where the hell are jenn & ryan?

details coming soon!

flip a coin and see what happens. [ryan]

11.27.07
Tacoma, Washington
8:40a

What happens next in the story? It all depends on the choices YOU make. How does the story end? Only YOU can find out! And the best part is that you can keep reading and rereading until you’ve had not one, but many incredible daring experiences.
[space and beyond, book #4 in the choose your own adventure series]

I woke up this morning in another one of Jenn’s Peace Corps friends’ houses in Tacoma, Washington and found myself looking at their books and judging them accordingly. It’s what you do. everyone does it, don’t judge me for judging them you judger. I’m sure they judged me and my road trip hair. me and my fast talking. me and my no house. When you don’t know each other, all you have is book covers to judge by. and so you do. and no matter how many times people tell you not to, you do, and it works.

Book covers reveal lots.

When you are browsing for a new city, a new home, and you only have so long to do it in, you judge the city by it’s cover. The few people you meet at the Safeway in Idaho, Montana, South Dakota are compared against each other and crunched as numbers in your cost benefit analysis of cities, and all of a sudden you have a feel for the city.

cherokee dude with cowboy hat at that one gas station, Montana: 7.8

lady with the highlights and the not enough lips for her lipstick, Idaho: 6.2

vegan fried foods with monkeys on horses art everywhere, Milwaukee: priceless

The few conversations had at various coffee shops in a particular town act as font choice, the sweaters they wear is either paperback or hardcover, the look you in the eye factor is glossy or matted. you look at the front, you flip it over and read the 30 second synopsis on the back, and you decide where to live.

San Fran: expensive, open-minded, artsy, asians.

L.A.: fake tits, fake, tits and also fake.

Seattle: rain, starbucks, grunge leftovers.

Portland: weed, indie art scene, affordable, up and coming, weed.

Hawaii: home, expensive, family, friends, home, musical chairs as job hunting, expensive, home, home, home, hapas, perfect weather, home, weed, surf, home, hapas, home, family, friends, home, home and also home.

flip a coin and see what happens.

If it comes up heads, turn to page 107.

If it comes up tails, turn to page 108.

every chapter ends with a beginning.

me talk pretty one day, David Sedaris. Into thin air, John Krakauer. Books on Belize, Hawaii, and How to buy your first Home. I think we’re in that first home right now. I love Jenn’s friends. I want their house. I wonder if they would feel comfortable knowing how I lust for it while they’re at work. I want to sit in a car across the street and stake it out and then report back to myself. Timequake, Kurt Vonnegut. The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas. Crime and Punishment, Fydor Dosteyevsky. And the last book cover I judged its book by was Space and Beyond, R.A. Montgomery, #4 in the choose your own adventure series. It was hidden. In between Hawaii and Belize. The only thing that drew me to it was the fact that I couldn’t see it.

If you decide to go willingly, turn to p. 20

If you decide to fight, turn to p. 22

this road trip blog was named after this series of books, and I’ve never read one.

If you choose to see the universe 2 billion years ago, turn to page 78.

If you want to see the past hundred years, tun to page 79.

I couldn’t actually begin to read it, because I kept getting sucked in by the endings.

I chose to begin with all the endings.

I chose to judge its journey by its destination, its means by its ends, its beyond by its space.

No matter what end I began with, it spoke to me.

If you choose to watch the future, turn to page 109.

If you choose to go elsewhere, turn to page 110.

Every ending was my now. I too, have choices, endings, pages. I too, want alternate realities. I too, feel like there are only 2 different pages to turn to, 2 different presidential candidates, 2 places to really live, when it really comes down to it, 2 paths, 2 roads, one less and one more traveled, 2 choices too much.

If you can hold off the enemy until you escape, turn to page 94.

If you give up, turn to page 96.

Sometimes, I admit, I just want to read a whole book full of page 96’s.

but today, uh-uh. I’m living on page 22.

