Games People Play.

About a week ago, the Wall Street Journal ran a story about the fact that the words "za," "qi" and "zzz" were added recently to the game of Scrabble's official word list for its original English-language edition.

Now, I just think that's silly, frankly, although I can almost accept the word "qi." Q is a hard letter to unload, especially if you're missing the letter "u" and are running out of tiles and space on the board. So yes, we do need all the "q" words we can get.

But "zzz"? Or even worse, "za"?

"Za" is supposedly slang for pizza. So who the hell actually says, "Hand me a slice of za, will ya?" Who in this world is so lazy that they can't be bothered to sound out with their mouth the first syllable in pizza? Especially because pizza is so chewy. You need all the practice you can get, just getting ready to chomp down on a piece.

Besides that, "pee" is the fun part of pizza! Everyone loves pee. It's a funny sound to make.

I wonder who invented the word pee? I mean, I guess it's short for piss, but at least the word piss makes sense. Piss actually SOUNDS like what it's supposed to be...the sound of liquid exiting from your frontal orifice and landing into a ceramic bowl filled with water...or, in ancient times, onto large slices of pepperoni pizza...oh, excuse me, I mean, za.

Za. It sounds like something an exotic Hungarian would say, not something as ordinary as pizza.

Anyway, I'm not going to use the word "za" any time soon on my Scrabble board. Unless I'm really, really desperate. And even then, I'm going to bitch about it.

By the way, does anyone else have a morbid fear of garbage disposals? Every time I turn mine on, I have this thought that passes through me that I'm accidently going to brush my hand against the opening and lose a finger. Like, I'll be cramming old stale pieces of za into it, singing off-key Celine Dion tunes, and I'll forget that I have the disposal going, and lose a couple of fingers.

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Okay, maybe it's just me.
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