Zach

Welcome to the Apodion Dispatches

Sun, 21 Dec 2008 00:19:58 GMT

Here's a placeholder for the Apodion Posterous account, which may contain dispatches from about town.

—Z. D. Smith

Roninspoon's Interview Game

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 00:51:22 GMT

Hello, everyone. If you happen to be reading this and have no idea why, because I haven’t updated this journal in 2 years and you’ve forgotten that I’m alive, it’s because in another corner of the internet I happen to be participating in a certain livejournal-based game, and have therefore been browbeaten into posting this on my livejournal in addition to my proper blog. Enjoy.

My buddy Ed has been soliciting requests to be interviewed. Unfortunately, concomitant with the ego boost of having someone ask you to talk about yourself is the obligation to actually furnish them with a proper answer, and moreover to put it up on the internet, for all to see.

The second part of the interview game is: if anybody would like me to come up with 5 piercing, trenchant and sympathetic questions perfectly tailored for them, that they might go on about themselves for this long, they need merely post a comment below and I will be obliged to give satisfaction.

Is there a cultural element to the Scandinavian domination of hyphen metal? If so, is it an element of the bands or the audience?

I dunno, man. I’ve started writing an answer to this one a couple times, and I think the problem is that where metal dipped considerably in America in the 1990s, there remained really vibrant, passionate metal subcultures all over Europe; and those have only gotten stronger as metal as gotten more popular in the English-speaking world.

I don’t know why Scandinavia, in particular, has been so fruitful, but it’s less anomalous in the context of European metal in general. Germany, for instance, has been an incredibly rich metal country for years and years: power metal, speed metal, and thrash have all had vital, independent and long-lived scenes there.

So in that context, the Scandinavian scenes are just more scenes—and the plural is useful there. I think that Scandinavia still has an exoticism to many Americans which I don’t really catch, any more, and thus the notion that Finland, Sweden, and Norway are be particularly culturally distinct might encounter skepticism. But to be honest Sweden was invigorating worldwide death metal while Norway was still, metallically speaking, in its diapers, and Sweden’s contributions to black metal have always, with a handful of notable exceptions, been strictly secondary to Norway’s. And to the Swedes and the Norwegians—and thus to the metal community at large—Finland is just full of its own truly deranged souls.

Now. All that said, Scandinavian metal—Black metal and viking metal in particular—has for some time now been leavened with a real cultural and geographic influence from the area. This is a clear case of metal first, cultural influence second—I don’t think that Scandinavia is, truly, any more hospitable to metal in an aesthetic sense—but the musicians there have long drawn on the severe climate and landscape as well as the norse history of the area. Norse myth, folk legends, fjords and pine forests have been fertile inspiration for Robert Plant, J.R.R. Tolkien and Enslaved alike. I should stress, though, that the first Swedish and Norwegian death metal bands were kids singing about slasher movies, just like everywhere else.

Cast the live action Metalocalypse film, drawing on the members of current or past metal bands, living or deceased.

This one is kind of a cheat, since several of the characters in that show are more or less overtly based on actual metal personages themselves. I have restricted myself to musicians who play the same instrument as their characters, in most cases.

Nathan Explosion: George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher, from Cannibal Corpse

William Murderface: Geezer Butler, from Black Sabbath (Geezer Butler is not nearly as unpleasant as Murderface. But they have the same hairstyle.)

Pickles The Drummer: Devin Townsend, from Strapping Young Lad (Devin isn’t a drummer, but Pickles is pretty transparently a Devin clone. I mean, dude’s got a skullet.)

Skwisgaar Skwigelf: Michael Amott, from Arch Enemy

Toki Wartooth: Kirk Hammett, from Metallica (though Hammett is neither a rhythm guitarist nor Norwegian, no other musician so perfectly exemplifies the sweet, second banana man-child.)

Briefly discuss the cultural and or technological catalysts that give rise to the evolution of logographic writing systems over alphabets.

This question is actually based on something of a false premise; there are no logographic writing systems in current use. Rather understandably, logographic systems—systems in which a single unique character or grapheme will stand for a word or morpheme—predate alphabets, but in reality it’s the alphabets which evolved out of logographies. Chinese, the logographic system which most readily springs to mind, has in fact also evolved out of the confines of strict logographic representation such that the majority of Chinese words involve a combination of different characters, including a combination of characters for semantic and phonetic notation.

