You are. And that is enough.
I play Family Feud on Facebook once in a while and sometimes it interprets things a little strange. I assume it’s because people don’t check their spelling when they type fast, but showing the answer CAR after writing BUSINESS CARD… like I said, a little strange.
But this morning was the worst. The category was “Something a husband rarely touches”. I got dishes, vacuum, a few things like that. My next guess was DUST RAG. The answer that popped up on the screen in its place?
ME.
With such a long break between Sunday afternoon’s show and a Friday night performance, we had a brush-up on Wednesday to go through our lines—a brief and informal refresher, if you will. And it was definitely informal. Informal to the point of making up lines as we went along.
For example, an exchange might normally go “You shouldn’t do that” and “Oh, but I want to.” Wednesday night, we’d usually say something like “You shouldn’t do that” and “Okay, I won’t… oh, but I want to.” It was a hoot, but if it had been a group of strangers versus our cast, I could have ended up in a lot of trouble.
At one point, I encourage someone to go into the kitchen and she normally responds with a hesitant “Oooookay…” This time, she asked, “What do I look like to you?” The setup was so good, I couldn’t help but blurt out, “You look like a woman! Now go in the kitchen and get me a samwich!” I then proceeded to laugh myself to tears.
Of course, some people were insensitive enough to point out, “So that’s why you’re single!”, so maybe not all of those tears were from laughter.
The first season of Beauty and the Geek aired in Australia this winter and ZOO Magazine included a review in their December 11th, 2006 issue. Here’s the article verbatim (grammar, spelling and snide remarks as written):
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BEAUTY AND THE GEEK
Brainy nerds learn how to get some lovin’ from some airhead babes
Nerds rejoice! This reality show is your Holy Grail — it will teach you how to pull an incredibly hot chick. All you need to do is pay her lots of money and guarantee some career-boosting exposure on a national TV show. Easy! Failing that, Beauty and the Geek might give you a few pointers for dealing with the ladies and some useful nerdy info too. The idea is simple: the Geeks (brain surgeons, rocket scientists etc) must train the girls to win mental challenges, while the Beauties must school the dorks to score with women. Sounds straightforward, but there are some serious airheads among the Beauties, and the dweebs are about as far from Casanova as you can get. Strangely, being vice president of the Dukes of Hazzard fan club doesn’t have the babes fighting for a date with Bill. Shawn, the assistant Scoutmaster, isn’t fighting them off either. [4 out of 5 stars]
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But who’s to say we should rely on their judgment when it comes to, well, anything? After all, the magazine includes a competition for “Real Girl of the year ’06”—pictures of ten girls in their underwear with quotes like:
If those are things beautiful Aussie women would say if they’re already prepared for mental challenges… maybe Bill and I should book our plane tickets now.
Long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, some Generation-X members of Mensa created a Yahoo mailing list for other members to keep in touch, talk about politics and religion, share cooking recipes and favorite methods to kill people without getting blood on your clothes… it’s fun stuff. The moderators of the list have set boundaries for what people can write, one of which has recently been broken, but they haven’t stopped it. That’s even more fun stuff.
The crime: making personal attacks. The perpetrator: some dude from South Africa whose screen name is “None of your business.” (Clever, isn’t he?) While we’re not sure what his motivation is, he has made it abundantly clear that he wants to be banned from the list. Consequently, the moderators won’t do it, but that hasn’t stopped him from trying. He’ll go off on a tear about how America is an oppressive nation, we killed all the Indians, bombed the Japanese, we eat too many Big Macs at McDonald’s… basically, he’s being as much of a prick as he possibly can.
I usually “lurk” on the list and let other people discuss how to kill their enemies, but after a few days of reading this guy’s drivel, I decided to throw my hat into the mix. (His initial message was a response to something one of my friends wrote—you can read our nifty exchanges below.) He’s usually quite prompt with his smart-ass replies, but he hasn’t written anything about my final message in this post. I’m quite disappointed, really, but when it comes to being a smart-ass… who’s yo’ daddy?
Now all I have to do is think up an appropriate victory dance. Given that he’s also talked about how low he could go with his insults, I’m thinking I should get the limbo pole ready. Continue reading “Some of my business”
I’d like to take a moment to thank The Powers That Be for making me a sturdy person.
I was playing soccer this afternoon and collided with someone. More specifically, my kneecap collided with his. You could hear the *CRACK* from across the field (at least I assume so—given that I was involved in the accident, I only know it was loud). He fell to the turf. I stayed upright, watching the guy hold his knee and roll around in pain. He needed help getting off the field. I stood around and waited for the game to start up again.
I’m not that big—about 195 pounds—but I’ve yet to run into or get kicked by someone on a soccer field and not jump right back up again. Conversely, I’ve left several opposing players on the ground who… well, they didn’t get right back up again. And I’m not even a thug anymore. I’m trying to develop a little finesse, learning how to maneuver and dribble the ball around people instead of barreling into them. If you flash back about a decade, I didn’t bother with that crap—I played defense and I could rumble with the best of them.
My favorite memory happened when I was about 16. We were playing in a tournament against the host team. They had a forward who… let’s just say he didn’t appreciate the art of defensive thuggery. As I kept pressuring him, he got more and more pissed off. It eventually came to a head when our arms got linked together at the elbow. Instead of letting go and running towards the ball, he tried pulling through my arm. Well, that was just plain silly—I kept my arm locked and pulled back. Neither of us let go and after a few more tugs, he spun around and punched me in the throat.
Why is that my favorite memory? A couple reasons:
That doesn’t make me a bad person, does it? Enjoying the fact that I took advantage of his frustration? I mean, just because I was bumping him around doesn’t mean he’s allowed to take a swing at me. Think about Star Wars—Greedo and Han Solo are facing off outside the bar, talking smack until Greedo whips out his gun and shoots first. Then the ref runs up and gives him a red card. Okay, maybe it didn’t happen quite like that, but give a man a degree of poetic license here!
But the reason I mention it is because I’m becoming a little less “hands-on” while playing soccer now, trying to dance around Greedo and keeping the gun in its holster. It’s worked to a degree—I haven’t been punched in the throat in over ten years—but sometimes people don’t appreciate the effort I’m making. Sometimes they play really aggressively and someone’s going to get victimized. When that happens… sometimes you gotta cap ‘em. Pun intended.
