In which journalist Emily Claire Afan
takes great pleasure in sharing stories and other oddities
Latest Post
San Francisco for Game Developers Conference, March 4, 2012. Early morning. My friend Danielle and I are sharing a hotel room and we’re fast asleep in our respective beds…
…which suddenly begin to shake. A lot.
The rumbling lasted a solid 30 seconds, but I was so tired that I barely registered what was happening. I heard the rustling of Danielle’s bedsheets, followed by a loud whisper:
“I think that was an earthquake!”
Sandy: Lots of people have been successful with online dating, she should try that site Too Many Fish...
Me: ...It's Plenty Of Fish, Sandy.
There is a little bit of the scorpion king in all of us.
— As spoken and written by my pal Jon, immortalized on the disposable table cover at the Bier Markt in Toronto. And what quote would be complete without careful illustrations?
I made HIS day? Talk about Backwards Land.
DeathSpank has been bringing me copious amounts of joy with such gems as:
“Well…don’t let what you just said ever happen again.”
“We sure have been through a lot together, like the time we overthrew the government using only a spatula & a shaved marmoset.”
“Fine, I’ll get you a pony. But it’s going to be an ugly one.”
I usually play it cool with it comes to stuff like this — after all, it’s part of my job. But there are industry people. And then there’s Ron Gilbert. Ron Gilbert. Just let me have this one, okay?
When you said ‘Warren Buffett,’ I thought you said, ‘warm butt-fucking.’
— I won’t reveal who said this during lunch at the Whistler Film Festival, but I will give context, even though it could be just as fun and inappropriate to leave it be as I’ve done in the past. (Or the times I probably went into far too much detail.) A person at my table commented that the chocolate cake for dessert was quite rich, to which someone else piped up, “Rich like Warren Buffett.” The man on my left looked up for a moment, gave his head a slight shake and said, “…I totally thought you said something else and you really don’t want me to repeat what I thought it was.” Of course when someone says that, you do want him to repeat it. So he did. And I thought my hearing was bad…
This might be a weird question, but what does an authentic Chinese bicycle look like?
— A Fredericton cabbie to my cousin Kris when she was on a business trip in New Brunswick last week. Really? Really? The same cabbie also turned to her earlier and said very slowly, “Your English. VERY GOOD.”
In discussing my friend Kym’s neverending obsession with New Kids on the Block last night, she recounted the day that her husband Adam (who plays on my softball team) waited by his computer until the very second that he could enter a code online to buy $500 VIP concert tickets, which would grant her backstage access to talk and *gasp* touch her favourite boy band.
She then told us about his experience in picking up the tickets from the box office, at which time he also happened to be getting Nine Inch Nails concert tickets for Kym.
The box office attendant did a double-take when he handed the tickets to Adam, then turned to him and said, “Either you’re fucked up or you have two girlfriends.”
“They’re for my wife,” he replied. “And yes, she’s fucked up.”
More than 15 years (15! 1-5!) have gone by since I’ve gone on a road trip with my parents and brother, and I thought those days were long behind me. But this past weekend, we took a whirlwind weekend trip to Cleveland, OH, where my cousin Jenny became the second in the family to get married.
The trip was more than a little surreal when I realized that my brother and I spent most of the time in the front and behind the wheel while our parents took it easy in the backseat.
We spent much of the trip making Simpsons references, from imitating Homer’s scream when he tried to sneak fruits and veggies across the border — and then driving past Bort Road shortly thereafter (!!!) — to saying “Free shower curtain!” when we arrived at the hotel and wondering whether or not Free Willy would be on TV.
We’d burst into random spurts of laughter, making our parents laugh.
After the fact, Dad would say, “What are we laughing at?”
Mom replied, “I don’t know. They have their own inside jokes, we’re just laughing at them laughing.”
We stopped at a McDonald’s for a pee break — Mom always has to go…again, weird role reversal — and Dad bought a coffee. He was confused trying to figure out the newfangled coffee lid when my brother impatiently flipped up the flap.
Dad’s eyes lit up in fascination and he exclaimed, “Amazing!”
To which Andrew dryly responded, “What a time to be alive.”
More tales from Ohio to come, including strange pictures, bananas and polka dancing. Welcome (back) to my life.
How does anyone like their bass that high? It sounds like weaponized garbage.
— Matt, reflecting on those who cruise through the city with their car windows rolled all the way down and the bass turned up so high that you can still feel the vibrations in your chest long after they’ve driven past—if you’re lucky, you may even get a slight ringing in your ears. It reminds me of people on public transit whose music is blasting through their headphones so loudly that everyone within a 10-foot radius can experience the pleasure of interrupted silence. I’m not sure why this happens. But I imagine it’s a combination of the following: It’s good to know that certain individuals are looking out for other people’s wants and needs. How considerate.
He once told me that he spent an entire summer masturbating. It was also the year he took up photography.
— The sun was strong and the shade was plentiful for a Canada Day picnic in High Park last week. It was during a conversation at this picnic that someone brought up a guy (who shall remain nameless) from our graduating year, and my friend Joe recounted this specific memory of him. When such a memory is shared in this manner, it’s practically a crime not to put it anywhere. And so here it shall live.
