Scrabble, Bar, Cheesebutt and some Celebrations

Right before posting my last update, I had spent most of the night playing Scrabble with my parents and a family friend. Of all the competitive activities I get involved in, Scrabble takes its place just below basketball in terms of me bringing out my ‘take-no-prisoners-win-at-all-costs’ mentality.

Yes, somewhere underneath this giant marshmallow coating beats a heart that eats other hearts for breakfast and then writes a scathing review about them. If I lose at Scrabble, I can often get quite pouty (worth 10 points with no bonuses if you’re playing along) but this time around I was bested by a 7-letter word played on a triple word score as the penultimate move.

The word? Asexual. My mother played it and asked, “Is that a word?” Now, whenever anyone drops a 7-letter word in Scrabble, it’s quite a humbling experience. Somehow the letter lords deemed it so that they were going to get just the right combination of letters to slap down on the board and kindly serve your arse to you on a silver platter at the same time. And any time that it’s a 7-letter word with a high-scoring letter involved, you’re going to question it. You can’t help it, even if it’s something as obvious as ‘aquatic’, you’ll still ask, “Are Latin words acceptable?” My advice? Lick your wounds and take the 50-point bonus on the chin.

I’ve been curious about how many people read this blog and I thought that it would only be fair to share some stats with you.
I now present to you the search terms that lead to my site…

vicroads 14.2 %
the conversation to be extended 14.2 %
the producers 14.2 %
blogostino.com 14.2 %
ben affleck ice skate 14.2 %
paul d’agostino 14.2 %
www.blogostino.com 14.2 %

What the hell, Internet? The two things that scream flamboyant transvestite just happen to make up an equal majority in search terms that lead to this site. Like my sexuality isn’t questioned often enough, now my own writing is  conspiring against me as well.

Later in the week, I was chilling out at uni with my Chinese friend and she said she was going to bring me some Chinese tea this week. I’m not really sure what I did to deserve tea, or a gift for that matter, but yay for tea.

I also sent out an inquiry about a bar that’s for sale in Fitzroy. I find it interesting that my brain works like that at times. Sign reads – Bar for Sale – I think, “Hey, maybe I’d like to buy a bar.” Rather than thinking, “Hmmm, that business must have failed miserably.” This means should you ever want to try and coerce me into doing something, just put it on a sign and add the words ‘for sale’ to the end.

But the query into the bar lead to one of the more interesting things that happened during the week, my interaction with the agent dealing with the property.

Attention, real estate agents of Melbourne, if your response to my query opens with ‘Hay Paolo’, after I specifically mention that I go by ‘Paul’ I am not going to take you seriously. At all. My brother suggested I respond with this…

Admittedly, I should have. After a few emails going back and forth about the bar, I received this…

Hay Paolo

His response…

Hay Paul

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to work “They mostly come at night… Mostly.” into a conversation at all during the week. I think my Aliens quote quota was definitely unfulfilled. Disappointing.

Vash has a serious case of cheesebutt. My bro and I noticed this while we were playing around with him during the week. He’d be running around and scurrying like a mad-cat and then… The wafting stench of off cheese…

Well, it turns out that what my brother and I call ‘cheesebutt’ is actually anal glands. Ewww. Doing some reading on this phenomenon on the Interwebs leads to finding out that cats ‘express’ their anal glands, much like they do to mark their territory when they piss everywhere. My brother managed to get it on his hands somehow, which I thought was hilarious.

My parents are going to Europe for several weeks later this week. It will be an interesting time without them around, no doubt. Maybe throw a party or fifteen. Time will tell… I’ve started planning my next trip, actually. But more to come on that in the future, when there’s something a bit more solid. We had a family BBQ of sorts, which was fun. I barely get to see all of my family these days, let alone in the same room at the same time. The night ended with a fast-paced game of Pictionary, pitting the sexes against one another. It’s always interesting to see Pictionary drawings from the communication standpoint, how people break down images and how people convey meaning through images – happening at exactly the same time. And I somehow managed to draw something that my team guessed correctly as ‘Cricket Whites’. Curse you green squares, I’ll show you ‘difficult’.

I think my goal for National Young Writers’ Month is quite ambitious. Perhaps too ambitious, but I’m going to at least try it. Maybe I’ll go all meta and turn my blog into the account of trying to achieve my NYWM goal (one short genre mashup every day, FYI) so peeps can be all, “OMG”, even though it’ll probably play out more like “NO-MG”. But! You can help me by feeding me genres you’d like to see smashed together in a glorious mess of words. Well, go on then!