True story. I watched some people playing scrabble in Alabama a while back. Actually I was sort of in the game. Sort of. In presence only. I'm no genius (by any stretch of the word) but this particular match made me look like a Quantum Physicists. One woman successfully used the word “caah” as in “the sound a crow makes”. My eyeballs almost popped out of my head and I bit my tongue until I almost passed out. She had the first turn of the game and used this word as her opener. What a great use of the letters a,a,c and h. I thought she might have scored more with either haac or acah but it seemed to work out ok. Ok, after this bold move nobody else in the game flinched or said anything and the next guy went. I think he made maybe “cat” or “hat” using a letter from the first gem. For some reason all I could think to say was “Wow, that’s an onomatopoeia”, which evoked the same sullen stares that the zombies had on the dawn of the dead. Subsequent turns were taken with players randomly placing letters tiles which sort of spelled words in one direction but totally butched the crossing words. The board soon looked like some kind of cryptic hieroglyphic that would require some kind of Navaho code breaker to understand. After someone wasted a triple word score space with the ever popular nine point game-breaker “sit” everyone gave a genuine “good job” and returned to the memorized look of intensity over their six tiles (as no one ever could seem to figure out how many tiles to draw after each turn to equal seven total). A second player used the word “mange” which she pronounced “main-gee, like when you don’t comb your hair” and “pose, like what those rap guys call their home-boys”. There was a “French” word used and also the word “ovo” which was described as a medical term relating to eggs and ovulating. Incredibly enough, this actually is part of the Latin word “ad ovo” which means “from the egg”. Retrospectively this was sort of like the Alice Cooper moment on Wayne’s World when he explained the Algonquian meaning of the word “Milwaukee” or like when the Scarecrow with no brains on the Wizard of Oz starting spitting out complex mathematical formulas. For a moment I thought I was being punk’d and Ashton would step out and start jumping around with his goofy grin and stupid sideways trucker hat.

I was secretly hoping someone would accidentally drop their tiles when they were drawing new ones over the board and a legible, real word would magically form as the fell, or that the letters would start moving around by themselves like a Jumanji board and make spell out some kind of noun. As I constantly heard the players saying “I can’t spell anything with these dumb letters” I moved around the board behind them and looked at the little wooden racks that held the tiles. I discovered that all of them had the letters I,G,N,O,R,A and N which they could have added to several T’s that were in stand alone spots on the board and gotten double word, triple letter and fifty bonus points for using all seven letters. Ok, I you know I made that part up because I already said that none of them ever had all seven tiles except for the first turn and I think even then one of the started with five.

I waited in anticipation for the defining moment of cluelessness when one of them drew out one of the two blank tiles and turned it over maybe eleven times in their fingers with each rotation looking for the imprinted letter. It went down just as my mind advertised. The look on the guy’s face was like a chimp trying to figure out how to open a child proof medicine bottle. Frustrated but intrigued. I was strangely satisfied when this happened. I guess because I had internally “called it”. The scoring was a fiasco as no one was sure exactly which letters you got credit for and if you got credited with every tile remotely connected to the ones you put down or not. Any given word play could have been worth either seven and a half or forty points. I finally couldn’t take it anymore and stealthily slipped away like a ninja trying to avoid the subject of why I didn’t want to watch this un-spelling bee. These guys were lucky that Forest Gump or the dad from “I am Sam” wasn’t playing or they would have gotten their collective rear ends grammatically spanked.

OK, these people looked to have had a couple of beers apiece. Maybe. But no one is drunk enough to think “Caah” is really a word. As Momma always said “Stupid is as stupid does”. You tell ‘em Momma.

[a 3 letter english wording meaning adios],
Kevin

The Inner Circle Of Dorks seems to meet at the bookstore in the mall. On Saturday’s. From like noon until Battlestar Galactica comes on. Whenever that is. It’s a good place for them to meet. They have chairs there. And research material. And comic books. And it is close to places where you can get a 103 ounce cherry slurpee and trash bags full of popcorn. And there is a theatre nearby where they can go to see X-Men again. For the 11th time. To record in their spiral bound notebooks fatal writing and story flaws that conflict with the early original X-Men comic books or to work on memorizing all of Wolverine’s dialogue. Or corporately laugh at Hollywood’s lame understanding of true telekinesis. So they meet. Or congregate. Like the cantina scene in Star Wars. They discuss things. And argue. Alot.

