A ginger-ale drinking game
Feb. 15th, 2016 11:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
asakiyumeThank you, everyone, for your good wishes last entry. The healing angel is recovering quite nicely, though still with lingering joint pain. Hope that goes away for him. This week is winter vacation, so that gives him more time to recuperate without missing more school (he's already missed two weeks).
In English he's supposed to be reading The Kite Runner. Although I was pleasantly surprised by his last book, Angela's Ashes, this one is every bit as awesomely depressing as Good-for-You English-class books come. We've been reading it out loud, and to get us through the current chapter (we're still in the very early part of the book), we together created a drinking game--but with the drink being ginger ale.
Behold:
The check marks represent how many times the thing in question came up (and consequently how many times we took a drink). Hassan is the narrator's childhood playmate and servant, whom the narrator treats rottenly. The narrator's got Big Regret about this as the adult telling the story, but right now we've been working up to whatever Really Terrible thing he's going to do to Hassan. Hence drinking game prompt no. 1: take a drink every time the narrator makes a dark allusion to the thing that made him what he is today.
Drinking game prompt no. 2 and no. 4 are self-explanatory. No. 3 is my shorthand for "disappointment in failing to receive his father's love"--the narrator's father is emotionally distant and not very interested in his son. Drinking game prompt no. 5, Hazaras, means take a drink every time Hazaras, the despised ethnic group that Hassan belongs to, are mentioned.
(In writing this entry I went and looked at a plot summary to see just how bad a thing we're in for. Oh. My. God.)
Let's change the subject. Here is a photo of a fire hydrant with a metal marker on it. It looks sort of like the hydrant is a child holding a balloon. If the snow gets high, the idea is that the metal marker is still visible, so (a) snowplows will be careful and (b) people will dig it out. As you can see, one of the neighbors did indeed dig it out. Thank you, civic-minded neighbor!
For a couple of years, someone or ones went around bending and twisting the markers . . . but that person (or those people) must have lost interest in that very mild form of troublemaking, because there's the marker, tall and straight.
In English he's supposed to be reading The Kite Runner. Although I was pleasantly surprised by his last book, Angela's Ashes, this one is every bit as awesomely depressing as Good-for-You English-class books come. We've been reading it out loud, and to get us through the current chapter (we're still in the very early part of the book), we together created a drinking game--but with the drink being ginger ale.
Behold:
The check marks represent how many times the thing in question came up (and consequently how many times we took a drink). Hassan is the narrator's childhood playmate and servant, whom the narrator treats rottenly. The narrator's got Big Regret about this as the adult telling the story, but right now we've been working up to whatever Really Terrible thing he's going to do to Hassan. Hence drinking game prompt no. 1: take a drink every time the narrator makes a dark allusion to the thing that made him what he is today.
Drinking game prompt no. 2 and no. 4 are self-explanatory. No. 3 is my shorthand for "disappointment in failing to receive his father's love"--the narrator's father is emotionally distant and not very interested in his son. Drinking game prompt no. 5, Hazaras, means take a drink every time Hazaras, the despised ethnic group that Hassan belongs to, are mentioned.
(In writing this entry I went and looked at a plot summary to see just how bad a thing we're in for. Oh. My. God.)
Let's change the subject. Here is a photo of a fire hydrant with a metal marker on it. It looks sort of like the hydrant is a child holding a balloon. If the snow gets high, the idea is that the metal marker is still visible, so (a) snowplows will be careful and (b) people will dig it out. As you can see, one of the neighbors did indeed dig it out. Thank you, civic-minded neighbor!
For a couple of years, someone or ones went around bending and twisting the markers . . . but that person (or those people) must have lost interest in that very mild form of troublemaking, because there's the marker, tall and straight.
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"as awesomely depressing as Good-for-You English-class books come"
Date: 2016-02-16 12:13 pm (UTC)And then there are those movies that are often widely but usually briefly popular, because they suggest that Even in the Direst Situation People are People / Can Love / Have Uplifting Imagination / et cetera. "Life is Beautiful" comes particularly to mind....
Now I have read up the comments, which I should have done before posting. Agreed about the dullness of The Maze Runner movie.
The Kite Runner as a date movie: Oh dear, oh dear. Now, I decided early in life that I hated dates, that it was because people are Testing Each Other /Shopping on dates, and that I wouldn't ever do another*. So that colours my immense amusement and horror about The Kite Runner as a date movie. *peek* Is s/he being Moved? *peek* Should I be Moved? *peek* Is my soul dead if I'd just like to leave? *determined non-peeking when it comes to a central turning point*
Not that I've seen the movie.
But The Kite Runner was on the United Methodist Women reading list when I pastored in Rock Springs, and dutifully read a snootful of the books to reflect glory on my church's quite active UMW. I often wondered, however, what discussion groups for the book were like as concerned *central turning point*, which is not exactly the usual conversational matter of Ladies' Fork Luncheon.
* In fact, one time in college, I found that what I'd assumed was going to a movie with a friend and his friends was something he was thinking of as a date. So my resolve failed, though not through my fault.
Re: "as awesomely depressing as Good-for-You English-class books come"
Date: 2016-02-16 12:45 pm (UTC)Sheeah, re: Central Plot Point--which we haven't reached yet and which yikes almighty, THAT is not going to be fun to read out loud--but how does that get talked about in prudish book groups?!
Re: "as awesomely depressing as Good-for-You English-class books come"
Date: 2016-02-16 05:45 pm (UTC)