Analogies are to Marina as Movies are to Tim Burton

…meaning that they’re something I make a lot, with varying degrees of success. Analogies or comparisons in general, I guess. I think they’re entertaining as all get-out, and sometimes they’re even useful.

For example, after semi-moving to Virginia, I discovered Wawa, which is like a convenience store but they also sell food that you order via touchscreen. Or, as I explained to a tourist who asked where the nearest convenience store was:

“It’s like if 7-11 and Subway had a baby, and then Sonic raised it.”

Somehow he seemed even more confused by this explanation. I’m not really sure why; everyone else I’ve mentioned it to thought it was the perfect description of our lord and master Wawa.

There was also the time I was shopping with my friend Eloise and she found a shirt that was a ridiculous shade of chartreuse. For some reason she was quite taken with the button-down. The ensuing conversation went as follows:

Me: I don’t know, this shirt is sparkly and I really like it, but it’s a little tight across the—

This picture honestly cannot capture how terrible that shirt was.

Me: Oh hell no. I thought you needed to buy sweaters.

Eloise: I do.

Me: That’s not a sweater. Where did you even get that?

Eloise: I took it when you weren’t looking so that you wouldn’t say “that’s not a sweater, put it down”. Isn’t it awesome?

Me: Ye-es…

Eloise: You don’t mean that.

Me: I mean that it’s awesome in the sense that it… inspires awe… with its horror.

Eloise: Is it really that bad?

Me: No. Yes. It’s the color that bananas are before you’re allowed to eat them.

Eloise: I eat bananas before they’re ripe!

Me: Yeah, okay, just buy the black sweater and a beret to go with your ironically ripped jeans and large glasses and your hipsterness will be complete.

Eloise: …this is a cute shirt…

Me: Would you ever wear it?

Eloise: …probably not.

Me: No. You wouldn’t. And it would hang in your closet like a big green unripe banana of shame.

Between this and my saying that the store Gussini “looks like Victoria’s Secret and Rack Room Shoes had a baby and then the baby threw up all over the inside of that store” (a lot of my comparisons involve inanimate things having babies with other inanimate things), I don’t think Eloise wants to take me shopping again in the near future.

A few other comparisons I have made in conversation:

Russian nesting doll of misery—when you have negative emotions that, in turn, cause you to have more negative emotions. Often caused by feeling bad about feeling bad.

The matryoshka of unhappiness.

The Scale of Awkwardness—this one is a little more complicated but possibly more useful (depending on the situations in your life). The name pretty much explains what it does: you can use it to rate how awkward something is. There are charts for pain and probably charts for emotions, so I thought this would probably come in handy.

0—What is wrong with you? We don’t need a zero. The scale goes from 1 to Awkward. If the awkward level is zero, then the situation isn’t awkward and you don’t need to use a scale of awkwardness. Move along.

1—parents texting

2—middle school dances

3—Christopher Walken

4—when someone says “Happy Birthday” and you automatically say “Thanks, you too” but it’s not their birthday

5—practicing lines with yourself in a public place and you can feel that everyone is judging you and thinking that you’re crazy

6—when you’re walking and someone approaches you head-on and you have to do that weird dance-y shuffle to figure out how to pass each other

My preferred way of avoiding this problem.

7—the moment when Elisha Gray found out that Alexander Graham Bell was given the credit for inventing the telephone

8—that time you accidentally called the teacher “Mom”

9—the time when Captain James Cook went back to Hawai’i expecting a warm welcome like he got last time, but instead they stabbed him to death

10—the Draco/Voldemort hug

The problem with Pokémon—don’t tell me no one else has noticed this:

Me: Digimon is better than Pokémon.

Felix: What is wrong with you?

Me: No! Think about it. Digimon are like familiars. Each person only has one and they’re matched to their personalities and it’s awesome.

Svetlana: But Pokémon are more awesome.

Me: No. Pokémon are like slaves that you use…to fight other slaves. It’s like Japanese dogfighting.

