On why Nick isn’t a satisfactory gossip:

MY FATHER: You don’t have enough Y chromosomes for that, Nick!
(Brief pause)
MY MOTHER: Actually, I think you mean X chromosomes.
ME: Isn’t it men who have a Y chromosome and women have two X chromosomes?
MY FATHER: Obviously, I mean X chromosomes.
ME: That would have been funnier if, firstly, you’d got it right and, secondly, you weren’t actually a geneticist.

Discussing small-town marriages:

ME: Well, it’s good for them if they can work it out. After all, your old neighbours managed it when he had that affair.
MY MOTHER: As far as we know.
ME: They moved to Cooma, didn’t they?
MY MOTHER: I don’t know if there’s much talent in Cooma.

Now, hands up: who hoped they’d never hear their mother say the word “talent” unironically?

MY MOTHER: Oh!
ME: You just tried to enter the shopping centre through the air-conditioning duct instead of the door, didn’t you?
MY MOTHER: Yes. It’s a new talent I’ve developed.

While watching the wonderful adaptations of the Nero Wolfe mysteries with my parents:

MY FATHER: Who’s the British bloke?
ME: The brother-in-law.
MY FATHER: No, I mean is he someone significant?
ME: Yes. (Well, he was the murderer.)
MY FATHER: No, I mean is the actor someone significant.
ME: Oh. No.
MY FATHER: Finally, a straight answer.

What happens when Nick is web-surfing and I’m checking Facebook:

NICK: Matt Smith couldn’t be channelling Patrick Troughton harder if he tried.
ME: In what way?
NICK: Well, body language, mostly.
(Baffled pause)
ME: What are you looking at?
NICK: This.
ME: Oh. Oh!
NICK: Yes. That Matt Smith, not our Matt Smith.
ME: They should have thought of moments like this when they cast him.

Mind, it would help if we just called our Matt Smith “Matt,” but such is life.

I think I may have dialogued (for want of a better word) the wrong episode of Sanctuary, judging by what happened in episode two:

NICK: Wow, that was . . .
ME: I know. Did you see the bit where she admitted to voluntarily having Jack the Ripper’s baby?
NICK: Yeah. What’s a combination of “terrible” and “awesome”? Ter-some?
ME: That’s not really euphonious. I think we can settle for “craptacular.”
NICK: Yeah.
ME: You know, for a doctor, she had a really shaky grasp of genetics.
NICK: There was some mumbo [redacted] going on in that show.
ME: So she froze the foetus for one hundred years. What kind of cell degradation would happen in that time? I mean, you can’t even freeze chicken for more than three months.
NICK: Mumbo [redacted].
ME: And then she has Jack the Ripper’s baby because she thinks he’s gone for good by that point?
NICK: Yeah.
ME: That’s a crazy bad grasp of genetics right there.

(This, by the way, is Sanctuary, if you haven’t come across it yet.)

ME: Does it have The Cult in the soundtrack?
NICK: I don’t think so.
ME: They had it in the trailer.
NICK: I think they missed a trick in the show.

ME: Oh, CGI city!
NICK: Yes.
ME: Wait, is that part of the episode or a logo?
NICK: I don’t know.
ME: It’s not a good sign when you can’t tell the episode from the logo.

NICK: Does this hospital have an interrogation room?
ME: Maybe the police station has a gurney?

ME: Oh no, it’s Voldemort!
NICK: Yes!
ME: Wait, maybe it’s Peter Garrett.

HERO: Who are you?
NICK (speaking for Amanda Tapping): I’m Batman.

ME: Wait, we’re twenty-five minutes through, and nothing’s happened yet?
NICK: The pacing is a bit flabby.
ME: It’s hard to tell because nothing has happened yet.
NICK: Of course, the humourlessness doesn’t help.
ME: Well, maybe there’ll be some jokes when something happens.

NICK: I don’t think that hat’s doing Amanda Tapping any favours.
ME: I don’t think it would do anyone any favours. I think it’s trying to evoke something, but I don’t know what.
NICK: Vampire Hunter D, maybe?

NICK: Let’s just walk across this completely empty soundstage.
ME: Completely empty soundstage with grand staircases.
NICK: Yeah.
ME: It’s all a bit Skydivers, isn’t it? “Walk, walk, walk: we shall start the scene here.”

HERO: You’re a doctor of what, precisely?
HEROINE: The actual discipline depends on the specific patient.
NICK: What?
ME: What?

HERO (faced with a mermaid): How is this even possible?
NICK: CGI. Lots of CGI.

HERO: What is that?
HEROINE: His exact classification is less important than his actual existence.
NICK: What?
ME: What?

HEROINE: He’s been relatively isolated since I first treated him.
NICK: Oh, the dialogue is so ponderous.
ME: Yeah.
NICK: “Relatively isolated.” It’s so flabby.
ME: And also? Most of it doesn’t make sense.

HEROINE: I’d like to offer you a place here.
HERO: What, helping you catch monsters?
HEROINE: We prefer to call them “abnormals.”
NICK: Oh, yes—because that’s much better.

HEROINE: I need someone who can see the world as it really is.
HERO: I lock up criminals, not monsters.
HEROINE: And you can’t see the irony in that statement?
NICK: No. Because there isn’t any.

HEROINE (talking about a child with a tentacle growing out of his chest): Such abnormal children are often adopted by well-meaning immigrants.
ME: What?
NICK: What?

HEROINE: What frightens you more, Dr Zimmerman? That frightened boy down there . . .
NICK: Or his disgusting tentacle?
HEROINE: What do you see when you look at him?
NICK: Apart from his disgusting tentacle?

ME: Even the end-title music is humourless.
NICK: Yeah, though I don’t mind it.
ME: Why on earth not?

ME: I used the derogatory term deliberately there.
NICK: Yeah.
ME: To indicate that I thought the person’s argument was derogatory.
NICK: Yeah.
ME: Because I’m not prone to derogatory language.
NICK: Yeah.
(Pause)
NICK: Except about me.
ME: Yeah . . . that’s more descriptive than derogatory.

NICK: Oh, god, I’m so drunk.
ME: Really?
NICK: That Trippel is brutal.
ME: Honey, I don’t think—and this is just my opinion, you understand—I don’t think you should come into the living room, hug and kiss your girlfriend, declare she’s the “best girl in the world,” and then stagger off saying, “Oh god, I’m so drunk.”
NICK: Those were unrelated acts! Unrelated!

In which Nick experiments with advanced Wii Fit Boxing:

NICK: I think I tried it once before, and just completely freaked out.
ME: Well, you completely freaked out this time, too. And when you freak out, you just start punching wildly.
NICK: You have to admit, it’s a useful survival trait.
ME: I was about to argue exactly the opposite.
NICK: Really?

Nick exercises while watching Good Game on the TiVo.

NICK: Theme Park!
ME: Wasn’t it a good game?
NICK: No, because you couldn’t stop the little bastards from vomiting.
ME: Sorry?
NICK: They’d go on rides, and they’d go too fast, and then they’d vomit everywhere. And you had to hire garbage collectors, and . . . god.
ME: Okay, then.

Who says games are no substitute for real life?

Most of the horrors of boarding-school life are fairly well understood: horrible food, snoring roommates, abject bullying, indoctrination into a rigid and aggressively snobbish middle-class ideology . . .

Actually, that last one might just apply to Enid Blyton.

But have you considered these other, less well-known risks to boarding-school life?

Impromptu fiddle performances by sickeningly cherubic classmates:

Risk of shipwreck:

Compulsory victory parades:

Assessable antiquing:

And the greatest threat of all:

That’s right: uncontextualised pointing.