Cash Out

The Money Bag:

Usability: The money bag has no easily-grippable handles and is wide at all parts. It is among the least ergonomic of the tokens.

Personality: I don't understand this piece in the slightest. It's money, which is an intrinsic component used to play Monopoly. When you play Sorry!, you get to pick Red, Blue, Green, or Yellow. You do not get to pick "Move Backwards 4." When you play Clue, you pick one of the suspects; you do not get to pick "The Envelope With the Answer." When you play Risk, you pick your army color; you don't get to be "The Red Dice." So conceptually, the piece is a little confused.

Humor: Uh, you could, pretend like you had all the money in the bag, maybe? Um, I'm a little lost. You could bribe your way out of jail, except everyone has to do that anyway. Perhaps every time you roll the dice, you could act like you're running away from the Beagle Boys. They always had bags of money. I don't know. You're on your own.

Verdict: Let's see, it's difficult to grip, utterly humorless, and doesn't make a lick of sense. I don't think this token has a single redeeming feature, but I still haven't gotten to its biggest drawback. The Bag of Money is the newest Monopoly Token, added in 1999 after a popularity contest was had. When terrible things get elected, it's usually because either the other choices were even worse, or a lot of people are just really, really dense. The other two choices were a bi-plane, which would've been awesome, or a Piggy Bank, which is something that can be used to store or transport money rather than the actual concept itself and thus more sensible. So truly, if you pick the Bag of Money, you are not only getting a horrible piece, but you're also the physical representation of the failure of democracy and a reminder that most people are much dumber than you'd think. Please pick something else.

Tomorrow (or Saturday): The Wheelbarrow

Don't Tread On Me

The Shoe:

Usability: The old-timey shoe comes equipped with an old timey shoehorn that makes for a handle. This is useful not only in moving your piece, but making your little shoe do a little dance on his way to your destination. Bonus.

Personality: Maybe it's because it has no laces, but the shoe has always looked rather beat-up to me; like someone kicked it off with no regard for its condition. I've always felt like it needed some pewter stank lines emanating from it. However, if you imagine it all laced up, it seems it'd be a pretty nice piece of footwear. Thus, I feel the shoe is like a tuxedo t-shirt; it says "I'm here to party, but I can step it up too," as famed scholar Cal Naughton Jr. once told us.

Humor: The shoe can cause a great deal of mischievous hijinx. In addition to performing various dances while moving, the shoe can hold in a lot of pent up rage. You can stomp hotels, kick houses, flip the wheelbarrow over, kick the puppy, trip the horse, etc. etc. There's very little limit to the havoc you can create. If it's the holiday season, or if you're just a dork, you can even sing the chorus from The Christmas Shoes every time you want to buy something.

Verdict: The shoe is not typically considered a glamor piece, so it's usually available to someone with a taste for goofy hijinx. Shoe players probably won't be seen as intimidating as the battleship, car, or cannon, so use that to your advantage and slide under the radar at the beginning.

Tomorrow: The Bag of Money

Fire in the hole!

The Cannon:

Usability: One of the perks of picking the cannon is that it is one of the easier pieces to handle. The protruding barrel makes for an easy handle, or it can be easily grabbed by its wheel. Its height makes it stand out on the board so you don't lose track of yourself.

Personality: Cannons serve exactly one purpose: to blow up tons of crap. Cannon players will be seen as hyperaggressive. Since the cannon tends to stick out, players are not likely to miss when you land on their properties.

Humor: Yes, you can point your cannon at enemy properties and blow them off the board, but the true fun of the cannon lies more in the area that it's a long shaft pointing straight up into the air with a round object below it, not to paint too clear a picture. While the full repertoire of Jokes About Penises is too extensive to include here, you can use your cannon to molest your opponent's tokens, especially if some poor sap picked the Horse and Rider or Terrier, as well as make your cannon fake an orgasm when someone lands on one of your higher rents.

Verdict: It takes a lot of confidence to pick the cannon. You have to be confident in your Monopoly skills to offset the aggressive nature of the piece, you have to be comfortable in your knowledge of penis jokes, and you have to be comfortable enough with your sexuality that you don't mind handling a phallus for a couple of hours. Finally, fellas, if you are playing a game of Monopoly and you are trying to impress one of the female players, avoid the Cannon. Nothing says "I'm compensating for something" quite like "I want to be the CANNON!" right out of the gate. Go with something else. Anything else.

Tomorrow: The Shoe

Pedal to the Metal

One of the many contributing factors to the demise of my blog was the emergence of something that resembled a social life. Before, I'd go to work and yuk it up with all the people there, then go home and do absolutely nothing for 8 hours or so, which left plenty of time for blog-writing program related activities.

Now, in addition to spending time with Kelli, it seems that people like to spend time with the two of us and we frequently entertain people at our lovely townhouse. One of our friends, the immensely entertaining Mike, loves to play Monopoly. Since I also love playing Monopoly, it's been a recent addition to our pasttimes. Kelli does not love Monopoly so much. In fact, she rather hates the game, and was about ready to leave me early on in our relationship over a game of Monopoly in which I was particularly successful/assholish. But, after refusing to play for a year, she is coming around to it and is getting better every game, mostly fueled by her refusal to make any deals with me unless it is for properties I do not want. Occasionally I offer some sound strategies for her, but since she usually tells me where I can shove them, I have laid off of that in recent attempts. I bought a book with winning tips, but she doesn't seem interested in reading it.

The Monopoly knowledge I intend to pass on today, however, cannot be found in any tome, yet may in fact be the most important decision you make in the game: the crucial question "Which of these random, bizarre tokens, most of which have nothing whatsoever to do with real estate, should I pick to represent me?"

