Month: December 2003

I’m agitated. I’ve been distraught lately. You would think that, coming home for Christmas Break, it would be all bubbles and stubbles, but it’s not. It’s been hell.

See, there’s been something weighing on my mind. It has to deal with my brother, Bryce. Bryce is a great guy. He’s funny, intelligent, and a great kisser. I mean… has black hair. (ahem) Anyway, that is why this is such a hard post to write, and I’ve put if off for as long as I could.

Let me set it up. Last weekend Megan and I came to Big Stone to help my father move stuff into our new upstairs. My mother has had this dream addition for years. I had never pictured it ever happening, because my mom has grandiose dreams and little motivation to realize them. My brother literally pictured himself married, with children, before coming home to enjoy the addition.

Well, ladies and gents, the dream is realized. This itself poses fundamental problems of happiness, but I won’t get into them here. The majority of the work is done. It’s quite a livable space now. Soon Bryce can move into my parent’s old bedroom and I’ll have the bunk beds all to myself. That’s right; I said “bunk beds”.

So, in between moving the largest most complex entertainment center ever and listening to my mother say, “Well, it didn’t look that yellow in the can,” we managed to escape the house with Tony. We were looking for a copy of Amadeus because if Megan watched it and wrote some things about it, she would get extra credit in her Music class. The movie was nowhere to be found. The most helpful comment we got from the different movie rental establishments that we visited was, “Why do you want a stupid movie about Beethoven?”

Stoners are so funny.

Driving back in failure, Tony says, “Hey, Miles. Remember when I said that Bryce and I have had a bad semester?”

Yes.

“Well, … let me put it this way. Bryce doesn’t have a major yet, but he has a minor.”

What? You heard right. My brother got a minor. As in “a Minor in possession of alcohol”. As in a fine, a ticket, jail time, execution. This was quite the shock. My brother… sure he was the black sheep, but I had no idea how dark his coat was.

The best part was yet to come. We finally found a copy of the bloody movie. My mom knew someone whose son loved the movie and they lent us their copy. So, we were sitting there, about to start watching the movie, eating food, when the phone rings.

Tony answers the phone, and I can hear his side of things. “Hello Rausches. … Hey, how did you know it was me? … Like, now? … Okay, here’s your brother.” And Tony hands me the phone. My conversation with my brother confirmed that he was planning on telling them right now. He asks to speak to mom.

I hand the phone to mom. I can hear her side of things. “Hello? … Hi. … What do you mean ‘bad news’? … What?! … Ha, ha, very funny. Lindsey better not be pregnant. … You know what? I don’t want to know. Here’s your father.” Mom, unable to bear the news that was soon to come, passes the phone off on my dad, who actually was in the bathroom at the time.

She comes back asking me and Tony what the phone call is about because Bryce couldn’t tell her. She tells us, “He said, ‘Bad news. Lindsey is pregnant. No, I’m just kidding.’ What a shithead.”

We decided to watch the movie as Bryce tells my dad in the bathroom the whole story. We hear some yelling, but just a little, and then a lot of talking. We watch the movie and things go on. They are both a bit disappointed in my brother, and my mom turns a wary eye towards me, as if to say, “Well, if Bryce got caught once, how many times have you not gotten caught?”

It’s true. I’m better at getting away with things then Bryce is.

This whole thing, though, is not what I’m angry about. It’s about what happened when I wasn’t home. Bryce came back to Big Stone a couple days before I did because of how his test situation turned out.

I get here to realize that Bryce has already turned the Minor into a joke. A whole joke concept that I was left out of the loop on. He does this, he slips the word “minor” into a sentence.

It’s a minor setback.
That’s quite a minor chord.
A man who digs in the ground is a minor.

Think of all the “minor” puns I could have used? Think of all the funniness that there could have been! I feel slighted. I should have known from Tony’s introductory joke, those days ago, that this sort of thing would happen.

So, to make up for things, here is my minor list.

• Make a minor change.
• That’s a minor problem.
• It’s a minor setback.
• That’s quite a minor chord.
• If you throw a piano down a mine shaft, I’ll show you A-flat Minor.
• A psychic was involved in a minor collision downtown. She had an auto-body experience.

