Taking on the Insect Mafia

"...so what I thought was my brain turning on and off, was actually my neice Jane turning the light on and off. You've been a great crowd, thank you. Good night and goodluck." You finish your address to the local high school, ever since your near death experience, you've become a motivational speaker. The work is much more steady than you're willing to admit. But you'd rather not think about that now, especially since you just finished. Right now, your thoughts are totally devoted to your plans to create a robot.

No, not just any robot. That would never do, anyone can make a robot that vacuums, blinks, shoots rockets, eats berries, changes diapers, explores the surface of mars, etc, etc. The robot you want to make needs to do something else. Something so spectacular it could mark the beginning of the end of world hunger, war, global warming, puppy killing, etc, etc. You're on your way home to call your brainy brothers to ask for some help. You figure, of course, that your brainy sister will be useful once the insect world gets wind of your plans and mounts an attack. But you should have at least a week before that happens.

You drop in the local radio shack on your way home, yelling out the owners name as loud as you can right as you enter. The other patrons would wince with surprise, if there were any. Nothing happens, so you yell again. Still nothing, which puts you on guard. You drop to the floor and begin slithering across the room. "Thank goodness for yoga," you think, "and that amazing slither pose." You keep thinking this until you bump your head into the swinging door to the back room, that doesn't swing this time. "Dang!" you shout, realizing that you've just blown your cover. ACtually you blew your cover when you walked in and shouted at the top of your lungs.

BUt the door won't swing in. SO you pull on it, and the dead body of the owner falls into your arms. "NO!!!!!" But that wasn't you, it was the voice of the owner, you had just scared you really bad, so bad that you'll ahve to change your pants when you get home. He laughs, and you laugh, and then tell him you need a flux capacitor, and he pulls one out from under the front desk and puts the charge on your tab.

As you walk out, your current love interest, the delectable Mary Jane, walks by. She notices the large wet spot on your pants and gives you a look. You look back, giving her a big smile. she gives you a grin, and you notice a wet spot growing on the front of her pants. Your smile grows bigger, and you each continue on your separate ways. She's a real stand up girl.

You get home and finish the robot. A knock on the door. Funny, you think. You answer the door and to your great surprise a large army of ants, bees, dung beetles, and termites swarm around you into the room, devouring your robot. As they leave, they challenge, "Just try that again!" As you change your second pair of pants, you realize that you only have two pairs of comfortable pants. You decide, then and there, to stop doing anything that angers the insect mafia.

Photo documentary

As it seems the rest of the blog world has resorted to posting pictures, I will do the same. Of course, they will be about Andrew. These are pictures I have taken of Andrew floating around things. For another floating picture, go to Andrews blog, one of the wildest blogs around.

Andrew on his pirate ship's revenge.

Andrew visiting the Empire State building.

Andrew on Mars, notice the sideways floating action. Fluke of mars' gravity.

Andrew hypnotizing warthogs.

Rubber bands

"And that's how I eventually got rid of all those stinky spots," you finish the brief, autobiographical story you were telling the group of 8-10 children that had gathered around you. Why, you ask yourself, "why do they keep coming back? It's because...I'm awesome!"

Just as you finish thinking these words, Bob rolls up in his fantastic limo-truck, and says, "Andrew! You've got to help me! I'm being chased by a herd of wild boulders!"

Dismissing the thought as another promise that a politician won't keep, you are struck by a small fleck of rubble. As you turn to look, a steady stream of small pebbles begins raining down on you. Bob grabs you by the collar and pulls you into the limo-truck as he pulls away, tires squealing, honk blaring, and brights flashing. YOu look out the back window, and sure enough, a herd of wild boulders is chasing Bob!

"What in the!?" you mildly scream at Bob. "I know, I know," he begins. "I was minding my own business, when all the sudden..."

"Wait," you cut him off, knowing full well that Bob has never minded his own business.

"Okay, I was randomly picking up smaller boulders and smashing them to bits against the larger boulders. It's a new workout I'm trying out."