One of the commonly mentioned advantages, though not a catalyst per se, of logographic (or pseudo-logographic) systems is that they are decipherable independent of the evolution in the spoken language to which they refer. Further, people speaking a range of mutually unintelligible dialects can still understand the same text—as a catalyst, you could get chicken and egg, but culturally the notion of China as an enormous area comprising numerous linguistic populations certainly requires either a linguistic convergence or a mutually intelligible writing system. My understanding is that the effect across time is somewhat muted in the modern world, as the literary conventions and word definitions in Classical Chinese render it highly difficult for the student of modern Chinese to read.

What was the best meal you’ve ever had and what made it so special?

I am horrible at remembering things like this: best meal, favorite singer, favorite painter. When I was very young, I had the notion that for pretty much every kind of thing in the world, there was a definitive, objective Best, and all I had to do was find out what each one was. I knew that Picasso, for instance, was the best painter in the world, though I’m not sure I was particularly familiar with his work.

Almost all of my meals of note were remarkable because they were at restaurants that my friends and I routinely went to. Most were in high school, when we couldn’t cook very well and had more disposable income. The Indian Café, on 107th St., was one such place: my group of friends from school—who overlapped significantly with my band—and I would go there really often. My friend Michelle would guzzle margaritas. I always ate everyone’s papadum, because I was the only one who liked ‘em, and I always ordered the lentils.

As far as actual meal experiences—I can’t tell you the best meal I’ve ever had, because I remember awfully few. The best meal I’ve had in recent memory, though, Robyn and I had a couple months ago, to celebrate our 1-year anniversary. The place was Basso 56. It was pretty fancy—definitely fancier than a usual Saturday night—but not so fancy that we had to hold back in ordering. What made it so lovely, for me, was the degree to which it underscored the value of the whole experience in a properly good restaurant. We ordered appetizers, salads, entrees, dessert, and digestifs—quite a few more courses than usual for me—and each one was excellent. Just as impressive, though, was the service: our waiter was attentive and friendly without being obsequious or fake, and authoritative and skilled without being snooty or intimidating. It was excellent service, and, far from simply providing us our food while it was still hot and managing not to fuck anything up, enhanced the experience every step of the way.

You have been asked to typeset your favorite novel. Which font do you choose?

But not which novel? For the sake of readability I will pass over your choice of terminology, and pretend you had said ‘typeface’. That’s a tough question to ask, I think, because naturally one’s choice of face for the body of a book has to not only stand on its own in terms of aesthetics and visual interest, but also stand in harmony with the general aesthetic of the book, content-wise, and perhaps most of all with the design of the rest of the book.

Naturally I don’t have a cover to consider, so I’ll go mostly on terms of visual interest. My favorite novel—and again my inability to cite favorite things comes into play, here—is probably Heller’s Catch 22. So we’ll want to keep things twentieth century, American, and middle of the road in terms of style; no late-period calligraphic revivals nor Italian Old Styles. Which is nice for me, because in the past six months or so I’ve found myself most consistently drawn to the faces of the 19th and early 20th century, especially newsprint. The development is quite evident and fascinating to see: from cheap and inflexible Scotch Roman types, printed on lousy paper with lousy ink, up through the first faces actually designed for the medium, like Melior—they all, even the former, have a robust charm, and their imperfections and slightly old-fashioned look, heightened by the fact that so many extent examples were printed from hot metal and other devices less advanced than our current digital presses.

So I think it would be interesting to lay our book in that period. I would choose Oxford, ATF’s 1892 revival of Binny & Ronaldson’s Roman No. 1. Oxford itself has not survived the following century’s succession of printing technologies, but happily it seems to have been the subject of its own revival, just very recently: Monticello.

Sat, 26 Mar 2005 15:19:40 GMT

Ok, so I know that just a couple days ago I said I was switching to one blog until jbo got his shit together.

Long story short, I decided that I might as well not wait any longer and so talked to our good friend Panamaus, and he set me up right.

There is now a single website which is completely mine, and to which I will be posting exclusively. Along with that website there is, once again, a livejournal feed, set up by fweez.

The website is: http://apodion.net
The livejournal feed from that is cruxomatic.

And that's it. I promise. I apologize for telling you all to keep switching like this, but I swear this'll be the last time.

BOO YAKA

Thu, 17 Mar 2005 21:40:50 GMT

Bacardi 151
Congratulations! You're 148 proof, with specific scores in beer (80) , wine (133), and liquor (113).

