Lots of Monkeys

It’s a cold day, so I don’t mind the walk.  I’ve been good with the cash lately.  Any time I have any, I’m headed to the bank on the lunch break to make a cash deposit.

This time, I’m asked if I’ve heard about the credit card they’re offering.

“I’m not interested.”  I say to the teller.

They insist, on telling me about it, about it’s great rate and I continue to refuse.  Finally, they add, “You can move over your current credit card balances for zero percent financing for twelve months.”

Then I told her I don’t keep a balance on my credit cards.  She looked confused and then I said, “I have a zero balance on my credit cards.”

She paused for a moment.

Then she quietly circled my bank balance and told me to have a good day.

Deadly Creatures on the Wii is a strange sort of game.  It’s definitely a guilty pleasure, like watching insects doing terrible perfectly natural cycle of life things to each other.  (Spoiler:  There is a big spider in this video.  It eats a snake.  Also, the host is insane.  Did I mention the spider is quite large?)

Deadly Creatures is like tha video, only you get to play as the spider and a scorpion, trading off between the arachnids for each chapter.  So far, I’ve played  for a couple of chapters and that video is a pretty good approximation for what you’ll see if you play the game.

Only with more controller waggling for the God of War style finishing moves.  If you ever wanted to see a tarantula bitch slap a black widow, this is the game for you.  Also, if you want to see a scorpion hold a lizard’s mouth open so that it can sting it in the tongue and then break its back, this is also the game for you.  I have the feeling that some liberties were taken with the Discovery Channel footage that they were probably using for research.

That said, I was very surprised by the inclusion of a storyline, which appears to be about cursed gold.  It stars Billy Bob Thornton and Dennis Hopper as two treasure hunters that just happen to be digging in the insect hunting grounds you’re inhabiting.

The insects don’t actually talk.  As it is, they barely make any noise.  They are just the observers, surviving by eating and killing, and I’m assuming that it’ll play out as an allegory for what’s happening in the human world above ground.  Worth my GameFly rental so far.

For some reason, it just hit me.  Like hypercolor t-shirts and jelly shoes and off the shoulder sweaters.  From the very depths of my memories: Swim trunks with designs that showed only when the fabric got wet.

I remember owning a pair of swimming trunks, itself an anomaly because I can’t swim, but these trunks had patterns on them that would only appear when wet.  Basically, the shorts had a sort of paisley design that would only show up when they were splashed with water, because parts of the fabric were impregnated with water repellent.  So you would get this interesting pattern, with some of the fabric getting wet and appearing darker, and part of it remaining dry.

Since I didn’t swim, I’m still trying to recall how I found this out.  I probably read the tags on the trunks.

I do remember them losing the water repellent properties over time, so then they just turned into regular swim trunks after a while.

Still, interesting concept.  But inane enough for me not to remember them until now.

I’m going to try sleeping.

Maybe all the way through the night.  I know, it sounds crazy but it Just.  Might.  Work.