Not a Life Person. (jenn)

One thing that really saves our relationship, is that Ryan and I are never homicidal/suicidal during the same diurnal rotation. For me, I tend to wake up with a “Fuck, not again” tickertape buzzing through my dehydrated head, slightly aching from teeth clenching/nightmares involving being back in Bulgaria and being force fed mayonnaise sandwiches by orphans.

One might think my not again is referring to Ryan, who has a belch disorder that is aggravated by coffee and cigarettes. Rather than the subtle beeping of a cheap motel alarm, I have the elongated cacophony of Ryan burping with every exhale for a good half an hour. And his burps, friends, are not cute and hiccupy. They sound as though he has a dying giant mutant toad in his mouth, that was pumped full of carbonated beverages, and is now telling the whole world in toadese that he will not go gentle into the good night.

Yes. That’s exactly what it sounds like.

But no, this is not what I am referring to when I wake up and say, “Fuck, not again”–it’s just life in general I speak of. I never wake up ready to live. And so, Ryan knows to be extra-gentle with me in the morning. He leaves me breakfast and hot chocolate, uses a soft voice, and avoids the topic of non-existence until at least after lunch. He takes Mati out, even if he wakes up at 4:30am and we’re in the below zero brisk mountain mornings of Montana.

Every morning, Ryan is Superboyfriend.

He also is Superproductive. He usually has a few manic hours of writing and reading before I even start to whimper with the first signs of life.

But my, how the tables turn as the sun slips into her evening gown. Even though he claims that in the glory days of his “early” 30’s he partied hard every night, Road Trip Ryan starts to fade after dinner, and by fade, I mean collapses in bed in his long underwear and begins to yell Exorcist-style about how he needs to find a girlfriend who understands we’re not alive, or how I over-microwaved and under-salted his corn chowder–when all of a sudden he passes out mid-“chow.” He’s sort of like a narcoleptic, existential toddler, but instead of whining to play, or read, or go to the bathroom again—he wants to kill me, kill himself, and go to the bathroom again.

I try get our clocks to coincide. I try to wake up early, but waking up early doesn’t mean I’ll fall asleep early. These are my hours. The post-midnight hours of blackened out skies, of subtle tidyings, of getting stuck over my words. Of tea and 2:00am chocolate. I have always been a night person. I am never as tired as I am when I first wake up and the day hits me with its demands and blankness.

Still, right now, at 1:40am, I am super happy, super in love, and Supergirlfriend:

Good night!

I do DO shit! (jenn)

Jenn + Badlands = Bliss

Hi friends.

I know it seems like I haven’t been the active little blogger since South Dakota, but I am the woman behind the scenes, behind the man, behind the motherfucking wheel–except when the road is:

(a) winding
(b) icy
(c) poorly lit
(d) paved

as Ryan doesn’t let me drive in those conditions, feeling I am not a “safe” driver, just because I swerve every time I:

(a) adjust the iPod
(b) adjust the GPS
(c) pet Mati
(d) eat veggies and hummus
(e) think I see the shadow of a deer

My point is, that I do DO shit, including:

(a) upload and rough chop video so Ryan can work his editing skills more smoothly
(b) be a kind and maternal tech support/girlfriend whenever Ryan has computer rage and wants to throw one of our Macs out the window of La Quinta ____________ (insert city here).
(c) search for places to live in
(d) write and post Craigslist ads
(e) write and make friends with people who respond to our Craigslist adds
(f) microwave dinner and/or pack road lunch and make sure Ryan has enough chips, Reese’s peanut butter cups, salted oil in a Ziploc, and other foods which will expedite death, to last x amount of driving hours
(g) handle all logistics, including motels, checking the tires/oil, laundry, and the last time Ryan washed road trip hair
(h) making sure mati/ryan shit daily and the family is content–nay–happy
(i) nay–ecstatic
(j) search and apply for jobs for the both of us
(k) hit my friends and family across the nation up for housing
(l) file Ryan’s unemployment claims
(m) make lists of all the things I do, to elevate my self-
(n) esteem
(o) post lists on blog
(p) continue to add things to list
(q) One Hundred Years of Solitude
(r) The Lives of Others
(s) Ben and Jerry’s Half Baked
(t) my sister
(u) in the 6th grade

I’m telling you all this because:

(a) I wish I blogged more
(b) I hate Ryan because he kicks my ass at road trip games and at blogging
(c) I am woman, therefore I bitch, but accurately and concisely, about all the things (a through u!!!) I do and cannot claim wealth and glory for
(d) The End!

I got this.

guess the tv theme song contest!!!

Dead Deer Fetus

More search engine fun!  If you’re not sure what we mean, check out Ambien in her Ass.

Dead Deer Fetus
Why can’t you feel particles?
Hannah Montana
Tabasco Thongs
Hole Stuffing
Hot Mom Thongs

Of course, the number one searched phrase that brought people to our site… “Why was Ryan Motts fired?”

hawaiianryan needs some sun.

la parrilla restaurant, bozeman, montana
most amazing fish tacos ever
lunch, 11.23.07 

Another Sunday Evening with my (a) suicidal (b) hopelessly comatose (c) dumbass boyfriend. (jenn)

La Quinta Motel, Coeur D’Alene, Idaho
6:00pmish

Scene – Ryan and Mati are sleeping on the bed au naturale. Jenn is tooling around Craigslist. Fire alarm goes off in motel. Jenn puts in earplugs because the fire alarm is deafening–it’s making the walls shudder. Mati is flipping her little dog shit. Jenn considers finding the possible fire source herself, as burning to death seems like a less painful alternative than having the alarm slowly split her brain into mini-brain parts. Seeing Ryan hasn’t flinched, she wakes him up in her usual loving manner.

Jenn: WAKE UP JACKASS!

Ryan: murrrpphhmm.

Jenn: THE FIRE ALARM IS GOING OFF!

Ryan: Whatever. [Immediately commences snoring.]

Jenn places Ryan’s phone on max volume next to his ear, knowing he won’t be able to hear it, but feeling that if he does die she will be able to clear her conscience and say, “Well girl, you tried to call and tell him the building was up in flames. You did everything you could. Now go buy yourself something nice for the funeral.”

Jenn and Mati walk through the lightly smoky motel hall and wait outside. Two fire trucks and an ambulance come blaring down the street. Jenn tries to call Ryan repeatedly to come out, but as predicted he does not answer. In a last moment of impassioned concerned, she tries to go back inside, but the motel people won’t let her back in.

Jenn (to motel people): My boyfriend is sleeping. He’s hearing-impaired. I need to get him.

They let her in.

Jenn: (Aside) Works every time.

Back in the room, she convinces Ryan to at least put on some clothes.

Ryan: I’m still not going.

Jenn: You just want to die a dignified death in your long johns?

Jenn heads back out their motel room door as an African American fireman with his supersized ax enters.

Fireman: Now would be a good time to get out.

Ryan: We really have to leave?

Jenn: Oh sure, listen to the big, black man and not the person who loves you most in this world. You have revealed yourself Hawaiian Ryan!

End Scene

Happy Thanksreceiving [ryan]