All right. No more messing around. Your knowledge of alcohol is so high that you have drinking and getting plastered down to a science. Sure, you could get wasted drinking beer, but who needs all those trips to the bathroom? You head straight for the bar and pick up that which is most efficient.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 85% on proof
You scored higher than 90% on beer index
You scored higher than 99% on wine index
You scored higher than 98% on liquor index

Link: The Alcohol Knowledge Test written by hoppersplit on Ok Cupid

Thu, 17 Mar 2005 12:01:42 GMT

Currently playing in iTunes: Pores by Z. D. Smith

Just whipped up some quick album art, finally. It's actually kind of neat looking, in that you-obviously-have-no-idea-how-to-use-photoshop way.

Thu, 17 Mar 2005 09:37:00 GMT

Spent much of tonight modifying a theme for Shapeshifter in OS X. It was pretty satisfying; I really like tricking out my GUI, and modifying a theme with relative ease was a good time.

I'm pretty wired; I need to stop drinking coffee at night (or in the early evening, apparently).

Also did some work on a remix of a previous Z. D. Smith composition; enough work, anyway, to eventually annoy Seamus in the next room. I'm pleased with what's come out, though it doesn't feel finished. I'm glad I'm pleased, since composition is the kind of the thing where I might put 3 or 4 hours work into a song and only discover at the end that the whole thing is absolute junk. It's at that point that my simple desire to not want all my work to have been for naught kicks in, and I go ahead and chop up and filter the stuff beyond recognition. Whatever works, I guess.

Side note: I really hate those folks who insist that discreet compositions or recordings are not, in certain contexts, songs, but in fact 'pieces' maybe, whereas they are in other cases. Everything I write is a song, be it a 4 minute rock song with drums and vocals or 9 minutes of ambient noise. What rubbish.

Mon, 14 Mar 2005 13:47:42 GMT

" ADOM for the Macintosh a little more real now... (03/14/2005, 11:42)

Hi all! At the weekend I got a first beta version from Jochen of ADOM for Macintosh. I'm testing it right now but it seems that ADOM for Macintosh will be available before the next ADOM release :-) I'll keep you updated... "

GAH

Mon, 14 Mar 2005 07:23:27 GMT

Currently playing in iTunes: Symphony of Psalms by Igor Stravinsky

So I decided today that I should start an honest-to-god journal. You know, writing down and articulating all the maddening trains of thought that bounce constantly around my head and that I sometimes inflict on those around me, when I can't help myself any longer, to their utter lack of interest. I did a good bit of writing today; it's remarkably helpful. I've always been a staunch and resolute materialist about this sort of thing, and never could see any use to writing something down that no one but myself would ever read, but I'm finally learning what most people find out around 5th or 6th grade, I guess.

I figure if I can keep myself on the articulation wagon it will probably develop a public component, too (ie, actual livejournal entries), so you all will probably end up finding yourselves either annoyed or gratified in the weeks to come.

On a completely different note: Where in this town can a fellow obtain for himself a lampshade?

Wed, 09 Mar 2005 09:52:03 GMT

This is a test.

Of my blogging client.

i haven't done any kind of survey in FOREVER, so i'm just gonna do this one and you can bite me.

Tue, 08 Mar 2005 08:31:15 GMT

> iTunes Survey
>
> How many total songs?
> 31216
>
> Sort by song title - first and last?
> First: - "-! /d+mt. sn6.1. ai 1346" by Mikael Stavostrand
> Last in the real alphabet: "Zzz" by Motohiro Nakashima
> Last one in library: (when arranged by artist name) - "Tiddler" by Nobukazu Takemura (In Japanese)
First one in library: (when arranged by artist name) - ((((invisible wavez)))) by [[[[vvrssnn]]]]

> Sort by time - first and last?
> Longest: "100 Minutes 1:39:59 Sami Koivikko
> Shortest: "Circles Of Mania" 0:02 Coil
>
> Sort by Album - first and last?
> First: ...And Justice For All - Metallica (duh!)
> Last: Zwei Photonen - Justus Koehncke

Sort by genre - first and last?
First: A Capella
Last: Yeye

Top five played songs?
My play counts are all skewed because of songs I've put on mixes.

Next one in the party shuffle?
"Rise" - Today Is The Day - Supernova

First playlist name?
"A-D wknst"

Find 'sex', how many songs show up?
48

Find 'death', how many songs show up?
238

Find 'love', how many songs show up?
277

Find 'drug', how many songs show up?
8

'girl'?
95

'boy'?
75

Well, what does that tell us? I don't have a lot of music about drugs.

