The True Story of a Fake Political Campaign: Peppermint Andersen Reavealed! (Part 2)

Being by nature man of sloth and slovenly dress, it is always more fun to imagine writing a story while engaging in various lecherous behaviors. That said, the story of Peppermint Andersen's latter day escapades has occupying my mind, and for what it's worth, I am not getting up from this table (even for bowel movements) until it is purged from my conscious and subconscious thoughts. Here is how it all went down:

To say that my second year in Ellensburg was a whirl-wind of activities would be fitting, given the ever present north wind that blew through the Kititas valley between 3-6 pm daily, all year round. The visual arts activities in Randal hall were exploding. Somehow I managed to skip from Painting 1 to Panting 4 without any introductory drawing or other boring (but useful), which allowed my co-conspirators and I to go absolutely berzerkoid bonkers in the studio; painting all night on weekends with contraband beer (Rainier cans are delectable when cooled in a bucket of freshly fallen snow), and spending our free time making up rhymes and stupid songs about topics we were studying in art history. You may scoff, but we all got A's and I still remember the rap about Chinese painter Tao Shih "Gettin' deep on a Dragons back! Ching Ching!" Which tells you that Tao Shih (Dao Sure) painted his landscapes with a deep perspective, with rocks that looked/represented a dragons back, Qing (Ching) dynasty. OK, Peppermint Andersen people, keep me on topic!

Qing Qing!

I had managed to score a sweet job as program director at KCWU, the college station, and my weekly schedule consisted of two three hour on-air shifts, conducting noon hour interviews. My office hours were usually between noon and 4 or 5, during which I would write scripts for all the production,and pretend not to be working on scripts instead of doing mundane horseshit like organizing shifts. Overall, though I sucked at some parts of my job, I was way better than the person I replaced and the person who replaced me. And the couple of guys who were fired prior to the person before me. Don't believe me? You can read it and weep when you listen to the tracks on my Sound Cloud page!

Now, with all that out of the way, back to Peppermint Andersen. It was springtime again and the student elections were up again. This time it was between two idiots, one of whom I had lived next to the previous year. For the sake of the story I will call them Seth and Marla. Now of course I don't know for sure if they are actually idiots (medium talent would probably suffice to describe their skills), but the way they went about their campaigns was juvenile enough that it was a logical conclusion. It seemed like everywhere I looked was a shoddily made poster telling me to vote for either Seth or Marla, but never giving me any concrete or compelling reason why I should.

During the past year I had grown increasingly annoyed about the fact that various boobs from the student government would pop over to my office through the shared door we had and waste my time and energy on various idiotic projects. As far as I was concerned anyone who wanted to get involved in the university "political game" had to be a hubris filled half wit hack. So when these two dummies started coming around trying to set up radio advertising I hit my limit. I made the call to Mr Andersen. He readily agreed to throw his hat in the ring one more time and we were off to the races!

He said he would have his kids help make campaign posters!

Of course, since Peppermint Andersen is a fake guy, what really ended up happening was that I started using my office hours to make his posters. I did this using Microsoft word. My main concern when making his campaign materials was that it never take more than five minutes to do it. If I am going to squander tax payers money at least I try to keep it limited to just a few bucks. Tell that to the student government! Pretty much I would take a picture of a foal or a calf and write a simple slogan telling people to vote for Peppermint Andersen instead of one of the two candidates. I made equal amounts for both Marla and Seth. Of course they were black and white, to save taxpayers money!

These pictures should give you an idea of what I was doing. Just imagine the caption printed on the picture if you can, you sexy individual!

SAY "NO" TO SETH! SAY "YES!" TO PEPPERMINT ANDERSEN!!!!!!

DON'T VOTE FOR MARLA! VOTE FOR PEPPERMINT ANDERSEN!!!!!!

True confession, I am sitting in the bookstore writing this and trying not to laugh so loud at the absurdity of this whole thing. I honestly can't believe I was spending my office hours making these sweet ass fliers! Oh, and the story gets even more ridiculous, so we have that going for us.

It's hard to say how long the campaign went on, my contribution was so half assed that I really didn't need to know anything except that it wasn't election day yet. So I printed my flyers and snuck around campus hanging them in various buildings on my way to classes. Not much of a stretch since we were heavily involved in sticker graffiti at the time. Of course I never really expected anyone to take this obvious joke seriously! Wow, was I in for a surprise!

One day I was sitting with my friend Casey's production office working on recording a PSA or sponsor commercial when there was a sudden knock at the door. This was odd because usually when the door was shut people left us alone, assuming we were recording. Well we opened the door to see our boss Chris (mustache, short shorts and flat top) and a older bald gentleman we had seen around and knew to work for the University. The conversation went as follows:

"I'm Jim Blankenship; Campus building manager. I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions about Peppermint Andersen!"

"OK"

"Are you making these fliers? Because they are being posted without permission and both our candidates have complained!"

"Really?"

"Yeah, Seth Fosgate views it as a personal attack!"

"Alright, I promise I won't make anymore."

"Good. I don't think we need to press charges or anything. But we can't have derogatory posters of any kind. Thank you."

In fact the real conversation was probably even dumber. One thing I do know is that Casey recorded the whole thing, the little rascal! If I ever get the chance I will post the original transcript, but for now you get a hazy version; though the "Seth Fosgate views it as a personal attack" was pretty much what he said. OK sheeple, that is all I have on Mr Peppermint Andersen, except that he used to call my radio shows on occasion, and a fine guest he was!