Computer in the Kitchen, Cake Icing, Spans

What's your favorite kitchen utensil?
M: I like straws.
V: I can tell you what I don't like a lot, which are currently mouse traps that fail to trap mice.
M: Those aren't really a kitchen utensil. They'd a tool you use in the kitchen.
V: Well then what's a kitchen utensil?
M: Something you use to either prepare or to consume food. Mice do not help make food and they certainly not "good eats."
V: Haht! Well what about this computer? It is in our kitchen and sometimes it finds recipes for us to make. Does that qualify it as a kitchen utensil?
M: No - it's just an information gatherer. It doesn't actually take an active part in the preparing of food.
V: I think your computer is sorely offended by this.
M: Remember when we moved in and put the computer in the kitchen and my mom freaked out because she was worried that it was too close to cooking surfaces and that we'd ruin it?
V: What she didn't count on was me and you eating breakfast every morning on it.
M: We did that in Hershey - Austin too.
V: I think I've spilled breakfast cereal milk on the damn thing too many times to be sorry for. Also - toast.
M: I had a Pop Tart for breakfast this morning.
V: Did you eat it off of the number pad?
M: No - I ate it in the car.
V: Tastes better off the number pad.

What are the contents in your refrigerator at the moment?
M: There was a piece of chocolate cake from the diner, but I'm eating it now.
V: You should take another bite. I'll type for a while.
M: I'm not sure I can hand over my typing responsibilities even for chocolate cake.
V: Then I would suggest putting that cake on the number pad. Umm..I think when I think of the fridge I think of the Brita filter and how, unlike orange juice, there is an endless supply of Brita water.
M: Dude! You ate the icing off the top of my cake!
V: Dude! I had a bite of cake - I didn't discriminate, I just dug in!
M: But you ate half the icing and you don't even like icing!
V: You exaggerate. There is a full other side that is covered in icing so even if I ate half of one side's icing, and I'm not saying that is the case here, but if it were, that would still only constitute one quarter of the icing.
M: All I'm saying is - I like cake.

Say “I live in a house and I like chicken” in another language.
M: Ohhh...I can do this one!
V: Well do it.
M: "Ik woon in een huis en ik hou van kip."
V: Ahh.."Yo soy en una casa y quiero pollo." I think.
M: You are a house and you love chicken?
V: Translate that with "Babble-shit"
M: Babble-shit says you're correct. Huh. I guess your Spanish is okay enough to come up with that phrase. I'm (slightly) impressed.
V: There is no guess or slightly in parenthesis! I owned that sentence!
M: Ja - maar ik kan van alles schrijven in nederlands. Jij ben niet zo goed met spans.
V: Can I have another piece of that cake? Not an icing piece even though there's icing over every last inch of it. Oh....and, I have always thought that when you say the word for Spanish in Dutch, that is: "spans" I have always felt that it sounds like some horrible STD that only afflicts the elderly and would have something to do with the combination of pantyhose and absorbent underpants. Spans. That is "Ohhhhhh! My hiiiiiippppp! It's no where near as hurting to me as my sppppaaaannnnsss flareup!"
M: I'm not touching or elaborating on that one.
V: Best not to touch it. Lest you get a great, raging case of the premature SPANS!

No questions today - but a few answers

Epyllionaire Vincent is away on a grad school, non-profit art collective, scouting for a good grade in his sculpture class trip to NYC.

Epyllionaire Molly Beth is keeping the home fires burning back in Philly.

Because of this, there are no questions tonight and I thought I'd take the time to give a little history lesson about why the Epyllionaires do what we do.

So we've been married for almost two years (2nd wedding anniversary on 20 May!) and been together for almost nine years. But we've known each other since the 6th grade and even dated in middle school. We've got a complicated and checkered history but it's worked for us and we're a happy, healthy, childless couple. What keeps us this way is the fact that we honestly enjoy communicating. We talk a whole fucking lot about everything and absolutely nothing. Our conversations sound pretty much identical to how we answer questions.