"That explains why they're after you," you logically point out. "Now I have the solution. Let them smash one of the town babies against you..."

"Are you insane!" he screams at you. "Think of the bad publicity. I'd never get re-elected!"

Your thought process is interrupted suddenly by one of the boulder banging into the side of the vehicle. You roll down the window, and sit up, riding side saddle in the window hole, legs dangling against the side of the truck. At just the right moment, now! YOu jump for the first boulder.

Bad idea. The boulder is moving along by rolling, something you hadn't planned on. In fact you had no plan, other than to remove yourself from the babble that Bob was producing. In any case, your landing on the boulder was tough, and so was the following trip to the ground. You get crunched to bits by the rolling boulder.

The boulders regroup, and head back to the hills, having satisfied their own twisted sense of justice. You are not a baby, but I guess they figure you'd do.

Strangely, having been smashed to bits doesn't seem to hurt you. Your atoms are scattered everywhere; some on the street, some have been hurled high into the sky, and some were actually breathed in by Bob. You can still feel all of them, as though you were just stretched out really far. And then, slowly, the atoms being coming together again, like a rubber band springing back. Your atoms rip through the sky, rip across the street, rip through Bobs lungs (he shouts and then goes back to the press conference he had called to celebrate his victory over the boulders and to mourn your untimely death, untimely in the sense that you hadn't gone on the hike you had planned for tomorrow), and snap back together as though nothing had happened.

"Wow," you say. "Never had that happen before."

Wow indeed. Turns out, you're a rubber band.

False Appearances

"...and I haven't seen the yellow sun in over seven weeks. Anyway, not much else is happening here in Ktown." You finish the email to an unnamed favorite brother and sigh as you realize that the final sentence represents one of the greatest lies you've ever told, that the appearance you've been forced to adopt is not one that you'd wish on any 2nd year ace reporter.

It began a few weeks ago, when you awoke from a troubled sleep. You glance at the clock, 10:30! You're late for work! (Barely...) Ever since Bob obtained control of the paper with the hand of his life at the late night poker ring, he's required strict observance to the clock. "Freaking clock," you mumble. "Now what was that dream about?" you ask yourself as you wander (yes wander, Bob has outlawed walking in Ketchikan, he claims it detracts from the ambiance, pronounced amb-e-ence, he never learned French and it rips you apart to hear him say it) across the street to work.

He's on top of you before you even enter the newsroom, well, what used to be the newsroom. Bob now demands it be called the "history making center." It really grates on you, like a cheese grater grating on cheese.

"Andrew!" He yells. He's also made it a condition of employment that you have to answer only to your full first name, and he tests you on it sometimes, to see if you'll answer to "Damstedt!" or "Andy!" but you're too busy ignoring him all the time anyway, so no worries there.

"Andrew!!" he yells louder. "What!" you yell back, "not going to let him keep this up" you think to yourself. "I've got a sweet idea for a story that you have to write. It'll keep me mayor for a long time, a long time I tells ya!" Two thoughts immediately plug up your mind, and the look on your face reveals the torturous hell you're dealing with. Thought number 1-"I hate how he reverts to his impression of fabled Cache Valley in his speech when he gets excited." Thought number 2-"Another Bob story...I've got to get those applications to graduate school in stat."

"Andrew!!! Pay attention, or you're fired." The image of the last reporter being fired crosses your mind. It wasn't pretty, he was actually fired from a canon into the ocean. A majestic sight until a hybrid of a humpback whale and a grizzly bear (one of Bobs recent experiments gone incredibly wrong) jumped a full 9 feet out of the air to catch him in it's mouth. You remember thinking that you should have expected that, but the circle of bubbles in the air didn't register until it was after the fact.

"Andrew!! You have to write a story about how I, Bob the mayor, know what makes animals happy. Really happy. All kinds of animals. Now start writing!"

"What? You don't know that," you reply. Actually, you've spent a good part of your summer wondering about this very question, and after making sure that if you wrote the book, you'd get onto the Daily Show to talk about it, you started considering writing it. You let it slip in the "history making room" and now...

