed son-of-a-bitch plugged his computer back in after a long hiatus and once again brought down our internet like a pack of velociraptors bringing down a crippled baby brontosaurus. We're supposed to get speed that is literally blinding to the common man. We're supposed to have internet so fast that it predicts our every thought; the minute that I wish to pay the gregarious fee of $400 for the Sex and the City boxed set, my computer reads my damn mind and places the order, with overnight shipping and a home lobotomy set so I can prepare my brain to actually enjoy the bullcrap I just ordered. Our internet is supposed to defy the laws of physics and make people of religion scream and wail at the bastardization of holy law that it commits with its blinding speed. I pay $100 to try and get this marvel of mankind, but I have a three-legged dog named Spunker delivered to my door instead of the solid-gold giant greyhound I ordered.
We have tried everything to remedy this solution, and it has recently been determined that the source of the problem comes from within. That golden dog I ordered was not mis-labeled but rather one of my roomates has shaved it, chopped off its leg, and covered it in feces so that all it can do is hobble along shamefully to the point that I am as likely to kick its ribs as I am to give it affection and love.
The upside of having the internet removed from me is that I have become less dependent upon it and I have free time to do many other things, like visit the craft store and pick out my favorite fabrics for the construction of my own throw pillows and curtains. I also have found that grinding my teeth into finely sharpened points is a good replacement for the global connectivity that I once enjoyed so much. I practically don't even miss the internet that Al Gore so graciously bestowed upon us many years ago.

The Prophecy

Deep in the Mongolian desert there lay an ancient citadel, constructed by a civilization long dead, but whose art and science has not been matched in the history of man. Upon these ancient walls in the desert was carved a prophecy. The runes said that some day, when the earth was wracked with conflict and pestilence, the ancient gods would once again return to the earth to shape it to their liking and correct the foul errors of the human race. These gods would take the form of man, but to call them man would be like calling a dragon a simple housefly. Many would not recognize their coming, and even the men themselves whom the gods would soon enter would not know of their destiny until the light beaconed upon their fully-covered or somewhat balding heads, depending on their genetic background and stress levels. These men, upon exiting the womb of their mothers, were blessed with the greatest of destinies and their lives, like the gears of a giant clock, worked in unison to bring each together so that they would meet just before their assumption as mighty avatars of the ancient gods. Some would require the gregarious consumption of much fermented barley and grapes to achieve the worthiness of the gods. Others would have to vanquish many corporeal beasts while suffering the belittling of others who could not see their invisible foes. Yet others among these great men would be forced to suffer through the toil and embrassment that many in the ancient world called "the all-nighter." Whatever their toils, it was written that each of these men, after long preparation, would be worth to assume their roles as the greatest humans on earth.
If one brave enough ventured to the citadel in the desert, one would find that they had to cross eleven gateways upon approaching the citadel, and battle eleven beasts to acquire the eleven keys to unlock the eleven locks that sealed the mighty door of the castle. In each of the eleven towers of the citadel it is said that each ancient god sleeps, waiting for the moment when they awake and will assume their hosts and once again rule the earth.
The eleven men are gathered somewhere on the planet, waiting and preparing for the waking of their gods and their powers. Where they are, none can know, but it is certain that they are ready...ready for the greatest calling of any human in the history of the universe. Even greater than the calling of He-Man or Optimus Prime. These men would be called to hold dominion over the entire galaxy. Even time and the workings of the mind would not be foreign to their thoughts and influence. They are waiting, and the universe itself holds its breath in anticipation of the greatest event in the history of time and space, with obvious exception to the invention of the mini-corndog.

WFR training w/ Aaron and Julian

wfrpic

fearless monstronauts save the world, or maybe just themselves, maybe.

what's creepy is that I'm not both of these people

I Hate You, Pop Culture.

