ah, yes, dear mint rubber or precious little mint ruberette. join us in celebration beause it was just around this time in december, five years ago, when this entire mint rubbing extravaganza we affectionately call mintrubbing.org was launched.

five years have passed. just keeping the project alive for this extended length of time is an outstanding feat in itself. and that's not considering all the heavy rubbing that has been going on. printed publications, tv stations, and websites more spectacular than ours have resisted less. five years is not a period one can joke about. or fuck around with.

i've though long and hard. how should we celebrate this achievement? should we have another special homage issue complete with wooden-tongue style? should we have one of those introspective issues full of statistics and excerpts from previous issues? or perhaps one of those dreadful experimental issues? maybe an issue filled only with messages from mint rubbers? or a content-free, one-page completely pointless issue? so many ideas, so much mint to rub.

well, no. you know how some celebrations are, don't you: there's all this anticipation building up, we're-gonna-have-one-hell-of-a-party kind of thing? and then it turns out to be one of those half-assed reunions filled with boredom and cheap booze? well, that's what you get with this issue as well, the same rehashed junk minus the cheap booze.

yeah, there's some stuff to be added in the following pages - just your basic mint rubbing material to keep you going - a pretty interesting article from one of our readers, some ancient wisdom, a bunch of featured sites, messages from readers, a couple of sticker photos, let me see what else.... yeah, that's about it.

oh, but why?, i hear you cry. this was supposed to be a celebration, for fuck's sake. where's the extravaganza, the crazyness, the attentiont to detail (and at times the sheer stupidity) that has brought mintrubbing.org its fame? well, don't you worry now. all of that shit is stashed somewhere for safekeeping. the thing is that, since this is supposed to be celebration, our mint rubbing experts will be celebrating as well, and they'll be doing it in their own style - by rubbing mint.

when mint is rubbed, no useful byproduct is created, except the wonderful, personal and enlightnening sensation of accomplishment and bliss that the rubber experiments. so, yeah, basically, we're too busy rubbing mint. what you see is what you get - just the basic stuff mentioned above and this thing, this article, or whatever you want to call it - the one you're reading right now, damn it.

ok, ok, i know. with a few exceptions (the experimental february and september issues, and the 30-page august one) we're all sick and tired of the half-assed journal issues that we've been seeing this year. so just to make it up to you this time, i'm going to keep writing, and make this one article as fucking long (and, most of the time, boring) as possible.

hell, yeah, here's another idea that i just got: this thing will only have one page, with the ancient wisdom, the texts, messages links and everything else included in it. that'll save some time by not creating additional pages. clever, right? let me just a grab one of the featured pages and throw it at you. ok, here you go. start with found photos. last time we presented something similar - a site with scanned pictures of found junk: letters, notes, pictures. sort-of-interesting, mildly voyeur-ish kind of stuff. well, this person whose page i just linked put up a site with photos found in folders that people share over the net. no, this isn't porn. no porn recommendations this time. just hand-picked photos of regular folk.

ok, i'm getting a little sleepy. but i need to go on, right? let me check - yeah, this page doesn't even begin to look long enough. let me just skip over this shitty song in winamp. future sound of london, that's better. anyway, let's take a look at our archives now: five years of rubbing. damn, i just thought we skipped an issue, but the september and august issues have both been mistakenly labelled as "#57", when the september one was actually #58. need to fix that, hold on.

do you see the shit that mintrubbing.org editors have to put up with? anyway, this article or whatever the hell it is, is starting to look more and more like a god damn blog. and that, dear friends, is when we definitely know rock bottom has been hit. next issue can't possibly get worse than a one page blog-wannabe kind of shit.

anyway, back to the archives. 59 issues. lwet me see which ones i like the most. let me see, let me see.. i definitely love the 2000-year internet and computing history - a lot of work has been put in that one, as well as the save the robots campaign. fucking ungrateful robots.

i also love the experimental issues: these strange things happen all the time, open electronic eyes, experimental again, exiled on mainline and overload. so much work has been put in those as well. and so much meaning. stuff that might even go unnoticed by the untrained brain.

