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!