The Deck; Saturday Afternoon [05/11].

[howareyanow]

Well, now, this weather put a bit of a damper on Wayne's vague plans of possible having a Burning Bush Party tonight to take care of that glittery shirt, now, wasn't it? Not that he'd been expecting much, considering he didn't have anyone's Facebook (and fuck Facebook, anyway), and the talking cat had suggested he make flyers if he wanted to let people know, but fuck if he was going to make flyers. He was just going to head out into the woods, maybe get a bonfire going at that old camp ground he remembered passing during his quote-unquote-Wilderness class, have a couple beers, a couple smokes, and if that was it, well, then, that didn't seem like a bad night. If anyone else happened by with pert'near the same idea, then that would work, too.

Not good bush party weather, though. Not good weather for anything much but crops, realleh, but if Wayne was going to allow himself to be cooped up inside for much longer, he was going to get a little stir-crazy. Seemed to be space enough out here on the deck where he could stand underneath something and have a dart without getting wet, though, so that was good enough for him.

Not much to do, realleh, but there was fresh air. Beat just stickin' in his room, dicking around on his phone all day. But if it stayed this quiet, he might wind up doing a little bit of that. Pull up the good ol' hockeyfights.com, and there's an afternoon well spent.


[[ open deck is open, of course! *mods plenty of overhangs and dry space or whatever, idk, why not?* ]]

Comments

[chirpchirpchirp]

Weirdly enough, that was apparently exactly what Vette needed, today? Which she hadn't even realized herself until Wayne (forever in her heart now known as Flatcakes) had launched off on his diatribe.

"Hey, relax," she said easily, pulling up one of the little outdoor tables and slapping her blaster pistols down onto it, one-two. "That's just what they're called back home. Your pancakes were just fine. Best I've had in a while, actually."

Which wasn't saying much, granted, but she'd let him think whatever he would anyway.

[howareyanow]

And that praise, which Wayne was going to take with a grain of salt because how good could alien pancakes be if they went around being considered flat?, did actually help a little, but not enough that he wasn't going to be a pedantic little shit about it because now he'd gotten himself all riled up.

"Well," he said, because she really should know, "that's not what they're called here. They're called pancakes. Or flapjacks. I guess you could call 'em flat, technicalleh, but they're not really. Flat. Not compared to a crape. Those you can call a flatcake. I don't give a shit what you call those. But I don't want anyone around here thinking I'm going around, makin' crapes, when I'm not, I'm making the fluffiest goddamn pancakes you ever had."

He was, however, not so distracted by his little fussy rant, though, that he hadn't noticed the blasters with a bit of interest.

[chirpchirpchirp]

Well now, Mister Pedantic Flatcake Guy, Vette was going to just grin, wholly unperturbed, as she started expertly disassembling her blasters for cleaning with the deftness and confidence of somebody who had been doing this for years. Barrel here, crystal there...

"They're flatter than birthday cakes, right? I'm pretty sure your pancakes were flatter than birthday cakes," she decreed. Mostly just to be a little shit, now.

[howareyanow]

"Well, sure, Vette," Wayne, brow furrowing again, nodded. "Vette, sure. But that's why you go around calling a birthday cake a birthday cake and not a pancake. You can call a birthday cake a sheet cake, that's a thing, but no one's going around trying to pass a birthday cake as a pancake. S'why it's a birthday cake.

"I mean, if we're going to go around, calling any sort of cake that flatter'n a birthday cake a flatcake, then what're you gonna do when you've got two birthday cakes, both of varying heights, and one's flatter than the other? Is that a flatcake now, too, Vette? Is it? Supposing someone sat on the cake? Well, then I suppose you've got yourself a new flatcake as well as a need to go and get yourself some new pants, while you're at it."

[chirpchirpchirp]

"I dunno, still tastes the same after you sit on it," Vette mused. "But why are they called pancakes, anyway? You don't serve them in a pan. They're not pan-shaped. If we're going to be pedantic about the shapes of cakes now, I feel the need to point out that calling it a pancake is a bit of a misnomer, too."

She pursed her lips for a moment as she started unpacking her blaster cleaning supplies.

"I mean, I guess I could just call it 'puffy breakfast food,' but then people might think I was talking about scrambled eggs or something, which... hey, also good."

