Dendrophilia

This morning I woke up a bit earlier than I planned.



Since I was up, I figured I would turn on the computer and convert some J-drama files from softsub to hardsub. If I didn't mention it earlier, I love watching TV shows from Japan.

Once my computer booted up, my Windows Messenger activated. I didn't even realize it was set on automatic. I was immediately nailed by an IM from a XX friend.

XX: Hi!

Me: Hi. Sorry. Just woke up.

XX: Morning wood?



Funny she should ask. She hit the nail on the head. I explained the whole story.

I was planning on sleeping in late since it's Sunday, and my noisy neighbors haven't been running the welders in the mornings lately. However, I had to wake up at 7 AM to pee. Since it was still early, I crawled back into bed to go back to sleep.

Then it happened.



Morning wood.

I figured I would just fall asleep and everything would be normal. I was wrong. I must have been thinking of something good because this sucker would just not go away. Now any post-puberty male can tell you that a boner, if left untreated, will cause aches and pains. So after 90 minutes, I gave up trying to sleep and got out of bed. I figured doing the file conversions would be non-sexual enough to ease the swelling.



No, it wasn't blueballs.



XX: Ninety minutes?!?

Me: Yeah. But I had worse.

Remember Virginia? The Eastern Unintelligentsia?



Well, there was an incident where she came into my room and woke me up at the crack of noon. Luckily Hilo can be a chilly place, and I was snug under the blankets.



She couldn't see that I was hiding yet another incident of MWS, Morning Wood Syndrome.



It wasn't the typical case of MWS. This one was bad. It was like someone took off the pressure regulator. Mini-me felt like it was going to explode. To top it off, I had to pee. Bad.



So there I was, wearing only boxers, hiding my manhood under a blanket, holding in my pee, with a cute girl sitting on my bed next to me. Sometimes I wish I was an extrovert.

A Different XX Friend Sometime Later: You should have just whipped it out and taken care of it. Tell her if she didn't like it, she could leave.



Like I said, "sometimes I wish I was an extrovert."

I couldn't do it. All I could do was chat and hide for what felt like an eternity. Virginia eventually left, but the wood remained.



I had to bend and contort into several different angles to get a flow going. It was the hardest time I had peeing. Pardon the pun.

$20,000 Pile of Crap Lucky

K: From what it sounds like, someone jumped the gun.

Me: Who?

K: Those guys.

Me: What guys?

K: The other group.

Me: What group?

K: This other group. Some other guys.

Me: What the fuck are you talking about? I have no fucking clue who anyone is.

Gotta love it when people think you know everything that happens in this world.

Anyway... I thought I would talk about financial responsibility and Hilo. Those two topics just go hand in hand like peanut butter and jelly. Or maybe not.



I used to have a friend who often bragged about his awesome Harley. "This bike would be worth over $20,000 and I got it for like 6," he would drone. He would justify spending thousands of dollars on a bike because he was getting a great deal.



This isn't the same kind of Harley that he was talking about, but it doesn't matter. Most Harleys are crap anyway, so any picture would do.

The truth of this $20,000 Harley was that it looked like this:



Yessiree! That pile of crap parts you have laying about in the living room sure looks like twenty-grand. I think he mistook fantasy for reality. The fantasy could be a really kick ass bike. The reality was that he spent a shitload of cash on metallic crap.

It would be like me buying a bunch of art supplies:



Then trying to pass it off as a billion dollar painting.



Knowing my luck, I would probably accidentally punch a hole in it while showing it to friends.

Now this same guy wanted to buy an air compressor to use around the garage. Most normal, sane people would have bought maybe a 3-5 gallon compressor. Maybe even a 10-15 if they were going to use power tools.



Not this guy. He bought something close to 100 gallons. The thing was so big it was lucky he didn't have a laundry dryer. It took up the dryer spot in the laundry room.



His thinking was that it was too good a deal to pass up. I think he got it for about $500, which is a very, very good price. Totally unnecessary though. He could have bought a smaller one for under $200.

The grandiose size of the compressor matched his grandiose dreams. His plan was to have a full set of air tools... impact guns... spray guns... which could still work... with a smaller compressor... sigh...

Fool and his money and all that.