One of these things is not healthy. Pokémon: not even once.

How much tooth fairy money is this worth?

This past summer, I had my wisdom teeth out, because they were somehow both impacted and threatening to explode out of the side of my face (citation needed). I have a Stupid Jaw Disorder, so they also thought that having fewer teeth crammed into my mandible would make things a little easier.

Before the surgery they told me what I was and wasn’t supposed to do after the surgery, but I didn’t really listen because I have a problem with authority and boring things. They all seemed pretty self-explanatory, anyway—it was stuff like “don’t rip out the stitches” and “eating jawbreakers is a bad idea”, I think. Besides, I already had a post-op plan.

I was going to send as many text messages to as many people as I could.

I don’t drink or do drugs (because drinking is illegal at my age and both that and drugs seem icky and unappealing and I have enough problems without them), so this was kind of my only chance to do something that was close to drunk texting. Immediately after I woke up from the surgery, I stumbled out of the oral surgeon’s office and started sending texts.

The following exchanges are completely factual, with my texts in normal font, bracketed and italicized translations for your benefit, and my friends’ texts bolded.

Conversation between myself and Diana

conversstion delayed i the ledd on am drufs
[The conversation we were having is delayed until I am less on the drugs.]

Le drufs?

yeah anesthsica cant to cant fttlhmodth
[Yeah, anesthesia. I can’t feel my mouth.]

XD you’re high

o think do yeah stomavj jhurts
[I think so, yeah. My stomach hurts.]

This is the best conversation ever

all the channels on the tv now aHrewbtr terrinoe
[All the channels on the TV now are terrible.]

Lol good story bro

tried to drink waytewr it wntn straight up throuygh my nose wtf
[I tried to drink water. It went straight up through my nose. Wtf.]

Not enjoying being high

not fuuny
[Not funny!]

eatn &6 drinkign too hard but m hangry
[Eating and drinking is too hard, but I’m hungry.]

Conversation between myself and Austin

k writing a podt like this wouldb be duclinmgfsa imposbloep
[Okay, writing a post like this would be f***ing impossible.]

…it would be so funny

oy uews nl
ldkt def no postigid
(No idea what I mean by the first part…)
[Idk, definitely no posting.]

tryd to drin atrer it wnyt straiht up throgyu my bnoews wth
[I tried to drink water. It went straight up through my nose. What the hell.]

*snicker*

not funy im trhristy
[Not funny. I’m thirsty.]

Try spraying your mouth

drinking not worki t goes through my nowe
[Drinking isn’t working; it goes out through my nose.]

Conversation between myself and Keena

why esophagus nop working
[Why is my esophagus not working?]

surgery was okay then?

yeah but drinking olmposs bliue
[Yeah, but drinking is impossible.]

…. You are on some lovely drugs. Are you up to a present or would you like to sleep?

just kinda laying on couych right now supposed to eat but it’s like ikmpossbnl
e
[I’m just kinda laying on the couch right now. I’m supposed to eat but it’s like impossible.]

You canz want ice cream?

not now he told me not to have that

Dawww okay sorry then can’t help you

nno wertres
[No worries.]

… pfft if you saw what youd sent youd understand. Just get some rest mkay?

not supposed to sleepo gfmsupposed yo esat bnut too hard
[I’m not supposed to sleep. I’m supposed to eat, but it’s too hard.]

Aww :( yogurt? cream cheese?

said no dairy, syupposed to pasta, too hard
[The doctor said no dairy. I’m supposed to eat pasta, but it’s too hard to do that.]

Really really overcooked pasta *nods*

i have chopped up spaghtii but swallowing esta myy dificil
[I have chopped up spaghetti, but swallowing is really hard.]
(For some reason I decided Spanish was really appropriate there.)

Ohhhhh. Sadface.

all thevstfdfd on tv right now sucks
[All the stuff on TV right now sucks.]

Hehhehh that’s unfortunate

blarghjk
[Blargh.]

