Illness of the Greatest Master

November of every year is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. For those unaware, NaNoWriMo is a personal challenge with hundreds of thousands of participants, in which your goal is to write a novel containing at least 50,000 words over the course of November. You win if you complete your novel; your prize is the book that you just wrote. I've never considered myself to be much of a writer, particularly not for something of such a grand scale, but this year I had a few friends who were planning to participate, so I figured I might as well try it out.

At 10:00 PM on October 31, two hours before NaNoWriMo would officially begin, I had no plans for my novel. I was scrambling to try to figure out even the vaguest semblance of a plot, or even a genre or general style. I ultimately decided to take my efforts to the realm of the unknown: I would stitch together my title one word at a time, via a random word generator, and figure out my plot from there. After finding a generator that allowed me to choose the part of speech, I tried out a few different templates: "the <noun>'s <adjective> <noun>," for example, and "the <adjective> <noun> <verb>s." After creating a dozen-odd titles, I finally found the one: Illness of the Greatest Master.

At my friend Evan's suggestion, illness was to refer not to a disease, but rather to the more colloquial ill; e.g., "yo, that be so ill." Obviously, I was going to be writing a street novel, complete with all the hip lingo.

I don't know who this is, but my November was
expected to be filled with good folks like him.

Next part of the title: the Greatest Master. It should be noted that there wasn't just one master; we were talking about the greatest master. There was more than one. But where do you draw the line? What defines who is a "master"? Logically, there had to be some sort of a ranking system.

So, to put two and two together: my novel was going to be about a society of rappers, and your position in this society was determined by your rapping ability. Poor rappers would be but measly peons, while the finest lyricists would be the aristocrats. And the finest lyricist of them all was, of course, the Greatest Master.

Specifically, my novel would be a rags-to-riches story. It would start with this poor white kid without a penny to his name, who accidentally stumbles upon this society and learns how to rap. He starts out at the bottom, but slowly learns his lessons, out-rapping the others one-by-one until he would eventually become the Greatest Master, and essentially run the world.

The second the clock struck midnight, I hit the ground running, not stopping until I was at 2000 words. After day 3, I was just over 5,000 words in, leaving my novel slightly ahead of schedule. My main character had just found the local meeting place of this rapper society, and was observing the way things run. I realized that it was that time, that inevitable moment, when I would have to write my first rap.

I don't know who this person is either, but it was starting to look
like my November would more realistically be filled with a lot of this guy.

After putting off the rap for a fair while, I finally sat down muscled through. I tried to think about things that the rapper type like. The individual performing this rap was named Diesel (referred to as DZ, more often pronounced "Deez"). I figured that was probably the name of a guy who liked cars a lot. Due to the conversation that he had just had before performing, it was evident that he also enjoyed to recreationally smoke cannabis. So logically, I had to write a rap about cars and weed.

Oh good. The two topics I knew the least about, in a language that I had no idea how to write.

I managed to power through, writing a rhythmically passable ode to marijuana, sprinkled liberally with your choice of colorful language. By that point, I was at 5,562 words. I never got around to continuing. That rap was the last thing I wrote.

Due to a tragic hard drive crash, I no longer possess my novel, which is quite a shame, because there were some parts of which I was rather proud. But I have, forever engraved in my past, the fact that I have written a rap about cars and weed.

Greg Edelston, Age 9: Internet Connoisseur

So when I was 9, I spent a fair amount of time on GameFAQs. For those unaware, GameFAQs is a game discussion website, with walkthroughs, cheats, general game info, and message boards. 9-year-old Greg loved the message boards for the game Golden Sun. He would spend a fair amount of time each day reading the fora, contributing to discussion, answering questions, playing forum games, and just generally having a raucous good time.

After a hefty amount of time on these boards, some higher-up saw it fit to make me into a moderator. Obviously, my 9-year-old contributions were profound enough to mark me as one of the community's top contributors. At least, enough so that the administrators and whatever other powers that may be decided to make me a moderator.

As it happens, it's actually a pretty big honor to get modded. Not just anyone can become a mod. But I didn't know that at the time, and thus didn't go about bragging.