Ok, those last two weren’t mine especially. I realized that, in the heat and anger of my typing, I had forgotten all the good ones that I had come up with or heard. But the rest were minor. Hehehe. I crack me up.

I don’t post during Finals Week. I have my studies to consider.

Sorry, Bryce. Bug me Monday.

Well, it’s that time again, when life gets a little weird. It is the time of year that mothers will gladly run you over with their Toys-R-Us shopping cart to grab that last stupid $20 piece of plastic kids call a toy. I am personally not a fan of the Christmas season.

“But Bryce,” you say, “there are a plethora of reasons to love the holiday season, how can you not be a fan?”

Well, random student, my feelings started when I got the flu every Christmas Eve for three years in a row. What can I say? God hates me.

Second, this holiday season tears people apart, sometimes literally. I mean, you never see people dog piling over a stupid “Furby” on Earth Day, do you? And how can you ever forget the disappointed look on the young ones’ faces when they saw you bought them a stapler instead of that stupid doll they wanted so bad. Whiny brats don’t realize how some kid from Canada would kill for a good stapler.

Third, I hate the television programming on Christmas. It’s as if the TV networks got together and have played the ultimate Holiday prank:

“Hey, let’s ALL play “A Christmas Story”!”

So that is why I have been less than pleased with my holiday seasons. What’s better than fighting over that last “A Very *NSync Christmas” CD, watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” 12 times in the same day, and seeing your friends holding back tears when they see the crappy gift you bought them while asking you if you kept the receipt? Oh, I don’t know. Maybe lighting myself on fire.

Quiet cutting sounds throughout
Sterling silver’s perfect glint
Prison places dealing doubt
Depressed and Dying for a stint

Frigid forests working lines
Waking where Aurora grows
Awful astral dyn’sty mined
Depressed or Dying, no one knows

“Never, nothing” resultant phrase
Rested wretched boring dope
Brightened Belle of daring praise
Depressed, not dying; I can cope

People of Southwest Minnesota State University, we must come together. One of the simple joys in life is sadly at risk and we must do something about it. I am talking about the threat of Do-Not-Call Lists being activated preventing friendly telemarketers to attempt selling products to you and your family. Since this controversy has started, like you, I have just been sick to my stomach. It is as if I have been told my parents quit loving me or that my brother is in love with me. What are we to do?

To start we could all quickly do our best to get on that list as soon as humanly possible. Why so soon? Judges are lining up to strike this �Do-Not-Call List� unconstitutional. Luckily a whopping 50 million people managed to squeeze their names and phone numbers on that list before judges made their ruling.

I think the greatest sign that people are ready for telemarketing to be over would be the length it took congress and President Bush to pass a bill allowing the list, a week. They passed this thing faster than Vanilla Ice�s career started and ended.

I realize many of us have started getting really good at comeback lines for the telemarketers, telling them you had no parents, carrying on conversations for as long as they would allow, trying to convince them you were Amish and of course everyone�s favorite flat out swearing at them. The best part is, they can not swear back! What a great country we live in.

Another great part of the lists is that telemarketers have to respect everyone that�s on the list already, unconstitutional or not, they have to buy the list to see who not to call and if they dare to call those people anyways they are slapped with a large fine. How large you ask? About the price of 2 to 3 books or $11,000.

Now this whole battle is not over yet. Telemarketers have their �Freedom of Speech� arguments while everyone else in the United States argue that they are annoying and should for the love of God leave us alone. The best we have been able to get is the list and a few other legal requirements from the telemarketers. Even if you are happy about these latest developments with our friendly telephone salesmen just remember, the next time you desperately need to change your phone service, get a new mortgage, or have that urge to get another credit card maybe they won�t be so eager to help you out.

My cousin Brenna is a great girl. She’s a writer. She’s a card. She’s all that and a bag of Frito Lays (to borrow from popular culture).

Bren is currently attending St. Olaf near/in/outskirts of Northfield, Minnesota (yes, Minnesota). It has been her habit for the last couple of years to come to our house for Thanksgiving. She lives originally in Rapid City, which is something like 6 or 7 hours from Big Stone. St. Olaf is something like 3 or 4 hours from Big Stone, the other way. That is something like 10 or 11 hours driving if she wanted to go home. Seeing as how she loves us much more than her original family, she typically stays in Big Stone with us.