Dawww *patpat*

dvds toofar away
[The DVDs are too far away.]

Awwwww :(

Rawer
[Rawr.]

Isn’t there anyone there for you to order around?

mom wemt to gert the percovet
[My mom went to get the percocet.]

Ah okay I was glad they hadn’t abandoned you

nhm.
[Mhm.]

Uwaaaah. :]

i cant make k sounds

D’awww. hehheh it’ll come back don’t worry.

shit i drpped the rmotr on the vfloo. too far
[Shit, I dropped the remote on the floor. Too far away.]

Look at that epic stretch. That must’ve been, what, six inches? What I’m saying is that it’s an insurmountable distance.

Waaah hope ur mom gets back soon!

roresnt relally msattr thesse nonthin good on any of the channrels
[It doesn’t really matter. There’s nothing good on any of the channels.]

:/ Hope you feel better.

Mythbusterssss

Yaaaaaaay :D

anesthesia weairng off but no other drugs yet

Hehheh less loopy now?

somewhat lol

^_^

but as i sed no painkillers started yet sooo

Lololol i should be getting some very interesting texts soon

soon = around 5pm

You may not have to take the painkillers just btw

eh i think i will, as im getting less numb its starting to hert

This picture basically summarizes how I was feeling after the anesthesia started to wear off.

I’m not really even sure how I ended up saying half of that stuff. Why did I tell Diana that all the shows on TV were Hebrew terrible? I was clearly watching Mythbusters, not Fiddler on the Roof. And why did I think it’d be appropriate to talk to Keena in Spanish? Neither of us has spoken Spanish in two years.

After the anesthesia stopped working I just felt really overheated and uncomfortable, like my chipmunk cheeks were full of burning cotton balls. Then a few days later a black hole opened in the back right side of my cheek because surgery sucks. Like, in the sense that there was a physical hole behind my back tooth, and I was pretty sure that I could see my jawbone in the hole. Or something white that totally does not belong on the visible spectrum. That was not a happy realization and after I saw that in the mirror I had to sit down with a cool cloth on my head because the room had gone over all cold and I was a little scared that I was going to faint like a goat.

Then we went to see the oral surgeon about it because possible visible bone is never a good thing.

Me: Hi. I think that a black hole to the underworld is opening in the back of my mouth.

Oral Surgeon: Does it hurt?

Me: You just removed four pieces of bone from my face. Of course it hurts.

Oral Surgeon: On a scale of one to ten, how much does it hurt?

Me: Not very much. Maybe…a three.

Oral Surgeon: Well, if you had a dry socket you would say it was a twelve.

Me: Oh.

Oral Surgeon: So it’s probably okay.

Me: Does that mean I don’t get vicodin? All my friends got vicodin when they got their wisdom teeth out.

Oral Surgeon: No.

Me: Oh.

Disappointingly, he didn’t give me vicodin. But on the positive side, it was all okay and two days later I regenerated that tissue like a freakin’ time lord.

That part made me feel like this.

Anyway, I totally don’t regret sending lousy texts, but there are two things I later realized I could’ve done that I didn’t.

1. I got my wisdom teeth out all at once, but I should have had them done one at a time for FOUR TIMES the amount of anesthetized texts.

2. My wisdom teeth are the only teeth that I didn’t get tooth fairy money from. What the hell, me? Those were probably worth, like, a ton of tooth fairy money. Probably at least two dollars each. What did the oral surgeon do with them, anyway? Did he throw them out? Does he have a monopoly on tooth fairy transactions? Damn it. I am probably supporting his hoarding of all the resources. I should have asked for those back.

Then again, what would I have done with them?

…probably left them in random sinks in my house, covered in red food dye.

It’s probably a good thing this didn’t occur to me earlier.

Nomenclature

I love names. As someone who attempts to write fiction—read as: scraps a story after a few chapters because she forgot to add a villain—and comes up with pretty decent characters, naming is something I like to think I’m good at. I like when names are significant, like how in the totally addictive show “Once Upon a Time”, Cinderella’s name is Ashley (see what they did there? Ashley).

