The Imperial merch.

Did you ever play Trouble with your friends as a kid? I fucking loved that game. I still love that game.

Can’t you just conjure up the satisfying feeling of popping that trademark Pop-O-Matic dome? Remember the frustration you felt when someone landed on your piece and sent you back to the beginning? The feeling of karmic glee when you got your revenge? The unbeatable satisfaction of pulling off the perfect die roll to get that last peg over the finish line?

And gosh, don’t you remember thinking how much better the game would be if, in place of the same old boring original version, you had an officially licensed Star Wars edition instead?

…yeah, me neither. But damned if they didn’t decide the world needed one anyway.

Goddammit, Rey, you’re better than this.

Not a Star Wars fan? Good news! According to Wikipedia, they’ve already been cheapening this game with other unnecessary themed editions for years! Take your game pieces for a spin around the racetrack with Trouble: Cars 2, or just let them go, let them go! with Trouble: Frozen. There’s even Trouble: SpongeBob SquarePants for those times when you feel the irresistible urge to move pegs around a board while contemplating who lives in a pineapple under the sea.

Or maybe just stare out a window instead and lament what this world is coming to.

As Nutty Hubby remarked when I texted him this photo, “Out of hand, this has gotten.”

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It’s-a-me, overpriced Mario.

I don’t know how many gamers there are among you, but for me, the highlight of my young life was the day my father brought home an NES console. Suddenly this lonely, sheltered little only child had a new best friend, and his name was Mario.

And though over the years Mario and his friends would evolve into new renderings of themselves and travel to new and uncharted console territories, and though I would discover and come to love the Xbox and the Playstation and Steam, there was always a soft spot in me for the place where it all began: that greige box with the red lettering and its cartridges which were forever needing cleaning and blowing into and even the odd incident of brute force if you didn’t want your game to start with glitched text or, horror of horrors, just a flashing grey screen.

So I get it. I get why the new “NES Classic Edition” is such a big deal, and why today, on the first day of sales in North America, it’s sold out everywhere.

And I get why online resellers are exploiting the shit out of this limited supply, even though I consider their tactics the lowest, most soulless form of commerce and their buyers ridiculous for permitting them to continue getting away with it.

But here in the Nut house, we believe the best way to get back something you used to love is to just never let it go in the first place.

Gotta go. Zelda II is calling my name.

The ice man cometh, AKA the 5 stages of Zamboni grief, illustrated poorly by The Nut.

I thought of this post last night while I was at the rink and dug it out again today for shits and giggles. My stick figure drawings are still no fancy blowfish, but I love them anyway.

Spoken Like A True Nut

I have a love-hate relationship with the Zamboni at my ice rink. Or any ice rink, really.

On the one hand, public skating sessions always leave the ice horribly chewed up within minutes, as people who have no idea what they’re doing scratch and scrape their blades along torturously while hotshot hockey kids duck around them at Mach speeds and deliberately mark up every last pristine inch they can find by practicing sudden stops and irritating passers-by with showers of snow.

On the other hand, I instinctively consider anything that makes me get off the ice to be my natural enemy. Even if I was literally thirty seconds away from leaving on my own, how DARE you suggest I go sit down?!

You know how when people experience the loss of a loved one, they go through the five stages of grief?

That’s me every time that Zamboni bullies me…

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According to my data, algae is the least of Rio’s pool problems.

So I’ve been catching the occasional Olympic event here and there, and all I can say is if I’m ever in Rio, I’m avoiding their pools like the plague…which they probably also contain.

That’s what xi said.

xi
noun
1. The fourteenth letter of the Greek alphabet. – Oxford Dictionaries¹
2. The easiest way of getting rid of that goddamn X tile in Scrabble. – The Nut

The Nut, table for one.

masturdating
verb
1. Going out alone. I.e. [sic] seeing a movie by yourself, going to a restaurant alone.
– Urban Dictionary¹
2. I don’t want to brag, but I really know how to show myself a good time. – The Nut

The ice man cometh, AKA the 5 stages of Zamboni grief, illustrated poorly by The Nut.

I have a love-hate relationship with the Zamboni at my ice rink. Or any ice rink, really.

On the one hand, public skating sessions always leave the ice horribly chewed up within minutes, as people who have no idea what they’re doing scratch and scrape their blades along torturously while hotshot hockey kids duck around them at Mach speeds and deliberately mark up every last pristine inch they can find by practicing sudden stops and irritating passers-by with showers of snow.

On the other hand, I instinctively consider anything that makes me get off the ice to be my natural enemy. Even if I was literally thirty seconds away from leaving on my own, how DARE you suggest I go sit down?!

You know how when people experience the loss of a loved one, they go through the five stages of grief?

That’s me every time that Zamboni bullies me off the ice.

NanoPoblano, Day 28: The short rows of self-loathing.

Sometimes I wonder whether I pick out knitting patterns because I love the style, or because I hate my hands.

♪ ♫ ♩ ♬
This is how we wrap and turn
Wrap and turn
Wrap and turn
This is how we wrap and turn
All motherfuckingforever scarf long.
♪ ♫ ♩ ♬

The next time I think it would be a good idea to make something with ruffles, for the love of god, TALK ME OUT OF IT.

Nutty and the Russians.

Now that I’ve finally wrapped up the devious ditching of my maidenhead, it’s time to move on to another reader-suggested subject: booze.

Which is perfect, because writing about myself having sex for the first time was weird and I could use a drink.

Wrote Christopher of Freethinkers Anonymous, “Since Gina stole my sex idea and since you suggested drinking enough rum to kill Captain Jack Sparrow (which would be all of it) I’m going to ask about the first time you got drunk. Hopefully that won’t overlap with anything to do with sex. Or maybe if it did it was a good thing. Anyway I’m hoping it was a good experience, or at least a funny one.”

Well now, let’s see.

✘  Sex – nope.
✓  Good experience – yep.
✓  Funny experience – well…I thought (and still think) it was hilarious. Certain owners of a certain apartment building might have had a differing opinion. But we’ll get to that.

Here, hold my beer.

Quoth The Nut: Day 3

Last day of quoting.

You know the rules.

You know the instigator.

So let’s get right to it.

Today’s quote is courtesy of a customer I had once during my retail days. A short and to the point reminder that your attitude is what you make it.

I couldn’t help but laugh. You had to at least admire the old guy for his candor. Lord knows we’ve all had those days where we’re just determined to take everything the wrong way; be down in the dumps; avidly pursue a state of dissatisfaction. Sometimes there’s a odd kind of pleasure to be found in rendering oneself deliberately unhappy.

And that’s okay once in a while – just so long as we don’t make a habit of it.

The world has enough career grumpypusses already.