11.24.07
Amsterdam, Montana
6:58a

THANKSRECEIVING
by Ryan Matsumoto

“It’s better to give than to receive.” –Everyone’s mom

“I don’t believe you”–Ron Burgundy

Is it really better to give than to receive? Better for whom? The giver? Sooooo, the giver is actually receiving something that is better? So the giver is actually a receiver too? Doesn’t “better” in this context imply that it is better for the giver to receive the benefits that come from giving rather than the benefits that come from simply receiving? which is really to say, it is better to receive by giving, rather than receive by receiving:I got to see the smile on a child’s face when he opened my Christmas gift,or,I enjoyed helping the old lady cross the street even though she smelled like soup. Even though you are indeed giving the gift, or giving the help, you are really driven by the thing you are receiving (or think you will receive) from the giving (e.g. the joy of giving).So essentially, it is two types of receiving that we’re really comparing. Perhaps, if the child’s smile made you sick, or instead of enjoyment for helping the old lady you received a rash, giving might start to lose its appeal, or dare I say, become worse than receiving, reversing the saying to “It’s better to receive than to give”. Oh I don’t know how you would get a rash from helping an old lady cross the street, but it’s hypothetical asshole. Ooh, I just thought of a way, never mind. Now you might say, “Hold on buckaroo (especially if you were a cowboy, or a Japanese surfer with a really bad version of a Japanese to English “Hip surfer slang phrases of the Pacific Rim” translation book), even when giving becomes difficult, I still give—hell, I’m married!” And I’m sure that’s true: marriage is hell. haha. Just playing. Not really. Anyway, stick with me. Yes, people still give even when it causes them pain. So, it must be that they are giving for the sake of giving right? Not really. They are still giving to receive. If people give despite the pain, it’s only because they’ve considered alternate paths, and after careful cost-benefit analysis, or not-so-careful, they try to decide the least painful route overall. And instead of recalculating every decision for every instance, people make up systems of thought: philosophies, creeds, manifestos, rules, guidelines, and ultimately, personalities–which can apply instinctively and generally to a lot of situations, essentially, for maximum self gain. The systems of thought help cut down on the processing effort of having to make your mind up on every little thing.

I never eat carbs.

I always listen to bjork when masturbating.

I don’t put out on the first date, unless you count head.

We are constantly creating ourselves.We are our own immaculate conception.We painfully carve bad habits out of our brain, with self-loathing butter knives, hoping that someday it will be a beautiful sculpture of pain avoiding perfection.We love irony apparently.We create egos, which we think will afford us the highest amount of pleasure and the least amount of pain for life—you know, selfishness. Control the ego, make sure it’s well rounded: nice guy or nice girl, smart, happy, wise, funny, reliable, fearless, trustworthy, strong values, uncompromising, giving, thoughtful, yada yada yada– and you will also control that bottom line of pain and pleasure for your self.assumption: well-rounded individuals with these type of characteristics tend to have a better time in life.Ticket price to get into society’s game: be giving and shit.Reward: you get to play with others who will help you to be selfish.“Unconditional giving” benefits the collective more than the individual–for there is always that point of diminishing returns. In other words, there is always a condition, upon which we give, and that condition can be measured against its cost. And we are doing this cost-benefit analysis constantly, involuntarily even—it’s just that most of us suck at it. So we end up paying more than we have to for the happiness we seek. People have forgotten that the root of our desire to be “giving” was born straight out of the womb of selfishness.Receiving the best benefit is always the concern of any giver or receiver any way you cut it.

“Ok Mr. smarty pants, what about when someone takes a bullet for someone else? How can that possibly be an example of the giver being concerned about receiving the best benefit? Obviously, death is not the best benefit as far as most people are concerned. You must admit that this is probably an example of someone giving unconditionally.”

Nope. I still think that the giver, which in this instance is giving their life for someone else, is still concerned about what they’re going to receive for giving their life, and that concern is what drives their decision (not that that person will receive something necessarily equal to or worth more than that thing which they gave, but I guess that’s my point—the profit margin of a particular act of giving is irrelevant to how selfish the act is). translation: getting nothing for something always gets you something. even if that something sucks.Essentially, the term selfish in this context is specifically referring to intention as opposed to outcome, and that is why to confuse the two, is logical suicide. How little or how much someone actually receives for their giving is irrelevant to the amount of selfishness involved—it is more of a question of—which reason, among the reasons for giving, is the driving reason, the nucleus reason, without which, the act of giving itself would collapse? Like any good argument: Find the underlying assumption of the opposing argument on which it rests, destroy it, and ipso facto destroy the argument.That is the first time I’ve ever used ipso facto.