This year was no different. The irony of Brenna (being a cousin on my dad’s side) staying with us for Thanksgiving is that my mom’s side of the family is the one that comes to visit us. She has kinda become the nth cousin. They all know her name, and most of them know her major, though they argue about it. As it is, we always have a good time when Brenna hangs out with us.

The trip to get her even started off good. It was my brother, my father and I, braving the open road at night. Bryce, to not feel like such a back seat loser, tried his best to start conversation topics. The one that actually got a conversation going was “What activities were you or are you involved with in college?”

My dad went first. He started off with clubs and organizations. Jobs could only be counted if the school was your employer. This was great news for me because I have three jobs for the school right now. “Well, I went to a lot of events to watch; does that count?”

Bryce got angry. “Dad, you can’t count that. That’s like saying, ‘Well, I went to a basketball game once and tossed the ball back when it went out of bounds.’ You can’t say that.” My dad immediately apologized (after tears) and we pulled the car over and hugged for what seemed like forever.

When we recovered, we pulled back onto the open road. My dad’s total number of activities came to 14. It was my turn. I named off clubs and organizations and the like. The numbers climbed, soaring up to 12. I wasn’t going to be outdone by my dad, so I asked a simple question. “Can jobs, if they are for the university, be counted?” Bryce said yes, and I said 15.

I felt victorious, wondrous, and powerful. Bryce read off his list of activities. “I’m in the paper, I write for the Spur.”

“One.”

“I … I was in ROTC at SDSU.”

“Two.”

“And I was undefeated grand world champion of intramural wrestling one year in a row.”

“… three… Wait, weren’t you the only one in that weight group? And you only wrestled once?”

But we didn’t have time to get into it. There we were, at Brenna’s dorm. We waited for her for a bit, grabbed her stuff, and headed home. The only thing I regret about the trip back is that we never asked Brenna the number of activities she was in. I would have to guess 39.

The weekend was peppered with cribbage. One game we played had Bryce and Lindsey versus Dad and Me/Brenna. We won the game, but you couldn’t tell by our playing method. It seems that every hand that we had there was a question as to which stupid, crappy card we should toss. We’d be faced with a host of retard cards and the choice would come to toss either a three or a seven.

It came down to which number do we hate more? We tossed a three the first time. The card that was cut was a two. We had a ten and a jack. So, thanks to dropping the three, we had nothing. If we had a seven, and tossed that, the card that was cut would be an eight. After a couple times of this happening, we would moan and scream when the card was cut, even if it was good. Good or bad, we always screwed it up.

We also never paid much attention to the game. We got into an argument. Brenna chastised me for still believing my “disillusionity.” I argued back, ridiculing (I’m sure) her writing. Then I yelled out, “Maybe I enjoy my disillushunamentity!” I did this while she was taking a swig of Sprite, and, as a consequence, it appears to have come out her nose, boiled her brain, and forced her to leave the table.

Thanksgiving hit full force, like a fat kid accidentally pushed off the Empire State Building by his just as fat, but less sensitive, first cousin. There was turkey, stuffing, potatoes, and wine. Oh, there was wine. Grandma, if you’re reading this, Bryce needs to be talked to about his drinking problems.

The highlight of the dinner was my grandparents recounting a very interesting story about pie crusts. You might think that I’m joking, but the story was awesome. There is really no way to tell it in text on a website. To fully enjoy it, you had to have been there. To get a nice second-hand reiteration, you must see Bryce and I perform it.

The story goes like this. My grandma has recently come to realize that kids these days are more fans of store-bought crust over hand-made crust. “Kids these days don’t know what good pie crust is!” So, she decides not to do hand-made crust for Thanksgiving. “Well, I said, to hell with getting up at 6 in the morning to make pie crust they don’t even like.”

She sends my grandpa out to get some store-bought crusts. He says, “So this pretty young girl helped me find the pie crusts, and I just reached up and grabbed five of them, because Alyce needed five, and… well, how was I supposed to know there were two in a tin? I thought it was expensive.”

