Eliot & Ari (who posted a blog entry on this very subject…) & I have been playing Scrabble the past two nights. We were inspired by the movie Word Wars that we watched together last week. The documentary documents G.I. Joel Sherman’s manhandling of three-time American Scabble Champ & shaolin taoist buddha-brahmin Joe Edley in the 2002 National Scrabble Championship. At one point in the film G. I. Joel sings “Across the Universe” at a piano, slightly out of key but largely stirring: “Words are pouring out like endless rain into a paper cup…” We were hooked and bought a Scrabble board over the weekend.

Now there have been many instances of competition between my roommates and me. We play 8-bit Nintendo (the Bible Adventure game with Baby Moses & how Noah balances three ponies on his head) and have Candlestick bowled against each other but mostly we are very cooperative: Instead of comparing paychecks and web stats biweekly we tend to combine resources to build our base for the rocket we call Future. But I think they would agree that Scrabble brought out an entire different side to our relationships. The shit talking started almost immediately.

Perhaps inspired by the bile that G. I. Joel’s stomach churns anticipating Joe Edley’s vocabulyrical skills, we lashed against one another in a several hour session Saturday night. At one point I vaguely remember heatedly responding to Eliot’s cries of “Go already! Hurry up and go!” with, “Get ready to access that part of your brain coded by Boston University!” Intense, perhaps because we as people occupy much the same level in the Scrabbleverse. The last game Saturday night was very close until I laid down all seven of my tiles off of one standing T to spell out “NOHITTER.” This gave me a huge score plus fifty bonus for using all my tiles in one play. It broke the game wide open.

Of course Eliot & Ari challenged NOHITTER. Does it merit a dash? But when we looked it up at dictionary.com there was indeed two listings for it, so that settled the dispute and I went on to win the game. The next afternoon, however, Eliot bothered me with the news that he found a Scrabble dictionary at Hasbro’s website and that NOHITTER was not listed as a valid Scrabble word. I was upset. This is controversial. IF an American English dictionary like dictionary.com says its a word who is Hasbro International, maker of toys, to contend that it isn’t? Here is what the board looked like when I laid down my big points:

If anyone can clarify the status of this “word” please use my Contact page and let me know.  Also with a touch of humility I will add that Eliot won our game this evening, but the spread of points was ridiculously low.  The final score was Eliot @ 173, Arielle @171, and me @ 170.  In other Scrabble news I may have to sneak downstairs and eat the letter tiles out of the velvet drawstring letter bag tonight:  They look so delicious!WHERE WAS HE: Where the hell was King Kong when we needed him? Jeff Bridges plays an anthropologist in the 1976 remake who discovers the ancient Kong (the filmmakers built a 40 foot robot to play Kong but the machine never really worked so most of the shots were of a man in a monkey suit…) brings him back to New York, etc. EXCEPT, when King Kong goes to NYC in the 1976 (America’s bicenteniel) version, he does not climb the Empire State building. King Kong scales the World Trade Center!

real live shoutcast human beings on the bizamps planned for tonight friday 09 beginning after dark when the snow is blowing…Friday Night:Widespread blowing snow and a chance of snow, mainly before 9pm… after 9pm djs/streetattorneys/ferret/badger/cat/badger/foxes 3rdarm.biz & eliot on the 3rd channel sweep the streets & melt the precipitation off Logan’s runways with giant tesslacoil hairdryers mounted on pickup trucks. listeners bring your own winamps winamps will not be provided by the bizamps

I sometiems feel like the small dog when confronted by a true leet, be it in the street in the restaurant biz in the quake 2 capture the flag community on the internet or istanbul, turkey. but i find strength in my faith of the cyclical nature of noobs and leets. like a bathroom cup with the words printed on both sides and a large spoon and a small spoon orbiting it while it rotates… the noobs shall be leets and the leets shall be noobs and the noobs shall be leets:

Close watchers and avid readers of 3rdarm.biz who also happen to be scholars of language* surely took note of the last entry’s dateline… “September 06 2005″.  I chose to leave this erroneous date intact, because I orignally wrote it and consequentially missed it in my biz edit and biz review.  Biz edit and biz anew are the scan tachticks that I use to scan the biz for errors in print, and it works like a fresh washer/dryer combo a good chunk of the time.  Somecasionally erroredits are outragoues.

* the Mind of Biz Commonsense reports that 80% of 3rdarm.biz readers also consume Bill Safire’s on language column, and that 99% have either read the book or watched the film, “The Exorcist”, as well as 17% reporting that they tried to read “The Stand” by Stephen King, or attempted to sit through the whole miniseries made for TV, but could not do it.