As I have a particular fascination with the bizarre and surreal, it should come to no one's surprise that I have paid an unhealthy bit of attention to the process of picking out your piece. I find there are three criteria by which to judge a piece:

A) Usability: How easy is it to pick this piece up and move it?
B) Personality: What does this piece say about me and my game strategy?
C) Humor: What sorts of hilarious possibilities will this piece open up?

Now, let's analyze our options, one per day, so I can milk this into two weeks' worth of posts and possibly re-establish an online presence and win back somewhere in the neighborhood of 250,000 of my MILLIONS of former readers.

So, without further ado:



The car. Let's start with the most popular piece: does old timey sports car live up to its reputation?

A) For being the most popular piece, the car is not really very easy to move. It sits low to the ground, has nothing protruding that makes for easy grabbing.

B) The good news is that everyone loves the car; the bad news is that everyone loves the car. The car is snazzy and it's fun to drive around the board, but it's not good for asserting your personality. Picking the car is pretty much the equivalent of deciding to follow the NFL and choosing the Steelers as your favorite team; yes, there are good reasons, but you still look like a lemming. Some of the rarely picked tokens raise eyebrows and thoughts; if you pick the car, you are simply "The Guy Who Picks The Car." And every table has a "Guy Who Picks The Car".

C) Humor with the car rests solely on doing donuts on your opponents property after you have to pay, or swerving along the board like you're driving drunk and crashing into their hotels. If you roll a 2 or a 3, you can sputter and backfire as you barely make it the few spaces. You can also honk at people in Jail when you visit them.

Verdict: A conservative pick, the equivalent of a poker face. Are you an Andretti who will hotly pursue any opportunity, or more of a Sunday driver who lets the deals come to them? It's hard to tell, since everyone on the planet likes to pick the car. If you can get it without a fight, you may slip under the radar and not reveal your hand.

Tomorrow: The Cannon

Happy Anniversary!

To me. Today marks one year that I've been dating my wonderful girlfriend Kelli. While it hasn't always been easy, mostly because I am an exceedingly difficult person to be in a relationship with, it has been happy and fun the whole time, and every day I am in a good mood because I am with her.

I love you more every day, Kelli. I hope to be with you for many more years to come.

My millions of former readers probably love you considerably less, seeing as how I am unable to have a relationship and a blog at the same time. They will just have to deal, I suppose.

It's Only a Theory, Of Course

I think the Colonel put St. John's Wort in his blend of 11 herbs and spices.

Think about it. Everyone loves some KFC. Everyone.

And why 11? Seriously. Who picks 11 herbs and spices? Everyone else would stop at 10. The eleventh spice is the key; the secret ingredient.

And really, why do you need 10 different herbs and spices, for that matter? Obviously to cover up the taste of the bad tasting secret ingredient, herb/spice #11.

So you eat the chicken with the St. John's Wort. You feel naturally happier. You are inclined to return and eat the chicken again. Instant repeat business.

I would be very surprised if this is not true.

Blogging Is Hard

I really have no explanation for why I'm suddenly the Worst. Blogger. Ever.

It might be the fact that maybe one in five blog posts I write somehow come back to haunt me for months and months after I write them.

It might be that my crippling doubt about how other people see me has been all but destroyed in the past while, and since that was the creative fuel for most of my self-deprecating posts, it leaves only the kinda pretentious posts where I bitch about how much I hate what's on the radio.

It might be that Kelli's car radio sucks, and I don't listen to the radio as much.

It might be that I have lots of entertaining, funny conversations with Kelli now on a daily basis, and so the one interesting conversation I had a week is no longer noteworthy enough to get its own blog post.

It might be that I'm a little bitter about my job and don't feel like I make any kind of impact.

On the other hand, my mind still runs at about eight zillion unrelated and mostly ridiculous thoughts per hour, so I could probably document some of them.

For example, I recently added a deck of cards to my collection. They are Halloween seasonal cards called "Tragic Royalty" and all the face cards have angry or twisted in anguish expressions. Many of them are clever, like the King of Hearts being a skeleton since there's a sword sticking in his head, and the Jack of Hearts turned toward the player with a patch over his usually hidden in profile eye.

Then, while at the liquor store, I found a pack of Jack Daniels cards which were just regular playing cards with Jack Daniels advertisments on the backs. I didn't buy them, but they did give me an idea: Drunken Royalty Cards. The face cards can all be in various states of debauchery, even organized by themes. The Hearts can be Horny Drunks, the Spades can be Violent Drunks, the Clubs can be Depressed Drunks, and the Diamonds can be Fun Drunks. I think this is a can't-miss idea, and since it took me all of two seconds to think of it, why hasn't anyone at the US Playing Card Co. figured it out yet?

In completely unrelated news, Kelli and I went to Wal-Mart a few nights ago after work and found ourselves surrounded by an elite squadron of lesbian employees putting stock on the shelves. I think at least 2 out of 3 employees we saw appeared to be a lesbian. Is this a corporate wide movement? I urge everyone to check out their local Wal-Mart during the night shift hours to find out if it is also a complete Lesbinanza.

Also Wal-Mart related: there is a night shift cashier at our Wal-Mart with mutton chops. Big, thick, Civil War-era Cavalry Commander mutton chops. The problem is that the cashier is a female. With mutton chops. Long, scraggly, impossible to ignore mutton chops. I hate being completely superficial, but shouldn't someone tell her that she should do something about those? I mean, my mom never hesitated to tell me when I looked unpresentable. And shouldn't Wal-Mart have some form of anti-mutton chop policy in its Cashier Dress Code?

Ok. That's all the wisdom I've got to offer for now. Hopefully I'll think of something else soon and get back in the habit of updating this thing.