In regards to real life, the chances are that if I’ve interacted with you, I named our kids. Sorry. As a girl it’s really hard to think about what my kids’ names are going to be, since I don’t know what their last name is going to be.

As a general rule, last name determines whether or not you can use Richard as a first name.

There are also name jinxes—names I can’t ever use because of someone in my life who already has that name. If you have an alias on this blog, your real name is probably name-jinxed because you are too important/too involved in my shenanigans for me to ever want to associate another person with your name. (There are also literal name jinxes, like “everyone on the maternal side of my family named Joseph died at a tragically young age in a particularly nasty manner”. Which is really a pity, because I actually like the name Joseph.)

Besides terrible puns and off-limits names, you also have to consider that everyone in the world has a name and that some of those people are famous. This basically means that, no matter how much I love the name “Olivia”, it would be cruel to use it if the last name was “Wilde”. Same goes for “Adam” and “Smith”.

There are also names that I love but would never saddle a kid with—Keegan and Jeramie, for example. I don’t understand it when people use ridiculous spellings of normal names, and I would never do that, but for some reason I like that version better than “Jeremy”. But I would never do that because I don’t want people to think that I’m insane, and I definitely don’t want my kid to have to explain “No, it’s spelled all weird; there’s no y.”

The last place I decided to do preemptive naming was in my chemistry class. This mostly stemmed from the face that I got really sad about the fact that you can’t spell my name using elements on the periodic table. (If only there was a free M…I can get ArINa to work!)

And yes, what followed was exactly what you are thinking. I’ve decided that I’m only giving my kids names that can be spelled out with elements. That way, they won’t be as sad as I was when they’re sitting in chemistry and can’t spell their names with the periodic table. I already made a list of pretty good names.

One of these is name-jinxed in a good way, but I thought it was worth listing regardless. Images courtesy of this extremely excellent website.

Periodic table, I now have some grievances that we need to address.

1. You need the following: A, E, M, R, D, T, L. These are really common letters. I’m not sure why you don’t have them.

2. You do not need the following: Yb, Cs, Hf, Rf, Np, Sg, anything that is a consonant followed by an M, anything that begins with “Uu” (that’s right, elements 113 to 118, I’m looking at you.) There are a few others but these annoy me the most. These do not spell anything in English, ever. Especially not names.

3. It would be cool if you had the following, but I can work around it if you listen to Grievance 1: To, Le, Ll, Ia,

4. What’s the deal with your lack of Qu? And your lack of J’s? That second point totally killed like a third of my list.

Despite these obvious flaws (seriously scientists, you need to get on that and discover some new elements and name them after my blog), I managed to come up with an extensive list of names. Including names that I would never use because I am not a terrible human being.

“Oh, really?” you ask. “Well, what if you want to name your kids after iconic figures from pop culture?”

“No problem!” I say.

Meet LuCY, CaSPEr, and FRaN.

“Well, what if you marry someone who isn’t American and wants names from his heritage?”

“I got this. Their names are TiMoTeO and NArCISSe. Except they won’t have the capitalization that a thirteen-year-old who just discovered AIM would use. I was just showing which elements are involved.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to name your kids after wizards?”

“You underestimate me.”

Say hello to GaNdAlF and AlBUS.

“Okay, well, I bet you can’t do food, children’s story characters, and terrifying historical figures.”

“I bet you are going to regret suggesting that.”

CaNdY, BAmBi, and AtTiLa. Aren’t they precious?

In other news, I wrote a love poem for chemistry nerds and/or people who don’t like chatspeek and/or people who like order. Here you go.

Phenolphthalein is pink

Bromethymol is blue

If I could rearrange the periodic table

I wouldn’t move a damn thing, because that would mess up the trends.

But metaphorically I would put Iodine next to Uranium.

Actually, I would put Yttrium, Oxygen, and Uranium next to each other, and then put that next to Iodine. Because “U” is not a word.

