shit's going to get fluffy

alright so as far as sam's comment on julia's last post goes... may i just note that maybe this blog wouldn't be so damned vagina-oriented if our male contributors oh i don't know, actually contributed???? jussayin. you guys can start posting things like measuring contests and the fact that i saw sam cuddle max better when wilbur hit him in the face with a pillow the other night if you want to, and i will read and enjoy them. but when us girls wanna talk about the puke-a-kitten-cute-shit that guys do for us those rules apply. got it?

unexpected things are just coming out of the wood work for me lately, and i know my posts as of late have been all bitchy and what not, but get ready for a curve ball... i am currently falling down the rabbit hole known as "a new prospective relationship". and damn is he just super neat. and without going into detail because sam and max would just have a fucking hey day with this, i really really really like him. and i think he thinks i'm pretty swell too. i feel good. in a hate myself kind of way because i'm not usually your cuddly, sentimental type. but this thing, whatever it is shaping up to be, makes visions of puppy dogs, fluffy towels, flying squirrels and other various bits of adorable shit fill my head and it feels awesome.

jules, i know what you mean about the stolen my heart? thing.... way to go.

sam, try not to hork too many times after reading this.

max... go drink some more tea, and i'm really really really gonna miss you man.

On code words and adorable pseudo-burglars

The house I live in Missoula has been my home for two years now and we've been this roughly amoebic group of roommates for three (they bought the house before I transferred here so I'm technically a late bloomer), and for the entire period we've had the understanding that if someone breaks in, or tries to murder us, or if an encyclopedia salesman is particularly unsavory, we all yell "SNOWCAT" and this is the signal to grab the nearest weapon to attack. Good news is we've got both a hatchet and a tomahawk right now so things are looking pretty solid on the the homeland security front.
WHICH IS LUCKY BECAUSE.
I got home the other night and my roommate Kendra, distress in her face, told me how we had a near SNOWCAT experience that very morning. Apparently while I was at work two men climbed over our fence and appeared to attempt to get into our house through my bedroom window, which is an basement egress in the back yard. While they were peering in, my other roommate's girlfriend Jess, who had been sleeping on the futon on the deck, stirred and said, "Um, hello?" Somewhat startled, they told her they were "measuring for a screen" and left in an embarrassed rush out the side gate.
Well my house found this quite bothersome, and we made some decisions about when and what to lock and hide, and were considering telling the neighbors that two sketchy dudes were kickin around the hood. Kendra even called our landlord to see if there was some work being done he hadn't mentioned, but he didn't know anything about it. SHIT.
HOWEVER.
I met a guy, like him a lot (this is related, I'm not just bragging). As Kendra and I discussed the situation, this guy, Clark, sat on the couch, sort of smiled, and finally said, "Can I tell you guys a secret?" Turns out the alleged attempting burglars were him and his friend, and they were actually measuring my window for a screen for a funny sweet surprise so bugs wouldn't get in. The friend had seen Jess but thought she was Kendra (they hadn't met Jess yet, and, to be fair, the two girls do look a lot alike) and assumed everything would be kosh. False. We were on amber alert because a boy wanted me to stop getting mosquito bites.

Moral of the story: Clark is no burglar, but (I'm sorry- I must) he's stolen my heart?

Response.

Sam, you are totally a douche for not writing on here in so long, and your self-loathing is justified, especially since you ditched me to go barbeque with your dad's girlfriend. homewrecker. picking up your slack, however, has been mucho good times. aaaahhh, who am i kidding? the only reason i absorb myself in this so often is because my boss told me that if she catches me on facebook during work hours one more time she's gonna fire me. looks like i should start scanning the classifieds.

jules. i don't know if you knew this about me..... but i'm sort of a champion dancer (and that's kind of a big deal). if you need a professional to help start your revolutionary coup, my salary normally starts around 75K. but i can teach you the robot, among other things, like how to successfully dance your way out of an awkward situation. works really well at office parties.

max. i will always love you even though your contributions are minimal at best. what ever happened to that sperm bank assignment i gave you? now that'd be some good readin'

calvin. i don't know if you ever check this but i'm sure once you do your ego will plummet from being told what a failure you are over and over again. but you're still one wicked dude.

i'm off to try to fight the man about my car, and possibly try to find a new one.

Oh shiiiit

I feel like a douche cause I haven't written on here in so long :(((((((( so many frowns over here. I'm totally cooking a pizza right now so I can't do it, but I have so much to say about how many beefs I have with the world right now that I'll write a real show-stopper. I promise and I love you and thanks for picking up my slack J and O.

