steamed buns

Father spent last Sunday alternating between entering numbers into an Excel spreadsheet and hanging his head over the family's inflated expenditures. "Your mom spends too much on clothes!" he said. "I am going to cut her budget to a sixth of what it is. She's going to hit me!" Then he came over to me and insisted that because free room and board is provided in prison, he was going to find a way to move us all into a prison. "I want a maximum security one!" he exclaimed. Daughter corrected his assumptions about maximum security prisons, yet Father insisted, "Maximum security is where they protect you the most! I will just stay inside!" And then tonight:

INT NIGHT LIVING ROOM

Father, after five minutes of repeating one extremely sibilant Chinese phrase extremely loudly: I could do okay in prison if I they let me have a piano.
Daughter: They don't let you have pianos in prison.
Father: Hey, you should study in a prison! It's the best study environment. This is nothing (pointing to plastic table Daughter purchased from Wal-Mart, where Daughter has spent eight weeks surrounded by green books, dog hair, and dishes dirty with chicken residue). This is privilege! You know, they [ed. not sure who "they" are] used to send you up to the monastery to study. You would study very well but be deranged when you came out of it. Because it was so...monotonous - what is the word for something that is monotonous. Monotonous...ly?
Daughter: Monotonous.
Father: - what is it - "monotonized"? Anyway, it is too monotonized. All you do is study all day. Then come out and ring the bell. Dang-dang-dang-dang-dang. Drives you crazy.
Daughter: Mm-hmm.
Father: But the best kung fu came out of that.
Daughter: Yes.
Father: But they only let you eat steamed buns, once in a while.

Daughter also tried to share her love for Freddie Mercury with Father last night, but got genuinely pissy when Father insisted on knowing how he died (Father has a 1986-era understanding of AIDS) and derided Freddie's pre-"Crazy Little Thing Called Love" comments as "Nazi" because he had failed to listen to the second half of the sentence. Daughter then called Father "judgmental." Father has been repeating in a singsong voice for two days, "I am not judgmental - I am sentimental. I am not judgmental - I am sentimental!"