Official Gameplay Guide: SKITTLES

Skittles is a roadtrip game an obsession that my nephews introduced me to a few years ago on a family vacation. (For legal reasons, I suppose I should clarify that, to my knowledge, Skittles and Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company have absolutely nothing to do with this game and even less to do with my blog. Also, the Skittles.com website is probably the trippiest thing I've ever seen come from a candy corporation, so click there and enjoy that some other time.) This game is highly addictive, so proceed at your own risk.

I should also say that the rules that I'm about to explain to you are strictly my nephews' rules-- they are my judges and parliamentarians. If ever there is a question regarding gameplay, I text my sister to ask the boys for clarification. (We take skittles very seriously.)

At first glance, the game is very simple.

Who can't do that? Well, my colorblind boyfriend has some trouble with lime green cars, so I guess SOME people can't do that, but you get my point: this game is easy for most people to pick up. (*Don't worry about his colorblindness affecting his score-- my extremely short attention span is my handicap. He kicks my butt. Maybe also because he can pretend he thinks everything is yellow and I know nothing about colorblindness.)

Why is it fun? Well, you don't see many yellow cars on the road-- or at least not as many as you see other cars. Thus the search begins.

There are, however, restrictions:

These rules are mostly to keep people from monopolizing the game-- or from shouting too much. (Really, once you start looking, you'll want to shout "SKITTLES!" at every yellow thing you see. You'll start cursing Waffle House signs and parking dividers and every other unnecessarily yellow thing in society.)

Other clarifying notes from my nephews:

• Hovercraft, boats, lawnmowers, and motorcycles all are considered skittles.
• One may choose whether or not Penske moving trucks count at the beginning of a new game.
• Cars on cinder blocks that have no engine in them do NOT count.
• Cars that are parked DO count.
• Yellow-orange is NOT yellow.
• It is often necessary to denote which skittle one is calling. For example, "SKITTLES! MOTORCYCLE!" This eliminates confusion if more than one skittle is present.

There is a lot of debate in the family as to when the game ends. When someone gets out of the car? The next day? Whenever someone says so? My nephews, being the empowering type, let me know that I can decide for myself whenever I play the game.

So I did.

On the way to the beach one day, my friends and I were in the middle of an intense round of skittles. Being huge Harry Potter nerds, we decided the game should end in a Quidditch-like fashion.

That's right. The Holy Grail of skittles-- a person eating Skittles in a yellow car.

I immediately called my nephews and received their unanimous approval. (To be thorough, that's four (4) yea's and zero (0) nay's.) We had taken skittles to the next level. And now I proudly present it to you.

If you come up with questions while you're playing, let me know. I'll text the boys and have an answer for you soon.

Happy skittle hunting!!!

Words That Mean Something Very Different in NOLA

As a transplant in NOLA (2+ years and going strong!), I'm especially conscious of how much dialect affects what words mean. I've finally stopped asking what people down here are saying-- 1. because I've probably picked up on it by now, 2. because sometimes that's just easier, and/or 3. because if I don't know it by now, it can't be all that common so stop saying that, I don't want to hear it! 

Not to mention people in New Orleans make fun of how I talk all the time (e.g., my hard A's like when I'm wagging around a saggy bag, my occasional "you guys" instead of "y'all," or talking about cheese all the time). 

Welcome to the Midwest! Where words mean exactly what the dictionary says they mean! 

Lessons learned here? For one thing, people in New Orleans are jerks for their weird words and for making fun of ME for being normal. (I mean, seriously. National news anchors base their delivery off of Columbus, OH speech patterns. HELLO. I should cite that, but I won't because you can Google it or assume I'm lying.)

For another, I have to be very conscious of how I'm speaking if I want to fit in, because there is a LOT of room for misunderstanding. 

So here I am, a gal who doesn't talk like she's from New Orleans OR from the Midwest, who will try to explain to all you people exactly what my struggle has been.

Example #1: Snowball

This is a no-brainer in the Midwest. However, it's completely foreign to people in New Orleans. And shut up, you NOLA local who swears you made a snowball once in 2008 and it was glorious. NO. That was pathetic. This is a snowball to you:

The yummier, smoother, fancier version of the Icee of the rest of the world. New Orleans: the one place in the world where eating yellow snowballs is not only appropriate but also encouraged.

2. Example #2: Shotgun

In the Midwest: Your God-given and Constitution-protected right to bear arms and spend a lot of money on ammunition. We have that in NOLA, too, but when you talk "shotgun" here, THIS is the first thing to come to mind:

A New Orleans shotgun is a house. You live in it. You paint it crazy colors. You don't use it to take out targets, animals, or people.