Today while sitting across the kitchen table from my 6 year-old cousin Savannah I was very pleased with my bowl of cinnamon Life. It tasted good and had just the right amount of milk. I like a good breakfast, and so it seemed like my day would start off great. Then Savannah decided to inform me on a bit of pop culture. I'm busy reading the amount of asorbic acid in my cereal off the back of the box when Savannah promptly states, "Love is a battlefield." I glance over my box and and almost cough up my cereal. I raise my left eyebrow as I often do when I hear something that is absolutely fucking rediculous, but I reign in the horses of argument and I calmly ask "where did you hear that?" "I heard it in a song." Savannah says. Great. Just what I need. Pop culture ingraining kids as young as 6 with obscure and vague statements about reality like "Love is a battlefield." I don't claim to know what a battlefield is like through experience, but I think that there is a bit of difference between the feelings of angst and discomfort that a 15 year-old experiences when trying to write shitty poetry for English class about the girl who doesn't like him and the feeling of having someone unload a clip of bullets at you while trying their goddamn best to put each and every one of them through your head.

The Absurdity of Humankind

Considering the incredible progression of events that leads 150,000 people to one place on one night, it is interesting to see how many of these peoples' lives converge in much the safe fasion to ring in the new year. Despite where these people may have come from, they are all at the Tempe Block Party here in Arizona to basically do the same thing. That "thing" involves alcohol, yelling, and in the worst cases, urine, vomit, blood, or handcuffs. I will relay the most interesting events of the night in a series of small and cleverly titled snippets.

The Deal-Sealer
Gus, Sam, and I used Gus' sister's apartment as our home base. His sister purchased the apartment from a mythical and unnamed ladies man. The apartment had green glowing lights set behind clouded glass and not a single light switch was without a dimmer. There were speakers wired throughout the entire place and a keg tap coming out of the kitchen sink. I didn't have to meet this man to know that he had one intent and one intent only for this style of aparment, and it wasn't to entertain a book club.

Piss-Poor Fisticuffs
While Gus stood in line to use a fine outdoor crap-shed several men engaged in a brawl over whose turn it was to use the potty. There was a long series of shoving and pulling each other out of the outhouse, and there was definitely some mussed hairdos that would require more gel and more than one leather jacket that would need a good one-over with a paper towel and some ice water. One guy got punched in the face and started bleeding everywhere, but that goddamn alpha-male shit must have kicked in because he pridefully strutted around without wiping off the blood to prove that he wasn't "a pussy" even though I could see that he had pee-peed all over his fake leather shoes.

Shows Signs of Aging
While waiting in line to pay one million dollars for a cup of beer, an older woman dressed like a schoolgirl presumed that she could cut into line with us under the pretext of engaging in conversation. I guess we were sending out that "we like desperate aging women" vibe. As she gets to the front of the line and we are already enjoying out tasty beverages, a man walks up to this woman an gets all friendly. Sam, blunt as ever, comments on the man's ugliness especially in comparison to the aging Britney Spears look-alike. At this point another older man skoots into our conversation circle and says "He has a huge dick." He then talks about how the other man is his brother and talks more about how much he wants to have sex with his brother's girlfriend. He made the mistake of asking if we also thought she was really hot, to which I replied "Well, we're young." At this point he realized that we weren't admiring his brother's good fortune as much as making fun of the woman and he walked off to sign up for his free midlife crisis.

Holy Trinity Minus One
We were approached by a group of girls that contained two twins. One of them engaged me in a religious debate TEN MINUTES before midnight. I was being told to accept Jesus into my life, but really I just wanted to accept Guinness into my stomach. The conversation ended with me faking complete agreement and mentioning something about having to go home early so I could get up and go to church. SATAN WORSHIP CHURCH! ZING!

Another Adventure in Internet Advertising

My reason for putting this gem up should be obvious, but I want you to look closer at a few things. First, its a bunch of goddamn spooning teenagers superimposed on top of doughnut holes. Who in the hell thought that one up? Also, the guy on the far right is wearing a sailor's top straight out of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. If you like spooning and sailing, go ahead and lose weight. If not, go rent Sex and the City and cry yourself to sleep after eating a half-gallon of low-fat chocolate ice cream.