you know what i hate? slavery.
my three favorite coworkers and i have a game we play at lunch. it's the "Make Someone Say..." game. two or more of us will conspire (read: whisper, or email ahead of time if we think of it) against the others. we pick a word, and try to make someone say it. which means we steer the conversation around that word. we've had "aluminum," and "cilantro" in the past, for example.

"so, do you guys like mexican food?" would totally work as a conversation-guiding question in a regular setting, but at this point, we're far too paranoid. to us, "so do you guys like mexican food?" results in "NO! it's a trap! don't answer!" responses. abrupt subject changes are always suspect.

on friday, we decided to spice things up a little. multi-word phrases, higher scores for high-syllable words, etc., etc... "prime number" was actually successful. it started with julia's "what did the zero say to the eight" joke, and then craig picked it up to say, "you know, we need more math jokes. with like, 3s and 5s and 7s..." before long, jackie said, excitedly, "oh yeah, like prime number jokes!" right as our other friend was leaning in to warn her about our obvious trap. she was too intoxicated by the fun math discussion to be suscpicious. that's pretty much why i love her so much.

however, there have been a few failures. "emancipation proclamation," while being the holy grail of syllable-based scoring, really didn't mesh well with everyone's standard lunch-time conversation boundaries. craig and i have vowed to make it work, though.

"so, how 'bout that abraham lincoln?"