"Andrew!! Of course I do, all the great mayors know that. Start writing!"

"Whatever Boob, I mean Bob." He stares at you, wondering if you meant it, obviously not having seen What about Bob, an irony for a man with his name. So heavy with irony. You decide to leave, telling Bob that you need to do some animal interviews. He grunts his approval.

A short walk takes you to the docks. You want to ask the the seals what makes them happy, when a bout of Dejavu strikes. You sense having been here before, in this very setting. Then it hits you, this was your dream last night! You think harder trying to remember what would happen next, when all of the sudden, your old brown leather couch comes screaming out of the ocean, and using the cushions like a giant mouth, swallows you whole and dives back into the ocean. Nothing other than a few startled tourists notice what happened, but none of them had their cameras out, and who's going to believe them. It's obvious that they're not the cream of the tourist crop, having completely missed the tourist season.

You struggle in the folds of the couch as the pressure increases. "What in earth is this all about!? I've got to remember more of that dream!" you think. The dream is coming back, you remember being eaten by your couch, diving into the ocean, the stupid tourists (good thing you had the dream, because otherwise, that very integral portion of the story would be lost), and...

Aha! You remember how you got out of it. With a great deal of foresight for a college student, you had placed a half eaten Abry's melt in the couch during general conference a few years ago, figuring that you now had your food storage taken care of. You reach out and find it. Despite being tempted to eat it, thinking that it might well be your last meal, you shove the sandwich into the ocean and it is immediately bitten by a shark, which also grabs hold of your hand and feeling resistance, pulls harder, pulling you out of the couch.

The couch turns to regain it's prize (you) and the shark and couch begin to battle. You sit there and watch, actually taking a bite of the sandwich, until you realize that the sandwich is actually putrid and that you also haven't breathed for over three minutes. After reaching the surface, you lift yourself onto the dock. Luckily, the couch didn't have eyes and didn't realize that it was diving right into teh floor of the harbor. You shake the water off yourself, and as you do, your old couch screams from a mortal bite. The humpback/grizzly had sneakily eaten both the shark and the couch. You hear that last words of your couch as they pop to the surface in the form of cartoon bubbles, "I only wanted to make you comfy..."

You really regret having given up that couch, especially now. If only your stupid brother had saved it for you, you would still be able to get it back. But now the humpback/grizzly bear had it, and it would take a miracle to get it back. Oh well, oh well you think.

You're saddened walking back to work. You've had the memory of your favorite couch reawakened, only to have it eaten by a humpback/grizzly bear. Bob the editorializing mayor is stealing your best shot at being on the Daily Show. If only you had someone to tell. If only that girl your mom had told you would start writing again, so you could tell her, because since you'll probably never meet her. But you must, you must keep up your...False Appearances!

A reversal of fortunes

After a long day of telephonic communication, you decide that it'd be nice to go for a hike on the Rainbow trail. You set out directly from the office, planning on hypnotizing a bear, and forcing it to catch a baby seal for you to roast and eat. This short walk takes you downtown, and as you walk past several jewelry shops, the following though occurs to you: "I'm really going to enjoy this baby seal." You see, in this episode, you're the villian!! As you realize this, all sorts of villainous thoughts enter your head, which are too evil to be written on paper. Or on a computer.
After solidifying your evil plan to take over the world by waging war on peace and happiness, you realize that you do not yet have an awesome name that will place the public in mortal fear upon utterance. This, of course, requires immediate and total attention, much like your brilliant niece Jane, so you devote even more brain power to the operation. Such a name is hard to come by, it needs to not only match your personality, but it needs to represent your mission and design. After a solid 2 minutes of study, a record for any evil villain, you decide on "Andrew." More frightening than Andy due to it's formality, and easy for you to remember. You smile a villainous smile and continue on your way. You had sat down on a bench to figure out the name, and because you were so absorbed in thought, hadn't seen that the bench had recently been painted. So recent, in fact, that the paint was still wet. "Brilliant" you mutter. You consider the color of the paint and the striped design it left on your clothes, and decide it will do as a design for your costume. While an evil villain, practical issues are still paramount because in your mild mannered life, you are still a newspaper reporter. There will be no spandex either, as that is very gross, and would cause your nipples to chafe anyway. That would stop any villain cold!

