As I left work today, I entered a deluge. The thought of walking thirty minutes to the train station in the pouring rain did not particularly appeal to me, so I ran to the gas station across the street to attempt to buy an umbrella. Unfortunately for me, this gas station does not sell umbrellas, nor did the person behind the counter have any idea where the closest place was that did sell umbrellas. So, in my panicked, frustrated state, which apparently the young man found endearing, I asked for a bag to at least put over my head to keep me slightly dry. Said young man one-upped my idea and gave me the biggest garbage bag he could find and ripped a small hole in the side of it so that I could see. So, if you had been one of the tens of thousands of people bustling about midtown in the rain, you would have seen a petite, animated garbage bag waddling across town.
Once I arrived at the train station, only half-drenched and slightly amused with the situation leading to my arrival, I decided that I needed to reward myself for my hard work with some rocking music. Seriously rocking. Like Salt-N-Pepa and my number one husband, Biggie. Well, you can imagine my disappointment when this came on shuffle:
He, unfortunately, doesn't have any feelings. Or ever make me smile.
*Marcus adds, "Have you ever thought about a bass line two and a half minutes in?"
The husband kept asking me this morning as he posted about video games whether I wished I was a boy. Well, being a girl really sucked after I hit about twelve or so, but before that, I had some experiences which rival Marcus' memories of playing video games with his brothers.
First, there are the entire Saturday afternoons that I spent reading Babysitters' Club books outside on the swings:
Or the evenings in the fourth grade when I would come home and read Animorphs while listening to Backstreet Boys and Hanson:
Oh the crushes that I had on Jake and Marco.
Oh and the even more serious crushes on Brian and Taylor. There were some feelings there. And then the fact that I would also play with my Barbie dolls. My next door neighbor, Jana, who was two years older than me (and the coolest girl in school-- everyone thought so) would come over, and we would pretend that our Barbie's had boyfriends (because once you got married, things were boring). My favorite Barbie outfit (which I can't find a picture of) was a bright pink going-out dress that looked like a Spandex bodysuit with a giant tutu attached to it. Man, oh man.
I totally had this Barbie doll.
And this Barbie Jeep.
And, in my spare time, when you know I wasn't totally trying to impress Jana, I would read American Girl books.
Felicity was my favorite.
And then when I got a little older (you know, the ripe old age of 11) and decided that I needed to read about more grown-up things, I started on the Sweet Valley High books. Those are such gems.
Those books really taught me what to expect when I went to high school. All the drama with friends and boys and crazy parties. You know, all that stuff that I experienced in high school.
And I also never nonchalantly worked my way through Anna Karenina for about two months or so.
So, while I may not have memories of different video game systems, game books, and television shows like Marcus does, I was getting done as a kid. Super getting it done.
The Scrabble computer cheats, and it loves to do it. It's not the best at it, though. The best cheating computer characters are from a time of joy in my life, and by "joy," I mean "rage and violence," specifically toward the games.
Super Macho Man?
I found no pictures of you from Super Punch-Out!!, perhaps because you are hiding from me, perhaps because of the two or three times I might have completely broken that SNES cartridge by slamming it into the ground.
(Hey, Justin, do you remember the time I accidentally "dropped" Earthbound? Me, neither. It was a shame that it broke so badly from such a short drop.)
There are other cheaters in the world of computers, most notably from Mario Kart 64 and every incarnation of Madden, but I just wanted to post a picture of Super Macho Man and a picture of the video game characters that caused my big brother to get so angry one afternoon at our grandmother's house that he kicked the NES and broke the front of it off:
I became addicted to the Mac Scrabble we bought, and I've played something like 200 games against the computer. At the higher levels, I lose horribly (as the computer consistently draws the highest scoring tiles and then invents the word QIZAXY for 750 points), so I just play the Veteran AI over and over again.
So, in the interest of documenting events even my wife doesn't care about, I just pulled this board off:
And here is both my final score and the series of three turns in which I did the best:
Oh, Bee. What are you feeling right now? What emotion is that etched into your metal-bee face? Is it wonder? Horror? Despair?
Let's see:
What makes you tick, Bee? What do you feel when you see DRAINER played? Is it an emotion you can quantify? Do you write about it in your journal late at night before you plot your next attempt to play WZOQY for 300 points?
We have a dry-erase board here where we leave notes for each other, and Catherine has left me the following this morning:
I am the cook Good teeth, strong stomach with you be! And once you have got down my book, You should get on with me. - Freddy Nietzsche
But I have a question: Did Nietzsche ever have a feeling? About anything? Or was he just kind of going through the motions? Especially about Wagner. No feelings there.
While my wife folds the laundry, I'm watching Lasagna Cat, and I had a very specific reaction to this one. I think you should skip watching that, though, and spend some time here:
Thirty seconds into that video, I knew I'd found a kindred spirit. Here's a little thought experiment:
How would you make the perfect film? And by "perfect," I mean a film that scores 100/100 on any imaginable scoring rubric. A paragon. A movie with flawless acting, music, plot, and so on. How would you do that?
1. Cast Sam Neill 2. Find real dinosaurs 3. Hire John Williams 4. Film
Well, that movie exists. It is called Jurassic Park.
BONUS FOOTAGE FROM THE SAM NEILL LINK:
Listen to the music in that tribute. Think about the kid who made the tribute. But seriously think about the music. And how much time had to have been spent scouring the Internet for the right photos.
Only my brothers will appreciate the following video, but I've watched it over and over again, each time feeling more like it's the greatest creation in the history of both video games and videos:
Well, not what we got. What celebrities got. And we're not going to have time tonight to discuss everything, or to put any more words in italics. So no discussion of this useless woman, despite how much she might fit the conversation, or of Miley Cyrus, who unfortunately did show up to the Oscars still looking pretty much like this. (Not sure how that fits the discussion, but I can't get over how Miley Cyrus looks in every photo.) No discussion of how Daniel Day-Lewis has the best facial structure in the world, as well as the worst taste in clothing, although his pictures on Getty Images (that's for the Oscars) are as awesome as always.
We really just have time for two things: Viggo Mortensen's beard and Christina Aguilera's breasts.
First, the beard, from tonight's Oscars:
That is the hottest beard a man has ever grown. It just might be. It's nearly flawless. Look at it again:
It has no flaws. And the amazing thing is that when he played the greatest character in the history of the world -- not in literature, because it was literally the history of this world -- he didn't grow this. He could have grown this beard. Instead, he grew this:
Good thing Peter Jackson didn't ruin anything else about the character, huh? Ha ha ha *cough* *choke* *stab*
Next, breasts! See, Christina Aguilera had a baby recently. It doesn't matter anymore what she used to look like, or even that she was pretty chesty as a pregnant woman, because now she looks like this:
And if you don't have time to watch the whole thing, there are pictures all over the Internet right now, because no one can believe she pulled those out:
It is not physically possible for a woman to be that petite -- and she is roughly four feet tall -- and have breasts that engorged. ("Engorged" is Catherine's word, so it's okay. She says, "They look like they're about to explode.")
So the moral here? Marcus wishes he had that beard and Catherine wishes she had those breasts so very badly that it hurts.
