Oh, my dear Drunk Goggles, I promise you this is not, in point of fact, the way I prefer to spend my inebriation.
Boredom, however, is a hell of a drug; let tentacles be tentacles, fished out of the sea for thousands of years like normal, rather than trying to recreate them from machinery!
My name is Fiddleford and you don't know me well enough to call me 'dear'.
You're the one who wanted so bad to talk about tentacles to begin with. This is an entirely hypothetical situation you invented for goodness knows why. I know for some reason Trench has this particular magic to it where it forces folks to talk to each other and make friends, but I have got to say, you are real bad at it.
I've been calling strangers my dear for several thousand years, now; knowing someone well is hardly a prerequisite for that, is it?
Not to say that I object to using your name, of course — Fiddleford, it quite rolls off the tongue and fingers both, doesn't it? — but I will also note you do not appear to object to my use of the word my, in calling you my dear — only the dearness of it. Is there some other adjective-based appellation you prefer?
Perhaps, in leaving the tentacles to the sea and its beasts and those who love them best, we can steer a course to something more amiable for us both — arts and crafts, or finger foods, or whether or not you actually play the fiddle found in your name?
[ Which is to say: even he recognizes when a conversation will benefit from at least one or two hinges, overall, as it were... ]
[There's a lot in that to pick through. Several thousand?
It puts him in mind of talking to Ford. The nitpicky fussing about words and technicalities, the overblown diction. The fact that he's so used to it from Ford probably gives him a little bit of a resistance to it. At the very least he is going to grab onto an opportunity to left turn the conversation with both hands.]
I play the banjo. My brother Banjomin's the fiddler in the family. Our parents took a gamble and they almost got it right.
You're in luck. Keytars weren't invented until a good while after my parents stopped having children. We had Banjomin, Ukelily, me, Contrabastion, Jacksophone, Dulcimarie, Jug and Beans, but no Keytharesa.
[ Touché, on the "lots to pick through" front — but, in all fairness, he did already say he played the banjo; what else could Augustine reasonably have expected? ]
I have, I think, three questions just at the moment:
1: Are you displaying a distaste for the Oxford comma, or is this a single sibling named "Jug and Beans"?
2: What's the instrument-playing breakdown amidst the rest of your siblings, or your parents for that matter?
3: How concerned should I be, on a scale from 1-10, that you instantly knew what the name would have been?
the real joke is Thistlebert is actually real and it's his fault I have this headcanon
[Oh my god. Oxford comma discourse. It really is like talking to a somehow shittier Ford.]
1. Two siblings. I ought to warn you that the more you nitpick my grammar the more I'm going to try and misuse it on purpose.
2. Most of us can play most instruments. Or we can at least pick them up and figure something out with a bit of trial and error. I'm not half bad with a guitar or a mandolin, but those are just a step sideways of banjo if you squint.
3. I don't see what's concerning about it. All McGuckets give their kids themed names. I've got cousins named Thistlebert, Dandelionel and Sorrelise because their parents chose wildflowers. I was doing vegetables.
[Oh. Oh no. Oh, damn it, it's happened again. He's fallen into that Trench situation of edging close to sensitive personal information and he hadn't even realized it was happening until it happened. He's hyper-aware of it at this point! How does it keep happening and taking him by surprise?
The one upside is he does like talking about his son.]
Just Tater. There were plans for more but I'm a universe away now, so.
[It's not as though more kids were in the cards even if he had stayed, but he's not going to just come out to a snippy stranger about his messy divorce. They are not at that social link level yet.]
things you don't expect to find on the Iditarod trail: full-size hogs?
He was a great kid at every age. Quiet, polite. Real smart. I don't know how but he always knew when it was going to rain. He'd point out whenever the weather report was wrong and he was always right.
[ (the only thing worse than being ambushed by a pun is not noticing the ambush, smdh) ]
While I suppose that there ... are only incredibly limited means ... to find out the truth of the matter, it seems likely enough to me that this is a trait all your children might have shared, as with all your musically-inclined siblings.
[ worst part: can't even hate on a guy gushing about his kids, how could he ]
[It's funny, because he didn't notice the setup for the pun because he unironically called his son Tater Tot. Oops.]
It's possible. It's sure not something I can do, but we all have our particular specialties. I wouldn't know the first thing about botany but my sister managed to breed up purple strawberries. Maybe he'd have been a meteorologist.
[The thing about the McGucket family is that Fiddleford is not an outlier. He didn't leave the farm and go to college to get away from a family where he didn't belong, he left the farm and went to college because he wanted to see the world outside Tennessee.]
You haven't said, as yet, how musically-inclined your parents are, or — for that matter — what name is borne by the McGucket of the partnership, or how many siblings there are, that we might determine what (if anything) is the mystically-influenced-by-naming-convention gift of their generation, you know.
(You were not explicitly clear as to whether or not you were including your parents in the "most of us can play most instruments well enough for bad jazz music" answer, either. Heartbreaking!)
You're overthinking this. There's nothing mystical about it. It's just we were coming up poor in the mountains so playing music together was one of the best options for entertainment once everyone's work was done. As far as I know my folks still don't have a television.
