scenes from a roadtrip

"Spiders are incredibly intelligent. Also evil."
"No! Spiders are nice!"
"Nice? They control our minds!"
"Yes, but it's for our own good. Bow before the benevolent spider overlords!"

...

"I don't want octopusses to be arachnids. I also want the plural to be "octopi"."
"You're not a revisionist historian, you're worse: you're a revisionist biologist AND a revisionist grammarian."

...

"Hoodoos!"
"Cool!"

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"Hoodoos!"
"I bet I could climb that. Have to have multiple belayers, though."

...

"Hoodoos!"
"You should update your Orkut profile and put "hoodoo spotting" in the "interests" section."

...

"Hoodoos!"
"..."
"You know, hoodoos are often haunted. In Haiti, that would make them Voodoo hoodoos. I know you're keen to climb these ones here, but would you do voodoo hoodoos?"
"groan"
"It may also surprise you to learn that several years ago I participated in a UN mission to bring peace to Rwanda by broadening the cultural horizons of one of the warring factions."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. First we taught them ballet. That was a bit of a mistake because they were so taken with the costumes that they refused to take them off. Then we did a nature appreciation class with them. They were particularly good at imitating owls. Then we did a sightseeing tour of the Wild West, and they took to the sixguns-and-hipflask lifestyle immediately. And we capped it all off with a rockclimbing expedition to Haiti."
"uh huh."
"Yeah. You should have seen those rootin' tootin' hooting tutu-ed Hutus on voodoo hoodoos."