Tag: humor

Cribbage for Turtles!

We’re still turtles when it comes to how long we take to play a cribbage game. And, I think I misjudged how randomization works with shuffling cards using a machine. I checked on line and various sources say, in general, whether you’re manually shuffling or using an automatic shuffling machine, adequate randomization of 52 cards would require shuffling seven times.

We experimented a little using a stopwatch. I can shuffle a deck in about 10 seconds using one table shuffle riffle and cuts. Sena probably takes about the same amount of time although she uses a different manual shuffling method (overhand, riffle). Rounding the numbers, shuffling 7 times would take about one minute and over 10 deals (one game), it would use up about 10 minutes or so.

The automatic shuffling machine takes about 5 seconds to shuffle a deck and doing that 7 times would take 35 seconds. Over 10 deals this would take up about 6 minutes. You can see it in action in our YouTube video, “Cribbage Meets Card Shuffler.”

We also ran the 24 face cards through the machine and it didn’t randomize them at all. Adding more cards didn’t improve it that much. It occasionally jams, but overall, it seems to do the job when you’re playing with a full deck—although I’m now skeptical that it does any better at randomizing cards than manual shuffling. And that probably accounts for the recommendation to shuffle seven times—by machine or manual methods.

This imposes an incentive for the tournament cribbage player to cut the time out of certain phases of the game. That’s because of the rule that you need to be able to play a cribbage game in 15 minutes. We wonder if experienced players might skimp on the shuffling phase.

For reference, the American Cribbage Congress (ACC) official rules about proper mixing of the cards (sec. 2.1) says:

2.1. Proper Mixing The pack must be mixed or shuffled at least three times (including mechanical card shufflers) with the cards face down or otherwise hidden from both players. The shuffler is not permitted to look at the bottom card after the last shuffle. If the shuffler should do so, the nonshuffler is to remind the shuffler of the prohibition and score a two-point penalty. The pack shall then be reshuffled by the offender.

What’s interesting about this is that it looks like the ACC allows automatic card shufflers, which made me wonder about whether mufflers are required. Ours makes a real racket. Note that a table riffle would work well to hide the numbers sides of the cards. It’s also clear you have to shuffle at least three times.

We’ve never been to a cribbage tournament so we don’t know how this works in actual practice. Let’s suppose that the strict 15-minute game time limit is the main rule and players shuffle three times. Then using a machine would take up only 3 minutes and manual shuffling would take up 5 minutes—if you’re not that concerned about randomization.  

Manual shuffling means a tournament player might have 10 minutes for actual game play, so there could be an incentive to use a machine. On the other hand, experienced cribbage tournament players probably play every phase of the game very fast.

We take about 20 minutes to play a game regardless of whether we shuffle manually or with a machine. That’s how turtles roll.

The Automatic Card Shuffler for Cribbage!

Today we used the automated card shuffler Sena ordered. I couldn’t find a company name or anything else from the box about where it’s made. We know it’s loud, but it does the job.

We’re not sure why it’s so noisy. It sounds like a bunch of pots and pans falling out of the cupboard during a tornado.

It was our first time using it and, while it felt like it was faster, it probably wasn’t according to my stopwatch. It took 22 minutes for us to play a cribbage game and manual shuffling took 25 minutes the other day (Big Time Bigfoot Cribbage Game). On the other hand, I think it randomizes the cards better than we do manually.

We kept starting to shuffle manually just because we’re so accustomed to doing it. It actually isn’t hard to set the cards into the feeder on top of the machine. In fact, you don’t have to be fussy about squaring up the deck before placing it in the shuffler. It’ll also shuffle two decks at once. It came with a charging cord so you don’t need batteries.

I don’t know if the American Cribbage Congress (ACC) allows automatic card shufflers in tournaments. I’ve never entered a tournament, but in photos the players are packed in cheek by jowl. And if you had one as noisy as ours for thousands of players, the din might be loud enough to set off alarms.