Bouré

Mon, 28 Feb 2005 12:28:02 GMT

Boure is a trick-taking game from Louisiana. We should definitely play. Rules:

Bouré

Let's get the painful but obvious problem with an attempt to canonize a regional game out of the way: these rules are very much a product of the environment in which they are used. Bouré is indigenous to Acadiana, played almost nowhere else, and it sports enough variations to make a Poker fan's hair curl. Because of this, I am terming the version of Bouré explained in the majority of this document Rural Avoyelles Parish Bouré. Even that is something of a misnomer, since the rules are not standardized over even such a small subset of the population of Louisiana, but I'm writing it down so I get to call it what I damn well please. Rural Avoyelles Parish Bouré--abbreviated RAP Bouré--it is. So, without further ado, I proudly present a canonical non-canonical set of rules for Rural Avoyelles Parish Bouré.

Number of Players: 2-10 is an unrealistic but technically feasible set of limits. The two-player game is very weak, however; three-player is doable but tends towards split pots. The best game is found with four, five and six players; more means that you will probably have to use cards from people who pass to supplement the primary deck, which makes for weaker deals. Therefore, 4-6 is a more realistic set of limits, and the ones I recommend. Stray on either side with care, and don't let those games give you a false impression of just how the game plays.

Equipment: One standard French-suited 52-card deck and an ample supply of tokens for use as betting material are necessary. Poker chips are recommended, moreso if you have different coloured chips that you can give different values. Since there is a fixed ante amount, the smallest unit necessary is one ante's worth.

Before the Game: Trade money in for chips. An equal amount for every player is suggested--it makes eyeballing for winners easier--but certainly not enforced. Indeed, many people simply play RAP Bouré with cash, but that makes for a much messier table, along with the added challenge of figuring out whether everyone has anted when the players at the table are less than sober. Decide on an ante amount. I suggest USD 0.10 or the closest equivalent where you live; enough to make a pot with four or five people playing actually tangible, but not so much that you feel you're really losing out when you have to pass on three or four hands in a row. If you're playing with friends, family, or anyone you'd like to see alive again, a 'pot limit' is highly recommended. The 'pot limit' does not actually affect the maximum amount of money in the pot, but it determines the maximum amount you have to put in the pot if you bouré or renege. Without this limit, people can have to put up many dollars due to a bad hand or a misplay, which can cause wounded feelings and even a knife in the hand. [You think I'm kidding? We take our games seriously down here in Louisiana.] We've had a lot of success with a 'pot limit' of USD 1.00, or ten times our ante.

Another very important point, especially for a regional game such as RAP Bouré, is to make sure that everyone playing is aware of the particulars of the game you're about to play. There are many variations on the rules of Bouré, and when someone says that they know how to play, that does not mean that they know how to play the version that you know how to play. Some of the differences between versions, such as whether you have to play a trump card if you cannot follow suit and cannot beat the highest trump on the table, can be the difference between a bouré and a split pot, and will cause consternation (and perhaps worse) if the particulars are not out on the table immediately. Some important points to cover if you've got someone coming in who is not a regular part of your gaming group are your rules for the aforementioned situation, how you treat reneges, and whether you use an 'in or out' round before you declare how many cards you take. Most of the other particulars will be small enough to not matter, but don't blame me if you get shot at because someone who plays a just-different-enough-to-cause-trouble variant shows up and causes trouble. You can't just tell someone to read their Hoyle's when you have a problem crop up. [Which is part of why I'm writing this website, of course.]

Choose someone to be the first dealer. Eldest, youngest, the person whose establishment is being used to play, or "me" are all valid choices. Everyone places one ante's worth of money into the 'pot,' generally in the centre of the table.

Order of Play: Deal rotates deosil. The dealer deals one card at a time face-down, starting with the person on their left and continuing deosil, until everyone has five cards. Instead of dealing their last card face-down, the dealer deals their fifth card face-up. The suit of the face-up card determines the "trump" suit for that hand, and that hand only. It is also the dealer's fifth card, so they effectively get a "free" trump for dealing.

