Scrabble Nerd

I have never been to a Scrabble tournament. I don’t belong to a real-world Scrabble club. I don’t play Scrabble in public places. But in almost every other way, I am a Scrabble Nerd.

I play online, usually 10-minute timed games, via the free software available at <www.isc.ro>. ISC = The Internet Scrabble Club. And, yes, that “ro” means it’s hosted in Romania. I play Scrabble on a Romanian website. Why is it Romanian? I have no idea.

At one point, years ago, I memorized all the allowable two-letter words. I made a stab at the “threes,” but never quite got comfortable with them. I also tried and failed to memorize certain subsets of seven-letter words (SATINE_ and SATIRE_, in case any fellow Scrabble Nerds are curious). At this point I’ve pretty much given up on the memorization thing, because it’s incredibly boring to stare at lists of meaningless letter combinations.

However, I still keep a list of crazy (legal) words my opponents use against me. Words they have no business knowing. Words that prove I am less of a nerd than them. Definitively!

Here, for your edification, is a sampling of the four-letter words from that list:

unco, gleg, liri, nark, haet, yowe, nogg, migg, gadi, ambo, zebu, lowe, nome, adit, sago, corm, mabe, bort, flic, rynd, pice, nene, curf, fley, sorb, hade, cedi, chao, birl, soja, knur, azan, peri, ohia, cete, axil, puli, naoi, unai, vagi, agio, mity, neep, diel, kiva, joss, gite, tate

Get a life, people!

So that I have a better chance of beating you at Scrabble.

On the Romanian Scrabble website.

On which I’ve played several thousand games of Scrabble.

Literally.

(My current username is “mophi,” if any of you are up for a beating.)

Monsieur Mittens

Kittens Are Making My Heart Ache

My neighborhood has a stray kitten infestation. The main concentration seems to be about a block away, but this afternoon I saw one in the garden of my next door neighbor.

They look much like the kitten below, except smaller and cuter.*

*Also, they will never have a toy.

Ladies, Ladies…

Dear Shaylee, Yolanda, Emmily, Camisha, Cassandra, Daesha, Adrianna, Destiney, Hilda, Alana, Iman, Ashanti, Christophe, Maura, Maeghan, Imelda, Jaymie, Kallee, and Laken,

There’s probably a better forum for dealing with this than an open letter posted on my blog, but I wanted to nip it in the bud.

Over the course of the last three days, each of you lovely ladies has asked to become my MySpace friend. Based on the fact that all of you have a prominent link to “View My Sexy Adult Profile (yes, I can post my real nude images there),” I’ve deduced two things:

1. You all want to date me.

2. You are all friends with each other.

Ladies, I’m flattered. You all seem very nice. But FRIENDSHIP IS A TREASURE. I can’t date all of you at once, and I don’t want to cause a rift by singling one of you out. I hope you can forgive me.

All the best,

Morgan

p.s. I think a couple of you may be spelling your names incorrectly.

Plug

I’ve got some improv shows coming up, if you’re interested.

Also, here is a picture of me and my friends being awesome.

Crazy Kid

My old school chums are having a nostalgia-fest on Facebook. It’s strange and wonderful to see old pictures of myself that I’ve never seen before, especially since my memories of childhood are getting foggier and foggier.

This is one of my favorites, posted by my friend Doug: