Articles in “Strange Conversations”

NICK: Looks like there’s a Mac version of BioShock coming out.
ME: You should get that. (Pause) Is that the one with the things?
NICK: Pardon:
ME: The things. The . . you know (vague hand gestures, with a hint of sinuosity in the wrist). You go through the things from the place and you come out at the other place. You know. (Increasingly frantic vague hand gestures.)
NICK: Oh, no: that’s Portal.
ME: Ah, Portal. With the portals. Obviously.
NICK: Well, yes.

ME: Honey, why is there a Chris Foss book under the armchair?
NICK: Well, I was looking for somewhere to put it.
ME: So you put it under the armchair?
NICK: Yes.
ME: I mean, you deliberately put it under the armchair?
NICK: Yes.
ME: Why didn’t you just put it back where you got it from?
(Pause)
NICK: Um . . .

ME: You’re not listening to me, are you?
NICK: The thing is, Treen, the voice you use for holding conversations with yourself and the one you use for talking to me—they’re identical! I can’t tell the difference!
ME: Has it ever occurred to you, honey, that maybe they’re not conversations with myself? That they’re conversations with you that you’re not listening to?
NICK (pause): No.

Nick plays Bejeweled 2 on his iPhone:

NICK: You’d think, when you exploded more than one Power Gem, that it would set off a massive explosion.
ME: Sometimes it does.
NICK: But this was four, all together!
ME: And it didn’t?
NICK: No.
ME: Oh, well. These things happen.
NICK: True.
ME: But you should still feel bad.
NICK: Really?

When we use verbs in different ways:

ME: Oh! Where did I put my gum?
NICK: You didn’t swallow it, did you?
ME: I . . . what? No, I meant the packet.

I’m still baffled by this. But Nick can’t understand why I’m baffled. So far, the only responses to my bafflement I’ve received have been “I really don’t understand why you have a problem with this” and “Stranger things have happened at sea, and you know it.”

Scene: a quiet afternoon in the study, Nick playing Fallout Three and me lurking on a forum. Suddenly, the peace is rudely shattered.

NICK: AAAAAARGH!
COMPUTER: Boom!
ME: Screech!
NICK: What just happened?
ME: Yes, what the hell did just happen?
NICK: I heard this noise behind me, and then, with the stuff . . .
ME: I threw something in the waste-paper bin.
NICK: Oh.
ME: And then you screamed and I didn’t know what was happening so I screamed.
NICK: I thought a giant insect had landed on me, in addition to the goddamned death claw trying to kill me!
ME: Right.
NICK: I mean, they’re the toughest roaming creatures in the game, they can kill you with one swipe, and now they’re just spawning everywhere!
ME: Okay.
NICK: Everywhere in the game, I mean.
ME: Yes, I assumed that.
NICK: So I’m just . . . I’m just a little jumpy.
ME: I can see that. But it’s okay now?
NICK: Yeah. No. Yeah.
(Pause)
NICK: Ha! Got the bastard.

Ah, immersive gaming. It immerses everyone in earshot, whether you want to be immersed or not.

(Is this worthy of being number one hundred? Who knows?)

Has anyone seen the film clip for Toto’s “Africa”? If not, here it is.

We watched it, and almost immediately had an argument:

ME: See, isn’t that weird?
NICK: Yeah.
ME: See, I’ve seen worse film clips, but I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a stranger one. I mean, is the song pro-Africa or anti-Africa?
NICK: I don’t know.
ME: I know! And who was the man with the spear?
NICK: Well, his shield had the same pattern as in the picture the guy was looking for in the book.
ME: Did it?
NICK: Clearly, he was a supernatural entity who the white guy was hunting for, and he didn’t want to be found, so he took steps.
ME: You don’t know that.
NICK: It’s supported by the text.
ME: No, it’s not! It’s a semi-plausible reading based on an ambiguous and obscure originating text!
NICK: Treen, those are my specialities.

Seriously, watch the film clip. And listen out for my favourite line, in which, apparently, the lonely wild dog seeks some “solitary company.”

I don’t know what that means, and I still don’t know what the guy with the spear is doing.

This is what happens when you live with a hardcore geek.

To make more sense of this, we were watching The West Wing (season three) during dinner, but it was one of those episodes where Aaron Sorkin “writes back” to his critics (in this instance, unconvincingly, about his sexism. I was left with the impression that, apparently, only ugly women—regardless of their intelligence—are frustrated by Sorkin’s particular brand of gender relations, which puts me in my place, I suppose) so I insisted on a break.