Blogspot doesn’t know how love potions work

When you’re making a Blogspot profile, you get to answer some random question that Blogspot uses to pretend they’re extremely quirky. This backfires with me because I am snarky. Actually, I’m not being snarky. They’re just using really unclear questions.

Blogspot: The love potion you made tastes terrible. How will you drink it?

Me: Wait, why would I drink a love potion that I made? Shouldn't I give the love potion to someone else so that they'll fall in love with me? I thought that was how love potions worked.

I realized that it was my responsibility to come up with some questions that people actually need to know the answers to. Questions that provoke deep thought. I even included some of my own sample answers. You’re welcome, Blogspot.

Which fruit do you think is the most sensual?

Passion fruit. I mean, come on, it’s in the name. Also there’s that whole Garden of Eden/Adam and Eve/creationism/and-then-they-realized-they-were-naked connection.

Wait. That was a pomegranate. Or an apple, depending on whether you believe the Fertile Crescent was the Garden of Eden. Actually that could be any fruit depending on where you’re from and what your priests told you. Huh. Now I’m not sure. I guess pomegranate. I don’t even know what passion fruit tastes like but maybe it really isn’t that sexy.

If you were making a school, what would your colors and mascot be?

Purple and silver. Because people just don’t wear enough purple. And I already have a ton of clothing/items that are purple. I would look extremely spirited by just wearing my normal clothes. It’d be awesome because I care very little about displaying school spirit, but everyone would think that I cared, and then I would win.

Mascot is harder than I thought. Here are some of my top choices:

• Secretary bird. They stomp and/or kick prey to death. And their prey can include snakes. And they do this on foot because flying isn’t very sportsmanlike. It would be like cheating, and neither my school nor the secretary bird is okay with that. Also our theme song could be “A Secretary Is Not A Toy”.

They look like they’re wearing shorts, so it’s totally PG to not put some kind of funny outfit on our mascot.

• Hedgehog. They’re covered in pointy death but they are still adorable. There is no way to lose with this mascot. The mascot uniform would be a weapon in itself.
• Cthulu. Do I really need to explain this? H.P. Lovecraft said that it’s like if an octopus and a dragon had a baby. Any team my school is competing against will immediately defecate themselves and shuffle shamefully away from the field/court/arena.
• Zombie. Holy crapmuffins, people. What if your school team was “the Fighting Zombies” or “the Ferocious Zombies”? That would be two hundred percent amazing.

Which apocalypse scenario is your favorite?

Rapture, I guess. Because the people who get raptured win because they go to heaven to chill with Jesus, and the people who don’t get raptured win because everything is the same but with fewer televangelists.

Until the plagues part, anyway. I guess I only like this scenario if I get raptured (unlikely) or predecease the plagues. In that case I guess I change my mind to meteor. Because as awesome a mascot as they’d be, zombies in an apocalypse smell bad.

Choose your celebrity parents.

That’s not really a question. More like a command. I pick Thomas Gibson and Tina Fey, though. Because Thomas Gibson is kind of serious and Tina Fey is hilarious, so I’d be completely well-rounded. And also that would make Aaron Hotchner my father.

Daddy!

If you could get one formula tattooed on your body, what would it be? (And it has to be, like, a real, established equation. You can’t do something like integral of e to the x equals function of u to the n. That doesn’t count.)

I had to do some research for this, but probably the entropy equation ΔS = Q/T. Partially because my first initial is actually S, and Q/T is like “cutie”, so then it’s basically calling me adorable. Also because entropy is associated with chaos and stuff, and that’s kind of exactly like me. Or it seems kind of edgy, at least. So that’s cool.

Which grammar rule is your favorite?

Oh, that’s an easy one. I’m kind of obsessed with the difference between “less” (uncountable amount, like, “there is less butterbeer in my glass than in your glass”) and “fewer” (countable amount, like “there are fewer molecules of butterbeer in my glass than in your glass”).