Time for an actual dance dance revolution

So yes I went to Butte again this weekend, and yes it was the folk festival, and yes I'm sorry you couldn't be there Olivia (we'll meet someday), and no Calvin wasn't even invited. Despite intermittent rain, sheer exhaustion, and a complete inability to actually hang out with all my friends who were down there, I had a good time. I got to rock the Tibetan sand mandala scene, the African-American tap dancing scene, Argentine tango scene, blah blah blah, made new friends and kept the old, blah blah blah, got a killer butt workout from walking up and down Butte's goddamn hills for three days, blah blah blah, and in general have only one major complaint:

WHERE THE FUCK WAS ALL THE DANCING.

A festival comprised mostly of music should consequently also be comprised mostly of dancing. You're out all day drinking in the streets, it's inevitable that you're going to need to dance at some point, and since blues, honky-tonk, bluegrass, gospel, Moroccan drumming and zydeco (among other things, obviously, geeze) were all to be had this weekend, it only seems logical that the festival planners allow for crowds to do anything between toe-tapping and competition-level jitterbug. HOWEVER. The dude who decided the seating was obviously an arthritic old dancing scrooge and as he grumbled to himself Friday morning, "If I can't dance, NOBODY WILLLLLLLL," packed the streets so tight with chairs that it was difficult to even navigate the aisles on the sides. AAAAAND the only two stages where they allowed for movement were so inappropriately crowded with people just standing and looking bored as shit that I couldn't do anything. One could say us dancer types were dancing constipated and the dancing Pepto Bismol was nowhere to be found in the medicine cabinet of the national folk festival 2010.

We gotta get this guy a Natural Light.

Two places I found relief were Saturday night at the Silver Dollar (you've yet to fail me, ole Dollar) where a double vodka cran made their house band sound like B.B. King, and Sunday afternoon at the main stage where a kickin but bizarrely apathetic-looking bluegrass troupe (I was under the impression that bluegrass bands were all supposed to be jacked up on Old Crow whiskey and stomping their bare feet all the time???) got even some of those previously mentioned old guys to shake their damn thang. A whomping good time was had by many, especially since there was a mystery keg (?!) like, five feet from me the whole time. Baller.

Sub-complaint:

When is our generation going to learn to dance? Am I the only 20-something in Montana who can do basic eight-count swing and waltz? Why do I always have to rely on smarmy silver-haired men in polos to fuckin twirl me around? Eff, peers! EFF!

In conclusion: Butte, I love you, but you have got to get your act together. Teach Sam and Max how to dance and how to like it, and then maybe we'll talk.

sans folk makes me sad

soooooooooooooooooooooooo i dunno about you guys but i spend the entirety of my day on facebook and this blog. it's not because i'm a fat lazy pig who has no friends in real life (trust me, given the chance i would be on a mountaintop and i'm really jealous of max right now). mostly it's due to the fact that i have a kushy desk job that allows me to sit inside a posh, air-conditioned office on my ass aaaaaalllll day long (bonus-i also get to bring my dog to work). and my netflix account has just run out so i'm conditioned to check my profile every twenty minutes.

facebook is a glorious tool. it has allowed me to re-connect in a way that myspace prohibited me from doing because i would look up long lost friends and see the shit that they had pasted all over their profiles and immediately click the "back" button. things like kim kardashian lying naked facedown on a beach somewhere (not in the dead fish kind of way, more like the sultry eyes kind of way) or what looks to be a hello kitty barf-a-thon. facebook has none of this nonsense. it's safe. anyhoo, the point being that now i know what every single person i have ever met is up to at any given moment. and guess what all the butte kids are jabbering about? you got it. fucking folk fest. and it sounds like a blast. i personally have never experienced it. because i'm lame and what not. but this year i was really hoping to get in on the fun. the problem is, i can't ever ever ever get an extra day off. it seems as though every single co-worker of mine has had like, a massive amount of time off this year to do stupid shit like go to ten year high school reunions and mother-in-law birthdays (seriously? who gets days off for that kind of shit?). but when olivia needs a day off to say, move all her shit out of her ex-boyfriend's house (which i still have not done and i've been living out of a backpack for the last three weeks) or take her dog to the vet, pay bills, go to the last year of folk fest and other important shit like work on my tan, it's a no-go. sorry dude, but you totally have to stand there with a smile on your face while we shove this huge baton up your ass. i mean, i totally have sunday off anyway, which means i could go, except for the fact that my sister planned my nephew's first birthday on that day. i'm genuinely thinking about not showing up because all of my sisters are certifiably crazy and they probably are going to bombard me with questions about shit that i'd rather leave buried in the deep recesses of my skull. and who remembers their first birthday anyway? i'm gonna buy him a disney movie. and kids don't care if you're there, they care only about what's underneath the paper. at least that's my justification. so i will put it to a vote. GSS.... do i go to my nephew's birthday party and end up smoking weed in my car all day in order to get through the whole thing? does that make me soulless? or do i come up with some lame-ass excuse and go enjoy the debauchery that is folk fest with a shit ton of people i haven't seen in ten years? i'll let you decide. whichever gets the most votes wins. that way i can blame any outcome on you guys and sleep at night.