In or Out: Starting with the person to the left of the dealer and continuing deosil, each player declares whether they are are 'in' or 'out.' A player who stays out for a hand has lost their ante, but cannot bouré or renege, both of which cost considerably more than the cost of an ante. The dealer collects the cards of players who are 'out' and places them in a stack. (This is technically only necessary for games with more then five people, and is not likely to be necessary with six players.)

Draw: The dealer next asks each player still in for the hand how many cards they'd like to replace from their hands, once again starting at the player to their left. They can take any number of cards up to and including five, or they can choose to not take any at all. The dealer collects their discards into a second stack and deals them new ones from the cards left undealt. If the original deal runs out, the dealer shuffles the cards of people who are out, making sure to not use the discards from this round. This is why it is important to keep them separate; there may be trump cards in the 'out' hands, but only fools would throw trumps away during the draw round. After providing cards for all of the other players, the dealer does the same--if they are still in the game--and only then do they collect their fifth card. This is to ensure that everyone is reminded until the end of this round just what suit is trumps. We actually use four aces from a dissimilar deck of cards and turn one face up to show the trump suit, but if everyone at the table is drinking, it may be better not to bother, as arguments over whether the face-up card got updated can ensue.

Play: The player closest to the left of the dealer leads. They can lead any card, face-up in the centre of the table. Play continues deosil, each player putting one card down. However, they must follow a strict set of rules in doing so:

Playing to Win: They must play to win. If the eight of diamonds is the highest card on the table, and the player has both the seven and the Queen of diamonds, they must play the Queen. Aces are high, not low.

Following Suit: They must follow suit, even if they cannot beat the highest card on the table. In other words, if the Queen of diamonds is on the table, and the only diamond you have is a four, you have to play it. You do not have to play the highest card in that suit; indeed, that would be considered foolish.

Trumps: If you do not have a card in the suit led, and you have a card in the trumps suit, you must play it. The trump suit is higher than every other suit in terms of value; a two of trumps beats the Ace of any other suit, and the Ace of trumps is unbeatable. Remember that you can only play trumps if you cannot follow suit. This obviously does not apply if the suit led was the trumps suit.

Following in Trumps: If you do not have a card in the suit led, and you have trumps, but you cannot beat the highest trump card on the table, you still have to play a trump. This is a common point of variation; make it clear when you play with newcomers.

Sluffing: If you do not have a card in the suit led, and you do not have a card in the trumps suit, then and only then can you throw down a card that is in neither of those suits. This is commonly referred to as 'tossing off' or 'sluffing,' and the card has no value. This commonly occurs on the last trick of the hand.

Whoever played the highest card takes the cards out of the centre and places them face-up in front of them so that people can see what has been already been played. Then they lead, and play continues.

Forced Plays: If a player has taken their second trick and they have the highest card still in play--typically the Ace of trumps, but possibly lower depending on previous tricks--they must lead that card. Similarly, if they have taken one trick and have the two highest cards still in play, they must lead both of these cards at the same time. The other players then each play two cards, following the rules above, typically playing their two lowest trumps or their last trump and a low off-card. This logical trend continues; if you are dealt the Ace, King, Queen, Jack, and ten of trumps and you are the person left to the dealer, you must play all five at the start. A failure to do any of this results in a renege. The easiest way to remember what you're supposed to do is this: if you know you're going to take the pot--three tricks out of five is a majority--then you cannot lead people on by playing something else. You must force the hand.

The rules for forced plays can get more complex. For example, if you've taken one trick and have the Ace, Queen, and Jack of trumps, you have a guaranteed win even if the King is still in play. The rules are a bit hazy here--we would put all three down, and give the person with the King a trick if they have another trump, but your results may vary. Just how mathematical you want to get with forced plays is up to you; you may be happy to just deal with the cases in the above paragraph. Another case of a forced play is if you play a trump card and no one else has any trumps left, but you do; the rest of your trumps should be played at the same time. This is another common point of variation and contention; discuss just how complex you allow forced plays to be when you're playing with new people.

Collecting the Pot: After all five cards in everyone's hands have been played, typically during five tricks, the player who took the most tricks takes the pot. If two or more players have collected the same number of tricks, the pot is 'split' and stays in the centre of the table. This can only occur if the tricks are divided up between three people in a 2-2-1 configuration or five people in a 1-1-1-1-1 configuration. If the person who would take the pot reneged during the hand, the pot stays as well. [If one of the almost-winners of a split pot reneged, the money still stays.]

