A new breed of scrabble

Since the demise of online poker I've found myself with large amounts of time on my hands.

Most of that time has been rerouted in very productive ways; I've been getting stuff done around the house, I'm spending a lot more time with the kids, hell I started exercising a little.

But sometimes I just want to sit there and veg.

I can't take the reality TV stuff, so that's not really an option. So what I've done is started playing online scrabble. Yeah...scrabble.

I'm sure this will come as great amusement to the regular readers who know I might be the most atroci...atroshou... terrible speller this side of the Susquehanna. Thankfully for me they have two types of games:
* The first type is the challenge game. You lose 20 points and a turn if you spell a word wrong and its challenged and you get to challenge other words. I think I'm the lowest ranked "English as a first language" player on the site. Every time I challenge they have some crazy ass real word...and you can imagine that a fair number of my words get tossed out.
* In the other version if you spell a word wrong the computer tells you that you have an illegal word and provides you with another chance. In this version I'm doing quite well. And it seems as if the game is steadily improving my spelling. For instance 'suede' is now part of my lexicon...as is 'lexicon'.

But my favorite part of the game is the fact that I think I've tapped into the last corner of the internet that hasn't been tainted or embittered by trolls, pricks, or bastards. Its a community of polite, pleasant, courteous players. This is the absolute opposite of online poker. Most are middle aged or older women and for many of the folks this is their social outlet.

And before you think I've gotten soft...or that my heart has been warmed by finding goodness in a wasteland of evil...I want to reassure you that my newfound joy is far more nefarious than that. I see the situation more like a gigantic landscape of new fallen snow that I now get to track the first footprints through.

Yesterday I lost two games from running out of time because I was too busy telling people how I way trying to get high by sniffing purple magic markers. I may have also mentioned that I was trying to get high because I really wanted to pleasure myself, but that I found me repulsive. I had all the blue hairs in a tizzy.

I'm setting the over/under for me getting kicked off at 9:43 pm tonight.