sam-thanks for the extra bed, man. and the rad drawing in the morn.

max- your cannibalism quote went over well with all my bozeman friends.

jules- i'm in awe.

The 28th Ammedment: Freedom of singing, climbing, drinking, and painting

In true Max fashion, I'll share my 3rd/4th of July reflections far too late for them to be in any way, shape, or form, relevant. In my mind, the 3rd was a great success because we ended it in a sing-along in which at least 67% of the participants were on a chair or table, said participants knew at least 80% of the words (after searching through Julia's post it shouldn't be too hard to guess which songs we sang), and 100% of those participating could not keep a tune and had a BAC high enough to prevent them from operating a pair of shoes, let alone drive a car.

Whilst my friends watched TV during the day of the fourth, my family, some family friends, and I climbed Mt. Fleecer and from the top we could identify 15 (fifteen!) differnt mountain ranges. Seeing the majestic beauty of these peaks made me question how I could ever think staying in town and drinking was fun when I could just as easily go out and explore these wonderful mountains.

Of course, we spent that night in town, drinking. However, we were graced with the presence of Mike and his wonderful fiance, Hannah. After giving Hannah shit for her suggesting a drink that was in his opinion 'too girly', Mike promptly ordered himself, me, and Sam Long Island iced tea's while Hannah ordered a 20 (twenty!) oz. beer and put us all to shame. Sometimes the universe just goes backward on itself.

We exercised our American freedom that night and infiltrated a building where our pal Olivia ( a different Olivia than our fine blog commentator) had begun a canvas painting of a melting desert road billowing off the edge of the earth. Or at least that's what was on the canvas after our gaggle of inebriated (and at times shoeless) artists had a go with the paint.

The most adorable moment of the night was Sam and Hannah getting all googly-eyed with eachother because they are artists and love Mac's and Macintosh things.

Anybody for a rousing round of We Be Burnin?

Well, I, too, feel the need to discuss America's birthday with you all, and since I ironically went from Missoula to Butte (they have Montana's largest 3rd of July celebration... which.... are you even allowed to be proud of that?) I thought it suitable to follow Olivia's impassioned political speeches with some vaguely patriotic drivel.

Day One: July 2. Gin & tonics and Cold Smoke at the Silver Dollar in downtown Butte. A delightfully sinewy and surprisingly British blues singer had some of us kind of dancing and a middle aged man absolutely not dancing at all. He was straight up fidgeting or just shrugging or something, alternating with clapping and freaking air guitaring the shit outta that place. I was worried.

When we got back to Sam's we found five or six drunk boys sitting on top of the fireplace in the lotus position and sunglasses, kissing me too many times, feeling my toes, putting their feet in the kitchen sink, and singing Biz Markie's "Just A Friend" more loudly than I'd ever heard before. It was rad.

Day Two: July 3. For those of you that don't know, July 3 is the wedding anniversary of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and The Statue of Liberty. He made her in his own image and then married her.

This is what happened when she lost her virginity.

Anyway to commemorate this auspicious occasion we went out to a greasy but satisfying breakfast, and onward to acquire classy Americana keepsakes/wardrobes. Barbeque in the evening, take full advantage of the lack of the no open container law (the first thing I did the first time I visited Butte was crack open a beer and walk to the liquor store) and wander downtown. Every year the people at Maloney's construct a couple rockets made out of beer cans (America!) and send them blasting into the evening sky. This year's four were disappointingly consistent, therefore striking little to no fear in any of us except Kelly, of course, but I did manage to recover the tails of one in an alley, thus completing the body of one Wilbur had found the previous year. You're welcome.