By virtue of being a mod, I was endowed with some powers. My favorite modly activity was to review recent punishments. I could see what an offending post was, and decide whether it was "too lenient," "far too lenient," "too strict," "far too strict," or "just right." Problem was, I didn't really know what the word "lenient" meant.

But I was a smart cookie. I knew what "strict" meant, and could extrapolate. Problem: solved. ...Sort of. Unfortunately, despite being able to work past my first roadblock, I was somehow unable to figure out the grander scheme of the process. My 9-year-old brain registered "too lenient" as "should be more lenient," and "too strict" as "should be more strict." Also, sometimes I would just get bored, not want to read the entire post, and just choose whichever option I hadn't chosen in a fairly long while. So, uh, I apologize to the several dozen people who received grossly unfair punishments as a result of my actions.

But alas, soon would my day come. One fateful day, there was a thread created by some 20-something-year-old, asking whether he was too old to be playing video games. In flooded the adults: 25-, 30-, and 40- year olds, all professing the pleasure they find in video games and taking recourse in the fact that they weren't the only ones. For whatever reason, I thought it was appropriate to chip in my two cents: "I'm only 9, but I don't think there's anything wrong with playing video games at any age."

Turns out, you're required to be at least 13 years old in order to have an account.

And from that day forward, the moderator account i_like_cheese was no longer present on GameFAQs.

16-5-5

It was about a month into my first semester of college. So we're talking a fair ways back. The night of October 3rd, specifically. I was approached by the rather-silly Charley Goddard at a little after 2:00 in the morning: "Greg, you seem like the kind of man who would be interested in eating things at silly hours. Might I interest you in a 5-5-5?" Goddard could not have been more correct; 2 AM was the prime time for some eating.

I asked for a little more detail, unfamiliar to the whole 5-5-5 concept. I had never ordered pizza on my own before. Apparently, Dominos is open into the wee hours of the morning, and they have this sweet deal where you can order three medium pizzas for $5 apiece. Pretty sweet deal. I asked if I could get toppings on my $5 pizza; Goddard said of course.

What he said: I would get a $5 pizza, and if I wanted to, I could buy toppings for it.

What I heard: I would pay $5, and receive a pizza with however many toppings I wanted.

To me, this didn't sound like much of a question at all. If I'm paying a flat fee of $5, I may as well get my money's worth and order as many toppings as I possibly can, right? So I navigated over to the Dominos website and started planning.

After a significant amount of thought, here was the pizza that I had planned:

• Sliced Italian sausage
• Philly steak (light, left)
• Ham (light, left)
• Feta cheese
• Shredded Parmesan Asiago
• Shredded provolone
• Garlic (light, right)
• Mushrooms (light, right)
• Pineapple (extra)
• Onions
• Roasted peppers (right)
• Diced tomatoes (light, left)

This was going to be the ideal pizza. It was like two meals in one. Like, I could have a 2 AM pizza dinner, and also I could have a 2AM meat-and-other-fix-ins feast, and also I could do both of those things at the same time. What could possibly go wrong?

Goddard placed the order: three medium pizzas. The first pizza would have light sausage. The second would have no sauce; just dough and cheese. The third would have sausage, steak, ham, feta cheese, Parmesan, provolone, garlic, mushrooms, pineapple, onions, peppers, and diced tomatoes.

My $5 pizza cost $16.

As in, my pizza alone cost more than a typical 5-5-5.

Turns out, they charge for toppings.

The guy actually called us back a minute later to make sure that we were sure we ordered what we wanted. Apparently, it's a little funny to order a pizza without sauce. My pizza was totally fine and normal; one of the others just seemed a little quirky.

Time passed; the pizzas arrived. I could finally taste the glory that was twelve different toppings. $16 totally well spent.

I sold two of the slices to friends at $2 apiece to make myself feel better about wasting $16. Overall, delicious, but not worth $16.

Maybe if they didn't forget the pineapple it would have been better.

Greg Edelston, Wanted Arsonist

Last night at around 3:30 AM, I decided that I wanted some ramen noodles. I had been hanging out on the second floor with four others; the kitchen was on the first floor. I went downstairs and put some water on the stove. I briefly considered whether it would be dangerous to leave the stove unattended. I had, of course, been taught to never leave a stove alone; but it was just a pot of water. It wasn't like the kitchen was going to catch on fire. So I left.