i also had a lot of fun doing the alien invasion issue just because it is so completely insane. and then the list wouldn't be complete without the detailed may 2002 issue or the legendary homage one. that wouldn't be all, though. there's so much cool shit in the archives that i can't believe it myself. there's some serious research on a wide range of topics such as democracy, productivity, poverty, intelligence, psychology, randomness, romanian political history (hey, this stuff has already been used in thesis papers), philosophy, globalization, living in the US or the mint plant. and then there are the purely mint rubbing articles on routine, 419 scams, santa claus, mint strips, pet rentals, giant snails, marriage insurance and many similarly fascinating topics.

ok, this thing is starting to take shape. let me drop another featured site, if you feel like taking a break. now, i'm not the one to go crazy about photography, but i know good photographs when i see them. and, contrary to popular opinion, good photography is not easy to come by. there's so much photographic junk on the net that it makes me nauseous jusst thinking about it. so, anyway, here's a site with stuff that's too good to be on the web. take a look.

what else? let me just add the article from our reader to the bottom of the page so i won't forget about it. hold on.

ok, it's done. thanks to ada for the article - you can check it out below, at the bottom of the page. let's all say "hi!" to ada and her buddies now - she seems to be a nice person. anyway, some people sent pictures of their rmra stickers. that's always nice - at least we know that post office employees didn't grab 'em. Marius sent us the first photo. This is what he had to say: "First of all, thank you for the MRA sticker... :) greatly appreciated. Second, I want you to see how proud I am of it, "wearing" it during the General Assembly of the student organization I am part of (BEST)". . Good job, dude.

Next, the webmaster at runzu.com sent us the second photo, saying that "Nu toate stickerele au ajuns pe frigidere sau pe usa de la baie... unii chiar fac propaganda. Asta asa, ca fapt divers.". This prompted us to take another look at his website, runzu.com; there seems to be some decidedly cool stuff on this page. check it out for yourself.

next, our beloved rmra on the web section - pages linking to us:

- http://profiles.yahoo.com/andreibranescu2004
- http://antiturma.lx.ro/
- http://unmicdrac.xhost.ro/wordpress/index.php
- http://www.c7obs.net/~david/links/
- http://www.materiamagica.com/towne/players...
- http://profiles.yahoo.com/hiquality2005
- http://www.jalnic.lx.ro/
- http://arunkatiyar.blogspot.com/
- http://www.vladimir.pixeltomorrow.com/album1.php
- http://www.geocities.com/mlekkx/links.html
- http://profiles.yahoo.com/bemfi_nossaurus
- http://www.soulknitting.blogspot.com/
- http://www.poliaektimisoara.ro/forum/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=2461
- http://profiles.yahoo.com/wasphk?intl=us&os=win&ver=7,0,0,426
- http://eubatcampii.marte.ro/clansman/ro/team.html
- http://new-potty.stumbleupon.com/
- http://night-owls.group.stumbleupon.com/
- http://www.livejournal.com/users/deadspeaker/181542.html
- http://www.redactia.net/homepage.php?subaction...
- http://profiles.yahoo.com/ktln
- http://ioanad.myaiesec.net/
- http://www.b0g.org/wsnm/users.php?w=troaca
- http://www.king-sheep.com/links.html
- http://profiles.yahoo.com/wanderer_for_ever
- http://pisicaturbata.blogspot.com/
- http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction...
- http://asconet.org:8000/antville/videosex/20050910/
- http://profiles.yahoo.com/alicevio
- http://users.aber.ac.uk/tdd5/
- http://profiles.yahoo.com/anarchysta_punk
- http://www.alumno.org/testme/index.php?cine=2

says the webmaster of one of the pages above: "To all those who have been looking for information regarding mint rubbing, look no further! An added bonus is that this information is from a distinctly Romanian mint rubbing perspective". next, forums linking to us:

