U I I E T A

Those of my avid readers* will remember that in a posting not long ago I referred to myself as being a contrarian by nature. However, for the purposes of full disclosure, along with giving me a topic to write about, I have to say that I have recently fallen in with a fad. (Luckily, it’s not planking.)

Now, before I get into the fad, I have to defend my apparent hypocriticalness. I still consider myself a contrarian, despite what I have just admitted. The reason for this is because by falling in with a fad, I’ve done something contrary to my own human nature, which is to be a contrarian. Thus, I’m still a contrarian, because I've contradicted myself. (If you need to work that out on a whiteboard, I totally understand. My head is still spinning.)

Alright, back to business. The fad I’m talking about is the game Words With Friends, which is essentially Scrabble over smart phones. It’s fun because you can play with anybody, no matter where they’re physically located. The games tend to take a while, as a player may not always be monitoring, but that adds to the drama, as you don’t want to lose a game that’s lasted for six days.

I’ve been playing for several weeks now, and so far I’ve found only one downside. You see, the game allows you to arrange your letters and then submit them as a move. If what you've attempted to play wasn’t a valid move, you can just try again. This means that you can guess at letter arrangements that look like words. This leads to a lot of weird words being played, especially when the triple-word scores are at stake. This does kind of build your vocabulary, as you see lots of new words, but you don’t really know the meaning of any of them unless you look them up.

Here is a partial list of words that have been played that I didn’t know were actual words:

bora
zona
fie
ute
eh
hao
la
houri
tipcat
zori
fe
bander
fice
aurora
gox
zoeal

(I’m sure that I played several of these words myself. Guess and Check is a temptation that is very hard to resist.)

Other than this one small detail, however, it’s a very fun game, which mixes both strategy and luck. Because of this, I’m fine with playing, even though it's a fad. Just as long as it doesn’t become an obsession that keeps me from my other priorities.

On a totally unrelated note, I’m not sure why I haven’t posted for several weeks. I must have been busy. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to figure out what words I can build using the following letters: u i i e t a. Also, it needs to get me sixty points.

* Let me live in my fantasy world.

The Fight Against Change (Offline For 8 Days)

I’m pretty certain that I’m going to eventually turn into the quintessential grumpy old man. I picture myself rocking on the front porch of my home, a perpetual scowl attached to my weathered face. I’ll shake my fist as teenagers drive by at a rate which I judge to be too fast (15 miles per hour), and I’ll complain about how things were a whole lot better back before matter transporters and Meal-In-A-Capsule pills came along. Above all, I’ll be stubborn and refuse to accept any sort of change.

I know this is going to happen because I’m already showing signs of it today. For example, just recently at work everybody got an instant messenger program installed on their computers. The goal is to make it easier to facilitate communication and thus boost productivity. However, as soon as I saw it I decided that I didn’t like it. My basic reasoning boiled down to this:

1)      Instant messaging means that people would have another line of communication with me.    

2)      People are annoying.

3)      Thus, I don’t want to communicate with people any more than I have to already.

4)      Bah! Humbug!

Today I was at a co-workers desk and he had his instant messenger up. The program showed a list of employees, including me, along with their ‘online’ status. Most were online. A few were off-line, but they had not been gone for long, and they had left a message saying when they would be back, usually within 10 to 15 minutes. My icon, however, told a different a story. After my name it said: Offline for 8 days.

I smiled and felt intensely proud of myself. You can give me the tools for change, but I sure don’t have to use them! That’ll teach the company for being so bold as to try and make me more productive! Humbug!

Now, how will I not become a grumpy old man if I’m already acting like this? There’s absolutely no way it won’t happen! This means that someday I'll just give up completely on changing with everybody else, and from that point on I’ll dig in my heels and watch the world pass me by, all while being as grouchy as can be. The thing about it is, however, that I’ll love it, because I’m a contrarian by nature, and what’s more contrary than rejecting everything new, whether it’s good or bad?

Sure, I won’t be much fun to be around. Hopefully I’ll have one or two close friends in my life who’ll accept me for who I am, but if that fails I’m sure there’ll be other contrarians like me out there, and we can sit around at a barber shop and complain about things such as how football used to be so much better back when they actually allowed the players to hit each other.

I’m not there yet. For example, I’ve recently embraced having a smart phone. However, I think that electronic devices to read books on are stupid, so it’s just a matter of time before the scale tips completely in favor of me thinking that basically everything new is stupid.

And I can’t wait for that day to come. Humbug!

Bumps, Bruises, and Why They Make Me Happy

“Wow, look at the grass stains on my skin. I say, if you knees aren’t green by the end of the day, you ought to seriously re-examine your life.”
- Calvin and Hobbes

It was about a year ago when I moved to Minnesota, in an attempt to seriously re-examine my life. Now, upon reflecting on the past twelve months, I’m quite certain that it’s been successful. I don’t know if I’ve actually gotten grass stains on my skin, but I have accumulated an impressive amount of the adult alternative: injuries.

I didn’t get injured much in Wisconsin, beyond a few jammed fingers playing basketball, and I attribute that directly to me not having nearly enough fun. I mean, the chances of getting injured while watching TV or reading a book are pretty low, besides the odd paper-cut, and those two activities constituted an embarrassingly high percentage of my free time there.

Now, however, things are different. I routinely wake up in the morning stiff, sore, or aching. Despite the fact that I sometimes limp around like I’m seventy, this makes me happy, because it means that I was out doing stuff, and doing stuff, in my book, is always better than not doing stuff. (I hope that didn’t get too technical.)

For example, last winter I was playing boot hockey and I took an elbow to the face. This resulted in the best black-eye I’ve ever had the privilege of sporting. I was ecstatic for the next several days as I watched the bruising deepen and spread. It was proof for the whole world to see, and cringe at, that I had been doing stuff!

Just recently, I was playing volleyball and I hurled myself off of the court in an attempt to bring back an errant shot. (For the record, I did manage to bring it back.) After I peeled myself off of the grass and got back on the sand, I noticed that my right leg had begun to swell up. I’m still not sure what I hit it on, but it must have been an epic collision. The swelling was a little concerning, but since I’m a guy, and my leg was still attached to the rest of my body, I just ignored it. This resulted in the best bruise of my entire life. It started just below the right side of my right knee and went all the way down to the bottom of my ankle, probably 10-11 inches long and 3 inches across at its widest. It managed to keep its awesomeness even as it started to heal, because, for some reason, a portion of the bruising decided to move to the back of my leg. (Seriously!) While confusing, this was still a welcome development. A migrating bruise! How often does that happen? Plus, it meant that I was doing stuff!

I’ve suffered various other injuries over the last year, but I won’t get into any more details. However, I will say that I’ve gotten more banged up than in the infamous Year Of Multiple Sprained Ankles, back when I was a young lad in high school, and that makes me fiercely proud.

Now, there may be those of you out there who are thinking that I’m a little bit off for equating fun with injuries. Perhaps you think that I’m trying to somehow justify the fact that I’m clumsy and injury-prone. If you are one of those people, here is my response: While I cannot say with certitude* that you’re wrong, I can say that I’d much rather be injured and having fun than healthy and lying on the couch. **

* Bonus points for current events humor!

** I will admit that you can get injured on the couch if you reach too quickly for your bag of chips without stretching beforehand.

*** There isn’t a third footnote.

The Original DQ

I sort of like it when new things are made to look old. Retro, would be the term for that, I believe. However, sometimes you just can’t beat when something is just really old.

For example, this weekend while driving through southern Minnesota I wound up at a small-town Dairy Queen. As I stepped in, my first thought was this: “Wow, this very well could be the original Dairy Queen!”

While probably not true, it was no modern restaurant, that was for sure. Everything seemed to be tinted a drab yellow. The equipment looked like it was made during the Industrial Revolution. For example, cups were kept in giant, yellowed rectangular storage bins that were slapped up on the wall, making it look like one of their main uses was to inflict head wounds on any unwary workers walking by.

The non-digital menu on the wall consisted of five sections, each individually lit. I know this because the second section from the left kept flickering on and off, making it nearly impossible to read and also causing me to wonder if I would be the first person ever to have a seizure trying to determine how much a burger cost.

Orders were not punched into the cash register. Instead, the cashier used a standardized Dairy Queen pad that was probably designed in the 1950’s. Each sheet consisted of a list of items on the menu which the cashier circled and added notes to in order to record each order. For example, on mine the word ‘cheeseburger’ was circled, and the letter ‘K’ was scrawled next to it to denote that I wanted ketchup. Once you had ordered, you were given an order number, which was pre-printed on a small section of the order form that was removed and given to you.

You then sat at what had to be some of the smallest restaurant tables ever and waited for your number to be called. While you waited, you could amuse yourself by listening to the drive-through orders as they came in. This was because the speaker crackled loudly throughout the entire building, meaning that you could easily hear the person in the car outside ordering a burger and fries from anywhere in the restaurant, including, in all probability, the bathroom.

Speaking of the drive-through, it is strategically located right next to the entrance, creating a flow of traffic through which anybody attempting to enter must navigate. This set-up enhances the process of natural selection by assuring that only the shrewd customers with quick reflexes who don’t get crushed by distracted texting teenagers or old men who believe they have to right to drive and park anywhere they want will have the opportunity to return for another meal.

With all of this being said, this Daily Queen is one of my favorite restaurants of all time. There’s no flash to it, and it may collapse from age at any moment, but it has character, which most places these days can’t claim. I forget which town it was located in, which annoys me because I’d think about making an occasional Saturday road trip there just to go for lunch and to see if I could make it through the drive-through gauntlet with sustaining only minor bruising. I guess to me it seems to represent a simpler, more innocent time, a time when giant automobiles with outrageously large fins would drive by sporting “I Like Ike” bumper stickers while newsboys on the street corner yelled, “Extra! Extra! Read all about!” Sometimes you just need to get away in today’s hectic, run-run-run society, and that’s what this Dairy Queen is all about.

Also, the food is pretty good and the prices are retro, so how can you go wrong?