A grumble from your stomach interrupts your moment of satisfaction about the name and costume, and you set out again for the seals. In the distance, you hear an explosion and see a black van with a red stripe on the top go flying into the ocean. "That's odd" you think, remembering that you left that van rolling more than two days ago and it should have exploded a long time ago.

Ignoring the thought, you finally reach the trailhead and begin hiking. At the top of the mountain, you readily find a bear, hypnotize it, and sit on a log to wait for your baby seal. "This is the life" you think, relishing every moment. In any minute the bear will be back you can eat the seal, and continue on your way doing villainous things. The bear seems to be taking way too long, which makes you restless. All villains hate waiting, and it makes them restless. You stand on the log to try and see where your bear is. You spot it halfway down the mountain, tied a gagged, struggling to break free to bring you the seal it sees swimming and splashing and generally having a wonderful time, driving the bear mad. This sets off all sorts of evil villain alarms, causing you to jump off the log, and right into the booby trap set by colonel Maldefore. You see, he was telephonically reading your thoughts all the while, and since you decided to be the villain, he decided to reverse roles and be the hero.

As he ties you with heavy ropes and chains, you ask, "Okay Maldefore, how did you patch into my mind telephonically without me knowing it?" "Simple" he replies. "You had been so busy with your other telephonic communications all day that I raced into the last interview on the extra phone in the office, and didn't hang up. I've been listening all the time. Hahahaha!" And since I couldn't let you kill innocent baby seals, and realizing that I had little time to lose, and realizing that the van that had rolled into my bungalow near the KIC was your fault, and realizing that you would wonder what had taken it so long to explode, I set to the arduous task of setting the explosives and detonating it. It took way too long for the limited amount of time I had. AFter seeing you on the mountain, totally not worrying about the van, I deduced that it wasn't yours. What a waste of time that was. Anyway, I rushed up here, wrestled the hypnotized bear, with only the thought of a dead, headless baby seal to spur me on, finally triumphing. I rushed up the hill to set the booby trap, which was pretty easy because as I am normally a villain, I am well versed in booby trap techniques." "Geez" you think, "I didn't really want to know" "I heard that" he shouts. I guess he still hasnt hung up yet.

As the colonel drags you from a rope behind his scooter through town, Bob jumps out of his office and starts to pummel him. This gives you the time you need to escape and as you run back to your apartment, you decide that being the villain isn't really that great, seeing as how you're still really hungry and kind of scratched up from the dragging with rope burns around your wrists. No, you think, I will be the good guy from now on. Suddenly, the you hear a click in your thoughts, and know somehow that the colonel has decided he doesn't like being the good guy either, and will be back to his villainatry very soon. Whatever, you think, whatever.

Whatever indeed.

New reason to blog - Andy fan fic!!

I've finally found a reason to blog: provide the world with my perception of Andy's life in Ketchikan. Here is the first installment of an alternate life of Andy, based very loosely on facts that I received from him this morning in our latest email string. These are stories told to Andrew, as though he were sitting there nodding, confirming my every word.

