It’s that time again! What does the weird shit I say really mean? I’ve roped Ame into some of my habits and some of hers as well, so let’s get this party started!

• “Potato, potato.”
  Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends has a character named Eduardo. In one episode, he was handling potatos and would regularly say “potato, potato” in his goofy little way. Now whenever potatos are mentioned, I think of this and sometimes I break out with my own “potato, potato.”
• Belt Line
  In Dallas, there’s a road called Belt Line. This road sprawls allll over Dallas in a giant loop, and if you travel pretty much anywhere in the city, you’ll encounter it. For a short time, I did a fair amount of driving around the city and it seemed that Belt Line was everywhere. Eventually, I saw it as my nemesis (memesis!) and cursed its name every time I passed or crossed it. “Belt Line!” I’d say through gritted teeth, and shake and pound my fists in anger. Silly of course, but definitely cathartic. Now, I live kind of close to Belt Line and I got really tired of doing the whole theatrics thing, but Ame and I still use it as an expletive every now and then.
• Bananaphone (Boop-Boop-a-Doop-a-Doop!!)
  Another expletive for Ame and me, this is of course from Raffi’s instant classic, Bananaphone. Instead of saying “bullshit” or “what the fuck?” we might just burst out with “what’s all this bananaphone?” or simply “Bananaphone!” Another part of the song is “Boop-Boop-a-Doop-a-Doop!” (apparently the sound dialing a bananphone makes). We usually reserve this one for when someone is acting like an idiot or oblivious to their surroundings and we make fun of them to eachother.

  Ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring. Bananaphone!

• Fuzzy
  When the animals are acting bad, usually Eris, Ame and I say their being fuzzy. Eris’s pupils dilate to the size of small planets, and she gets super-alert. Welcome to FuzzCon 5. She tears around the house, jumps on things, terrorizes the dog, through chair legs, and over and under everything else. I’m not sure if the newspaper comic Get Fuzzy has anything to do with this phenomenon, but I do want to explain the FuzzCon sub-meme here. If you’ve seen War Games with Matthew Broderick, you’ll know that DefCon stands for Defense Confidence. DefCon 5 means the defenses are at their most confident, and DefCon 1 the least. With FuzzCon, the opposite is true, but it makes sense. Fuzzy Confidence 1 means there’s almost no fuzziness, and FuzzCon 5 means Eris is full on fuzzy.

One of the many things that makes me a bad person: black humor. No I don’t mean “soul humor.”

The other day, Ame and I were at Garden Ridge Pottery (If you don’t have one in your area, think a really big arts & crafts store), and on one of the bargain tables there was book titled The Bump on Santa’s Noggin. It was kind of cute until I thought about it a little further.

Ostensibly, one can assume the book is about how Santa hits his head and forgets Christmas. Of course this is a feel-good book, so he recovers his memory somehow (probably by huffing “reindeer dust” or something) and Christmas is saved, the end. Why does one lose their memory in the first place from a blow to the head? Brain damage. A better title would be Santa Gets TBI.

I knew it was bad, but I started chuckling in the store, trying to keep it to myself (yeah, right). Ame asked me what was so funny, so I told her and started laughing harder. I swear she thought it was at least a little funny, but she’d never admit it. In truth, TBI is no laughing matter, but that’s what makes it so funny! I told you, black humor.

‘Tis the season to bulk up like a body-builder. My weights of choice are tons and tons of shopping bags. I am the best purse Ame has ever had! She just loads me up with whatever she’s bought and moves on to the next store. We don’t shop like this, except very rarely, so my spindly little arms are getting quite a workout.

We went to the mall recently, and the bags were digging in to my hands quite spectacularly. When the round of shopping was done and we reached the car to unload, my arm and shoulder were pretty sore. The next day, my wrist was feeling the pain. Carpal Tunnel! Carpal Tunnel!

“What’s in the box?”
“PAIN”

It’s no longer topical, but when has that ever stopped me before? Ame likes to play the “no purchase necessary” McDonald’s Monopoly sweepstakes when it comes around, and this last season was no exception. We have McDonald’s a couple times a week as it is, so this game is really just an opportunity to collect little colored Atlantic City properties and hope for a match or instant win.

The odds of winning any prize is about 1 in 3 or 4, but “any prize” really sucks like a small frosty with purchase of a large drink. Right on. The big money is in the property matches, and, just like Monopoly, the shitty properties are the shitty prizes, but matching Boardwalk and Park Place is where the real action is. Don’t get me wrong, matching even the dark purples, Baltic and Mediterranean (yes, I’ve practically memorized the game board of Monopoly), the lowest property in the game, would still be awesome because winning is awesome.

If I recall correctly, the odds of winning the Texas State Lottery is something like 1 in 65,000,000. At those levels, it really is no real appreciable difference mathematically in buying a ticket or not. Not quite a less-than-zero percent chance, but why bother? It reminds me of a goofy and kind of insightful comment I saw at Slashdot. 

“…you can have a negative percent chance of succeeding in a task. For example, if you have a -5% chance of succeeding, not only will you fail every time you make an attempt, you will also fail 1 in 20 times that you don’t even try.”

So whenever the McOpoly game comes around again, I just roll my eyes and hand all my miniature Monopoly properties over to Ame whereupon she hoards them with glee like some sort of paper-token miser.

Goddammit! Park Place again!?
- Ame

And this isn’t a bad thing, no, really! As you know, I work Friday through Monday, but the office is suffering some emergency maintenance issues. The space is flooded and inoperable, so no one can really do anything until the mess is cleaned up. The best part is I’m getting paid for the time.

Of course, there’s always bad news, and it’s really my own fault. I’ve been playing Mother 3 during my downtime at work; it really helps kill the time, and it’s a great game to boot. Every night before I left  work for home, I’d make a backup of my EEPROM (save-game file) just so I could have the option of continuing the game at home. This past Friday came and went, I worked, I played Mother 3, but it was the only night that I didn’t make a backup. I was at the final final final boss of the game when I it was time  to leave, and guess what I didn’t do? That’s right. No backup of the save-game.

Now I’m all freaking out (not really, it’s just a game) that my progress since my last backup (a significant amount!) could be lost. What if the hard drive on my desktop computer at work was affected? There are any number of scenarios that could warrant either a hard drive replacement or wiping it out and restoring it fresh! I’m sure I’m just being paranoid, and the file is fine, but the chance is there.

So, take the good with the bad though. Ame and I have really enjoyed these days off.