Bridge is WAR!

[kokup]

Bridge is WAR!

 

the popular image is that Bridge players are sweet little old ladies sitting around a tea table - by and large, this impression is correct,.... , but little old ladies can be vicious too!

 

just look at this picture, taken from a real game during an online Bridge tournament. the tournament director, called pebcat, has just announced he has removed a player for bad behaviour - probably saying nasty things in semi-public about his partner. For this, he would have been awarded the badge of "public enemy". people can hide their names on internet, but not their characters.

 

Anyhow, a few minutes later, pebcat announces that he has removed 11 asbo-ers [2], who had already manifested their bad temper in just the first round of the tourney.

 

That's 11 out of 143, a sizeable percentage.

 

Does this mean that people who play Bridge are unusually aggressive and rude, or are they representative of the human population as a whole?

 

In the 19th century, the Prussian army was the first in the world to use toy models for playing out likely battle scenarios before engagement. the knowledge they thereby gained helped them become Europe's strongest army. their successes turn influenced the later 3rd Reich to think they could win against superior odds.

 

and when computers came along, the first thing they did with them was to play war games with imaginary cannon, to see where they needed to point those metaphorical penises to rain hell over their adversaries.

 

i think it was von Neumann and Morgenstern who characterised the theory of games. i believe they didn't mention Wittegenstein's observation that all life is a game. some you win and some you lose.

 

it's easy to see games like Chess are War games, what with their bishops and castles, etc. But how about Snakes and Ladders? or Trivial Pursuit? or Bridge?

 

Bridge is a little different from Chess in that it involves dialogue and cooperation with a partner, but otherwise its an abstract "grab all you can" thing.

 

What's this ubiquitous fascination with pursuit and competition anyway? For sure, it's a Human Universal; as observed by Stephen PInker in his book "The Blank Slate".

 

And not just humans: Geerat Vermeij, a blind scientist, has made a lifetime study of shells and concluded that the driving force behind evolution is "eat and avoid being eaten" [2]. Basically, shells have evolved differently- shaped castles to defend themselves against the different marauding bishops and knights that beset them.

 

Vermeij's conclusion explains Pinker's observation, which in turn explains why so-called sapient organisms like Homo Sapiens spend more of their time squabbling than they do building. and even when they do build, they so often only build monuments to their egos.

 

Noam Chomsky is correct in his complaints about the deceitful and hurtful practices of successive USA administrations, but he doesn't seem to realise that such selfish behaviour is only normal, and hence inevitable. George Bush went to war, not simply to prove to himself that he was better than his Dad had made him think he was, but to make himself attractive to women.

 

"What??!!" i hear you cry .. "you must be off your head! it's nothing to do with that... you're just joking, right?"

 

no, i am not joking.

 

why do you think all the nice girls love a sailor? it's because they look so smart in their nice naval uniforms. so smart, so powerful, so superior. British naval armies were, until the invention of the airplane, always regarded as the Senior Service, because they could beat the sht out of natives just by standing offshore in their gunboats, without getting the nice creases in their trousers all muddy.

 

to perpetuate one's genes, one has to reproduce. for your genes to persist, they must be mixed with another's that comes from a provenly successful line. what is this success? and how is it indicated?

 

its actually quite simple. evolutionary success is not dying out. not dying out in a world where everyone else is scrabbling for more than their share of the pie. for all they can get. for the largest harem, the tallest skyscraper, the biggest muscles, the largest bank balance, a bigger car than their next-door neighbour. this is why Australia's national obsession is to beat the Poms at cricket.

 

so little Georgie's subconscious mind provoked him into his pre-emptive attack on someone who was no threat to him at all, just because he just couldn't help himself -- well, not entirely,.. he also consciously realised that his bank balance would increase substantially from all the backhanders that Bandar Bush and others would give him, as they were the ones who would benefit most from Saddam getting what was coming to him.

 

Little old ladies dont have the muscles to out-Schwatzenegger their opponents, not do they have phials of anthrax in the warheads of missiles, but they can redouble the bejesus out of their opponents at the virtual battlefield and walk home with their heads held high, exclaiming, like Man U fans, "We are the greatest!".

 

It always makes me laugh, that. What's this "we" business? - the fans weren't even playing!