[howareyanow]

"....you make 'em in a pan!" said Wayne, after a very long moment of just sort of looking at Vette as she managed to somehow skip right over that essential detail in her ponderings on the matter and sort of gawking at her a little. "Figgur it ouwt! And don't get started on how you can also make 'em on a griddle, because, guess what, big shoots, then you've just got griddle cakes."

[chirpchirpchirp]

"Okay, sure, but don't you also make birthday cakes in a pan? I mean, don't you make most cakes in a pan? I'm pretty sure that's exactly what cake pans were invented for," Vette pointed out. "What is with Earth and naming everything after what they're cooked in, anyway? Pancakes, griddle cakes, fries..."

She kind of petered off for a moment as she picked through her cleaning supplies for a fiddly little tool with a squidgy thing on the end.

Which was exactly what she'd call it if anyone asked, too.

[howareyanow]

"Fries are called chips in Eenglaand," Wayne, squinting at the horizon, drawled out. "And chips are something different on this side of the pond. But..." He trailed off thoughtfully for a moment, possibly too thoughtfully, because it almost seemed like he wasn't going to pick the thread back up, but just when it might have seemed that way, he did. "...naming things after their method of preparation makes more sense than just naming 'em after their shape. 'Cause the way you make 'em's not likely to change, while you can go ahead and make pancakes, griddlecakes, birthday cakes...hell, even fries in all sorts of shapes. Pancakes alone you've got your classic circle, you got your silver dollar, you got mouse-shaped, you can make snakes, you can make hearts. Now, the circle is, by and large, the most popular and most easily recognizable shape of a pancake, but any shape you make, that's indisputably still a pancake. A flatcake, well, now, that seems all just a matter of opinion. And comparrison. Flatter'n a birthday cake? Okay, Vette. Vette, okay. You have a point there. Flatter'n a crape? Not fucking likeleh."

[chirpchirpchirp]

"I am really going to have to try one of these crepe things you keep talking about," Vette decided, looking thoughtful. "Just how flat are we talking, here? Because those might even be the flatcakes I've been missing since getting stuck on this little blue ball."

Eh, maybe. Nothing on Earth was quite right, but food was food.

"I don't know, Wayne," she added (the 'Flatcakes' was silent), "I'm still learning my way around apples and oranges, here. Which, by the way, is another weird naming convention, right there. They're delicious, but whoever slapped a name on oranges really just kinda gave up, didn't they?"

All of this, of course, was said while resolutely cleaning out her blaster barrels. Really putting the ol' elbow grease into it.

[howareyanow]

"Well, now," said Wayne, giving his dart one last big drag before flicking it away, "that's just a common misconception, the thing about oranges. The color was actually named for the fruit, not the other way around. So, if anything, they got lazy about the color, not the fruit. But I'll make you some crapes, Vette." He nodded. "Sure I will. And if it turns out they're not like the flatcakes you've been after, well, then, I think you might want to have a look at your own before you run around, criticizing other perfectly normal, preparation-based naming conventions 'round here."

[chirpchirpchirp]

"How can the color be named after the fruit if we have orange back home, but not oranges?" And there was Vette, throwing a hand into the air in apparent frustration. "Ugh, this place is so weird. Drinking age limits and weapons lockers and... okay, you use metric, but everyone else is backwards in ways you'd never expect you'd actually miss, and I'm saying this as someone who has lost count of the worlds I've been to, Wayne. Lost count!"

A pause.

"But sure, I'll call your puffy breakfast cakes by the Earth name. Now that I know what that name is."

[howareyanow]

"You know what I think?" said Wayne. "I think, if where you're from's got the color orange, but no oranges, than that's the thing that's just back-asswards, that's what I think. But I guess it just goes to show: what the fuck else are you going to call the color orange."

There was a faint pause. "Weird word, anyway, any way you look at it. Or-rannnge. Lor-raaahnge. La nah-ran-jah...."

Boy, he could just about go for a beer right there. Instead, he just pulled the pack of cigarettes from his front pocket and tapped out another one, before giving her a firm and sincere nod.

"And I appreciate that, Vette, but don't feel too bad. You couldn't help it if you didn't know."

[chirpchirpchirp]

"Guess I couldn't," Vette agreed, and then grinned and shrugged (a lopsided shrug, so as to not disturb Miss Dozy), and picked up one of her blaster barrels to inspect the inside. "Knowing is half the battle and all that."

