by Catriona Mills

Articles in “Strange Conversations”

Strange Conversations: Part Two Hundred and Eighty-Four

Posted 30 March 2010 in by Catriona

Early morning IM strange conversation:

ME: Oooh, toast is ready! Bye!
NICK: Oh, of course. Oh wait!
ME: Quick! Toast is going cold!
NICK: We’ve now got 60 gig a month for no more cost from Internode!
ME: That is not urgent!
NICK: Sorry! Bye!
ME: My toast went cold for that?!
NICK: Bye!

You’ve got to admire his desperate attempts to leave the conversation at the end. Well, admire or pity them, I suppose.

(A brief apology: Things have been ever so slightly completely and utterly insane here, culminating in a pile of 93 first-year 500-word blog posts with a five-day marking turnaround and two other equally urgent deadlines, all coming due, oh, now. So the blog has suffered, I’m afraid. But do not abandon me, gentle readers! Not even if you find being called “gentle reader” horribly patronising! I’ll be back into my usual routine in no time—plus, there’s Doctor Who soon. Very soon. You wouldn’t abandon The Circulating Library just before the Eleventh Doctor appears, would you?)

Strange Conversations: Parts Two Hundred and Eighty-Two and Eighty-Three

Posted 27 March 2010 in by Catriona

Two related strange conversations.

In the car this morning:

ME: Nicholas, are you reading your iPhone?
NICK: Only Twitter.
ME: Why don’t you talk to your girlfriend instead?
NICK: Well, we have such a deep bond that we don’t really need to converse.
ME: I want a shallow bond.

And this evening:

ME: Shall we have the choc-mint candles for Earth Hour?
NICK: When is it?
ME: In about forty-five minutes.
NICK: I’d better charge my iPhone!
ME: We could talk, you know.
NICK: I know, but, Treen, it’s an hour.

Sigh.

Strange Conversations: Part Two Hundred and Eighty-One

Posted 24 March 2010 in by Catriona

If I tell you (as though you don’t know already) that I’m both a bad winner (I gloat) and a poor loser (I sulk), you’ll understand how much fun Nick has while I play Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures.

ME: Falling off the handrails was totes your fault, though.
NICK: My fault?
ME: Well, once you left the room, I managed to get to the other side of the chasm. Do you deny it?
NICK: I don’t deny that those two things happened.
ME: Actually, I got across twice. But the first time, I panicked and switched out of the character, because I thought she’d missed the last railing. But she hadn’t. Then when I switched out of her, she fell off the railing anyway.
NICK: Damn!
ME: I know! I mean, why would you do that?
NICK: I’ve had a sudden revelation about underwear.
ME: But why would that make you voluntarily drop to your death in a bottomless pit?
NICK: What?
ME: Oh. That statement wasn’t actually related to the conversation, was it?

Strange Conversations: Part Two Hundred and Eighty

Posted 19 March 2010 in by Catriona

In which Nick knocks a pile of coins into the sink:

NICK: I thought it was a glass shattering spontaneously at my passing, Sutekh the Destroyer style.
ME: Sutekh didn’t smash glasses.
NICK: I bet he did. When he was on his . . . you know.
ME: Period?
NICK: Druthers.

Strange Conversations: Part Two Hundred and Seventy-Nine

Posted 17 March 2010 in by Catriona

ME: Honey, can you stop swearing at everything?
NICK: I’m just in a bad mood. I don’t know why.
ME: And that’s fine. Just don’t take it out on me.
NICK: But I don’t take my bad moods out on you.
ME: Nice inflection.
NICK: But I don’t!
ME: I wasn’t objecting to that part of your statement. I was objecting to the second, unspoken part.
NICK: Oh.

Strange Conversations: Part Two Hundred and Seventy-Eight

Posted 16 March 2010 in by Catriona

After a particularly traumatic glasses loss:

ME: Can you just grab my old glasses?
NICK: Where are they?
ME: On top of the chest of drawers, obviously.
(Brief pause)
NICK: And if they weren’t there, where would they be?
ME: Honestly, why can’t you just remember where stuff is in the house? I remember where all your stuff is!
(Brief pause)
ME: And the fact that they’re not on top of the chest of drawers in no way changes my main point!
NICK: It doesn’t?
ME: No!

Strange Conversations: Part Two Hundred and Seventy-Seven

Posted 13 March 2010 in by Catriona

The tail end of a four-way argument, coming home from a pub meal:

ME: Sorry, I get the toilet first. I called bagsies.
MY MOTHER: I’ll just play the “I’m your mother” card.
ME: I’ll play the “But I really need to wee” card.
MY MOTHER: No, you won’t.
ME: All right, I’ll race you.
MY MOTHER: Okay.
ME: Not from here! From the front gate.

Strange Conversations: Part Two Hundred and Seventy-Six

Posted 12 March 2010 in by Catriona

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.

Strange Conversations: Part Two Hundred and Seventy-Five

Posted 12 March 2010 in by Catriona

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?

Strange Conversations: Part Two Hundred and Seventy-Four

Posted 12 March 2010 in by Catriona

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.

Strange Conversations: Part Two Hundred and Seventy-Three

Posted 11 March 2010 in by Catriona

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.

Strange Conversations: Part Two Hundred and Seventy-Two

Posted 10 March 2010 in by Catriona

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.

My Thoughts on Sanctuary Episode One, In Dialogue Form: A Follow-Up

Posted 8 March 2010 in by Catriona

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.

My Thoughts on Sanctuary Episode One, In Dialogue Form

Posted 8 March 2010 in by Catriona

(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?

Strange Conversations: Part Two Hundred and Seventy-One

Posted 8 March 2010 in by Catriona

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.

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