So after thinking it over rationally, and going a quick search of Google, I have come across the newest sign of the apocalypse: Mattel has changed the rules of Scrabble to allow proper nouns. Like names of people, places, companies, etc.

Obviously we have reached the end of days.

One of the things Alan and I did that was crazy for the wedding was Scrabble related. About a year before the wedding, we decided we wanted to do the name tags at the tables with Scrabble tiles. We had our mothers and their team of friends and relatives and acquaintances and really everyone they knew searching for Scrabble boards for us. Our moms found us about 25 Scrabble boards, and we had a friend make us about sixty additional tile holders. When we started doing the table arrangements, we made each person’s name and put them in individual baggies, and then put each table in a big freezer bag, and then when we set up the hall, about a dozen of us spent about half an hour making each person’s name in Scrabble tiles.

wedding_party

We weren’t really sure how this would work, but it looked pretty cool, and it was fairly nerdy. People immediately started renaming people and looking for dirty words. We used the Scrabble tiles as the kissing game instead of people having to clink glasses or sing songs about love or anything else. After dinner, we had people come up with the words they had created. Our best man and maid of honour would determine how good the word was, and that was how good the kiss would be.

It worked better than we had really imagined. It passed the time quickly between dinner and desert, and everyone relaxed and started trading letters between tables and so on. Some of the tables came up with really elaborate stuff, like “were sorry mario but your princess is in another castle” (this was related to our recessional song, which rocked). After a while, people didn’t care if we kissed or not, and we were able to sit down and eat our wedding pie.

Because yes, we had wedding pie. It was the day before pi day. And pie is so much better than cake.

All this to say that Mattel changing the rules of Scrabble hurts me deep down inside. In a way that others just may not understand.

scrabble

 

Emm Gryner - Stray Bullets

Emm Gryner - Stray Bullets


Stray Bullets
Emm Gryner
2010
Dead Daisy Records

Just a few weeks ago, Alan and I used Emm Gryner’s Saturday Night in Nowhere as the last song at our wedding reception. It was the perfect song to end the evening and the people who were still there liked it just as much as we did. So it was quite fitting that upon returning to our apartment after the wedding, along with all our gifts (which were brought by my brother a couple of days earlier), we had in our mailbox Emm Gryner’s sparkly new EP, Stray Bullets. It was sort of like another wedding gift.

The EP opens with a new version of Almighty Love, this time a duet with Joe Elliott, who is the lead singer for Def Leppard. The back and forth is beautiful, and brings this wonderful song to a whole new level. The other five tracks follow in lovely succession, my favourite of them being the track Holiday. I wouldn’t say there is anything ground-breaking on the EP, but if you like Emm’s other albums, you will find these tracks a nice addition to your music collection.

I’m very much looking forward to her duets album which is due out later this year. Hopefully Alan and I will be able to see her in concert again soon.

Now I need to listen to some loud obnoxious punk rock. I’ve spent the last few months sifting through my collection for wedding-friendly songs (which I sort of rocked at), and I need something loud and bombastic for a while. I’m getting too mellow in my old age.

 

Daniel H Wilson - How To Build A Robot Army

Daniel H Wilson - How To Build A Robot Army

How To Build A Robot Army – Tips On Defending Planet Earth Against Alien Invaders, Ninjas, and Zombies
Daniel H Wilson
2008, 176 pages

I’ve already reviewed two books by this author: Where’s My Jetpack? and How To Survive A Robot Uprising, and this book completes the set quite well. It’s premise is the opposite of Robot Uprising: Somehow we have managed to befriend the robots, and now the earth is under attack by all sorts of weird and wonderful movie cliches. Laid out in much the same manner, the first third of the book deals with reviewing current robotic technology, the second part with weaponizing our friendly neighbourhood Roombas and other bots, and the last part deals with how to take down movie monsters such as aliens, ninjas, vampires, pirates and sharks.

I would say that this book is better than Robot Uprising in that it is a little more hopeful. If the robots decide to be our friends, everything will be okay. If not? Well, I’m not so sure of our fates. The writing is very similar to the other two books, and I would suggest picking up all three for a lovely collection.

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