29 December 1997: Did He Say Cable?

Monday, 29 December 1997:

Did He Say Cable?

Okay, everyone who remembers the cable television ad from the mid-1980s with clips from the first Swamp Thing film, raise your hand. The ad had Swampy chasing Adrienne Barbeau around grunting, "Cay-bull" (her character's name was Abby Cable) with the voiceover cutting in to ask, "Did he say cable?"

Maybe you had to be there. I thought it was hilarious.

The upshot of this being that I had cable TV installed today. Yes, I've finally broken down, primarily so I can watch Babylon 5 on TNT next month. I watch very little TV, and I don't expect that will change much, although it may change somewhat. I may not be able to resist Muppets Tonight and re-runs of such wonderfully bad shows of my youth like The Six Million Dollar Man and Challenge of the SuperFriends. I watched the last this afternoon as my first test run. After that it was a toss-up between an Addams Family cartoon or BabeWatch (although the rendering of Morticia Addams in the former would have fit right into the latter). So instead I went and bagged and shelved some comic books.

Television: The vast cultural wasteland. Give me comic books any day!

Yesterday I went over to my friend and cow-orker Tracy's place for food and games. The cast of characters included:

Tracy, who tests my code at work;
Bill, her significant otter, and an occasional gaming buddy of mine;
Mike, who documents my code at work, also a gaming buddy, and
Sarah, his significant otter.

We played a delightful party game called Pass The Bomb. The game gives you a little bomb which you set ticking; some indeterminate time between 10 and 60 seconds later, it explodes. When you set the bomb ticking, you turn over a car, which has 2 or three letters on it, such as "OOL". You then have to come up with a word with the exact sequence of letters "OOL" in it (for instance, "DROOL"), and pass the bomb to the next person, who must come up with a different word with the same letters in it (say, "SCHOOL"), and so forth. The bomb goes around and around until it goes off, and that person takes the card. The goal is to take the fewest cards.

It's not an easy game. Some combinations don't lend themselves to easy words, for instance "ND". Bill at one point said if we ever got "ZZ" then eventually he'd just have to blurt out "SNIZZARD", which would effectively end the round because we'd all me laughing so hard we couldn't proceed. Later one we drew the "BB" card, and I almost managed to fob off "STRUBBED", but Bill called me on it. Mike laughed so hard he had to take his glasses off, and then observed that party games are fun because it makes otherwise sensible adults be reduced to hysterical laughter by pure nonsense.

Tracy made chimichangas and a very, very yummy chocolate eclair ring, which I would have eaten a lot more of if I hadn't gorged myself on the main meal. Oinque!

Tonight, on a whim, I called Karen and we went to dinner at the Wild Iris Cafe, which used to be my favorite restaurant in Madison, but which has gone downhill somewhat since my grad school days. The food is still good, but not as good, and it's substantially more expensive. Pity, but I still like to go occasionally. We had a good meal and a good chat. Karen is getting to know the SF3 folks better and better lately even as I'm pulling back from them somewhat.

When I got back I set to inking a pencil sketch that a member of APA Centauri sent me. I'd like to work on my art skills some more in the near-future, but it's clear they've atrophied substantially in the last five years, so it's going to take some work. I've spent too damn much time dabbling in too many different things in my life that I'm barely-competent at an awful lot of things, but good at only a few.

Michael Rawdon (Contact)