Bourés: If a player who stayed in does not take any tricks during the course of a hand, they have bouréd. Instead of a normal ante for the next round, they must match the amount of money that was in the pot during the hand. This will count as their ante. If there is a 'pot limit,' they only have to put up that much as their ante for the next round. It is generally polite to let those who bouréd and reneged to count the pot before the winner takes it and everyone else antes, so that they know how much they have to pony up.

Reneges: If ever a player does not play correctly--they do not follow suit when they should, they do not play to win, they forget to play trumps, they do not lead the Ace when they have taken two tricks--they renege. Play continues, but that player automatically loses the round and, for all intents and purposes, has bouréd.

Continuing: The deal moves one seat to the left; everyone antes into the pot, even if it was split, and the unlucky folks who bouréd and reneged must put the proper amounts in as their ante.

Variations: There are a number of variations to this description of RAP Bouré, some of which are common, others less so. Here is a non-exhaustive list of variations that you may wish to try. I will mark the ones that we typically use, so if you are using this website to learn the rules before you play with my group, you will know which variations to prepare for. If you know of any other good variations, please let me know.

Ante Amounts: The 'official' RAP Bouré rules state that a bouré or renege counts as your ante for the next round. I don't like this, because it makes the amount in the pot harder to count. Instead, we play so that you still have to put one more ante-unit in along with your payment for the bouré or renege. This keeps the pot amount at multiples of the number of players, assuming you don't hit the pot limit on the penalty payments. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be a common variant, but we use it. So nyeh. We use this variation.

Following Trumps: One of the more common variations concerns whether you must play a trump card if you cannot follow suit, have trumps, but cannot beat the highest trump on the table. RAP Bouré says yes, some people say no, and we follow RAP rules in this instance. It lends to a higher number of bourés, but we find that it makes the game more interesting.

Forced Plays: The rules for forced plays can be easy or complex. While the more mathematically-inclined of us may not have much trouble with all but the most obscure forced play situations, the rest of the world may want to simplify the rules. It is highly recommended not to change the 'forced Ace'-type rules, but the rest are less obvious and therefore may be changed as you see fit.

No "In or Out" Round: Instead of asking whether each player is in or out before the draw round, you can combine the two. Players can say "I'm out" if they do not wish to play for a round, or state the number of cards that they want. This leads to less bourés in general, since players close to the right side of the dealer have more information to go on as to whether or not they should stay in. It's hard to stay in when you've got a mild hand and the person to the left of the dealer has a cat-caught-the-mouse smile when they say, "Oh, I'll stay with what I have."

Pot Limits: Mentioned a number of times above, a 'pot limit' keeps bourés and reneges from breaking people's banks. They are almost required for any friendly game, as feelings can get hurt easily if you intentionally or unintentionally bouré someone on a USD 100 pot. People can get hurt too. Highly recommended. We use this variation.

Reneging: The rules for reneging are bad enough. Indeed, I think they are the only weak point of an otherwise easy-to-learn game. Because of this, renege rules vary wildly from group to group. Some allow you to retract a played card if you make a mistake; for a while, we played such that if you caught it, you acted as if you bouréd on the spot, adding money to the pot, and then retracted the play. This turned out to be much more trouble than it was worth, so now once a card has hit the table it is irretractable, with some leeway given for new players.

Table Talk: While not really a variation, there is a mostly unspoken rule with card games that you do not engage in table talk. However, when you play with people who do not lie about the game, and you're playing primarily to socialize, we find that table talk can actually soothe over wounds--keeping people out of a hand when you drew all of the face-card trumps may keep them from giving you evil eyes for the rest of the night. While it's not kosher to actually state out loud the cards in your hand, we definitely chat about the game as we play. This is highly dependent on the group you play with, so it is not recommended unless you know the people you play with well and think they can handle it. We use this 'variation'.

As previously stated, we all put up USD 10 at the beginning of each night. We also have a semi-complex rule system about just how much money you can put up in a given night. If you lose all of your starting money, you are allowed to put in half as much and get new chips. If you lose all of that, you're allow to get half again as much, and so on. After doing some calculation, this leads you to a total of USD 19.70 for a USD 10 start amount and USD 0.10 antes, since we round down fractional ante amounts. We also allow players who put more money in to 'clear the bill'--they do not have to pay up if their last round was a bouré or renege. Indeed, if they bouré or renege and do not have enough money to cover it, they simply put in everything they have and are allowed to play in an attempt to take their money back.