Four years ago we read an interview with David Lynch that wasn't a great final product, but had an astounding set of questions. I had a LiveJournal at the time and convinced V to answer it with me. We had fun - the people who read it seemed to enjoy it - and we revisited it annually for a couple of years.

The advent of Myspace made it easier to find surveys and to answer them - we did one together about a month ago and received comments like:

"you guys are AMAZING. i want you to quit your jobs and answer myspace surveys together, for the rest of our lives."

and

"Best blog I've ever read on myspace, including the Jedi blog and Dane Cook's blog."

(Thank you Rosalie and Minela!)

This prompted us to start a separate blog just for answering questions. We searched out an obscure literary term, added "aires" to it, and now you've got The Epyllionaires Questions Answered Blog.

We would love to ultimately receive questions from any readers - but we can't promise we'll answer any questions that try to get real personal about the "real" demons in our past(s), our sex life, (although we might answer some of those) or our financial standing,(school debt out the wazoo like everyone else). We also will ignore any direct questions about our friends and family. (No, I will not give you the cell numbers of my "hottie brother" or my "sweet ass sister." I don't want to think about either of them in that way and you shouldn't either.)

Transvestite Dracula, Egyptian MJ, No food for Vincent

Whats the best Halloween costume you've had?
V: The best Halloween costume I've ever had was the nylon mask Dracula. Mostly, if not entirely, because it freaked Chad the fuck out.
M: It's kind of cruel to like a costume because it made your baby brother upset.
V: Well, it was also supreme transvestite Dracula. It was kind of like a cross between Boris Karloff and Tammy Faye Baker.
M: What was Chad?
V: A Penn State football player.
M: So your parents took you out trick-or-treating as a toddler quarter back and a cross dressing blood sucker?
V: Ah - ooh - now that I see the picture I remember that I was wearing a sweet black bomber jacket with jeans. So I s'pose I was a cross dressing, airplane flying, Dracula on biz-caz-Fri.
M: Brian and I were salt and pepper shakers one year. We both had colanders covered in foil on our heads and weird tunics that didn't really let us sit down comfortably. I think it was cute, but all of the photos are missing.

Ever bought a CD for just one song?
M: Umm...Primitive Radio Gods....
V: What was that CD called?
M: Rocket.
V: Plenty of times I've bought CDs because of one song and that's turned out just fine. But I don't believe I've ever purchased an ENTIRE CD for just one song.
M: Before I got into The Smiths I bought their best of album from one of those CD clubs because I wanted "How Soon is Now." Umm..and I got Blue Oyster Cult's best of for "Don't Fear the Reaper."
V: I remember how elated I was as a pre-teen when I realized that I wasn't required to make any further purchases when "Remember the Time" was released as a single. I spent a good two days being depressed that I owned "Dangerous" but not "Remember the Time." Having spent my childhood listening to 45's and Greatest Hits tapes (Thanks, Mom and Dad.) I thought only one single or hit could be released per album so I was fully prepared to buy the "new" Michael Jackson album for "Remember the Time." Since then I have a more frugal approach that involves research before purchase.
M: Wasn't "Remember the Time" the video with Shaq?
V: Yeah, that's the one where he fucks Shaq in his 21 1/2 sized shoe. And Shaq's all going like, "Slam dunk, Michael! Slam dunk! Fuck my mouth! Nah! Nawh! Mmmm!"
M: No, seriously - wasn't Shaq in the video?
V: You are thinking of Michael Jordan for the video "Jam."
M: Then who plays the Egyptian king in "Remember the Time?"
V: Jackie Mason. No, wait, I mean Jackie Robinson. No! I mean Lawrence Olivier as Robinson Crusoe! Actually, it was Eddie Murphy.

M: Didn't that guard play basketball?
V: Yes, it was MAGIC JOHNSON! Magic AIDS! You know, A I D S. It was the 90's.

Describe your favorite meal.
V: Sorry, I can't answer because I'm listening to the Michael Jackson song.