I saw them in there on Saturday while I was looking at books on the Bargain Table. Because that’s where the chairs are. Near the Bargain Table. It’s sort of Dork Central really. And I was the odd one out. A freak. I stood around and listened while pretending to peruse the wildly discounted volumes. Or tried to listen at least, for they lapsed from semi-intelligible English to something else. Klingon I think.

They wore zip-up sweatshirts. And thick glasses. And digital watches that had the ability to do complex math problems and to tell you what time it is in Rivendell. Or Krypton. And their pecking order was obvious. The organization flow chart unmistakable. There were Mid-Level Dork soldiers, Dork-Dorks, Wanna Be Dorks, a Head Dork and the resident solo Dork Hottie. She was an overweight girl wearing a babydoll crop top that fit her like it was a sports bra. The top said “Hot Stuff” spelled out in rhinestones and had a mustard stain from a big pretzel near the neckline. She had tight jeans, hair coiffed like Princess Leia, and all the dorks dreamed of walking side by side with her at the Yu-Gi-Oh Convention. She was a Dork-ette, but had her pick of the stable. And she knew it.

The low guy on the Dork-em Pole was a small framed guy with a Slingblade haircut and a blonde Hitler mustache. He was attempting to trade some kind of playing cards things (kept in a sleeved folder, cross-referenced, indexed and pristine) with a Grunt Level Dork who had no apparent interest in anything being said to him. At all. He just thumbed through the vinyl protected pages and talked to himself. Out loud. Meanwhile Junior Dorkmier kept repeating his mantra of “That’s a good card” over and over again like a retarded Myna bird. He finally broke his trance-like state to blurt out “Whatta ya think Buddy, you gonna trade?” to which the Endless Thumber replied very slowly and in a detached way “I don’t knowwwwww……” which caused Little Mustache Guy so much anxiety that it appeared that he might pee his pants. Or throw up. Or potentially throw up AND pee his pants. Not sure if the deal got done or if this was just a clever ruse used to inspect Slingblade’s collection.

Meanwhile at the Dork Conference, a lively discussion intensified as sides were drawn about the ability to trump a Vladmir the Torturer card with two Plasma Energy discs and one Xenon Crystal, three Wizard of Waakia cards or if you indeed had to jump down, turn around and pick a bale of cotton. No shortages of opinions here and no one on the fence. The cooler Dorks had a kind of swagger to them as they punctuated particularly good points with a contemptuous straw slurp from their Icee. Nacho chips and popcorn particles fell harmlessly onto their chests and laps as each side refused to concede to the other.

I watched in amazement as they used words like “wog”, “transmogrify” and “eradicate”. They each seemed to make stuff up and articulate it to which a few others would adamantly agree while the others would ferociously shake their heads side to side getting so worked up that they spit and slobbered like St. Bernard’s. In between exaggerated hand motions they pushed their ever sliding glasses back up onto the bridge of their noses. It was becoming quite a scene. Finally King Dork ( he was obviously the Head Dork as he wore sweat pants that were only 1 size too big, shoe laces that matched and a t-shirt with a rather aggressive message that read: YOU MUST BE A PLANET BECAUSE YOUR FACE MATCHES URANUS ) who had been relatively reserved, stood up and ended the debate with a few choice words of wisdom. This settled the matter and diffused the ensuing Smackdown In Dorktown. He said, “Vladmir is of the Loran tribe. They are Zancors. A Zancor cannot be defeated by a Biltek. Therefore only a Malta Stone or Diridium Dagger can have any adverse effect on him.”

This seemed to satisfy the council as they quietly nodded and mumbled, acknowledging this overlooked basic truism. At this point the meeting was abruptly adjourned when the 30ish Grand Pubah Dork announced that his mom would be there in 10 minutes to pick him up in front of Sears and any loser that needed a ride should skedaddle quickly with him as he was going to walk past the Game X-Change one more time. This announcement was followed by quick glances at calculator watches and the gathering up of all comics, spiral bound notebooks and other assorted Dork-ernalia and with that, the meeting was history.

I was left standing by the Bargain Bin still faux reading a coffee table book called: Chariots, and the Men Who Drove Them while the Rain Man of Role Playing stared at me from across the table. I glanced up for a millisecond and when I did, he said “That’s a good book. Yeah. A really good book. Yeah” to which I replied “It is buddy. Sure it is”, as I walked away to the Computer section where I was headed in the first place. “Geez, What dorks” I thought, as I scanned the shelves for AutoCad 2007 LT For Idiots.

Peace. Later.
(Kevin Sprinkle)