Articles in “Strange Conversations”

Yet another Gmail chat conversation:

ME: Okay. Cool.
NICK: Awesome roarsome.
ME: No.
NICK: No?
ME: No.
NICK: Not a good catchphrase?
ME: No.
NICK: Okay then.

And with that, I have to announce a blogging hiatus. I’m flying interstate tomorrow for a job interview, and then spending a couple of days with my parents. In time-honoured fashion, I have, of course, caught a revolting cold two days out from the interview, so my plan of blogging in advance has been cancelled.

I will be back in time to live-blog this week’s Torchwood episode, but unless something outstandingly unprecedented occurs between now and then, I won’t be blogging in the interim.

Au revoir!

In which Nick becomes confused by the complexities of women’s fashion (in this case, my adorable striped house socks with the crocheted T-strap):

NICK: Oh, look: the little rubber bit has fallen off the bottom of your shoe.
ME: They’re socks.
NICK: Well, you don’t wear anything over them.
ME: That’s not the definition of a sock. They’re house socks.
NICK: I don’t even know what that means.
ME: It’s quite straightforward.
NICK: You mean they’re socks that you wear in the house?
ME: Yep.
NICK: Well, I suppose that’s . . . I mean, they’re . . . Well, they . . . They don’t even look like socks!
ME: They looks exactly like socks.
NICK: They look like shoes that are a bit sludgy!

I think Bonds should adopt that as their new advertising slogan, myself.

And again, with the Bones-related conversations, this time blended with Futurama:

ME: There’s no way an image search would bring up that photograph from their starting image.
NICK: That’s especially impossible!
ME: Yeah.
NICK (doing an unexpected about-face): Nothing is impossible if you can imagine it! . . . and you’re a forensic re-constructionist.

While watching an episode of Bones:

ME: Hey, don’t call the Norwegians “Vikings”!
NICK: Yeah. It pisses them off and they turn up in longboats.

Hmm.

Nick is cooking pasta sauce entirely from fresh ingredients he bought from the farmer’s market in the city this afternoon.

ME (calling from the study): How’s it going, honey?
NICK: I am reaching a crescendo of awesome!

Alas, things rarely stay so sunny for long, as evidenced by this brief monologue some five minutes later:

NICK: Garlic! Garlic! Ah, garlic—all is vanity!

No, I don’t know what it means. And I don’t believe Nick does, either.

Nick trots out about half-past six to pick up some fish and chips for tea.

Half an hour later, we have the following conversation over Gmail chat:

NICK: Hello! I am outside!
ME: Where are your keys?
NICK: Who knows! Halp!
ME: Why did you lock the front door if you didn’t take your keys?
NICK: Food is cooling down!

Thank goodness for iPhones, eh?

Gmail chat has been generating some fabulous conversations lately:

NICK: I don’t know, but it’s too important to ostridge about.
ME: Ostridge?
NICK: You know, head in sand kind of thing.
ME: Ostrich. You daft boy.
NICK: Damn, I bloody checked the spelling and everything.
ME: You can’t have!
NICK: Link.
ME: Here I was, thinking this was some, like, geek thing. Maybe Dennis Ostridge, best known for running with the wrong squad on WoW for six months and never noticing. Hence “Ostridging about.”
NICK: All the bloody dictionaries silently redirect to the correct article now, which makes Google think it’s going to the correct spelling.
ME: And? What about my compelling explanation?
NICK: Well, it’s good, I’ll grant you that. But I was too annoyed with Google for failing me to really notice. Actually, your reasoning is excellent.
ME: I thought so. And who has to check Google to find out how to spell “ostrich”?
NICK: Me, apparently. I couldn’t even get close enough for the Mac’s spell-checker to come up with an alternative.
ME: Hee! You daft boy.

NICK: Look at the picture!
ME: I don’t think that’s street legal.
NICK: It can do the Kessel run in about 2000 parsecs.
ME: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you think up and reject an original joke?
NICK: Hmm. The joke part was the 2000 parsecs.
ME: Remember what we said about how if you have to explain a joke, it’s not technically a joke? Because it’s not funny any more?
NICK: Some subscribe to that theory, yes.
ME: Not you?
NICK: In the context of this conversation? No.

