A spoonerism is a play on words in which you switch the first letters of 2 or more words in a phrase.

For instance, by switching the first letters of the words, and in this case re-spelling them, the Two of Clubs becomes a “Clue of Tubs.”

When it comes to cards, my favorite spoonerisms are the Whore of Farts, the Clack of Jubs, the Spine of Nades, the Spack of Jades, the Dicks of Simons (also known as the Dix of Siamonds), and my absolute favorite: the Hive of Farts.

Hive of Farts should be a winning play in poker, like the Royal Flush.

Dix of Siamonds sounds like royalty.

I’ve been doing this for as long as I can remember, from the first time I ever picked up a deck of cards.

At my advanced age the problem is that I can’t reverse this habit any more. When I see the seven of hearts, I don’t even think “Seven of Hearts,” that card is simply the “Heaven of Sartres” and that’s that.

It’s a good thing the only card games I play are solitaire games, because I’d leave my poker buddies bewildered.

I can see myself playing bridge in the park in my old age, with the other old men looking at me asking “What the hell is a Cive of Flubs?”

I don’t really know multi-player card games very well, and have not played any to speak of since I was a kid. And even then all I wanted to play was War.

Lately I’ve been playing Russian Solitaire on my PDA, and I noticed that while playing the game I spoonerize the card names to the point of obsession. “Oh, look,” says I, “if I move the Hate of Arts it will free up the Hen of Tarts.”

Admittedly, to achieve this lifetime perfect record I have on occasion had to blow dollars and dollars and dollars (and dollars and dollars) worth of quarters. And on more than one occasion I had to play the damn game for hours and hours and hours. But I *always* get the high score.

I want people who come to that pizza place to be astonished by the high score that I left there. It is my trophy. They should ask the owners of the place “Hey. Did you see the Ms. Pac Man virtuoso? When does this person usually come here? Can we see this person play? Do you realize that based on these high scores, this is the greatest master in the history of the game? Where can we meet this person so we can give him a free house?”

There’s not much to spoonerize in Ms. Pac Man, or in most video games. There are not a lot of words involved in Ms. Pac Man, Asteroids, Space Invaders...

While playing Ms. Pac Man, or pinball, the thoughts which consume my mind like maggots on a dead dog are a mix of memories and fantasies.

Memories come from the comments that observers made while watching me play -- I mean, while watching me absolutely kick ass -- at Ms. Pac Man at various places throughout this great country.

In Daytona Beach, crowds would gather when I played Ms. Pac Man.

One of the features of the game is that you can get extra points by eating fruits or other types of food that enter the screen. Cherries, raspberries, apples, bananas, and so on.

The first time the extra-point raspberry would come trotting out onto the screen, a particular drunk-ass redneck who was there to watch me play every night would yell “GIT DA FROOT! GIT DA FROOT!”

He would yell “GIT DA FROOT!” even when the extra-point item was a pretzel.

When I missed the pretzel or the banana or the apple he would shout “YOU MISSED DA FROOT!” Then he’d turn and laugh in the face of whoever was nearest to him with the reprise “THAT BOY MISSED DA FROOT!”

I was so wound up and concentrating so hard that I rarely if ever turned to see the adoring crowds that surrounded me as I played.

If there was a lull in the game I would turn to my left just slightly to see that they were still there. Or I would keep tabs on the faces reflected in the glass of the game console. Without looking at them directly I could see them react to my excellence or concentrate on the game or drink beer or exchange comments and facial expressions showing amazement at my skills.

I always imagined myself playing Ms. Pac Man on “ABC’s Wide World of Video Games.”

Jim McKay would howl “Oh! In a rare lapse of concentration Mark Thomas gets eaten by the ghosts in a classic triple-jackknife-scrumshoot. Those three ghosts came together as one, it was like a vortex of death for Mark Thomas. And this is one Ms. Pac Man champion who is not afraid to express his frustration right now.”

Dick Schaap (enthusiastically): “For students of Ms. Pac Man, Mark Thomas is giving a clinic tonight in the techniques of predicting the appearance of apples and pretzels on the upper-right portion of boards 3 and 4. We are really seeing a master at the pinnacle of his powers tonight.”

Jim McKay: “Mark Thomas triumphs against the ghosts, the dots, the fruits and the pretzel! This is Ms. Pac Man competition at its finest!”

Dick Schaap: “You know what every Ms. Pac Man champion will tell you, Jim…”

Jim McKay: “What’s that, Dick?”

Dick Schaap: “A pretzel is not a fruit!”

(Laughter. Fade to locker-room interview with myself.)

Throughout the contest Dick Schaap and Jim McKay would invoke all kinds of terminology to describe my virtuoso maneuvers, from split-second ghost-fooling reverses to my techniques for maximizing the value of my off-screen time while going from one side of the board to the other. (Jim McKay: “He’s diddling on the off-screen. That boy is invisible right now, those ghosts don’t know which way to go…”)

As a kid consumed by my “GIT DA FROOT!” moments of arcade heroics, I couldn’t understand why video games and pinball machines were not a nationally televised American craze. Didn’t the suits at the television networks see the drama in all this?

I was 13 and 14 years old in those days at Daytona Beach. 20 years later, I realize that watching a Ms. Pac Man championship would be as exciting for most television viewers as would be a Rubik’s Cube tournament or a crossword puzzle contest.

These things have their measures of excitement, but the element of human competition is missing. Whatever advances there have been in artificial intelligence since the early 1980s (my pioneering glory days at the Ms. Pac Man table), the ghosts of Ms. Pac Man are still not going to pour it on at the end of a game to make any extra effort to defeat me. And a Rubik’s Cube is not going to put up any more of a contest than it ever does.

But I don’t care. Every single day for the last month or so, you’d have found me at the pizza place near here, kicking ass at Ms. Pac Man and pissing away quarter after quarter and hour after hour in an endless quest to get a higher and higher score and to secure my dominance at this game in this pizza place into the next generation.

Or at least until they unplug or reset the machine.

When that happens, I will start all over again.