Beware the wanglers

This unemployment thing has me trying all manner of marvelous new things.

Scrubbing our toilets with a toothbrush. Getting the mail.

And, since there's no particularly compelling reason to get out of bed in the morning, I've been staying up till all hours of the night playing Scrabulous. With Satan.

Have you heard of this? Scrabulous is the on-line, un-Hasbro sanctioned version of Scrabble.

You can play with others or by yourself. Or against the robot, who I'm convinced is Satan, the Dark Scrabulous Lord, lurking in Cyberspace and screwing with all of us lazy, unemployed idiots to amuse himself until the day his only son, Barack Obama, is finally elected president and he can rule the planet as foretold in Chapter 12, Verse 9 from the Book of Batshit Crazy Republicans.

Shaddap, settle down.

So I'm holding my own against the robot with 'ANGLER' for a double letter/double word score and I'm all SCREW YOU SATAN until the robot responds with the incomprehensible 'WANGLER' and suddenly I'm stuck with I I E Y I A Y, which, I'm pretty sure is the sound I made after being outsmarted by that fucking bastard robot a third time in less than 10 minutes.

Wangler, Hedy? I KNOW. Wangler.

According to Scrabble's extremely helpful on-line dictionary, a wangler is 'one who wangles'.

Yep.

So I'm left guessing at wangler because, as an unemployed person, the motivational wind in my lazy little sails can be knocked out by the silliest things and the STRESS of looking up WANGLER in a REAL DICTIONARY is just TOO MUCH right now.
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After my afternoon nap, I attempt to look up wangler using the Microsoft Word dictionary.

You right clicky on wangler, clicky one more time on Look Up and VOILA! The cursor actually JUMPED from wangler to another random word on the page and flat out REFUSED TO DEFINE WANGLER.

This could be a sign from [insert the random god of your choice here; I suggest Cialis, God of Pork] that I'm simply not meant to know the way of the wangler, but I persist and find solace at dictionary.com:

wan·gle /ˈwæŋgəl/
1. to bring about, accomplish, or obtain by scheming or underhand methods: to wangle an invitation.
2. to falsify or manipulate for dishonest ends: to wangle business records.
3. to use contrivance, scheming, or underhand methods to obtain some goal or result.
4. to manipulate something for dishonest ends.
[And my personal favorite:]
5. an act or instance of wangling.
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Confession: I know wangle. Or knew and even used 'wangle an invitation' at some point in my ever-darkening past. But wangler threw me. Who actually admits to being a wangler?
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E O O O F A S.

That's what I draw on my first turn, on my fourth and final game of Spelling with Satan last night.

What the fuck am I supposed to do with E O O O F A S? It's late. I'm exhausted from wrestling with wangler, and I am thisclose to giving up. Then I remember there's this god-like feature on the Official Scrabble web site: The Scrabble Word Builder. Pop in your letters and it gives you available words.

It's cheating. But it's late. And there's no way I'm coming up with OS ('an orifice') or SOFA ('a long upholstered seat' - who knew?) on my own.

So, kiddies, to review: Beware the wanglers. Think of unemployment as one big ass shrapnel recovery expedition. And it's okay to cheat when you're playing with Satan.
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I am listening to: Wordplay - Jason Mraz
I am reading: Literally, The Best Language Book Ever by Paul Yeager
And I am: Satan's Scrabulous Little Bitch