Event: Birth of John Deere, inventor of the steel plow and founder of Deere & Company
Year: 1804
Learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Deere_%28inventor%29

F. 喉仏

Learning lessons from one’s mistakes is very important.  Unfortunately, we are only able to do this if we assume consistency.  This policy is generally a bad one when dealing with kanji.  All this is just a lead-up to my pointing out that Theoman will probably be distressed to learn that I did in fact include “Brain Freeze,” (E) which is the newest edition to the game of Operation.  Never having played (or at least, never having competently played) Operation as a child, I felt less loyalty to the assortment of pieces present there in my youth.  The logic behind his decision to avoid bones seemed sound enough, but the Funny Bone isn’t really a bone, now is it?  It’s the ulnar nerve (C).  So, better luck next time, Theoman.  Still, it’s not a total loss.  Half your guesses are on here somewhere, and you spotted the Broken Heart (A) quickly enough.  But really, what KYPC player wouldn’t?

Shirley would probably appreciate it if we made things easier on her by not introducing contexts in which she would be inclined to mention her knee surgery.  We’ll work on that for next week, but for now let’s take a look at her responses.  It seems that Shirley may be a fine doctor after all, for she looks beyond the condition to the root cause itself.  Can excessive co-pay fees lead to a Broken Heart?  It seems possible.  Can really bad health care legislation be responsible for a Charley Horse (B)?  Uhh . . . maybe if it makes you hopping mad, haha . . . Perhaps a well-tickled Funny Bone, causing an exorbitant amount of shaking of sides, might be a reason for kne-uh-hip surgery.  And perhaps the writing of a great number of letters in an attempt to find relief for those kne-uh-hip surgery patients is the source of your Writer’s Cramp (D).  Can’t remember the Hippocratic Oath?  Must be Brain Freeze.  Lacking patience (or patients)?  Clearly, it’s something to do with . . . your . . . Adam’s Apple (F).  Or, as it is known in Japanese, the “throat Buddha.”  Because, as we all know, Buddha was an impulsive, reckless sort of guy.  Right?

You know what’s not going to win Best Picture?  That movie I watched in high school once where Keanu Reeves played Buddha.  And you thought I wouldn’t be able to make that transition.

Yesterday was the Super Bowl.  Did you watch it?  Well, I did, and I was disappointed.  Super Bowl.  Hah!  Nothing “super” about it.  So I set out to find things more deserving of the title “Super.”  Did I succeed?  You be the judge.  Sort through this pile of balls, conductors, heroes, sonics, and Tuesdays and tell me what should really be super.  I’ll even throw that bowl in there, just for good measure.

A. 英雄　B. 音速　C. 火曜日　D. 玉　E. 導体　F. 配管工兄弟　G. 椀

Officer Escobar was not having a great day, but he was willing to admit the possibility that other people were having worse ones.  Take Officer Tang, for example.  She had burst into the precinct mid-morning demanding assistance in arresting someone.  That was astonishing in and of itself, for Tang never asked for anybody’s help for anything, but then when she started describing the situation, it got downright ludicrous.  A person that physically could not be moved from the scene of the crime?  Come on.  No one believed her, but that wasn’t about to stop her.  She tried to convince anyone and everyone she could find—sergeants, lieutenants, the captain, the coroner, homicide detectives, ballistics specialists.

Escobar, luckily, was lowly enough to escape her notice, so he spent much of the morning watching her running around the building yelling at people.  Last he heard she had gone off to the courthouse to try to get the judge to order her arrestee to be removed.

Then there was this kid.  Escobar had taken him into an interrogation room—not because he wanted to scare him, but just because that was where there was space—sat him down, and asked him to explain himself.  Finally Peter was in a position where he felt he had to tell the whole truth.  And I mean the whole truth.  He told him about pouring coffee in his cereal, the muted wrath of Mr. Abrahamson, accidentally stumbling on a couple of sites that may have been pornographic when searching the term “earworm,” being silently mocked by Sourdough for the decay of his musical talent, and stealing a nickel from a saxophone player.  Officer Escobar had heard of bad days before; he had participated in a number himself.  But this one stretched the boundaries of the imagination.

And yet he believed every word.  When the boy mentioned the old woman in the subway station, on the outside, Escobar simply nodded.  On the inside, he jumped out of his shoes.  He had kept his vow to avoid Simon Park Station all those months, but he had never truly forgotten the old woman.  So she had found her champion.  He looked like kind of a mess.  Escobar, in one of his more philosophical moments, supposed that real champions often do.

Even more shockingly, Officer Tang’s story all of a sudden made perfect sense.  In her frantic ravings, she had somehow neglected to mention the age, gender, or location of the person she was trying to apprehend.  If she had, she might have secured assistance sooner.

Escobar wanted to find out more about the woman, for the bits of information he picked up from Tang and the kid really raised more questions than they answered.  And he wanted to let the kid go.  He hadn’t done anything seriously wrong.  But there were some crimes that even Officer Escobar could not overlook.  If you did something to a fellow citizen, he might glance the other way—hey, maybe that person deserved it.  But if you did that same thing to the police, then you would be introduced to justice of the biblical variety.

Event: Ham the Astrochimp becomes the first American (technically, Cameroonian) chimpanzee in space
Year: 1961
Learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ham_the_chimp

G. 販売員

Theoman appeared to be on the right track, guessing what sounded like a list of professions, which these in fact are.  However, as he failed to identify what exactly he was guessing, we have no choice but to assume that he believed these were the names of the rooms in Clue, and thus we can award him no points, for these are in fact the names of possible professions in the game of Life.  All kidding aside, he made the unfortunate mistake of attempting to be too up-to-date.  I can only assume that he, like I, looked up the list online, but I, unlike he, chose to ignore any profession on the list that I could not recall being in the game when I played it as a kid.  Fortunately for him, only two of his guesses–hairstylist and mechanic–were unfamiliar to me.  Unfortunately for him, it seems that most of these characters were unfamiliar to him.  While all of his other guesses do appear on the list, only the Doctor, A, is in the right place.  And he left out the teacher and the artist, two of the most important (and thus least well paid) jobs.

As usual, A Fan tried to hedge his bets by guessing a little bit of everything (and throwing in a bunch of stuff about movies that is totally unrelated).  Or is it?  Was his calling the doctor Moneyball a reference to Scott Hatteberg’s supposedly career-ending ruptured elbow nerve?  Or how about calling E, the police officer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close?  I don’t know anything about the movie (other than that it was panned by rottentomatoes.com), but that certainly sounds like it could describe the job.  The connection between F, the artist, and Midnight in Paris is obviously appropriate, even more so than if he had said The Artist.  I am biased toward the former because it contains something that I frequently find to be a key element in movies: words.  In conclusion, Hugo probably should win, which means that it has no chance.  At least they only nominated nine movies for Best Picture this year instead of ten.

Shirley, following A Fan’s lead, decided to go her own way, and for some of her answers we don’t even have to stretch that much to make them sound right.  Her inclusion of the doctor as something to throw away is presumably yet another comment on the pain of knee surgery.  B, the athlete, is most definitely something you would find at a football game.  I believe I have done my taxes while watching TV before (I may have even done them while falling asleep); would C, the accountant, do the same?  Let’s hope not.  I thank my lucky stars that I teach at the college level, because if I had to listen to little kids scream “TEACHER!” (D) all day, I’d certainly lose it.  Are there police officers in the sky?  They have helicopters, I suppose.  Sounds like a good candidate for a classic Scattergories argument.  “Artist” for “things you are allergic to” sounds like too much of a stretch for me, but I give an unqualified thumbs up for the answer of “salesperson” (G) in the category of “things you are afraid of.”  There’s a reason I don’t own a landline phone.

Okay, this time I’ll be more specific.  We’re going to do a set of things from one of the other games, a set of things that would be of particular concern to one of the kinds of people on this most recent list (that is, they would be if they were actual things and not just a bunch of puns or other silly jokes).  Still a bit of a noodle scratcher?  Try lying down for a while.  I hear that’s good for what ails you.  Don’t take my word for it, though; I’m no . . .

A. 傷ついた心　B. こむら返り　C. 尺骨神経　D. 書痙　E. 脳の凍結

F. 喉仏

Peter was not looking at his watch, so he did not know that it had taken him less than five minutes to decide that the hastily laid scheme of squirrel and man had gone awry.

He was standing across the street from the station, trying to look nonchalant, and therefore assuming that he looked like he was plotting a crime no less serious than high treason.  Four minutes and thirty-seven seconds earlier, he had arrived outside the building and thought at the squirrel: Go inside, get the key, and come back here.  He even imagined a key as he thought it, just to be sure, though it was only after sending in Rocky that he realized he had no idea what a handcuff key looks like, or whether it would bear any resemblance to the common house key he had visualized.

Now he was plagued by regret, that uniquely horrifying blend of remorse and anticipation known only to a secret admirer who has dropped a letter with his name on it into the mailbox and immediately afterward starts trying to jam his arm into its depths, desperate to take it back.  He tried willing Rocky to return, but the squirrel would not appear at the open window where he had originally darted in.  Maybe he was out of range.  Or maybe . . . something worse.

“They can’t arrest a squirrel” was sounding dumber by the second.  He wondered what he might do if he stumbled on a small animal stealing his keys.  And what if they weren’t just keys to a house or an apartment, but something far more important?  What if the squirrel evaded capture and was out of reach?  What if I had a gun . . .?

Peter wasn’t about to run off and join PETA, but he still would have felt bad if the squirrel came to harm and it was his fault.  He felt a strange bond of kinship with the rodent; they were both being manipulated by the same evil song.  And then, there was always the risk that the cops would see Rocky and think the same thing Peter did: that no normal animal would come in to steal keys if it was acting on its own free will.  And then they would look out the window and see the guy across the street, with his hands in his pockets, whistling, as if whistling could make a person look innocent anywhere outside of a 1930’s cartoon . . .

His mind was made up.  He was going in after him.  Leave no ma—no squirrel behind.

The man at the front desk inside was thoroughly distracted by the telephone and might not have noticed Peter even if he shouted.  Peter considered this a stroke of luck.  He did not want to talk to anyone, because he could not imagine that conversation going well (“Excuse me, have you seen my squirrel?”)  He crouched down, both to avoid being seen and so that he could get a better view of the station as Rocky would see it.  Where could he have gone?

He crept past the desk and into a hallway, already preparing the defense that there were no signs explicitly telling him that he couldn’t go that way (at least, none that he could see from his squirrel’s-eye-view).  He may have been talking to himself.  When you’re sneaking around the police station looking for your lost squirrel, there really isn’t any point in pretending you’re not insane anymore.

A human can imitate a squirrel’s view of life by bending the knees and leaning forward, but he can only go so far.  The vast differences in stature remain.  Because it is small, a squirrel can be low to the ground and still look up.  Peter was all but forced to look down in that position, which was probably why he crashed into a pair of legs only a minute or two into the search.

After noting the unmistakable dark blue of the uniform pants, Peter looked up, past a respectable gut, into a wide, light brown face with receding black hair and a rather unruly mustache.  The face looked neither enraged nor pleased; it was simply weary.

Well, Peter thought, the 5% of his brain that wanted to remain optimistic somehow drowning out the 95% that wanted to run, at least that solves one problem.

“Does this belong to you?” the officer asked.  He was holding a frantic Rocky by the tail.

Event: Roman Emperor Caligula is killed by the Praetorian Guards, who then proclaim Claudius Emperor
Year: 41
Learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caligula

Clearly, the secret point of this challenge was not to make any real attempt at identifying the games but simply to spend the whole time talking about whether or not we like(d) them.  Well spotted, A(nother) Fan!  His comments on Operation were highly insightful and vastly understandable, especially to those of us not blessed with an overabundance of manual dexterity as children.  As for Life, on the other hand, he seems to have missed the point (I’m just talking about the game . . . right?)  Even at a young age, we players were able to discover pretty much right off the bat that going to college was an absolute waste of time.  All it did was allow you access to a couple of extra careers, and since career choice was random and the salary unrelated to said career choice, this was exceedingly pointless.  And you got stuck with loans!  Skipping college was a no-brainer.  Really, though, if you want to avoid “difficult” decisions like that, you’re better off sticking with Candy Land, which I for one was still playing in college (apparently I failed to learn the lesson that Life was trying to teach me).  Although there was, perhaps, less woofing involved.

But I suppose we should give him a more objective score as well, to see whether or not his claim about blindness enhancing his other senses (or at least his results) has any merit.  He’s one for six (or one for five if you consider that he only made five guesses with any chance of being correct), picking up a correct answer at E.  Looks like he’s better at Clue than he remembers.  Still, it’ll be hard for him to take too much joy in the victory, as he identified the much-maligned Monopoly (F) as his beloved Bridge.

Shirley’s opinions were a little more subtle, but we can still tell what she likes (the intrigue of Clue, the simplicity of Candy Land, the absurdity of Life) and what she doesn’t (the facelessness of Sorry, the interminability of Monopoly, anything under the sun related to the word “operation”).  Her guesses, too, were more subtly correct, which is a polite way of saying that they were wrong.  The second character in A, now that I think about it, does look a bit like one of those awkwardly shaped pieces in a too-small hole, but this is actually a country; the “Land” of “Candy Land.”  Presumably Shirley doesn’t want the weight of a whole nation on her new steel knee, so she’ll be okay being wrong about that one.  We can clearly see the butler in B raising up a knife to do violence to . . . some sort of complicated clockwork mechanism, it looks like, though that would seem to provide for a pretty poor mystery.  Anyway, as we all know, all butlers are British, and all British people are exceedingly polite, so it only makes sense that he would say, “Sorry” after doing the deed.  Shirley, however, says “Sorry” when presented with C, the Operation.  And D, the simplest one, is of course Life.  Just as it should be, right?

(Pause for laughter)

Theoman quietly picked up three correct answers.  This is a kid that you never want to let be the banker.

I’m still in a bit of a gaming mood, so this week’s challenge won’t stray too far.  We’re going to be working with a set of things from one of the games we just finished talking about (and no, I’m not including Bridge).  However, here’s the trick: I’m not going to tell you which game.  You have to guess that for yourself.  I will provide a couple hints, though: remember that KYPC has already had quizzes on the murder weapons from Clue and the playing pieces from Monopoly.  Presumably the Wordsman isn’t that repetitive.  Also, let’s give me a little credit and assume that I’m not going to present you with something as boring as the array of colors or numbers featured in Sorry.

A. 医者　B. 運動選手　C. 会計士　D. 教師　E. 警察官　F. 芸術家

G. 販売員

The squirrel turned around and bounded up the tree like it was being chased by a rabid dog.  It settled on a low branch and looked back at Peter with that same focused stare.  It was almost eerie, like watching a swarm of gnats fly in a single-file line.

He refused to be convinced by this demonstration.  Running up trees was something that squirrels did all the time.  It was entirely possible that it had decided to race up there on its own, and that the timing was a mere coincidence.  In order to prove it, he would need to convince the squirrel to do something it would never do normally.  Since Simon Park already had one resident who had made a name for herself shouting at trees, Peter chose to think his next command rather than say it out loud: Sing the alphabet song.

The squirrel did not open its mouth and start belting out, “A, B, C.”  It simply continued to stare at him.  It may have just been his imagination, but he thought he could see it shaking its tiny head slightly, as if to dislodge a pesky insect . . . or piece of music.  But the test was a failure.  Peter assured himself that his mind was simply running wild, and that he had no ability to command small rodents to do his bidding.

Unless, he thought, now playing the devil’s advocate’s devil’s advocate (as only a lawyer can), it just can’t obey commands it can’t comprehend.

Peter wrestled for a while with the idea of a command that would be meaningful to the squirrel but still be something it would never do on its own.  After rejecting a number of possibilities as too cruel, he noticed one of his fellow street musicians a little ways along the path.  He was a saxophonist, but at the moment he was taking a food break instead of performing.  The man was eating a large sandwich and making an extremely slovenly job of it: scraps of lettuce and other vegetables, bits of bread, and slivers of meat were scattered around, in, and on his open case.

Run over there, jump into the case, and bring back a coin—one of those shiny metal round things, Peter commanded, before he even really knew why.

As the squirrel dashed off, he realized that there was probably more to the order than a subconscious desire to commit petty theft.  No ordinary animal, he reasoned, would ever run into a veritable feast like that and come back bearing one of the few items that could not possibly be construed as food.

He watched the squirrel—which he had decided to name Rocky—race over and leap into the case.  The musician was distracted trying to negotiate his way through a large meatball and noticed nothing.  A moment later Rocky bounded back, bearing in his (or her—Peter had no idea how to tell with squirrels) mouth a small, shiny metal round thing.  He reached down.  It was a nickel.  He felt a little sorry for the musician.

Then Peter laughed.  What a joke!  The song worked exactly as the woman said it would, but he was so bad at it that it only worked on small animals.  “What am I supposed to do?” he muttered.  “Have this squirrel break into the police station and—?”

It was then that Peter had the stupidest idea he had had all day.

He had had plenty of bad ideas so far, ranging from the inconsiderate (practicing the Speech before sunrise) to the harmless and silly (looking up old annoying commercial jingles on YouTube) to the downright suicidal (running across busy streets without looking), but none of those had been quite this stupid.

It started with a simple thought—They can’t arrest a squirrel—and ended with an image of Rocky bounding toward him, holding a key just as skillfully as he had held the coin a moment earlier.

Even stupider, however, was that he decided to go for it.  Those that knew him—family, friends, less-tipsy coworkers—would have never expected such as decision out of Peter Hamlin.  Then again, maybe it wasn’t really Peter Hamlin calling the shots.  After all, the real Peter Hamlin slept on a normal schedule, worked eight-to-four (three on Fridays), and was a law-abiding citizen.  This man, on the other hand, was manipulated by sounds that existed only inside his head, fraternized with undesirables who got in trouble with the police, had already broken several laws (most of them traffic laws) that day, and commanded the loyalty of squirrels.  Perhaps the stupidest idea of all would be thinking that these two were, in fact, the same person.

Before he could talk himself out of it, Peter—or someone who looked a lot like him—set off for the police station.

The saxophonist had finished his late lunch/early dinner and promptly returned to plying his trade.  He did not even bother to rinse his mouth first, causing woodwind teachers everywhere to wince at the damage he was doing to his reed (they may or may not have been comforted to learn that the reed was already well past its prime and smelled strongly of baloney).  While his attention had been elsewhere for the food break, during the performance his eyes were fixed on his case, which was why he saw a squirrel run up, drop in a coin, and sprint away.

“Damn,” he said, pausing in astonishment.  “I’m even better than I thought.”

Event: Popeye the Sailor first appears in E.C. Segar’s Thimble Theatre
Year: 1929
Learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popeye