When boyfriends make unreasonable requests (not like that! Why do you have such a filthy mind?) via G-mail chat:

ME: Freaking out! Freaking out now! Freaking out has commenced!
NICK: Why?
ME: Do you even need to ask?
NICK: Why can’t you ever freak out in a ninja or a funkadelic way?

While listening to Cheap Trick’s re-recording of the Transformers theme song for the new movie.

(Yes, you read that correctly. Cheap Trick.)

NICK: Hmm.
ME: What’s up? You don’t like it?
NICK: Well, I don’t know. I think I preferred the other movie one.
ME: The movie where Optimus Prime dies?
NICK: Yeah.
ME: But was that done by Cheap Trick?
NICK: No, but it was another ‘80s’ hair band. Maybe it was Whitesnake?

(For the record, it was Lion), who are, and I quote, “a 1980s heavy metal band best known for their theme song from the 1986 animated movie The Transformers: The Movie.”)

For the curious, the Cheap Trick version is here.

And the Lion one is here.

While glancing through a slide show on the world’s weirdest hotels:

ME: Well, I’m not staying at Giraffe Manor in Kenya.
NICK: Why not?
ME (reading): “The five-room property is arranged so that roaming giraffes can poke their heads into any open window or doorway and lick guests with their sticky, prehensile tongues.”
NICK: Well, that’s just delightful.
ME: I know! I kinda like the idea of the giraffes roaming free, but I don’t want to be licked by sticky, prehensile tongues.
(Pause)
ME: I realise I may be alone in that, but that’s my position and I’m sticking to it.

(I think that title might end up being longer than the actual blog post).

SCENE: Inside JB Hi-Fi, just after my impassioned rant about the selfishness of people who leave their adorable West Highland Whites locked up in the car, even on a winter’s day, when the poor thing was clearly highly distressed and barking non-stop, which I won’t repeat here.

NICE, WELL-INFORMED SALESMAN: Can I help you?
ME: Yes, Do you have any 400 to 800 firewire cables?
NICE, WELL-INFORMED SALESMAN: No. We’re getting them in, but we haven’t been stocking them because [brief explanation that showed that he, unlike the stoner we subsequently talked to in Harvey Norman, knew what he was talking about.]
NICK: Oh, dear.
ME: Never mind. Didn’t we see that they’re having a sale on Doctor Who DVDs? Let’s go and look at those!
NICK: Okay!

So, while we might not have a 400 to 800 firewire cable, we do have shiny new copies of “City of Death” (“What a wonderful butler: he’s so violent!”) and the E-space trilogy.

What do you normally do when you complete a scary job application?

NICK: Well, are we going shopping? Oh: are you updating your Facebook status?
ME: Of course I am! I’ve just done something!

The longer I work on this job application, the more sarcastic I become:

ME: That poster for Halloween costumes is creepy.
NICK: I wonder where it is. It’s probably an actual location in the game.
ME: Gasp! How exciting!
NICK: Well, I’m excited.
ME: I can tell.
NICK: I don’t know about you.
ME: I’m not excited at all.
NICK: No, I didn’t think so. You seem not to be excited about things any more.
(Pause)
ME: Excuse me?
NICK: Sorry, that was a bit rude.
ME: And pointless. I’ve never been excited by Fallout 3.
NICK: Yeah, good point.

As Nick watches the trailer for Tales of Monkey Island, in light of the news that the franchise will be revived:

NICK: Sigh. It fills me with a deep sense of joy, Treena.
ME: I remember last time you played Monkey Island. You started getting really cranky and then chucked a massive hissy fit and refused to play any more because you couldn’t win the diving competition.
NICK: That’s right!
(Pause for me to laugh)
NICK: There better not be anything like that in the new game.
(Continued laughter)
NICK: But that wasn’t in the spirit of Monkey Island at all!
(Pause for further laughter)
NICK: I mean, a sodding diving competition!

Alas, into each life a little rain must fall, no?