On a related note, example 2b: camelback. In the Midwest: a brand of water bottle or an actual camel's hump. In New Orleans? A shotgun house with a second story added to the back end. I could explain to you why, but I won't.

Example #3: Cold drink

In the Midwest: quite literally and unimaginatively, a drink that is cold. Any drink that is cold.

In New Orleans: quite irrationally and very specifically, a soda or pop or coke or whatever you choose to call a sugary, carbonated beverage. Probably cold. I am sure that I will NEVER understand this.

Example #4: Dressed

In the Midwest: Again, literally it means being dressed. Having clothes on. (We're not creative? Or maybe we just like for our words to MAKE SENSE.) Extra points for dressing in a dress.

In New Orleans: Putting everything on your sandwich. Like your sandwich is getting dressed up? I guess. I guess I can embrace this. When I go home to see the family, I will just ask for my sandwiches with everything on it. Sorry. "Fully dressed" will only get me strange stares at the deli in Ohio.

Example #5: Suck the head, pinch the tail

Um, excuse me? This is a family-friendly blog and I will NOT have the kind of dirty talk.

 

Oooooooooh, wait. You're in New Orleans, so you're eating crawfish. Yep, this sexually charged phrase is a set of instructions for eating mudbugs. They're delicious, and this is the best way to enjoy them, so cheers, y'all! I'll be suck 'dem heads until dere ain' no more to suck!

And a note to my Midwestern friends: Just don't bother saying this. It's not worth it. #badpickuplines

LeeAnne's Bar Skank Guide

Well, I've survived the holidays and apparently I've spent a full two weeks recovering from NYE in New Orleans. It wasn't depressing as my last post promised, but I digress. I'm here to fill y'all in on what I have been up to these last few weeks... Beginning with a guide to bar skanks.

Last weekend we had an awesome comedy magician and an amazing hypnotist on campus, and what better way to celebrate that than to get crunked? Just kidding, but I did go out with friends that came down for the show to the village bar, "The Regal Beagle." At the time I joked that they were lucky they were such "Three's Company" fans, otherwise I wouldn't go in there. But if I hadn't gone, where would my blog inspiration be? And what would you, dear reader, be doing right now?!

It all started with my friend Evie, who sort of prides herself in her people watching skills.

I want to clarify here that she is announcing "Skanks, ho!" as in "Skanks ahead!" or "Skanks ahoy!" (hence the pirate hat) and not as in "Skanks and hoes!" That's just redundant, and Evie wouldn't waste her time with such silly announcements.

Anyway, what better place to spot bar skanks than in a college bar? To save yourself some time next time you're out, we've put together a skank spotting guide for your general safety and convenience.

You are bound to encounter any variety of bar skanks in the wild, so I've taken the liberty of illustrating four for you. 

I want to take a moment to say I didn't draw these panels to say that I'm a skank, even though I'm the example in each one. After my friend Jackie pointed out that I always make her my alcoholic friend in my posts, I realized I didn't want anybody else complaining that I always make them my skank friend. So there. Judge away, if you must!


If you disagree or have other bar skanks in mind, forget you, start your own blog. If you think these four are a little too specific and you don't know what to do with yourself, don't fret! If all else fails, study and remember the following bar skank behaviors and you'll be an advanced skank spotter in no time!

(As I finished the example skanks in that panel, I thought to myself, "Do I have a thing against blonde people?" but we'll save the self-discovery for some other time.)


In case you're wondering what a skank fight looks like, I imagine it looks something like this: 

Yeah, I just doodled crudely over the glitter explosion drawing I did for my Christmas crafting post. Have you seen what skanks wear? I don't think this is too far off the mark. Glitter, sequins, it's all the same.


In case you're wondering what a man fight looks like, fortunately for you we experienced one last weekend so I can share the whole thing in great detail:

Our reactions as I've described them are pretty accurate and say a lot about our character. Well, except Duke's reaction-- I don't really know what he was thinking, but he was working really hard on keeping his southern drawl all night so I hope against hope that he was thinking something like that. Or "those fellas are scrappier than a couple o' rabid possum" or "looks like two pigs fighting under a blanket." Well, that last one was from Steel Magnolias, but I think you get it.


Unfortunately, none of our reactions were at all effective. The fight was not broken up, the drinks were not saved, and although the table was initially flipped away from us, it eventually flipped back toward us, resulting in this:

(Technically I was covered in beer, but I didn't want to draw that because, well, let's think about what that would look like.)


Had we been bar skanks, we probably would have managed to get away from the man fight unscathed.


And just so Jackie doesn't feel left out of a blog post where I talk about booze:

Happy skank spotting!