Monday, March 09, 2009

Idiopoly

In lieu of any real content to post at the moment, here's an email exchange between Jack and me this afternoon on the subject of gifts for our upcoming birthday given the current economic clime. (Edited for brevity and to remove more-or-less redundant Steelers commentary.)

* * * * *

Nate (12:50 PM PDT)
Is there anything in particular you want for the birthday, by the way? If not I'll improvise.

Jack (1:07 PM PDT)
I don't want anything in particular for our birthday; I will mention that I'm a little backed up on civilian reading at the moment. Perhaps a natty new top hat with the top punched out of it, or a copper tin of beans.

Nate (1:44 PM PDT)
Woooo Depression-era hobo chic. I think I'll also get you a barrel with a couple of suspender straps on it so you can wear that along with your top hat and shrug as if to say, "Well, I have no money, though I suppose I could mortgage another of my undeveloped properties to pay that $15." I was going to get you a big diamond ring but it turns out you'd have to pay a tax of like $75.00 on it.

Jack (2:00 PM PDT)
Don't even tell me your sob stories. I'm sitting here in jail just 'cause I rolled doubles three times. Well, that and I knifed another $2-a-night squatter in an empty lot on Mediterranean Ave.

Nate (2:40 PM PDT)
I myself was sent directly to jail, with the officer who accosted me offering neither an explanation nor an opportunity to complete my errand of passing GO and thereby collecting my wage of $200. I tell you, comrade, the police in this city are a mere appendage of its vile plutocratic head. I should write all about it in a new edition of my anarchist newsletter but I am entirely taken up with bargaining the third yellow property away from the shiftless Bohemian immigrant who had the good fortune to land upon it first.

Jack (3:09 PM PDT)
OK, I can't beat that. That's very funny.

* * * * *

Playing Monopoly with my brothers while growing up (and here I mean up until the age of about 22) tended to bring out my pissy, competitive side more than anything else I've encountered in life, but everybody's a winner when you're playing a sort of Meta-Monopoly consisting of making weird board game jokes, I guess.

3 Comments:

Blogger Don said...

Your trivial pursuits boggle the cranium.

3/10/2009 11:16 AM  
Blogger Jack said...

Well, in Life you've got to accept that Risk or else find yourself in Trouble. It's like they say, "You've got to either Go, Connect Four, or get out of the Electronic Talking Battleship."

3/10/2009 12:11 PM  
Blogger Dan B. said...

Economic woes make for a hard-Scrabble existence.

3/12/2009 4:25 PM  

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