But if it's going to keep you up at night, yes, my parents could also play.
More wistful than overthinking, I suspect. No matter how many times I've tried, I've never really managed to develop a large family, much less one that was universally musical.
Which isn't to say I haven't spent plenty of evenings with everyone gathered up around a fire singing — instruments optional and sometimes improvised — to wind down from a long day's work, with television not at all an option.
It was a lot better than sitting in the firelit dark listening to basically everyone else having sex again, after all.
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Boredom, however, is a hell of a drug; let tentacles be tentacles, fished out of the sea for thousands of years like normal, rather than trying to recreate them from machinery!
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You're the one who wanted so bad to talk about tentacles to begin with. This is an entirely hypothetical situation you invented for goodness knows why. I know for some reason Trench has this particular magic to it where it forces folks to talk to each other and make friends, but I have got to say, you are real bad at it.
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Not to say that I object to using your name, of course — Fiddleford, it quite rolls off the tongue and fingers both, doesn't it? — but I will also note you do not appear to object to my use of the word my, in calling you my dear — only the dearness of it. Is there some other adjective-based appellation you prefer?
Perhaps, in leaving the tentacles to the sea and its beasts and those who love them best, we can steer a course to something more amiable for us both — arts and crafts, or finger foods, or whether or not you actually play the fiddle found in your name?
[ Which is to say: even he recognizes when a conversation will benefit from at least one or two hinges, overall, as it were... ]
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It puts him in mind of talking to Ford. The nitpicky fussing about words and technicalities, the overblown diction. The fact that he's so used to it from Ford probably gives him a little bit of a resistance to it. At the very least he is going to grab onto an opportunity to left turn the conversation with both hands.]
I play the banjo. My brother Banjomin's the fiddler in the family. Our parents took a gamble and they almost got it right.
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... this is a joke, right? Banjo-min?! Who would name someone that — ]
I suppose they must count themselves lucky that you play any instrument at all, come to think of it.
And that it isn't, say, a keytar.
(Unless that's some portion of your sister's name, in which case... well, I'm sure I apologise.)
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You're in luck. Keytars weren't invented until a good while after my parents stopped having children. We had Banjomin, Ukelily, me, Contrabastion, Jacksophone, Dulcimarie, Jug and Beans, but no Keytharesa.
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I have, I think, three questions just at the moment:
1: Are you displaying a distaste for the Oxford comma, or is this a single sibling named "Jug and Beans"?
2: What's the instrument-playing breakdown amidst the rest of your siblings, or your parents for that matter?
3: How concerned should I be, on a scale from 1-10, that you instantly knew what the name would have been?
the real joke is Thistlebert is actually real and it's his fault I have this headcanon
1. Two siblings. I ought to warn you that the more you nitpick my grammar the more I'm going to try and misuse it on purpose.
2. Most of us can play most instruments. Or we can at least pick them up and figure something out with a bit of trial and error. I'm not half bad with a guitar or a mandolin, but those are just a step sideways of banjo if you squint.
3. I don't see what's concerning about it. All McGuckets give their kids themed names. I've got cousins named Thistlebert, Dandelionel and Sorrelise because their parents chose wildflowers. I was doing vegetables.
the only place I see this happen IRL is sled dogs
[ (totally judging you, though; it's just probably in the opposite direction compared to the person providing the editorial asides) ]And which vegetables did you do?
[ how many McGuckets does it take to fill a bucket, while his thoughts are at it... ]
sled dog owners, tennessee hog farmers, same thing basically
The one upside is he does like talking about his son.]
Just Tater. There were plans for more but I'm a universe away now, so.
[It's not as though more kids were in the cards even if he had stayed, but he's not going to just come out to a snippy stranger about his messy divorce. They are not at that social link level yet.]
things you don't expect to find on the Iditarod trail: full-size hogs?
Must have been extra adorable when he was a toddler.
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While I suppose that there ... are only incredibly limited means ... to find out the truth of the matter, it seems likely enough to me that this is a trait all your children might have shared, as with all your musically-inclined siblings.
[ worst part: can't even hate on a guy gushing about his kids, how could he ]
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It's possible. It's sure not something I can do, but we all have our particular specialties. I wouldn't know the first thing about botany but my sister managed to breed up purple strawberries. Maybe he'd have been a meteorologist.
[The thing about the McGucket family is that Fiddleford is not an outlier. He didn't leave the farm and go to college to get away from a family where he didn't belong, he left the farm and went to college because he wanted to see the world outside Tennessee.]
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(You were not explicitly clear as to whether or not you were including your parents in the "most of us can play most instruments well enough for bad jazz music" answer, either. Heartbreaking!)
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But if it's going to keep you up at night, yes, my parents could also play.
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Which isn't to say I haven't spent plenty of evenings with everyone gathered up around a fire singing — instruments optional and sometimes improvised — to wind down from a long day's work, with television not at all an option.
It was a lot better than sitting in the firelit dark listening to basically everyone else having sex again, after all.no subject
[Or lack thereof. Jesus Christ.]