Coping with Old Farthood By Teaching Patience to Others

I get notices from the Iowa legislators about how great it is that I’m getting to be an old fart. An Iowa senator even reminded me: “Check your driver’s license to see if it’s time to renew!”

That’s one of the few things I’m up to “speed” on—see what I did there?

Other things remind me that I’m getting older. I walk slower. I can make several miles by walking out to the mall, walking up and down inside, and walking back. I made 5 miles yesterday.

Here’s the thing; I don’t powerwalk and, for the first time, I made a couple of stops along the way to rest. I’ve never done that before. Part of the reason is that, early this spring I had a bout of painful shin splints and calf cramps which took me a week to recover from. I wrote a very long blog post about that.

This time, before I set out for home, I was sitting inside and watching people outside. The bench I sat on faces the parking lot and a street runs along just outside of it. There’s a crosswalk visible from my bench.

As I gazed out at the parking lot, I saw one blue SUV with the two doors on the driver’s side wide open, making it impossible for anyone to park in the lane next to it. One elderly gentleman wearing a cap sat shotgun and appeared to be napping. A few minutes later, a woman with an unsteady gait made her way out to the car. She moved slowly and a few times I though she might topple over. She didn’t look very old, and she might have been younger than me, but not by much. She got in the back seat behind the napping man. The two side doors remained open.

A few minutes later, an old man with a wheeled walker came out of the mall and started to cross the street. He would push the walker forward a couple of inches at a time and then sort of drag his legs a couple of steps forward. He pushed the walker forward a couple of inches, and shuffled a couple of steps behind it; that’s the way he went. As I watched him, I wondered if I was going to have to hurry out there to help because I thought he might fall any second.

I actually took my eyes off him for a few minutes and when I looked back, I couldn’t see him in the crosswalk anymore. I figured he made it across, but then I noticed that the SUV was still sitting there and both driver’s side doors were still open. I peered around the crosswalk—and he was still scraping along, inching forward a few inches at a time. Drivers would have to either wait or back up and find another route.

He just kept creeping along. I think it took him all of 15 minutes just to get to the SUV, a distance that could have been measured linearly as not much more than 20 yards or so.

I remember wondering where and who the driver was. There were two seats left and I thought “No way is he the driver!” The driver must have still been in the mall somewhere.

As I sat there, the old man inched over to the SUV and finally made it. I almost could have taken a nap during the whole journey, but I’m not quite that old yet.

Then he opened the driver’s side back side door—and shoved his walker in the back seat! There was now only the driver’s seat open, and still no driver in sight.

And finally—the old guy got in the driver’s seat! He pulled up his trousers, started the SUV, backed carefully out of the parking lane and cruised smoothly out of the parking lot and away to who knows where, maybe a dance hall.

After I recovered from incredulity, I walked back home. I sat down to rest once before trying to across the street where, a month ago I had a sudden attack of calf cramps which nearly stopped me in the middle of the crossing. At that time, I had to hobble over to a bench and massage the cramps before heading the rest of the way home.

This time, as cars waited for me to get across, I could feel the cramps starting again but I slowed down instead of trying to trot across. I thought, “They’ll just have to wait.” No cramps this time.

Maybe that’s one of the reasons the state legislators send out cards and certificates to seniors. We help teach patience to others. You’re welcome.

Cribbage Drips Under Pressure

Today we played cribbage under pressure—time pressure that is. We tried it because we wondered about why, in tournament games, you always hear you should be able to play a game in 15 minutes. The American Cribbage Congress (ACC) has over 200 local grassroots cribbage clubs across North America. If you join one of them, you generally have to learn how to play a cribbage game in 15 minutes.

Most clubs have you play 9 other players during regular meetings, which typically last about two and a half to three hours.  I’m sure the practical time range is closer to somewhere between 15-20 minutes, but the driver to keep it shorter is that tournament organizers have to accommodate a large number of entrants. I’m not sure how much you can socialize during meetings. We had to cut the chit chat and focus on the cards.