When we once more returned to home base, we knew there was nothing better to do besides get tanked and light fireworks, so we got tanked and lit fireworks. The Star Spangled Bangers which warned that they shot off flaming balls were the highlight. Then when the city show began, I mostly proclaimed "BEAUTIFUL" and almost rolled down the hill and wondered who the boy in the skirt was. I guess after that we proceeded to just drink more booze and crazily sing and dance to "Africa" by Toto and "Total Eclipse of the Heart" by Bonnie Tyler. (Have you SEEN that music video?!) P.S. Sam drunkenly shouting "FUCKIN FOREVER'S GONNA START TONIGHT" is an image I will never lose.

Oh yeah and unlike last year, Max luckily didn't get bit by a dog and be a total baby the rest of the night so he got to have fun with the rest of us who would have gotten over the injury anyway. Good job on that one Max. Keep it real.

Max on the 3rd of Joolye.

Day Three: July 4. Considering that most of us had died in the night, everybody else did the next best thing and slept pretty late. Then we watched The Soup and literally the best movie ever made, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Then we drove back to Missoula where I found two other sad drunk boys to hang out with. That night ended up with a big pile of broken glass and this song on repeat.

America, I love you.

Umurica!

hello society members. olive here. i figured in light of the latest mile-marker for this great country i would post some things that i think makes our nation great..... and probably a longer list of things that we really need to improve upon. as well as a really kick-ass story of how i spent my fourth. enjoy.

America's Positive Attributes:

1. freedom of speech. you had to know this was going to be on the top of my list. not only am i extremely liberal, (which makes pissing off conservatives all the more fun) but in this great country i get to say whatever the hell i want, whenever the hell i want to. which is great considering the fact that i have no internal censor. seriously. in case you haven't noticed i cannot not swear. (sam, if my incessant dirty mouth becomes a problem to our more timid readers, we will have to come up with some euphemisms for me to use. talk to me about it.)

2. hot dogs. what? they're made out excess parts of pigs and whatnot and somehow they are still delicious! piled high with mustard, relish and sauerkraut, i can think of nothing that makes me all warm and fuzzier.... excluding my puppy.

3.this guy. yarp. that's how you party here in umerica. he wore that cape all.day.long.

4. the cultural diversity. the fact that i live in an american college town means that i know snippets of random phrases and cuss words in a whole crap-ton of languages. and foreign food rocks ( except for certain types of curry, my bowels do not handle that well.)

5. hobbies. i don't know what they do for fun in other countries (well, in Afghanistan they make elaborate rugs for fun.... i do know that) but we in umerica have some of the most wide-ranging ways to kill time. mine are tattooing and graffiti, as well as bellydance and blogging. but there are people that take some shit to the next level. like this guy. how many times do you think he's gonna hit his face on pavement until he gives up? but i'm sorry to inform you that no matter how good you are at any particular thing you decide to waste time learning, you will never EVER be cooler than this girl. seriously. i would marry her if it weren't for the fact that she hit on nick cannon. gross. but i do love that show.

Shit That America is Slacking On:

1. education. that whole "no child left behind" thing was complete trash and everyone knows it. instead of actually fixing the problems that public education faces we just reinforced them. underfunding for schools should be one of the main focuses of any political party... because a country is only as smart as the people who run it, and as far as i'm concerned, we're fucked. we focus solely instead on military funding and recruitment, and if you ask me, there are enough dumb shits running around with big ass guns in the world. memorization and regurgitation is the way students are taught to excel. i'm one of them. i don't remember half the shit that got me any of my A's in high school, and i'm not going to call myself intellectual by any means but max just graduated from a prestigious university and i know he will agree with me, so i'm right.

2. health care reform. come on, Obama. you said you could do it. man up and do it. in this country it is im-fucking-possible for someone my age to get decent health insurance, unless they are signed under a parent's policy. which is bullshit. i have hospital bills out the yang because doctors here feel like they are providing you with a service, rather than doing their duty as a physician. you can't even get into some hospitals in this country without some sort of insurance plan. they will literally ship you off to a different facility.

3. wal mart. seriously. check this out and tell me this is just what america needs.

