Silver Adept (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
silveradept) wrote2012-04-10 10:06 pm
silveradept) wrote2012-04-10 10:06 pm
Entry tags:
Shadow Idol - Trying to make two topics relate to each other...
Have you ever had a fruity drink? (And by that, I don't mean a euphemism for anything - a drink, alcoholic or non, that has actual fruit in it.) For some reason, those serving drinks, at least in a restaurant or other establishment, seem to believe that straws are a good thing to have with such drinks. Despite most straws being smaller than the fruit in the drink. (The one exception? Bubble Tea straws are designed to suck up the tapioca bubbles. It's sensible.) Which makes the straw good for creating suction to pull up the fruit with. And possibly to shoot at people, if you want. (Family tradition dictates that straw wrappers are the things that get shot, but these days, they're not all that prevalent. Ah, and that one does not cross Grandma when she pulls the waiter aside and says she's paying for it...even if Mom has done the same thing beforehand.)
Well, okay, there's one other reason for a straw, but truthfully, it could be served by having a swizzle stick accompany the drink instead. Something tells me, though, that swizzle sticks are not provided in bulk by restaurant supply stores and bulk suppliers. Even if they would be an awesome way of marketing your particular establishment to others by letting people take home their excellent swizzle sticks.
If this were a normal entry, I'd then transition from the personal and small to the bigger, less-granular point through the use of something possibly related - from fruit and straws to donkeys and elephants (and Greens and Tea, Constitution and others). Puns, hopefully clever material, and all sorts of things that get us from one topic to another. It's going from one variation on the theme to another.
Instead, however, we're going to stop on playing cards. Because just about everyone in my family plays cards in one way or another. We usually started with learning cribbage, since it doesn't need that many people, it doesn't require having a handful of cards, and the rules are both simple and complex enough to be learned and then analyzed for best results. (Kind of like Fluxx.)
Then there's hearts, colloquially "nasty cards" in the family, for good reason - we don't worry about the two of clubs, and occasionally we say "no, no points on the first trick" if we're feeling nice. And we end up passing cards to the right first, because it's a conservative household. Or so they joke. Except it isn't. (If you've played Bang!, that's a pretty good representation of "nasty cards")
After that, it's double-deck pinochle, with a slightly weirder-than-usual bidding system, I think, but one that does require keeping a handful of cards and bidding one's hand either acurately or pre-emptively, depending. (This is Dominion - with a few expansions.)
But there's only one, maybe two, of the people who play cards in the family that have gone on to doing the big game - where you not only have to bid, but describe your hand in detail to your partner, and then, assuming you've arrived at the right contract, play the hand out against the opposition. The one that does, does so regularly and has apparently acumulated some amount of ranking according to the federation. He and Dad tried to teach me the basics of the bidding when I was younger. I don't think I got much out of it, plus the counting of everything was just the beginning, and I was having trouble with just that. Plus, at the time, I didn't really see the appeal of the game. Kind of weird, isn't it, with all the other card games that the family plays with relish?
I still look in on the Goren columns occasionally, trying to see if there's any more magic to it than there was before. It's not there, but it does let me at least converse with those who do play the game and say it's excellent.
This is a Shadow Idol entry, for the partner prompts of "The Straw that Stirs The Drink / Bridge". It makes for a rather disjointed entry, but no challenge is too tough, is it?
Well, okay, there's one other reason for a straw, but truthfully, it could be served by having a swizzle stick accompany the drink instead. Something tells me, though, that swizzle sticks are not provided in bulk by restaurant supply stores and bulk suppliers. Even if they would be an awesome way of marketing your particular establishment to others by letting people take home their excellent swizzle sticks.
If this were a normal entry, I'd then transition from the personal and small to the bigger, less-granular point through the use of something possibly related - from fruit and straws to donkeys and elephants (and Greens and Tea, Constitution and others). Puns, hopefully clever material, and all sorts of things that get us from one topic to another. It's going from one variation on the theme to another.
Instead, however, we're going to stop on playing cards. Because just about everyone in my family plays cards in one way or another. We usually started with learning cribbage, since it doesn't need that many people, it doesn't require having a handful of cards, and the rules are both simple and complex enough to be learned and then analyzed for best results. (Kind of like Fluxx.)
Then there's hearts, colloquially "nasty cards" in the family, for good reason - we don't worry about the two of clubs, and occasionally we say "no, no points on the first trick" if we're feeling nice. And we end up passing cards to the right first, because it's a conservative household. Or so they joke. Except it isn't. (If you've played Bang!, that's a pretty good representation of "nasty cards")
After that, it's double-deck pinochle, with a slightly weirder-than-usual bidding system, I think, but one that does require keeping a handful of cards and bidding one's hand either acurately or pre-emptively, depending. (This is Dominion - with a few expansions.)
But there's only one, maybe two, of the people who play cards in the family that have gone on to doing the big game - where you not only have to bid, but describe your hand in detail to your partner, and then, assuming you've arrived at the right contract, play the hand out against the opposition. The one that does, does so regularly and has apparently acumulated some amount of ranking according to the federation. He and Dad tried to teach me the basics of the bidding when I was younger. I don't think I got much out of it, plus the counting of everything was just the beginning, and I was having trouble with just that. Plus, at the time, I didn't really see the appeal of the game. Kind of weird, isn't it, with all the other card games that the family plays with relish?
I still look in on the Goren columns occasionally, trying to see if there's any more magic to it than there was before. It's not there, but it does let me at least converse with those who do play the game and say it's excellent.
This is a Shadow Idol entry, for the partner prompts of "The Straw that Stirs The Drink / Bridge". It makes for a rather disjointed entry, but no challenge is too tough, is it?