I’d not been in the study—which, remember, is some ten feet from the living room—two minutes when this popped up on the Gmail chat function:

NICK: They did have muffins but I did not have any.
ME: What? What? Where? Whem? When, even? Who is this? What the hell is happening? Ack!
NICK: Just responding to something you wrote yesterday.
ME: What? I wrote what where?
NICK: Treena? Are you ok?
ME: No! I don’t know what’s happening!
(Nick comes into the study with his iPhone)
NICK: See, I’ll show you what I’m talking about.
(Shows me some fairly banal chat we had yesterday about him not having a muffin with his coffee)
NICK: See, nothing worth panicking about.

Now, Nick has claimed for years that my mulling a conversation over in my head and then saying, some half an hour later, “And you know what else annoys me?” is the most irritating thing it is possible for one’s partner to do.

I maintain that saving chats on the iPhone and then picking them up thirty hours after they’ve ended is much, much worse.

After looking at one of those “the BBC says most people have only read six of these books” lists that are circulating on Facebook:

ME: And they’re really problematic lists.
NICK: How so?
ME: Well, they have “the complete works of Shakespeare” as one entry and Hamlet as another. Why?
NICK: Weird.
ME: I mean, I’ve only read forty-five of the hundred books on the list, but some of them I’m never going to read. Five People You Meet In Heaven? And the bloody Da Vinci Code?
NICK: Yeah, no.
ME: I may not have read The Da Vinci Code, but I have no qualms about how I have chosen to exercise my literacy.
NICK: Me, neither. And I only read books with spaceships in them.

I am shouting at the West Wing before and after this conversation, but I’ll spare you those bits.

ME: We should watch Dule Hill’s new show.
NICK: Yes, I hear it’s supposed to be good.
ME: Nick, I told you that. I told you it was supposed to be good.
NICK: Treen, that’s just how my brain works. Information is filed away; it isn’t attached to a citation.
ME: Well, it’s a good thing you didn’t finish your Ph.D., then.
NICK: Yes, it is.

ME: Honey, why is there a wok on the footstool in the living room?
NICK: Well, I couldn’t find the container.
ME (pointing six inches to his left): It’s right there.
NICK: Well, I know that now.
ME: So why is there a wok on the footstool in the living room?
NICK: Well, I saw the container as I was heading out of the room.
ME: But why is there a wok on the footstool in the living room?
NICK: Treena, we’re never going to have a conversation on this topic that ends in a satisfactory manner.
ME: Really?
NICK: Not satisfactory to you, anyway.

While planning dinner:

NICK: It’s really saturated fat that’s the problem.
ME: No, you said we couldn’t eat any fat at all, or we’d die.
NICK: It’s like there’s this whole parallel world where we actually have these conversations.
ME: Yes. In my head.
NICK: I’m glad you finally admit that.
ME: That doesn’t mean it’s not real!
NICK: I think you’ll find that’s pretty much the definition of “not real.”
ME: No, it’s not—Dumbledore said so.
NICK: But he’s not real, either.
(Pause)
ME: There has to be a way for me to get out of this conversation.
NICK: There isn’t. But I’ll try not to gloat too much, even though I hardly ever win arguments.
ME: You didn’t win this one. I just decided to stop participating.
NICK: No! You can’t log out of the game!

Always the subtleties of musical genres and movements escape me:

ME: This is horrible!
NICK: What?
ME: This! It’s incomprehensible thrashy guitar and a completely inaudible vocal track!
NICK: Treen, it is My Bloody Valentine. They’re the original shoegazer band.
ME: That is a total lie!
NICK: It is not!
ME: You look me in the eye, and tell me that that band whose name I’ve forgotten—Joy Division! That they weren’t the original shoegazer band.
NICK: They weren’t.
ME: He stared at his shoes all the time!
NICK: But they weren’t shoegazer.

A Packrat/laptop-with-a-scroll-pad related strange conversation:

ME: Bugger!
NICK: What?
ME: I just bought a sodding parrot!
NICK (slightly different intonation): What?
ME: I was just trying to scroll down the page and I accidentally bought a bloody parrot! Now what do I do?
NICK: You just . . .
(Long pause)
ME: Yes?
NICK: You just got to keep it real.
(Longer pause)
NICK: I have no idea what that means. Sorry.

It cost me one hundred credits, too.

And, five minutes later:

ME: I mean, a bloody parrot! I don’t need a parrot. I’ve already finished that set.
NICK: It happens, Treen. You just need to deal with it.
ME: I have never accidentally bought a parrot before.
NICK: Really?

Seeking shelter from the 36-degree heat at the shopping centre:

ME: On a scale of one to ten, how bad does my hair look? Because I can’t be bothered redressing it.
NICK: Lower is better, right?
ME: Yes. Ten would be the worst.
NICK: I’d say . . . three.
ME: Three?!
NICK: What?
ME: Why can’t you just say “one”?
NICK: You’ve got to stop asking me these things.