There are more Brits than citizens any other country but the 3rdarm.biz host nation reading 3rdarm.biz and I’ve no idea who any of these Britsscotsburs are.  Use the contact page and let me know, or I’m shutting off the pump that fills Resevoir Britsamused@bizremarks.Biz.  Blody hollor.

Last saturday nite, while I got down to the crazy feet hustling drinks for an office holiday party, I was reminded of what the woman server I was serving with once told me I’d never make it.  It was the very first day of my job at the hotel, more than two years ago, and I had never bussed tables before.  Having just moved to Boston and my dishwasher Empire treasure thoroughly spent I was desperate to make it as a busboy at the Fisheries.

The first night I worked at the hotel was a busy Saturday night, and I remember the violent pandemonium I witnessed only in brief snatches.  But I do recall crystal clear this woman Dawn of Dawnland (we’re all in Dawnland) talking to me while we were side by side at one of the glass enclosed side stations.   “You’ve never bussed tables before?  I can’t believe they hired you.”  She told me that I probably wouldn’t make it as a matter of fact.

I guess thats a kind of selfish memory, not in the least representative of Dawn’s memory of that night.  But the beauty of time is that its so big.  Hard to understand what I felt when she told me that this man wouldn’t make it that night, and matter of fact I might not have made it that night.  But I made my motion by and by and in the end we worked together, its important to me.

I think my feelings can best be summed by the following passages from the chapter “Inherit the Whirlwind” from the book, “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” by Thomas Frank:

“Sometimes the Conservatives were even moved to declare that it was the damnable scientists, in their megalomaniac desire to impose their obscene views on the rest of the world, who started the Kansas fight in the first place.

Having provoked the inevitable reaction, the Cons promptly began to scream “religious persecution,” recasting themselves as the victims of a secular world’s determination to stamp out the godly.  Just as the small-minded hillbillies in “Inherit the Wind” persecute the high school science teacher for his views,* so the Cons carefully totted up each bit of criticism that was leveled at the Kansas board by the national media and imagined themselves nailed to the cross.  All the ridicule, they believe, is merely the followers of “naturalism” expressing their irrational hatred for “people of faith.”  The Cons are thus, in their own minds, victims of bigotry as surely as any of the usual population of the discriminated-against—- the “people of color.”

*Contemporary anti-evolution returns again to the 1960 movie “Inherit the Wind” (a dramatization of the Monkey Trial starring Spencer Tracy) and the need to reverse the “paradigm” that this movie supposedly established.”

Note to aunty: Monkey Trial?  Spencer Tracy?  Movie?

September 6 2005
Sunshine Biscuit Company invented the famous Cheezit crackers and sold them for decades before being acquired by Keebler’s business elves in 1996. From their mighty tree factory the Keebler elves shoved the Cheezit brand down the collective throats of nations from that point forward. Now, far in the future, we have the new Cheezit, the negative image of the original sunshine bizkit. Last night I had a bout with the new Cheezit, right after midnight. Last night I ate a whole box of the cheesy Midnight Biscuits.

It is the elves’ fault. They twisted the original Cheezit marketing message from, “Peace, Love & Cheese” to a single massive message that takes up the whole back of the new box. The message reads, “Get Your Own Box” and reading it over and over again, my fingers dripping Cheezit grease, I became indignant. Share with my roommates? Screw that! This is MY box! Whatever, I’ll do what I want with MY box. I’ll eat the whole damn thing! Its mine! Mine mine mine! This morning I woke up like a sick seasnake with a bulge in my trunk in the shape of a pile of Cheezits. My face is covered with greasy cheeze zits.

Whatever, I did what I wanted to do with my box, aight?

In many ways the production of the original Cheezit by the Sunshine Biscuit Company and its subsequent sale to Keebler mirrors the new mammalian discoveries on the remote Indonesian island of Borneo. About a hundred years ago when Sunshine Biscuits rolled out the first Cheezits scientists in the Borneo jungle identified a new predatory mammal, the Ferret-Badger. This prestigious badger/ferret lived high in the mountains and ate smaller animals, like most carniverous ferret/badger/badger/ferrets do.

Now in the new century with the release of the new “Get Your Own Box” cheezit we have a new mammal discovered in the Borneo jungles. This time it is a Cat-Fox, in laymans terms a long-tailed sharp-toothed cat/fox/fox/cat/fox/cat, because it has not been scientifically named yet. Last night the animal spirit of the Cat-Fox took over my body and I carniverously devoured a box of Cheezits. Approached in my dreams by a Ferret-Badger, I screamed and clutched my precious. “This is my f&#*#ing box whatever I’ll eat the whole thing I’ll do what I want!!”