She threw a grin his way.

"And you've said the other half of the battle is going to score me crepes, so I figure I still come out on top, here."

[howareyanow]

And, briefly, Wayne gave a squinting sort of smile back.

"Can confirm," he said. And now that that had reached a satisfying conclusion, he turned his attention to those guns.

"Quite a couple of pieces you got there, Vette," he noted. "Don't suppose they....shoot lasers, by any chance, do they?"

Because if he was standing there, talking a blue alien, and she didn't even have laser guns, well, then, what the fuck were they even doing here?

[chirpchirpchirp]

"Technically they shoot supercharged plasma," Vette shared, "but everyone just kinda calls 'em lasers anyway. Everything neat is lasers, right?"

She took a moment to put one of her blasters back together, and then made sure the safety was on before holding it up for him to see.

"No firing it off in here, I am not running for a fire extinguisher, but you don't strike me as being that reckless with a weapon anyway."

[howareyanow]

"That's a Texas-size 10-4," said Wayne, doing a sharp turn toward Vette, paired with a stiff step forward for a better look. "No bein' reckless with anything that could lose you limb, little digits, or life. That includes, but is not restricted to, weapons, animals, heavy machinery, fire...." He squinted. "...and women."

[chirpchirpchirp]

"Especially women," Vette agreed brightly. "But yeah, that's a pretty solid list."

She turned the blaster over a few times so that he could look at all the shiny bits (so many shiny bits), and then held it out for him to take. Less because she trusted him, and more because she trusted her ability to kick his ass before he could figure out which shiny button was the safety lock. "You'd mentioned hunting before. You shoot?"

[howareyanow]

Wayne knew his way around a gun for sure; never handled a space gun before, but he liked to think he could figgur it ouwt if he wanted to. Weren't no reason to want to at the moment, anyway, especially since Vette was perfectly correct about being able to kick his ass. Not because of any lack of prowess of his own, of course, but it was pretty easy to win a fight when the other person wasn't likely to fight back.

His dart dangled from his lips as both his hands were preoccupied with inspecting this shiny (so shiny) little piece here.

"I shoot," he murmured, that dart bouncing but balanced expertly as he talked. "Rifles and shotguns, mostleh. Just for huntin', though...."

There was a pause, and he, seemingly satisfied with his inspection, offered the gun back with both hands.

"And capping the tail ends of wormpickers when they're trespassin' up on the properteh."

[chirpchirpchirp]

"See," Vette took her blaster back and set it back on the little table with the other one, "I was following you just fine right up until that last bit. What in the world is a wormpicker?"

[howareyanow]

"Wormpicker is," Wayne stated, "thankfully, exactly what it sounds like. It's a bunch of degens who go stomping through your fields an' all over your crops to....pick worms."

[chirpchirpchirp]

It was Vette's turn to work on her squint, now.

"... I'm trying to think of a single reason to do that," she admitted, "and I am coming up completely short."

Not much fishing on Nar Shaddaa.

Or Ryloth, for that matter.

[howareyanow]

"They stomp the fields," Wayne explained, "and your crops, picking worms, and then turn around to go sell 'em to bait shops and gas stations for fishermen to pick up and use for bait. Mostleh city folk, mostleh. S'only people I can think of that bother with fishin', but can't even get their own bait, fuck."

[chirpchirpchirp]

"Aren't there... other places with worms? Can't they go dig in the woods? Why do they have to tear up someone's livelihood for worms?"

Because they were lazy, and ploughs did all the hard work of breaking the earth for them, Vette.

"Some people really do deserve a blaster bolt right up the business end, sheesh."

[howareyanow]

"That's what I said," said Wayne, who then seemed to take a moment to squint particularly hard at Vette before looking away, thoughtfully.

"One time," he offered, "it got so bad with them stompin' all over our beans, y'know what I did? I went out into the field, and I went and dug me up some holes, real deep ones, 'bout two meters, give'er take. Stuck a skunk in each one of 'em. And you can bet, we didn't have any more problems with wormpickers for the rest of that years."

[chirpchirpchirp]

Vette gave a delighted little gasp at that.

Because pirate.

"Pit traps! Pit traps!" You'd made her day, Wayne. "What's a skunk? Is it big and vicious and made of teeth?"