I originally wanted to share with you the story of Blane Nordahl, sterling silver thief extraordinaire, but the New Yorker apparently buries its links like a boring suburban woman her Precious Moments dolls. Instead I’ll proffer another link to a short story by Jhumpa Lahiri. She wrote Interpreter of Maladies, a fine book I read while on my reading kick.
You may wonder, gentle reader, why I frequently link to the New Yorker. As far as snooty magazines go, I actually prefer The Atlantic Monthly simply because of its glossy cover and alluring font. Believe me, I’d like to tell you how I appreciate one magazine’s moderate liberalism or another magazine’s star contributor, but I’m actually a packaging whore through and through. The first thing I notice after tearing out those annoying postcard ads–and I’m sure some of you will agree with me–is how the ghetto ink transfers itself right onto my fingers. You could argue that the New Yorker publishes on a weekly basis, effectively preventing it from coating itself in unnecessary shine. Truth is, they want their fiction and their points of view to seep into my skin, enter my bloodstream, and assault my brain. Too bad they didn’t anticipate my frequent handwashing.
I’m not saying that The Atlantic is as dry as a housebroken puppy. It’s just that the magazine leaks far less, making it a semi-housebroken puppy. Compare this to the New Yorker, which is more like the puppy that pisses all over your parquet kitchen floor. All told, however, this is the Internet. We don’t have to worry about inanimate objects dirtying our good selves. We just have to worry about unseen stalkers who want to dirty our good selves.
I told you about an unsavory experience I had with two schmucks early last month, gentle reader, and today marks the beginning of some closure. It looks like one of the pricks gave a full confession, which significantly shortens the court process and decreases my chances of, you know, pocketing a gavel.
Still, it’s heartening to see our legal system respond so swiftly, even if the incident was minor. Lady Justice has indeed proven victorious, straightening what was crooked and righting what was wrong. And hot damn, someone’s gonna get whacked with the Cane of Good Behavior.
The topic of boardgames came up recently, gentle reader, and the conversation ended with more questions than answers. Why are there so few modern classics, I wondered, and how can we fix this problem? A tentative answer struck in the form of a pleasant saleswoman from March of Dimes who painted, in broad and vivid strokes, a fundraising idea gone haywire. We were sitting on a flight to Tennessee when she turned to me.
“What do you do?” she asked genially.
“Nothing of value,” I replied. “And you?”
She apparently did something of value, and talk eventually settled on flawed ideas for fundraising. She once witnessed a contest involving land, a cow, and some imaginary lines. Here’s how it worked: some fundraisers took a plot of land, imposed an imaginary grid on it, and then loosed a cow onto the grid. Contestants purchased raffle tickets with random coordinates, hoping beyond all hope that the cow would poop on the precise location of victory.
“It’s like bingo!” I exclaimed, happy to have had an epiphany. “Maybe a dirtier version of bingo.”
Scatology will forever hold an unwholesome appeal, as evidenced by the wonderment created by this anecdote. But wait! What if we reinvented all the boardgames of old and released scatological updates of time-honored favorites? Imagine Poopopoly, if you will. The board would remain the same, for the most part, but all the pieces would resemble dogs. The game dynamics would likewise remain the same, except you could have your dog defecate on your opponent’s pricey hotels, thereby decreasing overall property values. I don’t know if you can see what I’m seeing, but I’m envisioning a soiled Shangri-la stretching from Baltic Avenue to Park Place.
Before you whip out your checkbooks, I’d urge you to pause and reflect. Not all games lend themselves to reinvention, after all. Clue: Bathroom Edition would be a colossal failure.
“Hey, I’m ready to guess! It’s Colonel Mustard with the Knife…in the bathroom.”
“Actually, you’re wrong. It’s Miss Scarlet with the Wrench…in the bathroom.”
And can you imagine an updated Twister? Let’s not imagine an updated Twister. My fervent hope, when all is said and done, is that you’ll understand an important entrepreneurial truth: a lot of thought should go into your product proposal. Impulsive action will only send you up Shit Creek without a–I need to phone the makers of Slip N’ Slide. Immediately.