1689 miles traveled
People have accents just like in the movie “Fargo”! People have accents just like in “Fargo”!!! It’s so adorable! I just want to hug everybody. [insert offensive inaccurate fargo accent here] “Oh, Comere yoo adorable leettle northerner you.”
I’m writing this from the student union at North Dakota State University. We just met a student we both have a huge crush on. Honestly, this is a pretty cool school. Friendly, laid back, and fairly diverse. Although, I’m reminded of one thing while here. I’m writing this next part as an open letter to all college students everywhere;
Alcohol is not a defining characteristic.
Wearing a tee shirt that proclaims your undying devotion to beer is not a statement. It doesn’t make you different. It doesn’t make you more adult. It’s so pervasive as to be the opposite of edgy, and it doesn’t
tell us anything about you.
Jeeze. Come on.
Oh, and sex. We know you like sex, you’re college students. Honestly, we get it. I love sex too; it’s in my list of top 3 favorite things ever.
But tee shirts that invite women to have sex with you…'' well,
A.) They’re not really all that funny
B.) They’re not clever, seriously, they’re not
C.) They don’t work.
As a matter of fact, I think they decrease your chances of getting laid by 67% (and frankly the chances
are already dangerously low, given your personality.)
Admit it. You’re really wearing that, “Got Lei’d in Hawaii” shirt to impress other guys, right? To prove your heterosexuality. Make sure no one thinks you’re, gasp! gay.
Come here, you need a big hug too. Yes, there there, you’re going to grow up to be a big strong man.
Sorry. Went on a bit of a rant there.
Anyway, after this we’re heading over to Jamestown, which means more driving. I don’t love driving, but
at least there’s stuff to look at out here. There’s really only one word to describe the landscape.
Pretty.
It’s the major reason we're doing this again. Although it’s hard to stay focused while driving. The major highway in North Dakota is arrow straight and flat flat flat. The road is a perfect line going endlessly into the horizon. Since the truck has cruise control. Since there is very little traffic. Since there are no curves, there really isn’t much effort to driving. Our job as we drive is to
A.) Stay awake.
B.) Keep the truck between the two white lines.
C.) Continue to stay awake.
It feels surreal, like we’re keeping the truck balanced on a fence for two hours. It’s our current form of meditation, while having the stressful excitement of having the potential to kill us.
Here are some typical exits we’ve passed in North Dakota (I swear I’m not lying):
Anaconda Opportunity
No Services
Bad Route Road
Buffalo Alice
No Services
Home on the Range
No Services
Driving along, we’ve learned that the state motto for North Dakota is “North Dakota: The Roughrider State”, which is all right I guess.
Trying to find places to get food and fuel, we’ve come up with a few better ones:
North Dakota: No Services.
North Dakota: Vega-what?
North Dakota: Organic food is for Commies!
As we drive J and I have taken to reading anything we see out loud in funny voices.
“Blinsky! Hello, I am a truck. My name is Blinsky!”
This is how we pass our time. We’ve decided that fighting over the speed of the truck was beneath us. So we’ve moved on to fighting about the temperature inside to truck.
Me: “Can we turn on the air conditioning?”
J: “I’m freezing!”
Me: “What are you talking about? It’s like a thousand degrees in here!”
J: “Negative one thousand maybe.”
Me: “How did you get so crazy?”
J: “Jerkface.”
[a note to our more sensitive viewers: In reality J and I have NEVER called each other “jerkface.”
I’m making up half of this stuff, and exaggerating the other half. Just pretend you’re reading about two fake
people.]
Still, J’s also having issue with my humor these days. I dunno. It’s got something to do with my use of the phrase, “your mother.”
J: “How far is it till Fargo.”
Me: “Your mother.”
J: “What? That doesn’t even make sense.”
Me: “Your mother doesn’t even make sense.”
J: “Ahhhhhhh!”
I think J just doesn’t have my refined sense of humor.
(note to J’s mom: This is not about you. I meant it as more of an archetypal “mother,” like “The Mother Of Us All”, or “The Great Earth Mother”)
(note to “The Great Earth Mother”: please do not smite me for the “your mother” jokes, I’m just being silly. No offense.)
When we’re not driving the truck, staging mock fights, or begging the locals for vegetarian food, J and I have been writing. I’ve been writing fiction lately (apparently I’m either trying to be like J, or I’m procrastinating from writing my next album.)
Of course for J writing is the easiest thing in the world. Each day she effortlessly spins off a novel or two of ghosts who cry rainbow tears, alien races who communicate through smell, and extra dimensional creatures who highest aspiration is to merge into an eternal uni-mind.
Meanwhile, I struggle just to make my prepositions talk to my participles, whatever they are.
I don’t know why I’m even trying to write, I can barely talk. I was reading a book on dialog, and I’ve
started to observe how I, and others, talk. I’ve noticed something extremely disturbing about how I speak. I have this weird habit of ending all of my sentences with a trailing conjunction.
For example:
“I getting pretty hungry, maybe we could stop to get some food and…''
“and what?”
“What”
“You said, ‘and’”
“and what?”
“Ahhhhhhh!”
More later…
