Abstract: We encounter long slender bendable objects such as shoelaces, rubber bands, and wires in everyday life. We are living in a wired world and sometimes struggle with topology. For instance, is there an efficient way to untangle cable spaghetti? Self-contact and impermeability are crucial aspects in modeling physical rods. In this talk I will discuss an elementary model that can be employed to describe their behavior. It allows for proving rigorous results on equilibrium states and on the stability of numerical schemes. This is joint work with Sören Bartels and Heiko von der Mosel.