“Ipso facto is a Latin phrase, which means that a certain effect is a direct consequence of the action in question, instead of being brought about by a subsequent action”–wikipedia

I think the most user friendly confusion that seems to find its way into everyone’s philosophical inbox like a mass e-mail from Zafutu, the sole heir to the throne of Nigeria, requesting your assistance in laundering 4.5 billion dollars, which, without your help would otherwise be inaccessible, is this retarded notion that selfishness can be gaged by the apparent amount of x (whatever) actually received by the giver:retarded notion: The less received by the giver, the more selfless the giver.This apparent lack of investment savvy gains us unwarranted selfless points:

Oh my god, he just gave us his leftover chicken without any expectation of something in return—how selfless.

leftover chicken

My point: There’s always expectation—even though that expectation is sometimes only visible with the infrared capabilities that come with brutal scrutiny.

I don’t receive anything from my grandma. Trust me. The whole relationship is based on my taking care of her. There’s absolutely nothing in it for me. All I do is give. I give my time, my money and sometimes my tears because it’s so painful to see her in pain. But I still give. What the hell are you talking about, Mr. Way-too-many –‘s and :’s and italics and (parenthesis) (and) (unnecessary) (ands) mother fucker?

You are still receiving the benefit of fulfilling your idea of what a person should be like–The kind of person who takes care of their grandma regardless of apparent reward (“apparent” being the operative word here). But then again, what else are you supposed to do–you selfless saint (sarcasm sarcasm sarcasm), leave your grandma to her helpless state? Doesn’t that route also have its negative elements?”What a selfish not-taking-care-of-his-grandma asshole he is!” she muttered somewhat under her breath while erasing his # from her Blackberry.

Don’t be so quick to pat yourself on the back Mr. grandma care taker, there’s always a selfish reason lurking behind that lame curtain of pseudo-selflessness you display like the wizard of OZ:

enter toto, stageright.

Moreover, those ideas of what a person should be like will be based on what kind of person you think would most likely succeed in your particular environment.But once again, it is still receiving that you are giving for.

Everyone is 100% selfish.

Everyone does everything in an attempt to better his or her situation.And here’s the checkmate:Every attempt to refute this axiom seems to confirm it:I have chosen for my life to be selfless so that I can live in a better…wait, shit. Ok, I want to be an unconditionally giving person because it just feels way better to…dammit!!! Ok here– I don’t necessarily want to always choose the selfless route, but I try choose it anyway, to help others…and overall I have decided that that is the best way for me to be…ARGGHHHHH!!!! In other words, you’ve chosen, as your best strategy for self-gaining, the strategy of “being a giving person”.People tend to like you more. you feel better about yourself. you’re more likely to get employed by more companies who tend to like team players.Being a giving person is just a price that you’ve decided is worth paying for the overall selfish gain of living most happily in this world.From Mother Teresa to Hitler, from Jesus to Dr. Phil, everyone—equally selfish.The real question, once properly untangled from its popularly confused yet genetically inferior adopted question brother is this:which 100% selfish strategy will be the most effective in actually gaining for self?For it seems that we are enslaved to that 100% selfish state. All questions of “whether or not I am selfish” should be upgraded to “Being that we are all 100% equally selfish, how then shall I best be selfish?” And therein lies many complex possibilities, one of which may include—giving presents at Christmas time!So if this is what’s really going on, then I say, it is better to give than to receive sometimes, but better to receive than give at other times. If it were simply as the saying seems to imply, that giving is always better than receiving, then wouldn’t that necessarily mean that you, the giver, are subjecting the one you are giving to, the receiver, to the lesser of the two experiences, depriving them of the “better” benefits of giving—you selfish bastard!

selfish bastard

Happy Thanksreceiving!
Ryan

My Happy Thanksgiving Fuck you song [ryan]

11.23.07

Amsterdam, Montana

7:00p

My Happy Thanksgiving Fuck you song: