Weird Conversations With Your Baby

Filed under “Things I Never Imagined I’d Say to My 1-yr-Old”…

The following dialogue occurred after the Spawn managed to get hold of Lords of War and mix up 4 decks. We always pick up our own messes, so while we were sorting things back out, it sounded like this:

Me: No, that’s an Elf, so it goes here. Yes, the Zombie does go with the Undead — good job!”

Squeaker: Mm-HM!

Me: Yep, the Banshee goes there and it’s a good bet that anyone in green holding a bow will be an Elf… More Templars… How did you even get these?

Squeaker: Mama drink coffee!

Game of Thrones Board Game

I love the Song of Ice and Fire books by George R. R. Martin. The board game is really well done and is fantastic at emulating the feel of the plotlines and situations in the story… We always dive into a game with happy anticipation, general friendliness and understandings of alliances. By turn three, it’s pretty much like this:

Anyone else played this game? Ever had one where Westeros was politely divided up without making you hate your friends? Didn’t think so.

How Geeky Are You?

Have you ever wished that there was a way to measure your friends and your own geekiness? Facebook quizzes just aren’t accurate… Surely there must be another way, a way so complex and peppered with so many obscure references that non-geeks would give up in despair (and then pretend they are too cool to care about such things anyway). Well, wish and wonder no longer… BEHOLD! THE GEEKOMETER! (you’ll need to click on it and zoom in to truly appreciate it).

Originally conceived and calibrated by a friend of mine, it was illustrated by me and has undergone some revisions as we’ve added new games to our repertoire and new careers to our circle of friends. Yes, I have played many of the games listed.

The pictures and the “you might be into…” sections are mainly for giggles and some inside jokes. The way to calculate your Geek Score is as follows:

1) Get together with your friends for some marathon gaming. Keep a score sheet of each game played, its geekometer rating, who played it and who won.

2) At the end of the event, each person should tally the geekometer ratings of all the games they played, multiplying the game’s rating by 2 for games they won. Divide that number by total number of games played by that person (include repetitions of the same game).

The result will be the person’s Geek Rating, so then you can find that number on the Geekometer and see if their career choices and hobbies match up to the chart. It’s kind of scarily accurate in my experience.

This is also a good way to evaluate new friends and acquaintances and to discuss people who aren’t in the know right in front of them, “She’s really a 2.4, but game-name-drops like she’s a 3.5;” “He’s a complete 4.1, but will still play 3.1 level games…”

Do you have a way to rate your own or other people’s nerd-quotient? Do you have brilliant suggestions for recalibrating the geekometer (warning: recalibrating the geekometer is a 3.9 level activity; be sure you are qualified before attempting)? Tell me about it in the comments and have an awesome weekend! Go play some games!

I Introduce Mr. Taz-E-Boy to a New Friend

So, I have a taser. Not necessarily for use on other people mind you; I live in a lovely small town in a rural area with a low crime rate. There are lots of opportunities for hiking, biking, and camping and such and did you know that you can use a taser to cure snake and spider bites? That’s why I originally got it. And I did use it for that once on a nasty spider bite that just kept getting worse and more gross after a week, so I talked my little brother into zapping it (he did not need much convincing). The swelling went down within an hour and it was scar tissue by evening. So, there’s some anecdotal scientific data for you.

While Mr. Taz-E-Boy (as I call it) is purportedly for first aid uses, what tends to really happen is that at certain kinds of parties people get a few drinks in them and dare each other to taser themselves or others. This is fun for everyone. The standing rule is no non-consensual tasing and mostly there isn’t, although the story of “Emma” will inevitably come up as a point of debate on this rule…

I met Emma at an awesome Halloween Party a couple years ago. We had some mutual friends and got to talking. She was dressed as Bellatrix LeStrange, she has a huge vocabulary, she is an artist and a gamer and a wonderful cook (her flourless chocolate cake is just… well, Foodgasm is the best way to describe it). I developed an immediate Girl Crush. We commenced hanging out and inviting each other to future parties. At a game night not so long after this, some of my friends were going on about how evil I was and that you should watch your back around Bekka, and so on. Emma put forth the theory that I couldn’t really be that bad; they were just saying that because I was a terribly wicked opponent in games. I nonchalantly said, “Oh no, I really am quite evil. I shall have to find a way to prove it to you.” And later in the evening, I found a way. I announced to her, “I will prove that I am evil by introducing you suddenly and without warning to Mr. Taz-E-Boy.” Now if she had said “No, don’t do that — I have a heart condition/electricity phobia/etc!” I would have certainly not gone any further with it. But she didn’t say anything. Her eyes widened and one eyebrow arched quizzically as if to say “Oh, really?” That sounded like consent to me. So I told her, “Not now though. I’ll wait until you’ve forgotten about it.”

A month or so later, there was another game night going on and when it was not either of our turns, I sent Emma a text message. I was sitting right next to her, but she figured that I was communicating some snide, out of game comment so she flipped open her phone and saw the following message:

Bzzzzzt!

I gave her about two seconds to process this, turn into a ninja and react with an elbow to my face before I applied Mr. Taz-E-Boy to her upper arm. She did not turn into a ninja quickly enough. Now, she had on long sleeves and Mr. Taz-E-Boy is only 50,000 volts, but you will still definitely notice it. She jumped, screamed and then laughed (I told you she was cool). She even declined to tase me back, as I immediately offered to let her do.

She is the one who later gave me the nickname of “Evil Bekka” to differentiate me from another Becca in our circle of friends who could not possibly be considered evil by any stretch of the imagination… I have since then introduced Emma to much more pleasant things, like the Firefly Series, my home made cheesy fries and countless board games. Plus, she now has a fun story to tell about the time she got tasered — if that’s not a good icebreaker, I don’t know what is.