What is the best idea you’ve ever had that turned out to be the worst idea you’ve ever had?

When I was ten, my best friend Jeannie and I decided to make sandwiches. Not just any sandwiches… the best sandwiches that had ever been made. So we took slices of white bread and filled them with things that were two hundred percent delicious:

• Peanut butter
• Chocolate syrup
• Marshmallow fluff
• Marshmallows
• Chocolate chips
• Sprinkles
• Whipped cream
• M&Ms

I call this the Glory Sandwich.

We were geniuses. We had created sandwiches that people would base religions around. They would eat our sacred sandwiches on the high holy days. These were sandwich gods.

Then we tried to eat these hyperglycemic monstrocities with glasses of chocolate milk that had a chocolate molarity of over nine thousand. We made it about halfway through before collapsing on my couch, sweetly frothing at the mouth (probably just marshmallows and whipped cream) and vowing that we would never do that again as long as we lived. To my knowledge, neither of us has ever gone back.

What is your favorite relatively-PG expression of annoyance and/or disaster?

Crapmuffins.

Where is the worst place to be trapped with a sombrero?

The Texas side of the Mexican border.

If you were a saint, what would you be the patron saint of?

Body-focused repetitive disorders and not believing in moose.

Nope. It’s a hoax.

Are you as funny as you think you are?

Probably not.

It's all Greek to me

When I was signing up for classes this semester, I decided, “Hey, I know what I’ll do. I’ll take Greek and Roman mythology! I love that stuff and I already know tons about it.”

It’s something like this, right? But more incest.

But then, like all desirable classes, it was full and I had to find something else using our lousy registration website, Banner (warning: not PG. And probably not as funny if you’ve never used Banner). I ended up picking Greek Archaeology and Art because even though the course title is synonymous with “pretty old Greek stuff that was buried for a few hundred years”, it filled two of my eleven General Education Requirements, which means I won’t have to take Intro to British Literature or something like that. Because liberal arts educations mean that you need to know stuff about Shakespeare even if you’re a neuroscience major.

The only problem so far is the teacher. He seems like a totally nice human being who is genuinely passionate about what he does. But he also kind of reminds me of the Catholic priest from my hometown—you know, the one who caused me to invent a holy drinking game. He just talks and talks and talks in monotone, while useless slides flip quickly by in the background.

By “useless”, I’ll give him credit that he kind of knows how to use Powerpoint. The slides are semi-organized and he doesn’t have trouble trying to change between them. On the other hand, he doesn’t ever put any text on the slides, so lessons tend to go like this:

Estimated elapsed time: 20 seconds.

This is kind of a problem for everyone who writes at the speed at which most humans are able to write. Because we have to figure out how to remember which art piece he is talking about, and simultanouesly write down everything he’s saying because there isn’t really a hard copy of the notes he’s giving us.

Also, the book is next to useless. I bought mine used because the used copy was only $22 and twenty-two is my lucky number. I clearly didn’t anticipate what “used” would mean, because I definitely wasn’t expecting Chapter Four, part of Chapter Six, and pages 29 through 132 to fall out.

Clockwise from upper left: pages 29 to 132, Chapter 6, Chapter 4, the rest of the book. Not pictured: disappointment.

My other used textbook, which is for Physiological Psychology, is pristine apart from a little bit of highlighting. I’m especially cool with this because I think that biopsych is the most interesting topic in the world. My book agrees with me, apparently, because it even says “Biological psychology is the most interesting topic in the world” in the first chapter. No joke. It’s even all italicized. And then it goes on to say that other people who say similar things about their areas of study are wrong.

Anyway, my method for remembering what my Archaeology professor was saying is now drawing. I write down whatever he says and then I draw the art on whatever it was that he said it about, because sometimes “boar fighting a lion!” isn’t really enough of a description for me to match it to a specific piece. I’m definitely not a trained artist but I have to say that it might be time for me to abandon neuroscience and start a path of becoming an art restoration expert.