The KIC Mafia:

I bet that your blank day has turned into an extraordinary day. Right as you finished writing that email, a tip came in from an anonymous caller. He went to confirm it, and along the way were abducted by the KIC mafia. They heard you were hassling the manager so they wanted to break your knuckles to teach you a lesson. Luckily, Bob saw the whole event unfolding, thought quickly, rolled under the black van with the red stripe along the top, attached himself to the undercarriage with his belt, and went for hte rid eof his life. Right as the KIC mafia (led by Mr. T) was about to break all you rknuckles, you see Bob in the background. Knowing that he needed a diversion, you stand up as best you can in the folding chair they have you tied up to with that really rough rope, and begin singing the star spangled banner. As these are very patriotic goons, they immediately put their hands on their hearts and listen. You give a bang up performance while Bob moves into position. At the end, you shout out "BRAVE!!!" like all the swimmers do at Pete's old swim meets, which startles the goons, Bob jumps out and applies round houses to half the gang, while you spin around like a helicopter blade, disabling the other half by ramming their shins. Bob uses his belt to untie you (?) and you run outside. Luckily the keys are in the van. Unluckily the van is out of gas. Luckily, Bob happens to have some old vegetable oil in his pockets. Unluckily, this van hasn't been converted to run on vegetable oil yet. Luckily, you are on the top of the mountain and can push the van to get it moving. Unluckily, both you and Bob are fairly winded from the burst of action in the warehouse, and you climb into the van too soon, and because it is moving so slowly, this gives the goons time to recover. Those that took round houses to the face come running out, pushing those who took helicopter folding chair to the shins in "wheelbarrow" race form, who shout out instructions to the guys pushing them; they can't see because the roundhouses have caused their faces to swell over their eyes. They begin chasing you down, and just as they are about to catch you, you shove a stick you managed to grab off a tree by the side of the road between the wheelbarrow walking guy (there are actually only two goons, Mr T is the wheelbarrow) and cause him to trip and fall, hitting his face on the pavement, disabling his vision. Now that both Mr. T's and Harold from Harold and the purple crayon's vision are ruined, you and Bob jump out of the van to finish off the mobsters. The van continues rolling. But suddenly, Harold whips out his crayon, draws an eye doctor, who rapidly fixes both their vision. It's now a two on two fight: you and Bob vs Mr T and Harold. Mr T cracks his knuckles, and grins widely while Harold just gives that blank stare. You start doing the helicopter move again, but realize the chair isn't attached anymore and stop. Bob just gives that blank stare.

Andrew finishes the story in a later email because Katie wakes up and I have to take care of her:

ended with me and Bob leaving Mr. T and Harold in a daze but before we go Bob gets hit by lightning and we rush to the hospital where he is resuscitated. but not before the vice mayor has unwieldily used his power in the mayor's absence wreaking havoc on K-can. Not being able to move his limbs, Bob asks me to solve the problem and if I need anything I can call Jack Bauer on his private line to help restore justice to the city. I leave Bob in the hospital and encounter Mr. T waiting outside, who I quickly give a roundhouse kick as I dial Bauer's number. "It's jack." Bauer says and he is within moments in Ketchikan helping me fight the evils that are spreading so quickly through Ketchikan. We reach city hall where vice mayor maldefore is signing document after document to increase taxes and expel cruise ships. Jack shoots him in the leg and he stops. Then I kick him in the face and rip up the documents and restore peace to the city.

What will tomorrow bring!? (Probably something to do with the van that is left rolling.)

Caving to peer pressure

I guess that I'd better post something too, blogging is so hot right now.

Maybe I'd better warn the DC Damstedts that a buddy of mine is moving out to DC tommorrow. He's been hired by the navy as a budget analyst. I think that means you'd better be freaking nice to him or he'll cut your programs. Journalism, yup, probably the first to go. And I wouldn't doubt if he finds a way to cut the judicial system too. Then we'd be left with, well, probably only the navy, which might work out okay.

Here in Provo, I've set about building some Olympic medal award platforms for a scouting event. I've got some sweet plans in my mind for a croquet set as well. And I should be involved in making a table for Jill sometime this summer. Oh the sweet joy that is woodworking.

I got back from a trip to Denmark last week. It sure made me realize that I do not want to travel much for my job. My initial feeling was "vacation" but it turned out being "double over time." I guess if you don't pay for your own plane tickets and hotels and food and stuff, you can't really complain about not getting to tour around a little.

So now I'm just here in little old Provo, burning things and playing with awesome kids. Life doesn't get much better.