We’re used to playing at a leisurely pace, chatting and dawdling. Usually, we take about 25 minutes to play a game—sometimes longer. But under time pressure, all phases of the game got more difficult to manage.

We kept getting stuck on certain phases of the game. We probably didn’t throw to the crib as well as we’d like because we felt so pressured to stay under the time limit. I’m sure we made counting and scoring mistakes in both the pegging and scoring phases.

We played 4 games and could play in 15 minutes and 36 seconds in only one of them. It seems like the average for us was somewhere in between 15 and 20 minutes. I used the stopwatch on my cell phone.

Oddly, the second time we tried to play faster led to the fastest time, which was just over 15 minutes as noted above. But each time we played, the longer times got; the first game was around 20 minutes, the next one after that was about 15 minutes; the next was a little over 16 and the next one after that was closer to 17 minutes.

I think fatigue from the pressure got to us. However, I wonder if we just practiced a little more, whether the jitteriness from the sense of pressure would ease because we’d eventually get better at scoring the less common hand and crib scores. Would an expert tell us that? By the way, do you know what the definition of an expert is? A retired drip under pressure.

I gave up on the idea of shuffling 2-3 times each hand and just did it once—which didn’t really seem to improve our times. We’re supposed to get our card shuffling machine tomorrow. I wonder if using that would speed things up or slow us down.

The other point to make is that we usually help each other score and count when we play cribbage. Well, that’s not what tournament players do. You sweat it out and if you make a mistake, your opponent can’t help you. And don’t get me started on the muggins rule. Talk about pressure.

Maybe the answer is to have a fresh deck of cards which don’t stick to each other from the snack foods you eat while playing cribbage just for fun. And don’t talk, joke, laugh, or shuffle too many times, and remember luck is part of the game. Skill can take you just so far. It’s kind of like life. Somebody called cribbage a “finicky game.” OK, so it was Barry Rigal, who’s famous for being a bridge player and edited the book Card Games for Dummies.

So, explain why cribbage players, who I’m guessing are among the most finicky people on the planet, can deal with the pressure of a card game with a lot of finicky rules but manage to play a cribbage game in 15 minutes?

If you’re a cribbage player, we’d love to hear your answers. No pressure.

Big Time Bigfoot Cribbage Game!

Yesterday, Sena and I had a major cribbage showdown on the Bigfoot cribbage board. It took a little practice to get used to it because we generally use the long board. Aside from the usual hiccups figuring out scores, I did a fair job of keeping up for a while.

However; Sena won. She plays a smart game and I didn’t have the time to crack any Bigfoot jokes during the filming of the full game. We’re not tournament players so we took over 25 minutes to play one game. It was fun, though.

Sena ordered a card shuffler machine, and we’ll see how much time that shaves off playing a game. Probably not much although the maker advertises that it shuffles in less than 2 seconds. I don’t think tournaments allow shuffling machines.

Except for the length of the video, I think what it has going for it is the demo of how the game is played.

And on to the important stuff—a couple of Bigfoot jokes:

Do you know why Bigfoot is so good at hiding? He owes money to Chuck Norris.

Bigfoot claims he saw Chuck Norris once, but nobody believed him.

The reason nobody sees Bigfoot is because Chuck Norris found him first.

Bigfoot thinks Chuck Norris is a myth.

The Bouncy Egg Caper on Easter!

Want a scientific excuse to waste an egg? Sena and I found this experiment that uses vinegar to make a bouncy egg yesterday.

We put a whole raw egg into a bowl full of vinegar and let it sit for 24 hours. Initially, a couple of hours after we put the egg in the bowl of vinegar, Sena noticed pressure building up in the bowl. Even though the lid was on, vinegar was starting to leak out so she set it inside a larger bowl.

I started to worry a little about whether enough pressure would build to blow the lid off in an explosion—but it never happened.