Recently we have started learning about statues, which I believe is going quite excellently.

Smithsonian Institute. Call me.

Title of Blog (with guest artwork!)

Apparently, about 94.33333333% of the people on this planet (data needed) have never played Pictionary Telephone—the amazingly fun game that this blog is named after. This is very sad, as it means that about 94.33333333% of homo sapiens sapiens lead empty, joyless lives. (And you call yourselves “wise wise man”. Hah.) If you're one of that very sad population, however, there's hope! This post will teach you how to play Pictionary Telephone.

If you were an elementary school student at any point in time, you know the game Telephone. One person chooses a random phrase like "Twinkle, twinkle, little star" and whispers it to the person next to them. Then that person turns to Person #3 and whispers whatever they heard the first person say. By the time it gets around your whole reading circle/lunch table/detention room, the phrase has mutated into the alliterative "I love the smell of sweaty socks" or something completely irrelevant to what the first person said.

That's how Pictionary Telephone works, only with paper and pictures also. You need an odd number of people—the more, the better. Sometimes your phrases hardly change at all (especially if you write highly drawable ones, like “Kittens!”) or sometimes they change a lot (especially if you write something ridiculously existentialist like “I reject your reality and substitute my own”), leading to disaster and hilarity. Everyone needs a stack of small papers; there should be one paper for each person in every stack. So if you're playing with eleven people, each person needs a stack of eleven papers. The other rule is that when you draw things, you can’t use letters or numbers. Note: it really helps if you number your papers. If you don't, there's almost a guarantee that someone will drop the stack and then you will be sad and confused.

On Paper 1, everyone needs to write a phrase. So to start off a recent game, for example, I wrote "All the raindrops are lemon drops and gumdrops", which is from this adorable song that I performed a jazz dance to when I was four.

Then I passed the stack to my roommate Summer, who read Paper 1, placed it at the back of the stack, and on Paper 2 illustrated what I'd written:

Those are either gumdrops, or it’s snowing lumps of coral. Either way, pretty damn impressive.

Summer then passed the whole stack to Levi, who tried to figure out what she meant by that insanely talented drawing. He wrote “Catching snowflakes on my tongue”, which is a reasonable interpretation if you don’t know what snowflakes look like. I’ll give him credit though, since he’s from Southern Virginia and there’s only snow down here when Snow Meiser takes over Heat Meiser’s territory (citation needed).

Note: If you’re following along correctly, you probably noticed that you’re writing on the odd-numbered papers and drawing on the even-numbered ones. Yep, that’s how it works. The goal is to end on a phrase, which is why you need an odd number of people to play.

Levi passed the message along to Svetlana, who drew an incredibly detailed and amazing representation of this.

The definition of art.

Theo received the paper and did a less-than-stellar job of figuring out what Svetlana’s epic drawing meant. On Paper 5, he wrote, “Sky asterisks fall upon my tongue.”

…what?!

I’m not saying that Svetlana is Michaelangelo or something, but what the hell are sky asterisks? (According to googleimages, this is a sky asterisk. It also does not look even close to what Svetlana drew.)

Either way, Morgan, who got the papers next, did her very best with what Theo gave her.

Looks like snow to me.

I can only assume that La-a (that's pronounced la-dash-a) was trying very hard to figure out what Morgain meant by this, but I think something was lost in translation, because she wrote “He saw stars before he passed out.” This moved along to Shandy, who was probably wondering what the hell someone wrote down to get the phrases to this point.

Lovely.

Original message aside, I’ve got to say that Shandy’s drawing of this wasn’t bad. And HAL (our resident sassy-but-possibly-straight robot) correctly interpreted this to mean “Drunk people pass out.”

And that, my readers, is how you play Pictionary Telephone, and how you get from a Barney song to alcoholics.

Maybe you didn’t have that far to go.

[Disclaimer: I don't own the last picture, but the website I found it on said it was from the public domain. So please don't sue me. I'm just someone who tries really hard to be funny.]