Okay anyone reading this right now must be giddily contemplating the kind of mail I get through the Contact page where I declare myself to be, “Queen of the Fucking Universe,” and/or the physical memory of your father as harvested from your brainstem by shapeless aliens on the beach at the end of a wormhole. The answer is that I get a lot of letters from people all over the world and that I take time to queue them up in a line that I will eventually and progressively deal with by writing back and responding, but first I have to put them up on my website:

phony bologna Sent this from 3rdarm.biz: Ummm, Yeah, aaah, I was wondering, Ummm, did, ahh damn it how do I connect to the internet and run a radio show, get back to me…ah yeah, umm, peace.
Website: www.perfect10dancers.com/

So I visited the site, perfect10dancers.com, which seemed innocent enough. I was expecting perhaps gold medal ballroom, but instead got “Rikk is a “triple-threat” in every sense of the word. Part white, black, and hispanic, this smooth young hottie will light your party on fire…” Now I’m wondering if this was a sincere recommendation for my next night out in Muskegon, Michigan, or if perhaps the very mention of “triple threat” is a veiled threat of violence in the form of a decapitation attempt at my 3rdarm.

I got two letters recently from family. The two letters are from my two aunts called Mo. The two Mos were interested in 3rdarm.biz fascination with fishsex, although they approach the topic using different strategies. One Mo wrote;

“I hope that Mo the magic whale is a reference to Moby Dick and not
your aunt who loves you. Also, what in the world attracted you to the
concept of fishsex?”

Well allow me to clear the air. Fishsex is not, in fact, a serious hobby of mine, although I do handle at least seven raw scrods a day and sometimes more. It is more of a way to brand 3rdarm.biz on Google’s search engine. You see, when someone searches for fishsex and they find 3rdarm.biz they will find the most graphic written description of fishsex around. Hopefully that will satisfy their hunger so they don’t get arrested in a public aquarium with their pants around their ankles, and hey, maybe they’ll recommend 3rdarm.biz to a friend. Aquarium visits are also expensive, and 3rdarm.biz is cheap, if you get my drift.

My other Aunt Mo wrote in with less than innocent curiousity, masking the fishsex question in a story about a New York trip, Ed Sullivan Theatre, and by raising the topic of hotdogs:

“…We went by the Ed Sullivan theatre where David Letterman does his show… We saw Biff & several of the camera people & of course Rupert at the deli next door…. From there we journeyed to St. Patrick’s after a stop at the Japanese Dept store. We lit a candle at St. Jude’s altar for you… In the am we had taken the subway to the Papaya King at 86th & 3rd for hot dogs & papaya juice followed by sausage,pepppers & a coconut juice drink. Our hot dogs rested on a layer of their store made coleslaw & could be topped by their special hot mustard…”

My response; in terms of lighting a candle at the St. Jude (the saint of lost causes) altar, the fishsex thing is not a lost cause. In fact, its not even a problem anymore. Like I said, the fishsex thing these days is all aboveboard… I’m only using some of my fishsex writing, which I did back in high school more than four years ago, to generate Google hits and maybe reach a few people. Fishsex people need an outlet. Secondly, to compare fishsex to eating hotdogs or using special hot mustard, thats factually inaccurate. Hot dogs are made out of beef & pork, not fish. Nor is special hot mustard favorable to canola oil.

People at the Papaya King know that, but lets pretend they don’t know.

Just yesterday I recieved a message from “Zander” who may or maynot have stumbled upon my website looking for quality fishsex:

“Why you so muthafuckin’ fly? If you were my daddy and I were an actess what WOULD you say to me? I hope it would be something gangster and profound. Why don’t you try sending me an “instant message?” Excuse me. Or, if that doesn’t work- ’cause the internet’s stupid- try giving me a “phone call.”
One love, A-Mull. Pace!”

As a street attorney I recommend that Zander read Sticky Fishstick Stickin’ XXX; when the effect wears off, write 3rdarm.biz another email. People writing into 3rdarm.biz in the future please understand that I am a busy man who until about a week after the coming solstice is working two jobs. If I put your email into the queue please be patient because the queue will be dealt with because thats my biz.

Special delivery in the mail today now playing on my stereo system: Manhunter’s new release from Digital Muckamuck Produce, which is my friend Ethan the Professor’s record label. This is some insane thumpasaurus 45 although the first time I put it on was at 33 RPM. Perhaps only appropriate to play it on a slow wave the first time through: it is about 9PM and I’ve just woken from a three hour mocha nap with the culminating mocha dehydration.

I put in my resignation from the Scrod Hut today and renegotiated my final day of work. The general manager, who is Dutch and in fact immediately got on a plane to Amsterdam after accepting my resignation, had wanted me to put in six final crushing weeks of lunch service. For a sloth or a noob this could be acceptable & easy, but I am the #1 lunch server in North America and do not take lunch service lightly, in any way shape or form. For me six weeks could mean perhaps instant death.