Obviously, the kitchen caught on fire.

I returned ten minutes later, Cup Noodles in hand. I opened the door and took two steps in, at which point I realized that the entire pot was engulfed in flames. I put down my noodles on the sink counter next to me, and my 3:40 AM brain started turning its gears. My first thought was: There's a fire. It's caused by the stove. I should turn the stove off. Fortunately, I soon realized that that was a TERRIBLE idea, and that I would likely burn my arm off trying to reach the dial. Instead, I fled for help.

I realized that I needed a fire extinguisher. I ran back upstairs to ask my friends where I might find one; however, they were highly likely to think that I was making a joke of some sort. Thus, I had to clarify and reiterate that I was not making a joke. After a few rounds of "I need a fire extinguisher. Where are they? I am not joking." "What?" "The stove is on fire. Like, for actual. Where's a fire extinguisher?" etc., they finally followed me downstairs.

Apparently when I said that the stove was on fire, they were imagining a flame the size of perhaps a birthday candle. When I showed them through the window of the door that the flames went twice as high as the pot itself, it was go-time.

At that point, this lumbering intimidating Russian fellow by the name of Nikolay went into action mode. He ran off into another hall and quickly returned with a fire extinguisher, and then removed his jacket ("I like thees jacket too much."), took a deep breath, and ran in.

It was impossible to see into the kitchen through all the smoke, but you could vaguely see Nick's silhouette extinguishing the fire like a boss, opening a window, and returning back from the abyss. The literal problem was solved.

In the meantime, I was calling the R2-on-call (the phone that gets passed around the resident resources in case there's ever a problem). Unfortunately, it was about 3:45 AM, so the conversation went roughly as follows:

R2: Hey, this is the R2-on-call phone. This is Kate. What's up?

Me: Um. Hello. This is Greg. Uh, Edelston. So, I'm just totally lit the stove on fire.

R2: What? 

Me: In the West Hall 1st-floor kitchen, there is a pot of water on the stove, and it is on fire. Well, it just was. Nick just got the fire extinguisher and put it out. So I guess the actual danger is gone, but the room is still full of smoke. But like, we opened a window, so I dunno, it just seemed like it would be a good idea to call you and let you know?

R2: Oh, yeah. Well, uh, if the fire's out, then I guess the best I can tell you is to try not to light it on fire again.

Me: Okay. I wasn't planning on it. Thanks, and sorry for waking you up.

R2: No, no. It's okay. Thanks for telling me. Good night.

She told me the next morning that she was still in 3:45-AM-mode, and thus the words "fire extinguisher" didn't click for her; she assumed it was just a little burner fire or something. I could probably have communicated that a little better, in retrospect.

We wanted to go inspect the damage and figure out how the hell I managed to catch a pot of water on fire, but the room was still too smokey, so we couldn't walk in. We instead waited around for half an hour for the smoke to clear up, with me kvetching the entire time about how I left my noodles in there.

Finally, the smoke cleared up enough for us to inspect the damage. It was disgusting. Everything was coated in soot from the smoke. Everything. You could run your finger along any surface and watch it turn ten shades darker before your eyes. You would tread footprints wherever you walked. Worse yet, there were three large trays of what had been chocolate truffles-to-be sitting out on the table, now completely covered in a yellow dust, with a sign that read "DO NOT TOUCH. There will be consequences. I will destroy like 25% of the things that you hold dear." The truffles were supposed to take two days to make. They were no more.

Apparently, the pot that I decided to use had a rubber bottom. Why anyone though it was a good idea to put rubber on the bottom of a metal pot is beyond me, but I'm guessing it has some use beyond starting fires. Either way, the rubber caught on fire and started melting, which completely ruined one of the burners. I am still impressed by my own ability to light a pot of water on fire.

But don't worry. I wound up eating noodles that night.

UPDATE: I now know why the pot had rubber on the bottom. It was actually my friend's electric kettle. I'm just stupid.