On the other hand, some fools live a charmed life. Another friend arrived home one day with this:



He found it in a surplus store and thought it was hilarious. So he bought it for $10. OK, so ten bucks is a cheap price to pay for some yucks, but did we really need a condom vending machine at home?

After admiring it for an hour, he set to it with some tools. He wanted to see the insides. He found a few condoms.



And about $8 in loose change. The previous owner never bothered to empty the coin receptacle before chucking the vending machine.



I guess it was all ribbed for his pleasure. Lucky fucker.

V: The Eastern Unintelligentsia

I was driving home after a bike ride and out of the blue, I remembered V.



V might be considered one of the early unintelligentsia. I met her when I was in college in Hilo.

This girl was a major firecracker.
Not only was she really good looking, but she was also funny, and had
great self esteem. She did what she felt like doing and if people
didn't like it, too bad. I don't recall her ever saying anything
negative about another person other than those who tried to make fun of
her. Instead of getting you to laugh at people, she made you laugh with
her. This made her immensely likable, and we used to look forward to
her visits.

She loved acting. I guess it comes naturally when
one is an extrovert. However, she really did enjoy it. She used to try
and get us to go watch her in various plays, but since we were "above"
going to plays, I never did get to see her act. I kick myself now.

Now because she loved acting, she loved being on film. One day she came over and we did an impromptu photo shoot. My roommate put her in various wrestling holds while I snapped off a few shots. It's frikking hilarious when your 6 foot tall roommate has a 5 foot tall girl in a headlock or in a suplex.
And the girl played along and loved it. Unfortunately I don't have
those pictures anymore. They were stored on 3.5" floppy disks. Remember
those?

V was also generous with her things. She once let my roommate her car for a day. It was an older Nissan Sentra
(but it wasn't old back then), filled with the requisite items of the
typical female car. She had two pairs of shoes, several shirts, a
couple of shorts, and an odd number of socks. My memory is fuzzy, but I
think I remember something like panties or bikinis.


So my roomie left for the day. V came over in the evening, and my roomie returned. V went outside to get in her car...

"How did my four door become a two door?"

My roommate was the stereotypical clueless surfer dude. He just hopped in the first Sentra
that looked like V's car and drove off. The weird thing was that the
key actually worked! They returned the car to a bewildered parking lot
wanderer.

Like some other unintelligentsia, V would take breaks
from hair removal duties. She too would allow her legs to grow a fine
coat. Even worse, V would take it one step further. Not only would she
show her prickly legs to us, but she would insist, nay force, us to
touch them. Touch them we did. We were forced into running our hands
across her stubbled shins and calves. It was an experience on the order
of a car wreck. We knew it was bad and disgusting, but we could not
stop from getting more.


Now V wasn't just all humor and
acting. She could give a guy a major case of blue-balls if she wanted.
Like the time she came to visit wearing some loose fitting soccer
shorts. She sprawled out on the couch and discussed her underwear
habits. Mainly, how she rarely wore them. Those satineque shorts
revealed a lot, but not enough. I'm sure it was obvious where our eyes
were, but V didn't care. That's just how she was. She knew college guys
want to look, and she just saw it as a fact of life. Not a huge
production for her.

And don't get me started on AOL. AOL used to be the number one internet
craze at the time. I had an account, and V wanted to try out the chat.
Of course, with V, nothing was normal. Imagine being a college male
with a hot female seated right next to you. Now imagine the female is
online describing her fellatio techniques. Yeah, you get the picture.


But even V sometimes needed help. There was one night when it was raining cats and dogs, which is normal for Hilo,
when she called asking for a ride. My roommate was either too drunk or
stoned to comprehend the message, so I hopped in my truck to go pick
her up. When I found her at the 7-11, she was soaked to the bone. She
had an argument with her boyfriend, and he kicked her out of his house.
She had to walk several blocks through the downpour to the payphone to
call for a ride. This was the era before the widespread use of
cellphones. I don't think she let the breakup set her back though. She
was back on her feet in a few days. She always had a tough personality.

I do thank Hilo for being cold enough to prevent any thoughts of sleeping in the nude. On more than one occasion,
V burst into my room before noon to wake me up. What was a surprising
and funny situation could have easily become a source embarrassment. I wasn't used to locking my room door when the house doors were locked.

So V, thanks for being one hell of an entertaining human being. You made some otherwise boring college days a bit more fun.