- http://www.redactia.net/homepage.php?subaction=showfull...
- http://www.keywen.com/Society/People/Expatriates/Romanian/
- http://www.bascalie.ro/3dp/forum/cool-sites-vt52.html
- http://www.filmshooting.com/scripts/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12032
- http://referat-e.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13
- http://www.grigore.org/forum/viewtopic.php?id=37
- http://www.jucaushii.ro/forum/archive.php/o_t__t_2490__start_15__index.html
- http://teenz.sparetimegroup.net/forum/index/12/470.html
- http://www.rrroxana.lx.ro/forum/viewtopic.php?t=133&sid=2fd3b7d5cbcc87f1488c0a22bc463a1e
- http://underworld.phase2.ro/forum/index.php?showtopic=17

finally, new sites certified by rmra this month:

- http://hauntedmails.com
- http://marius.gnufreaks.org
- http://www.shoparcari.tk

the above list includes only new sites linking to mintrubbing.org in the past month. for the complete, mind-boggling list click here.

ok, the internet connection stopped working. go figure. so i'll just take a break now and get back to this thing later. hopefully the bullshitting mood will remain and i'll keep writing. if not, i'll just wrap it up and send it to stefan for posting online. we'll see.

- time passes -

nope, that's it. just a bunch of featured sites: from the science department, Sea Launch, 4D Sculpture, BlackLight Power and NASA's gravity probe | and, naturally, www.trabi.ro.

that's it for this month. in the words of irenne:

Sus munca!... Sa n-ajungem la ea!!!!

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr MRA President,

may I be allowed to bring to your attention a study that we, A , T and Z - researchers, have conducted over the last 3 years in the field of "Pregnancy, breastfeeding and early childhood while Mintrubbing", otherwhise known as "Mintrubbing and Chilbearing from the very beggining - A possible study".

May it be specified that Mrs Z, full time researcher, joined our team at the midterm of our study, but has proven eversince as an essential presence for our work. Without her, none of this incipient study would have been possible. Keep up the good job, Z! It is also of great importance to state that the study has been conducted in two different environments, so that Mintrubbing and Childbearing (...) could have been approached under different lights, from a cultural, social and, nevertheless, economical point of view.

This showed that both Romania and Western France can be considered rather mintrubbing-friendly (due to the latin origins, we presume) , but Romania is definetly The Mintrubbing Country, struggling for centuries to keep this ancient wisdom and preserving it through policies and politics of all kind. We note as well, at the French scale, that the couple De Villepin/ Sarkozy are doing great wrong to this way/philosophy of life, and therefore should be mutated on a production chain in a Chinese match-box factory as plain workers, and not be allowed to retire before the age of 97, when they would welcome Mintrubbing as The Best Idea of All Times. I propose that the Assemblly take a motion on this one.

Well, lets get back to our dogs and cut some more leaves about our study. So, as I was saying, the 3 years of the study mainly focuses on:

1. pre-pregnancy period - 1 to 1 year 1/2
2. pregnancy - 9 months
3. birth/ brestfeeding/early childhood period - 13 months and counting

Our conclusions are particularly satisfactory: it has been clearly shown that these four elements (pregnancy, brestfeeding , early childhood and mintrubbing) are not only non-anthagonistic, but also safe from a health point of view and even advisable as to the relationship with the new-born. (ex: mint *does* pass in the mothermilk but acts as a homeopathic medication, helping to improve motricity and intelligence, while mintrubbing while pregnancy is a prime relaxation method, with positive effects on the synuses, as well) Also, even proven to be highly addictive for adults, Mintrubbing is clearly not a threat to children and dare I say more, the possibility of child-contamination with Mintrubbing Syndrome (MRS) is as high as for an /Amoeba/ to get influenza :

- /laughs/-

their Mintrubbing is _never_ an aim, a goal, as it so often occurs in adults (being a MRS person, I know what I am talking about). Well, before ending, I would only like to add that it has been proven that Mintrubbing is far *safer* for the child, not to mention *cheaper* and more *environment-friendly*, than Gas Burning. Mintrubbing does not require the presence of an adult. For best results in the art and philosophy skills development, we suggest that you add in your infant's education program the Contemplation of the Green Horses Frescoes. Last, but not least, *remember* to use but not to *abuse*, your child still needs a fresh meal, some sporting activities and above all, caring, all of which are completely compatible, I must say once more, with Mintrubbing.

Thank you.

- /thunderous applause/-.