4. celebrities. ok, ok. i love snookie just as much as the next red blooded american but don't you think that when the news is taken over by the latest sandra bullock-jesse james sex tape scandal when instead we should be focusing our efforts on what the fuck is happening in gulf... that this shit is just getting a little extreme? and we all want to think that they're really like us, most of them just have better faking skills and can adopt babies from third world countries like it's going out of style, but if you could pick a charity to donate to every year, would you really pick peta? and for what reason? the cool photo shoot? why don't you take the eight million dollars you made from that last pepsi commercial and put it towards health clinics in poor neighborhoods, Haitian relief efforts, or Aids research, you douche.

there. i put five good things and only four bad. i think i'm getting better at this whole positivity thing.

and now for a story. my fourth rocked. and i think it is shaping up to becoming one of my favorite holidays. not because i'm patriotic. i'm really not. but because every fourth of july for the past two years has been a bitchin good time. last year i ended up in missoula hanging out with all the kids that moved there from butte (literally. all of them.) at an impromptu pantsless party. there were giant piles of corn everywhere and it was awesome. this year i floated the river and got a gnarly sunburn. after that i went to what would affectionately be called the crazy ranch. one of the kids in our floating party rents a room from this old guy named terry at a ranch just outside of bozeman and he invited us over for a good old fashioned bbq. this bbq, however, turned out to be anything but old fashioned. i got really drunk and played croquet. then i ate some mushrooms and got into the hot tub. right as the mushrooms were kicking in this old guy terry brings out a notepad that has the word INDEPENDENT THINKER written on the back and proceeds to videotape a poem that he wrote about the financial crisis our country is currently going through in the style of the late great george carlin. it was epic. i could not stop laughing. after that he read me a poem he wrote about how all his best friends wear fur coats. it was a poem about every dog he had ever owned. i don't know if any of you have ever experienced any type of hallucinogen, but it makes everything hilarious. after that we sat on his front porch and watched the city of bozeman light up with fireworks while aaron sat on the roof screaming at us about how awesome the finale was going to be this year. now i'm not one of those people that eats mushrooms every weekend and goes on quests to find their power animal or anything like that, but some experiences in life you just can't turn down. and this was one of them.

so there you have it. my fourth was way more awesome than yours and if it wasn't, then you better fess up and share. until next time.

In brief

A tepid welcome to our new contributor Olivia (just kidding, I guess it's pretty warm) and photo evidence of my Solstice potluck dish:

Booyah. 

If you're out here in the Great American West somewhere, get out of doors and sniff a mock orange bush, the blooms of which are currently in full force. RAD SCENTS. 

If you're elsewhere, keep it real and go back to sleep. You're in a different time zone.

That is all. 

GOOD DAY.

inaugeral posts: badass or bust.

so i know that i'm supposed to write something all uplifting and shit for my GSS debut, but to tell you the truth i just don't have it in me right now. i don't know if any of yous guys out theres are meteorology fans, but you don't have to like bad nicolas cage movies in order to get the full effect of what happened here in bozeman yesterday. a hail storm of epic proportions hit around four o clock and for lack of better words here, fucked shit up.

it started out to be a beautiful day. i even put my bathing suit on and went to the freaking tennis court for christ's sakes. here i am, minding my own business picking up random necessities at the grocery store and as soon as i get outside... wham! hail the size of andre the giant's adams apple. all i could think was "find shelter. find shelter. find shelter." it was an immediate personal mantra that must have been playing in the heads of every bozeman resident at the time. fight or flight response. but you can't really win against a hail stone as big as your fist that's been hurtling towards you at the speed of something that goes really fast... so i drove dale jr trying to avoid being killed in a freak storm that god himself bestowed upon me for making fun of all those poor saps over in billings a week ago.

i survived. my car, however. did not. she now sports over fifty dents, a cracked front windshield, a shattered back windshield, and a bruised ego. seriously. my back windshield kind of makes me look like a bad ass that got into a gun fight with russian mobsters. good news: my car is fully insured. bad news: i still have to pay $750 to get that bitch fixed. but it could be worse. i got a text that had a picture of some lady getting hit in the face. and my friend kurt totally got hit in the weiner whilst smoking a cigarette and laughing at everyone's misfortune. instant karma zing!

but at least these people had fun.

the rest of my day was spent in a drunken haze cuz that's how i deal with shit. but i played pool and had fun, before i ended up barfing all over a gas station parking lot. but it's cool because i had friends to hold my hair. and later got into a pretty heated argument about the new avatar the last airbender movie, ending in a fantastic quote made by my frind steve that goes like this: "i'm not going to pay seven dollars to watch a hate crime." whatever that means.

sam. thanks for inviting me bro. (that's right i just called you bro, get over it.) hopefully my future posts will not be as negative-infused as this one was. and i am totally going to write about future illegal activities that we partake in, so hopefully we have no followers who are involved in law enforcement.

max. don't worry, i'm still not judging.

calvin. dood. where the fuck are you man? get out of your hidey hole!

jules. is it ok if i call you jules? i don't know you, but i enjoy your posts. maybe one day we can meet and it will be sweet. (that rhymed!)

GSS for life.