Grandma gets the tins and makes the pies. She checks on them that night, to see how they look, and discovers that she forgot to remove the paper between the crust and the filling. “You know that feeling when your blood turns to water? That’s how I felt seeing that paper there.” Grandma is a bit overdramatic.

Grandpa, that night, has a dream about it. Yes. Grandma couldn’t sleep all night, and Grandpa had a dream about it. “I had a dream about the damn thing. … In my dream the damn thing just lifted out, you know. My dream didn’t show what to do if it doesn’t.” Grandpa does what the dream says, but it doesn’t work perfectly. He has to do some nifty amateur surgery, but he figures it out. My uncle Kevin says, “Wait. So this pie is store-bought crust?” and my grandmother, with a huge, guilty smile on her face, can only say, “Yes!”

The activity around our household was minimal after that. We did go to Unity Square one day to play basketball. I was definitely not suited for such an athletically inclined activity, but my team won. Thanks to Tony’s underestimation of my luck, I managed to score a few points, even.

We watched TV. We saw the top celebrity battles. The runner-up was that battle between Britney and, Limp master himself, Fred Durst. I think this is a pretty weak battle. I could see how certain people would have watched it with delight, muttering “burnage” as blows were dealt, but I took no notice of the debacle. The number one was Eddie Van Halen versus David Lee Roth. Take that for what it’s worth.

It was time to take her back. Bryce and Brenna and I met Megan at China Moon in Madison to begin our trip. It came down to everyone being done and me talking with a plate full of food when Brenna said, “You ready to go?” I look down at my plate, at my watch, at them, and back at my plate. “Gimme a sec.” So, I stuffed a whole bunch into my big, fat, stupid mouth, and we left.

On the trip up was nice. We listened to Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (voted the number one album by Rolling Stone Magazine), lots of rap music, and then Nirvana. Megan is a huge Nirvana fan. So we started talking about how she’s going to marry him in Heaven.

“Wait, so then where do I fit?”

“Ok, we can get married in heaven, and he’ll be our son.”

And that started the topic, if you could adopt dead people in Heaven, who would you adopt? This is truly a heated argument. One person would pick someone, Lincoln, and the other person wanted that person to begin with. So, then the second person would pick a rival, John Wilkes Booth, to spite the first person. Exempt are deities and people still alive, as much as we all wanted Paul McCartney.

The list the Megan and I came up with is:

• Kurt Cobain
• Lead singers of Sublime, Drowning Pool, Blind Melon
• Mother Teresa
• Alfred Hitchcock
• Catherine Hepburn
• Steven Spielberg
• Alexander the Great
• Emily Dickinson
• William Blake
• Robert Frost
• Walt Whitman
• Mufasa
• Rainbow Bright
• Hedy Lamarr
• Nemo’s Mom
• Charlie Chaplin
• Harry Houdini
• FDR
• Cain
• Abel
• Adam
• Abraham
• M. C. Escher
• Tycho Brahe
• Joseph Smith
• Tupac
• George Washington Carver
• Jack Benny
• Lee Harvey Oswald
• Sigmund Freud
• Jesse James
• Wyatt Erp
• Karl Marx
• Machiavelli
• Crazy Horse
• Kate Smith
• Lee Harvey Oswald
• Josef Stalin
• B. F. Skinner
• and some I can’t read anymore.

It was dark in the car. As the list rambled on, my words became muddled. Soon it was impossible to see the paper anymore, so we quit the game. It’s food for thought, though. I’m just hoping that God has something like this in place already. Then we don’t have to spend all the time getting names on a petition.

We got there safe and sound. We dropped Brenna off and drove back home. The trip home was mostly uneventful. We stopped at a Burger King, and then Bryce and Megan left me there. I was devastated that my brother and my girlfriend would double cross me like that. Shameful.

Shameful.

The next day we had church. I played guitar, but (once again) pissed off my mom while doing so and just quit playing halfway through the last song. We hit the store to buy some goodies. The fun thing about that was when Bryce slipped a douche and a package of Vagisil. Megan thought it was my mom’s, so she didn’t say anything.

So, Bryce said, “Miles, why are you getting Vagisil?”

So, not to be outdone, I say, “Wait, you got extra strength? How bad do you think my burning and itching is?”

I love going to store with my brother.