For Girly Beach Weekend 2010, Emily is having a custom Monopoly board made with Beach House stuff on it. I thought, what is a custom board without custom figures?

In this blurry cell phone picture, we have represented:

-The World’s Largest Frying Pan, located in Long Beach -A sand castle, for the annual competition at Cannon Beach -A bottle of wine, because we are fueled by booze -Jake the Alligator Man, located at Marsh’s Free Museum in Long Beach -That Smug Bastard Bald Eagle who flies away whenever Emily tries to photograph him -The horse that gave Anne epic facial swelling -A crab for Jackie-Chan style stomping on the beach -An elephant in a shower cap, which is completely an in-joke -The ‘I’m Calling Grandma’ creepy doll that weI hid all over the house -And, of course, the blowjob pirate.

On Christmas morn, I struggled out of bed toward my phone, which had been buzzing nonstop for about an hour with ‘MERRY CHRISTMAS OMG’ text messages and at some point, my conscious mind recognized that screeching “BAH HUMBUG, MOTHERFUCKERS” in its general direction wasn’t going to actually make it stop.

…I am not a morning person.

But struggle out of bed I did, and after I fed Napoleon and swigged about a gallon of coffee, I was ready to face the day. First things first–I responded to the wave of texts, and then I was completely and totally free to play with the toys SantaShadowstitch had brought me.

Not just any toys. A battle unicorn, for one. A super uber metal battle unicorn, and when it transforms, the spine is used as a flail for ultimate badassery.

I haven’t yet figured out the teleport mode but once I do, the battle unicorn and I will be zapping all over the damn place.

He also brought me a highly-poseable Castlevania Dracula figure. This figure is currently scaling my giant Elvira, and I can appreciate that sort of mojo.

My mom got me some books and a set of super-sharp knives, because when people see something and think of me, somehow it’s almost always knives of some sort. I’m starting to get a complex.

One of the books was Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions by James Randi. I have begun reading this book, and Randi is pissed that men of science are backing up con artists who claim psychic abilities. The word ‘charlatan’ is used in the first chapter no less than twenty times. I love it. I think that if James Randi ever met Mr. “I consider those who are interested in the occult to be the scientists of the future” Konstantinos, he would slap him across the face. Repeatedly.

I then settled in with Napoleon on the couch and read him ‘The Pirates! In an Adventure with Napoleon’. His favorite part wasn’t even about Napoleon, it was about the Pirate King:

The Pirate King paused for a moment to pull a great white shark from behind his throne and punch it in half with a fist. A fair amount of shark guts went over the tables at the front, but none of the audience minded at all.

Napoleon, you see, is strongly anti-shark ever since he saw that segment on Shark Week with footage of a shark attacking a dog very similar to himself. It reminded him of his own dog mortality, and he does not like that one bit. He is almost as anti-shark as he is anti-midget.

After storytime, we took a nap. Then, I looked at the kitchen, which had turned into a nightmare zone with all of the baking I’d been doing, and just looking at it made me feel like I needed yet another nap.

Eventually, Anne came to pick me up for Christmas dinner at her place with her sister. My official capacity was to keep them from rumbling under the Christmas tree, but I am a terrible person to pick for that function as I almost always encourage fights.

After dinner, things got a bit silly. I had only had one glass of wine, I think Anne’s sister had two, and Anne herself didn’t have any, so I can’t really explain WHY we all got slapstick-y at once. Maybe Trader Joe’s is injecting interesting chemicals into their food.

All I know is that after we listened to Ultraman Ukelele (which you should also pause and watch, right this very moment):

we began to play a game called ‘Bananagrams’ which is a bit like Scrabble in that you are building interconnected words from tiles drawn from a central pile, but instead of taking turns on a board, everyone works independently, and the first person to use all their tiles when the pool is down to less than the total amount of players wins.

You see, I got caught up while playing. In an effort to finish the word ‘quaalude’, I drew far too many tiles using the method where one dumps a letter back in the pool and draws three in exchange and ended up with a hot mess of letters, far too many to attempt to win the game. My brain locked up. I lumped everything together and smiled winningly.

You should know that ‘juggaaalo’ is a totally acceptable spelling of the word if you say it like you’re screaming in horror at the mere idea of seeing a live one, which is how everyone should say it, anyway.

But ‘Hottenfoyzingoux’–there was no way I was getting away with that one.

One by one, it struck us funny. We began to make up definitions, etymology, and laugh more and more hysterically. We decided that Hottenfoyzingoux was semi-Swedish, and would be the name of something sold at IKEA.

Then it happened: We made Anne laugh so hard she vomited. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life before. One minute, she was laughing hysterically, the next minute, she was running for the bathroom and her placemat and carpet were stained–victims in a game of war they weren’t even playing.

Uh, Merry Christmas?

…If I’m giving people the gift of vomit, no wonder they think of me when they see knives.