squidpants

So i was looking through the comics page of the newspaper and I decided to read the bridge column. That stuff never makes any sense, it's like a string of random words put together. Obviously it's for bridge players, but bridge sounds like the most confusing game since braille cricket or that game Calvin and Hobbes used to play. And how many people actually read it? I bet I could write it and nobody would know the difference. So, here goes.

First, there's always some kind of stupid pun, like this one I found in the Washington Post:

Ever noticed," my friend the English professor said, "that 'ept,' 'ane,' 'mune' and 'ruly' aren't words, yet we have 'inept,' 'inane,' 'immune,' and 'unruly'?" The play by today's declarer wasn't too ept.

Ooh, how delightfully clever! And occasionally, there's a lame extended metaphor like Adam and Eve playing against the snake in the garden of eden, or something.

Bridge by Andrew Wiseman

When driving down the highway with my bridge partner to a game at the VFW, my companion remarked that bridge was like a road trip that never ended. I thought this was true, especially since driving is also really fucking boring. Then I was reminded of the time I went to New Orleans and had a voodoo of a game!

(Then after the clever remark, there's a jumble of numbers and letters that don't seem to correspond with actual cards or cardinal directions)

You hold H 6 N J 8 Q A T A R 6 P O O P 1 2 3 4 5

After acclimatizing to the humidity of our low-lying bridge table, North leads with his high queen, countered by East who trumped a dummy jack, trying to finesse a strain out of Lake Pontchartrain by bidding up West's taco. After holding a suit at the dry cleaners because it was still stained and using a singleton diamond to sort out the bric-a-brac and cueing a trick or treat in your weak hand, probably weak because you spent too much time passed out in the gutter and not enough time throwing beads to girls, North ruff-sluffed. Then East ga-ron-tees that his queen would beat an alligator in a fight and slams interest through a mangrove swamp in a hurricane. South Vulnerable.


And most of those are real terms. Bridge columns suck. It's like reading a dictionary with irritable bowel syndrome.