The EDD Diary #5 - "You need 15 minutes to be ready for action"

Week ending 20/07/07, EDD spam clocked in at seventeen.

This week I am going to impart stories of six of my friends. Lets call them Traci, Traci, Sylvester, Marie, Manuel and Dollie, just to preserve their privacy and any unnecessary embarrassment. This week there will be no quotation marks to indicate what I have gleaned from my spam and what I have constructed. This may become a trend from now on, who knows? This week is about relaxing moments, right moments and ready moments.

Tracie Land and Traci Walls
Tracie and Traci were best friends at University. They were always amused at their last names and thought that if they ever graduated from their law degree that they would set up a Conveyancing firm called Land and Walls. However while they were at University, to help make ends meet they set up a small salubrious side business. They were savvy enough to realise that a high proportion of campus life was to do with how to get “out of it” and “get laid”. So they decided to aim at the most ego based, yet vulnerable, sector – the undergrad male. Figuring that too many substances could be grounds to create problems they merely jumped the gun and said “Why even wait to discover that there may be “a problem”, just make sure there never is”. Now, the savvy part comes in here, because they figured that no matter how trashed an undergrad male can be, they are young and virile enough to still get an erection, so they merely applied the placebo effect. Off loading inexpensive no name sugar-free pills, they purchased in large $2 bags from some dodgy wholesaler out west, at “3 for $10” they made a very cosy income. They called their little enterprise “Triple Good” selling the best “goods” for a “good” erection and a “good” day (with express delivery in discreet packaging). The demand was unprecedented. Their business was double the local campus dealer, albeit their product was a quarter the price. With business booming they could relax and take their time on the road to plotting their career path. Everything was easy for these two, and this luck even extended into their romantic liaisons. Often a relationship will come between a close friendship and may herald the slow demise, but not for these two, it just made their bonds stronger. The secret was in their choices. Tracie fell for a well-adjusted but humorously shrewd marketing under-grad by the name of Manuel Calhoun, while Traci, fell for his step-sister and best friend, Dollie, an equally charismatic lady with an eagle eye for spotting the next major trend. The conveyancing company never eventuated but what did was far more influential. These four unscrupulous individuals, together, were a power-house. They established the pop-culture agency “Stone-Hard” that set trends and had major investments in music, art and fashion production houses across the globe.

Sylvester Valencia
Sylvester could only be described, in his terms, as “a real man”. Well hell, at 92, he still had the libido of a 17 year old, so he deserved any “cred” he wanted to afford himself, I reckon. Sylvester grew up in a rural town, known for its orange orchards, an unfortunate location for one with such a last name and parents who were not the slightest bit interested in oranges. Instead, he grew up on a diet of mushrooms, carrots, onions, spinach, rhubarb, apples and duck eggs. His parents were considered quite eccentric and had moved to this particular area because of its abundant lakes and therefore attractive location for water-fowl. They basically operated a free-range duck farm, a concept well ahead of its time! As back up, they farmed rhubarb, spinach and carrots. In his later years, Sylvester attributed his unwavering manhood to this unique diet and who am I to question? I first met Sylvester at a party that Tracie and Traci were hosting. He was dating another friend of theirs, Marie Stanley. At that time Sylvester was 71 and Marie was 23. Sylvester, never tried to hide his age, he was proud of it and proud of his youthful appearance. However, don’t get me wrong, this was never in an over-bearing way. Sylvester’s charm was really in his knowledge. He had travelled to many distant places and had studied an ancient and relatively unknown martial art with a feisty old Lapplander, under the skies of the Northern Lights. One of his favourite sayings was “ We are all, by nature, boundless creativity, evolution and growth and therefore a moment-to-moment emanation of the universal field of living consciousness”. I don’t think we ever really understood what that meant at the time, but it sounded cool and we all just went “Yeah! Right on!”

Marie Stanley
The first thing you should know about Marie Stanley is that she was a pioneer, an explorer. She would always say, “You should know, the most enjoyable parts of your life should be the parts you have no concept of, the unknown, the process of discovery!” She could talk to you about this all night. She would take you on journeys you could never imagine and you would walk away feeling somehow transformed or initiated, like you had entered a new metaphysical level. It was easy to see how she had dated Sylvester Valencia for a couple of years, they were like two peas in a pod! However, Maria’s adventurous spirit meant that she just didn’t stay anywhere for too long, there was too much to see and do and discover and learn. After her final year at University, she packed her bags and waved goodbye to her lover. She spent time in America and abroad for several years before a brief return. That summer was a blast! Reunions took place and parties extended into the wee hours and spilled on into next day. There was so much to talk about, so much to invoke. A real headiness was in the air. It was the summer of love, everyone seemed to be in-love and a healthy lusty glow adorned our faces. Come Autumn and Maria was off again, she was on her way to study with the son of the ancient Lapplander that Sylvester had trained with 40 years prior. All we know is that she never made it, somewhere, en-route, around the Russian Siberian border she went missing. I like to think she found her teacher, her lover, there, somewhere, and embarked on a whole new journey that no longer needed ties to us and the Western Culture we signified.

Manuel Calhoun
To say that Manuel Calhoun had male power at an unprecedented level, would be a little exaggerated. However, he did have the charisma that occurs with some younger men. They have stronger muscles and bones, better looking skin, energy and alertness. To top this all off, Manuel was very smart and incredibly funny. His jokes and stories did not rely on the base humour of belittling someone else, or highlighting their mis-fortune for a cheap laugh. No, Manuel’s humour was much more constructed and sophisticated than that and would have you chuckling for days as you recalled more of the elaborate storyline. Part of his humour was also self-referential. He could have you in stitches at the improbable stories he would base around himself and his love for his lime green circa1980 Gemini. Of course, this had been the source and centre of his initial seduction of Tracie Land. Tracie would often re-enact her heightened desire for Manuel the day he casually pulled up outside campus library and asked her for directions. Immediately, knowing a catch when she saw it, she offered to jump in the car and take him there personally. To this day she claims it was the sexy lime green that put a spell on her and sent her hormones awol, they never made it to the faculty building, rather they spent the next five hours parking at the bottom oval on campus.

Dollie Thorne
Dollie Thorne was not what you would call a beauty but there was something mysterious and alluring about her. She had an aloofness that was not cold but enough to mean that she really only engaged with those she wanted to. Dollie was obsessed with youth culture and its construct. She knew the market was never going to fail here. There’s a safe, effective and easy method to keep a business afloat and that is make the business in the business of making business, if you get what I mean. So, Dollie’s business was in designing youth culture, keeping one step ahead and setting the trends. It was designed with anti-aging in mind, the biggest fear in youth culture. It was Traci, her muse and lover that came up with one of her various slogans -
“No problem, now the problem has gone!” a catchcry that also became the title for a best selling album by a youth generation band that was backed by a production company that the agency “Stone-Hard”, of which she was one of the co-directors, had shares in. Dollie, however, did not possess the genes or the miraculous “fountain of youth secret” that Sylvester did and as she aged her endeavours to ward of the tell tale signs were ineffective. Devastated, but not one for depression, she used her innate skill at creating smoke and mirrors and retreated to the virtual world, where she could remain ever youthful and hip. All her business was done virtually and her physical life was unhindered by the ruthless media circus outside her walls. The relentless advancing of her years only served her as she meticulously fed her empire and laid down the foundations of her mythical life. She built an oasis in the metropolis, a walled in castle where only those she trusted most could keep her company and not divulge her secret.