Gabriel O'Hara, Rick Astley, Don't Tell Your Pastor

If you were a character in a book, what character would you be and in what book?
M: I bet you're expecting me to say something profound being that I'm a graduated English major who has read hundreds and hundreds of books.
V: Not profound, just esoteric. Or else have a really unexpected reason for something blatant and obvious.
M: I'd want to be in a children's picture book because the conflict would be minimal and manageable and I'd always get a happy ending.
V: I've always wanted to be Gabriel O'Hara.
M: From Spiderman 2099?
V: Um, yes. I always thought that they were priming him to be the future version of the Green Goblin, (THEY being Peter David), and he was pretty bad ass. I took my confirmation name from him after St. Francis de Sales told me Miguel was "un-worthy."
M: Would Michael have been an okay choice?
V: Oh, I'm sure. But apparently the Catholic Jesus doesn't like non-American English names. I know it's sooooo far fetched to want something thaaaat out there.
M: Do you think you could have gotten Miguel if you were Hispanic or Latin American?
V: Not in Robesonia. They probably would prefer "Bill" or "Sam" or something like that.
M: We grew up in a fucked up place.

Have you ever lied to a preacher/pastor/rabbi/etc???
V: That's funny.
M: It wasn't intentional - I picked the questions long before you decided to recount your confirmation story.
V: Well, I suppose I liked when I got confirmed and told the Jesus I would go to church every Sunday. And I lied when I had to make first confession.
M: What did you lie about?
V: When Father Tom seemed unimpressed with my true to life story of running away I started making up bad things I did in school.
M: You made up fake sins so that you could be forgiven for them? Wouldn't that mean you'd have to confess making up lies in confession at a later confession?
V: No, I would just self-regulate later, beating myself in my parents' basement with a ratchet and a cork screw tied together with bread twisty ties. Or just listening to Rick Astley.
Mea culpa! Mea culpa!
M: If you still went to church would you have to confess lying about what you confessed in confession?
V: I don't' know, we should write the pope a letter.
M: Well, personally, I can't remember lying to any priests, but I'm sure I have.
V: Didn't you ever lie to the nuns? You were like four. All four year olds lie.
M: I probably lied to the nuns. They only let us draw once a week and I always wanted to draw more often. I'm sure I spun some story to get my hands on more markers, more often.

Do you wash behind your ears?
V: Every fucking day.
M: You wash behind your ears separately and intentionally?
V: You don't?
M: I just figure that the shampoo from my hair takes care of that.
V: Do you let the shampoo from your hair wash your ass crack and bellybutton?
M: No, of course not. My head is a long way from my ass.
V: Well, I shall be teaching any spawn we may have how to properly wash their head cavities and crevices.
M: It's not like the back of my ears smells or anything, I think I'm doing an okay job.
V: I have no complaints about your hygiene. If you don't want your ears squeaky clean that's between you and GOD! Just don't tell your pastor.

Poking, Pretzels, Plants

What do you do when you’re bored?
V: I make drawings.
M: You make drawings when you aren't bored, why we're waiting for food at a diner, when you wake up, in the dark in bed, and sometimes when you're driving.
V: That's what I'm saying. I make drawings, I don't get bored.
M: You never get bored? I don't believe that.
V: When have you ever seen me bored unless I have to sit through something and I can't draw.
M: You get bored whenever we're forced to go to church or dance recitals. Then you make weird noises and/or comments that make me laugh and get nasty looks by those sitting around us.
V: Yes. What about you?
M: I whine. And poke things. Usually I whine while poking things.
V: Like me.

What is, in your opinion, the easiest job in the world?
V: The easiest job I've ever had was working at a gas station. I could listen to tapes and make drawings while I sold people coffee and cigarettes.
M: I don't think I've ever really had an "easy" job. I've had boring, unstimulating jobs, but they weren't exactly easy. The closest I come to easy was the last month I was working for Bachman Pretzel and old man Bachman had me make holiday decorations out of pretzel rods. I got paid like $9 an hour for that shit.

Do you have any plants in your house?
M: I'm trying to grow some herbs in tiny pots I got at Target for $1. And I've got two bamboo stalks that I haven't killed yet.
V: I have this small tropical plant that I bought three and a half years ago that was basically dead before I got it home. Somehow it's still living and not growing so much as dense-i-fying. Also, I just planted two mouse traps because our little mouse friend seems to have invited other, smaller mousey friends.
M: I think it birthed those smaller mousey friends, not invited them.
V: Oh. Right.
M: I don't want the mice to eat our crackers anymore.
V: I'm sick of the mices getting into my booze! If I had a nickel for every sauced up rodent I've seen running against the walls . . .
M: You'd have no nickels.
V: Then who's been drinking my booze?
M: Which booze exactly?
V: It seems like the whiskey empties itself.
M: Mice don't like whiskey - Vincent likes whiskey.

Desceased political figure, EXXTREEME Adventure, Not among

If you could meet one deceased political figure, who would you meet?
M: What exactly do they consider political? National, international, local . . .
V: Religious. I think maybe I would pick some Mayan guru. I don't know any of them by name but I would very much like somebody high up on the Mayan political ladder and a translator.
M: I'd kina like to see what Martin Luther has to say for himself. 'Cause really it was his break from the Catholic church that ultimately started all this crazy Christian fervor. Speaking of which, did you know that the in-speech is to call fundamentalist Christians "Fundies?"
V: No, who calls them "Fundies?"
M: The goth chick I yanked these questions from called them "Fundies" and it took me a full three minutes to figure out what the hell she was talking about.
V: Fundies also seems to communicate something about their underpants being amusing. This is why I think I still prefer "Bible Bangers" because it sounds nice and dirty. . . raunchy. You know, like "Fuck that bible hard!"
M: You should probably stop there.

If you saw a big sack of rainbow colored drugs, what would you do?
M: How big is the bag exactly? Because I wouldn't just be like, "Yum! This bag looks tasty!" and eat them all if it were a garbage bag.
V: No, you wouldn't eat them all. . . you would separate them all into their individual colors and shapes. I would probably grab the bag very nonchalantly, save half for consumption, and sell the rest. That would be my summer job.
M: You could make up "Grab Bags" like they have at the dollar store where each one had a handful of mystery pills. You might have a problem coming up with the Boy/Girl gender distinctions, though.
V: I wouldn't come up with gender distinctions, I would come up with political distinctions Conservative/Liberal. The Conservatives get a mixture of Runts, M&Ms, Skittles, and Jelly Beans. Liberals get the pills. No, I change that again. I would mark a distinction. It would be Dangerous Adventure/EXXXTREEEME Adventure. The only difference being that there's Pop Rocks mixed into the EXXXTREEME bag. Who doesn't like Pop Rocks with their drugs?
M: Has anybody ever mixed Pop Rocks with drugs? And if so, what is the street name for said drugs?
V: Oh. I'm not going to answer that because I don't know.
M: Snopes.com says that there is candied Meth. It's a pretty new article and apparently you can now get peanut butter flavored Meth.
V: We have our finger on the pulse.
M: Yeah, of drug dealers.

Is there anything really trivial that greatly pisses you off?
M: I get irrationally upset when people use the word "between" when they're comparing more than two things. You have to decide between chocolate and vanilla, but you have to decide among chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, and peanut butter meth.
V: What about if you have for choices but your brain can only deal with binaries so you must deal with them separately against each other, that is chocolate or strawberry. Strawberry moves onto the next round where it faces vanilla, etc. Isn't that between?
M: Technically if you did it that way it would be between each pair, but then you aren't really comparing all of the things equally. Strawberry might win against chocolate, but chocolate might have beaten vanilla.
V: But then shouldn't we do away with a word like between? Because - let me explain here - there is ALWAYS a third, fourth, sometimes fifth option. That is, chocolate, vanilla, OR nothing OR both OR (always an option) die. Therefore I propose the word between is done away with in the English language except in the case of grossly misusing it to piss off uppity English majors. Oh snap!
M: . . .
V: Uppity English majors sounds mean. I didn't mean to hurt anybody's feelings. Actually mostly yours. I don't want to hurt your feelings. If you like between, let's keep it. I will try to use it properly.
M: Okay. It's a deal.
V: A deal between US? As in, you AND me? Two, not among.

Social Work, Diamonds, Those Penguin Fucks

What were your favourite childhood toys?
M: I was a big stuffed animal kid. I had lots of them and I can remember very vividly creating elaborate back stories for all of them.
V: Didn't you have "Social Worker Barbie?"
M: That's a family myth that I'm pretty sure my mum made up because it sounded good. I've claimed to remember it, but I don't really. I didn't like Barbies and I sure as hell didn't pretend that they were social workers.
V: Whenever you mom tells that story I know she's talking about a Barbie doll but for some reason the mental image I get is of My Pet Monster being all like "Rrrr! You can't keep this crack baby!"
M: I had a My Pet Monster but it never occurred to me to make it interact with my Barbies - mostly I just liked playing with its handcuffs.
V: Haht! Yeah... I got a lot of mileage out of a rectangular laundry basket and this plastic tub in the shape of a cylinder that I covered in stickers. This is not to say that I didn't have any "real toys" but all of my real toys somehow interacted with these two objects on a regular basis. I do remember the GI Joe hovercraft being a big deal.
M: I had a My Little Pony beauty parlor - but then it got moldy.
V: Eww. Did it like spit water?
M: Yup. Out of a flower shaped nozzle.
V: What was that for? Clean up?
M: It was a beauty parlor. Ponies need their manes washed. Duh. It's not like it was a pony bidet or anything.
V: Did it come with a pony pooper scooper?
M: My Little Ponies are all house trained.
V: Plus they have no anuses.

What was the last song you got stuck in your head?
V: Desiree by Neil Diamond.
M: Yeah, you were singing that earlier and it was going straight through me. I don't understand your attraction to Neil Diamond. I think he's creepy.
V: "When I became a man / At the hands / Of a girl almost twice my age" With an exclamation point at the end. Neil Diamond does a lot of exclamation points.
M: He just makes me cringe. Why can't you ever fall in love with musicians who don't make me cringe?
V: I fell in love with Mike Doughty. And Michael Stipe for that matter.
M: Mike Doughty is a-okay, Michael Stipe too. But Mike Patton? Blargh. I've got "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" stuck in my head currently. I've been trying to get it out since this afternoon.
V: "And . . . I. . . wanna. . . beyour. . . dawg"
M: Not the same song. Although I would have liked to have heard the "intermediate guitar players" I had in class try to tackle it. It would have been amusing.

Step into your cave. There you will find your power animal. What kind of animal is it?
M: The only thing I can think of is the penguin from "Fight Club." I don't think I could ever have a power animal because of that image.
V: Why is it that penguins are America's new power animal? Is it because seeing gaggles of same looking, small brained, portly, wobbly porkchops reminds them of something familiar?
M: Pork chops? You're using the butchered carcass of one animal to describe humans finding something relatable in another animal?
V: I suppose I could use "Chiefs." Wobbly Chiefs. Americans love black and white, wobbly chiefs. And fuck that stupid documentary in the overbloated ass for instigating and endless cloy of crap. A barrage of mind numbing. . . what pole do penguins live on?
M: Dunno.
V: The South because nothing lives on the North Pole except Santa Claus. That's it! The answer is to replace Santa Claus with a herd of fat fucking birds that waddle into your chimneys and bring you yule tide joy. And because those chubby pigeons aren't specifically Christian or Jewish or anything every little capitalist boy and girl chiefs can enjoy. And you know what?
M: What?
V: Good riddance.
M: Good riddance to what? You're ranting and I'm not sure if you're pissed off at penguins, Americans, Santa Claus, or capitalist chiefs.
V: Oh. I thought it was a package deal. But just to clarify - good riddance to the Big Chief.
M: So what's your power animal?
V: Toemuckin.
M: Me too.