Articles in “Strange Conversations”

(Conversational silence.)

NICK: Ah, woman as an object of exchange in homosocial relations.
ME: Pardon?
NICK: This song. [“Jessie’s Girl,” for the record.]
ME: But she’s not an object of exchange. There’s no exchange.
NICK: I guess it’s pre-text.
ME: You know, I’m really just trying to mark, here.
NICK: Oh, sorry, babe.

(Conversational silence.)

NICK (standing up and stretching): Creaking. Creaking but not yet leaking.
ME: Pardon?
NICK: Hee.
ME: Okay, two questions. Firstly, do you often leak in the study?
NICK: No.
ME: Good. Secondly, is there a high chance that you’ll leak in the near future?
NICK: Probably not.
ME: Then why the “not yet leaking”?
NICK: It’s my way of saying I’m old but I’m not yet out of the game.
ME: You’re 33.
NICK: True.

NICK: Will you stop laughing?
ME: No. You tried to get your pants on, missed, and fell over. What’s not to laugh at?
NICK: I also hurt my finger a bit.

ME: Are you playing a Zerg character?
NICK: Well, yes.
ME: This is shameful!
NICK: What is?
ME: First you never manage to keep up an adequate supply of minerals, which, frankly, is not something I look for in a man. And now you’re a Zerg!
NICK: That needs to be a strange conversation.
ME: As though I’d share my shame with the world.

When you’ve been grass-widowed by Starcraft 2, you need to make your own fun.

So I took my car in for a service and I said to the mechanic, “If you find anything extravagantly wrong with it, give me a ring before you fix it, okay?”

He said he would.

One courtesy bus, one ordinary bus, and an hour later, I get home, make myself a cup of coffee, and settle down to check my e-mails when the phone rings.

It’s the mechanic.

He says to me, “We were checking over the car and we found mumble, mumble, mumble. Would you like us to fix that?”

And I think, “Oh, no. I wasn’t actually listening to him; I was checking my e-mails.”

But I don’t want to admit that I wasn’t listening, so I come up with a cunning plan. This way, I’ll find out what he was saying before I commit to expensive car repairs, but I won’t have to admit that I wasn’t listening to him.

So I say, “Can you just remind me what that part does?”

And he says, “Those are the things that clean your windshield off when it rains.”

ME: I seem to spend a lot of time worrying. I think it’s because I’m not very bright.
NICK: You’re plenty bright. I’ve seen your brain.
ME: No, I’m a moron.
NICK: Treen, if that was true, you wouldn’t spend so much time worrying about your intellect.
ME: The Internet? I hardly spend any time worrying about the Internet.

I guess that answers that question.

ME: Now you have me humming the Doctor’s theme!
NICK: Well, that’s no bad thing, surely?
ME: Unlike your Scots accent, no.
NICK: What Scots accent?
ME: Sorry, I thought you’d said, “that’s nae bad thing.” But you must have just slipped on the syllable.
NICK: There was a banana skin right underneath it.
ME: I see.
NICK: There’s no rest for the syllabant.
ME: Sibilant?
NICK: Bugger.

ME: I suppose I should get back to the folding of laundry. So, so boring.
NICK: Ah well.
ME: Also?
NICK: Yes?
ME: Don’t think I didn’t notice that you left a bottle of tomato sauce on the bookcase.
NICK: Well, it started out as tomato juice, but, well, time makes fools of us all.
ME: Yes. You do realise, don’t you that, tomato sauce is not to tomato juice as yoghurt is to milk?
NICK: I did know that. And furthermore I was fairly sure you’d point that out too. So you’ve really fallen into my trap, there.
ME: Yes, clearly you win this round.

Nick and I split the preparations for a party:

NICK: I’m going to vacuum now.
ME: No.
NICK: I’ve finished the dusting!
ME: This table and lamp haven’t been dusted.
NICK: Yeah.
ME: Nor has this table.
NICK: Okay.
ME: And I’m pretty sure you haven’t dusted this one because it has a stale cracker on it.
NICK: You see things I don’t see.
ME: Like furniture?

Last night:

ME: It’s cold. Richard the Third and I think it’s cold.
NICK: I don’t get that. Oh! “Now is the winter of our discontent”?
ME: I was talking about my bookmark, but that’s quite clever.

ME: Behold! Nicholas returns home, and the house is filled with light.
NICK: I am the King of Light! The Lord of Light?
ME: You leave a lot of lights on.
NICK: That’s … similar.

ME: I have read a book about killer unicorns. Now I should watch some football.
NICK: The Rampart or whatever one?
ME: Rampant, honey. Like the heraldry.
NICK: That’s the one. Ah, of course!
ME: Not ‘rampart’ like the architecture.
NICK: Heh. I was having a Heroes of Might and Magic moment.
ME: Really? You should see someone about that.
NICK: I think there’s a cream you can get for it.
ME: Okay, ew.

In which I fret about whether or not I’ve bombarded my editor with questions:

NICK: Editor’s lives aren’t meant to be easy. I am a geeenius!
ME: That’s a plural possessive, genius.
NICK: Not that kind of genius.
ME: What kind?
NICK: The Nick kind.

Nick wanders into the bedroom with his iPhone, after an evening of exhausting iPadding:

ME: Oh, look—it’s the return of the repressed.
NICK: It’s not repressed! It’s lovely!
ME: You haven’t looked at it once all night.
NICK: Well, they say the iPad really extends the battery life on the iPhone.

ME: I need a new title for my novel, but I can’t think what.
NICK: It’s a pity the two kingdoms don’t have names. You could call it From X to Y.
ME: From Here to Eternity?
NICK: From Justin to Kelly.

What a shame From Russia with Love is already taken.