From looking at the rules and the variations that we use, you can see that we try to make the game as interesting as possible while keeping it sociable, keeping rules that make bourés more common but with a pot limit to keep the amount you lose in check. We've found that this can lead to considerable pots; in one recent five-player game, the pot got up to over seven dollars before someone took it. In non-limit games, the pot has been known to climb into the hundreds. I once again warn you about the bodily harm that can result from those sorts of games, but it's your life.

Endnote: This is the first set of rules that I've ever written up, and as such they may not be as clear as I'd like. Please feel free to contact me if you need clarification or see any errors; I'd like this to be as definitive a set of rules for RAP Bouré as possible.

Except for two variations: "In or Out" round shall be handled with the ol' chip-in-hand maneuver,

and

barring persuasive argumentation, the trump card shall be determined by taking off the top card after the deal.

netnewswire - 2 points

Sat, 26 Feb 2005 08:52:56 GMT

NetNewsWire gets 2 points. I decided to bite the bullet and subscribe to the 43folders rss feed, but didn't feel like tracking down the little "rss" button on the webpage and copying the URL. So I typed 'http://43folders.com" in the subscribe box, saying to myself, 'dammit, there's absolutely no reason that this program shouldn't be smart enough to figure it out.'

And it worked! That's smart design, folks.

moleskins?

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 21:00:20 GMT

So, I finally broke down and bought two moleskine pocket notebooks from powell's. not only that, but i even have some fancy japanese pens coming, too.

i am another inductee to the cult of writer-geek.

now i just need a job; WILL WRITE FOR FOOD.

FUCK

Mon, 21 Feb 2005 04:34:19 GMT

Hunter S. Thomspon shot himself!

Fuck!

here

Sun, 06 Feb 2005 05:50:00 GMT

I'M IN PORTLAND NOW

ok, so no, seriously.

Thu, 03 Feb 2005 15:26:52 GMT

'Mother North' is the best black metal song ever.

No, seriously.

Well, top five, definitely. But jesus. This song is so fucking good.

GEEE MAIL!!!

Thu, 03 Feb 2005 13:57:14 GMT

so, like everybody else on gmail apparently, i now have 50 gmail invites

even though i couldn't even give them all away when i had 4 - if you want a gmail account, ask me.

gmail is google's 1GB-sized free webmail service with nifty javascript interface and free pop/rss support, if you were wondering.

Fri, 28 Jan 2005 19:30:02 GMT

man, i have like 8 Withering Surface records, and they're ALL terrible.

I am full of questions.

Why do these people keep putting out records?

Why don't they ever improve?

Why do I have like, all of them?

Why is Denmark incapable of producing good music?

Note: I did not actually confirm that Withering Surface is from Denmark before I wrote this.

I suspect they are.

taking off

Sun, 16 Jan 2005 09:32:05 GMT

So, for those of you who don't know, which is maybe a lot of you, I'm not coming back to Bard Spring '05. Instead, I'm moving out to Portland, OR.

I'll be up at Bard at some point to gather my belongings, and to you bid all y'all a fond and hearty farewell.

Sun, 09 Jan 2005 07:10:20 GMT

well gosh, what an eventful month it's been so far.

i got a tattoo; you saw that.

i also just joined the writing staff of tartarean desire, a not at all disreputable metal webzine. Expect even more critical brilliance from yours truly.

also, i am currently listening to the new strapping young lad album, due to be released in march. i honestly cannot say whether or not I like it yet.

it certainly is different. at least I THINK it is.

Sat, 08 Jan 2005 05:29:42 GMT

my new shoulder

music thinger.

Tue, 14 Dec 2004 10:29:32 GMT

new entry in my incredibly insightful music journal.

musics

Tue, 30 Nov 2004 18:59:58 GMT

Two things of note:

There is a new article in the music journal thing.

Also, I wrote a new song. I'm pretty pleased with it, though a) it has no bottom end and b) it has no name.

Thu, 18 Nov 2004 17:22:27 GMT

Despite being praised as a legitimate alternative to the fashionable metal that’s currently polluting the airwaves, The War Within actually signals the emergence of a new conservatism that’s just as trendy and artistically bankrupt as the genres it has been claimed to rail against.

bitches.

uh, what?

Mon, 15 Nov 2004 11:36:40 GMT

ok, first off ignore the fact that i'm writing this at 635 in the morning.

where the hell did shiira come from? this is basically the best browser for the mac. and i've never heard of it before. it blows safari out of the water.