Smoking a cigarette on the cold bench outside the employee entrance (located in a breezy position directly across the street from the Copley Square tunnel-mouth offramp from the Mass Pike) was how I steeled myself. Then I charged into the Scrod Hut and said, “Can’t do it! Three weeks!” The Dutch are known for their cooperation but my general manager has been Americanized. “You promised Christmas!” he screamed with cables bulging from his neck! Okay, I replied, on the ropes without coffee or a cigarette in either hand (my two sources of morning power). “Then Christmas is my last day.”

“Done.” On December 25 a new #1 lunch server in North America will be born and I will retire. As the sun sets on the 25th somewhere a newborn baby will be crying, small beverage tray in its tiny hands. It will be swaddled in hay in a manger of a sort surrounded by animals of toil. Three wise men will appear, having followed the farthest star, one with a bowl of chowder, one with a plate of scrod, and one with a baked alaska. I will be sipping a Large Mocha on the last train home to Cambridge, retired.

Thats what I drank after the train ride home today, my mind floating through multicolored feathers fallen from the future as it flies just ahead of my seeing hearing smelling tasting talking face. A large Mocha from Carberry’s. I only wish I knew what it was. Because I have some skeletons in the closet with the Central Square Dunkin Donuts I can no longer go there (it got weird between me and this Brazilian girl Sandra, who works there), but I really wanted a Dunkachino after work today. So I stopped at Carberry’s and asked for a chocolate coffee chino Dunka drink. The Muslim man told me what I really wanted was a mocha and then set off making me one. It took about seven minutes to make and I was the only customer in Carberry’s. After I drank it I immediately fell asleep and had strange dreams about playing on the Kansas City Reds major league baseball team.

Although now, like Governor Bill Richardson, I can tell you that was all a dream. Mmmm…. mocha. What is it? A reader sent this from New Mexico: “This is the crazy customer that sent you the peanuts from New Mexico. I just wondered if you got them.” Yes I did get them and you were right. New Mexican peanuts are much better than Georgia peanuts and better than Alabama peanuts. New Mexican peanuts are simply the best and I thank you very much.

Reminder once again; Manhunter is thumpasaurus best. Buy their new vinyl release on muckamuck.com the muckamuck produce stand, because I doubt the professor is mailing a free copy to everyone in America.

This morning hit Dawnland (original American name for East Coast) illuminating the people in the glory of their mad dash for limited resources. My roommates and I all rushed the bathroom at the same time. I scurried in while C was outside smoking a cigarette then felt guilty and sped up the process, cutting my upper lip shaving with the only two blades my two blade razor has. Sporting a bandaid mustache, I pushed people around at the coffee counter in Store 24.

The trains were jammed but people feared all the blood all over my face like two blade jam so I got a seat. At work another department had taken over the function I was supposed to perform, so I was early. I went up to the office and told the general manager I was ready to quit; the place I work at in my neighborhood & my family need me more than the corporation. He said give me six weeks. I don’t have six weeks.

What is creative choice? This is my catchphrase for liberalism aka freedom in America. It covers all the bases and arrests the usual suspects. Pro life? Creative choice. Intelligent design? Creative choice. Stay the course in the war? Creative choice. Most of the bizamp shoutcast radio sessions are definitely all about creative choice.

Well I hope everyone likes the new header for December. I notice a lot of my friends & colleagues really get down on Christmas music and the holiday season in general. I’m one of the opposing herd. This month in particular just ain’t my thing. The vibes are not to my liking and they can make me bristly. Pause to think: some Indians (native Americans) had duo calendars: one was circular, reflecting the orbit of Earth; the other was linear, and called the Long Count. Born in January, I am post-Jesus on the cyclical calendar and the Long Count. Basically, I’m so over that guy.

What I want for Christmas is ban against Jesus supposed likeness apearing on any and all covers of current events newsmagazines. Thats what I want.

Ever want to bite a dog? Some black Russian squirrels had the urge. This terrorist cell operated under the name Squirrels Bite Dog: “Squirrels have bitten to death a stray dog which was barking at them in a Russian park, local media report.

Passers-by were reportedly too late to stop the attack by the black squirrels in a village in the far east, which reportedly lasted about a minute.

They are said to have scampered off at the sight of humans, some carrying pieces of flesh.

A pine cone shortage may have led the squirrels to seek other food sources…

A Lazo man who called himself only Mikhalich said there had been “no pine cones at all” in the local forests this year.

“The little beasts are agitated because they have nothing to eat,” he said. “