 

ah, but they were. for they, like everone else, like you and like me, live, not in the real world, but in the dreamworld of their imaginations, so that when their team scores, the fans receive all that reflected glory from the kudos of their superheroes just as if they kicked the ball themselves. That's why they are willing to spend half a week's wages for 90 minutes of sheer self-indulgence, sitting on a plastic chair watching a bunch of grown men playing a kid's game.

 

So, the more you win, the more evidently successful are your genes. And thus the sexier you are. This is the answer to that perennial question: "What's it all about, Alfie?".

 

And that's why people play Bridge.

 

1. asbo = AntiSocial Behavior Order - a judicial condition imposed by the UK legal system on hoodies [3] and other non-PLUs [4]

 

2. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...&pagewanted=all

 

3. disadvantaged youths who turn to petty crime and wear cagoules with the hoods turned up to screen their pimply faces from security cameras.

 

4. PLU = People Like Us - the UK equivalent of the American WASP, or something like that.

[blackshoe]

Can I have some of whatever it is you're smoking?

[1eyedjack]

Has Shubi graduated? :) :D

[glen]

Short Shubi story showing bridge is war - playing f2f, my wife opens 1NT 14-17. Shubi asks if I have a written defense for that. I wrote down: double=all hands less than 10 points, suit bid=10+ with suit just below the one bid. It's a battlefield.

[jtfanclub]

Short Shubi story showing bridge is war - playing f2f, my wife opens 1NT 14-17. Shubi asks if I have a written defense for that. I wrote down: double=all hands less than 10 points, suit bid=10+ with suit just below the one bid. It's a battlefield.

I love it!

 

But no, people are rude on the internet because they think they can get away with it. Nothing about bridge

[Guest Jlall]

cliff notes?

[Elianna]

cliff notes?

1) People were very rude in a tournament, treating bridge as a game of war.

 

2) Other games have the potential to be treated as war.

 

3) People have simulated war, this led to the (at times perceived) rise of german power. (The simulations making them better warriors)

 

4) There is a cause for this in nature.

 

5) So people play bridge to practice their war skills, to make them better at war in real life.

 

BTW, footnotes about footnotes? Impressive.

[babalu1997]

Bridge is WAR!

MAKE LOVE, NOT BRIDGE :P

[kenrexford]

After reading this, I am more and more convinced of one thing.

 

Bridge is a result of a plot by Al-Qaeda to sap and impurify the precious bodily fluids of the American people.

[pclayton]

Switch to decaf.

[kokup]

none of you seem very convinvced by my thesis.

 

so here is an addendum (with apologies to Country Joe and the Fish):

 

Gimme an F…

Gimme a I… (as i recall, it wasn't an I, it was a U)

Gimme a S… (as i recall, it wasn't a S, it was a C)

Gimme a H… (i dont remember what the last letter was)

 

What’s that spell?

What’s that spell?

What’s that spell?

What’s that spell?

What’s that spell?

 

yeah, c’mon on all you big strong men

BBO needs your help again

he’s got himself in a terrible jam

way down yonder in IMPyLand

so put down your books and pick up a card

we’re gonna have a whole lot of fun

 

and it’s 1, 2, 3, what’re we bidding for?

don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn

next stop is DoubleLand

and it’s 5, 6, 7, open up the pearly gates

well there ain’t no time to wonder why

whoopee! we’re all gonna "bye"

 

well c’mon generals, let’s move fast

your big chance has come at last

gotta go out and get those clowns

the only good Opp is one who’s down

and you know that peace can only be won

when we’ve blown ‘em all to kingdom come

 

chorus

 

well c’mon on rich Bill

don’t be slow

why this is war a-go-go

there’s plenty good money to be made

by supplyin’ the fools with the tools of the trade

just hope and pray that if they drop a bomb

we drop it on-the <insert name of your favourite enemy here>

chorus

 

well c’mon mothers throughout this land

pack your boys off to BBO gang

c’mon pops, don’t hesitate

send ‘em off before it’s too late

be the first one on your block to hear the boy sound off [1] on the box [2]

 

1. "sounding off" = an English expression meaning "rant"

2. "box" = television = tube = YouTube [3]

3.

<- click this (no, you idiot, not "this"! ...that! ..whadd'ya mean, "what that?"?! ....What's it all about, Alfie??)

[matmat]

phil, i don't think it's caffeine.

[kokup]

like underwear

you mean his dummy is exposed?

 

Gee...

[Hanoi5]

Excellent rant, man. Publish it!