I think a lot of people get this idea around Easter. The main thing that happens is the vinegar (a weak acid) eats away at the egg shell (which is made of calcium carbonate) until the shell dissolves. Carbon dioxide gas bubbles form. It leaves a rubbery membrane behind. The water in the vinegar diffuses across the membrane.

The egg had a lot of bubbles all over it and was visibly larger. The shell had completely dissolved—and it bounced! Sena tried bouncing it from higher and higher levels until the inevitable splat. All that was left was the yolk and the membrane.

It kind of reminds me of the morgue autopsy scene in the 1997 Men in Black movie between the deputy medical examiner Dr. Laurel Weaver and Agent J (everything reminds of Men in Black movies):

Dr. Weaver: Feel that? Where the eggshell should be? Notice anything strange?                 

Agent J: No, all fine.       

Dr. Weaver: Doctor, the whole shell is missing.                  

Agent J: Well, of course. That’s obviously the first thing I noticed. What I was pointing out is the fact that there are no… pieces…of it left. You know, so the shell is intact; wherever it is whole, somewhere. That we can be sure of.

Svengoolie Movie: It Came from Outer Space

I watched the Svengoolie movie, “It Came from Outer Space” last night. I’m sure I’ll recover someday. Until then, I’ll have to do my best to write about it. Ray Bradbury actually wrote what’s called the film treatment for the story and Harry Essex wrote the screenplay. I gather there’s a difference between the two, but don’t ask me what it is. So, it’s helpful to know that real movie reviewers also noticed what I noticed, which is that the dialogue has a distinctive literary quality. I’m a Ray Bradbury fan from way back in my youth when they were still using stone tablets to write on. But even I noticed the tone and language were more elevated than what I usually see on the Svengoolie TV show.

Kudos to the movie reviewer who mentioned the literary quality of the dialogue, which in my opinion also are reminiscent of Ray Bradbury:

Scheib, Richard. (2002, July 28). It Came from Outer Space (1953). Accessed April 20, 2025. Moriareviews. https://www.moriareviews.com/sciencefiction/it-came-from-outer-space-1953.htm

Interestingly, this blogger’s review says that Bradbury was unhappy with the result of the production.

The other blogger/reviewer had similar remarks, but it was his About post comments which caught my interest, in which his remarks about Svengoolie’s schlocky films on the show are right on target. On the other hand, he likes this movie. He also mentions that Bradbury got fired after getting paid $2,000 for writing the treatment. I’m not clear on why he was fired:

Steve aka Falcon. (Spielberg can’t get enough … It Came from Outer Space (1953). Accessed April 20, 2025. Falcon at the Movies, https://falconmovies.wordpress.com/2014/05/04/spielberg-cant-get-enough-it-came-from-outer-space-1953/

Anyway, I agree with both reviewers that “It Came from Outer Space” is different from most space invaders films in that the extraterrestrials didn’t actually invade Earth. In fact, they had a malfunction in their spacecraft and accidentally crashed here. They were actually headed for somewhere else, possibly Milliways, the restaurant at the end of the universe (“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe” by Douglas Adams). They took the form of earthlings so they could get around without being noticed.

That doesn’t actually work because, although they looked like us, they talked in a monotone and had blank, unblinking stares. And they crashed here, indicating the same kind of inability to drive that reminded me of the Roswell incident back in 1947 (only a few years before this movie was released) in which a UFO crashed in New Mexico.

The one thing that struck me was that, in the movie, the extraterrestrials not only couldn’t drive their spacecraft, their main goal after crashing was to fix their busted vehicle. Apparently, in their human disguises they had to go to Lowe’s Hardware to buy replacement electrical parts.

So, these extremely advanced creatures who mastered interstellar travel can get electrical parts in a 1950s era hardware store? “Excuse me, can you get me 4,000 gray toggle switches with matching cover plates—and a voltmeter?”

The spaceship carrying the lost creatures looked like a meteor as it crash-landed and again when it took off after it was fixed. Although you can find a Wikpedia article about this movie that, at the very top, links to another which claims that Bradbury published the film treatment as a book, the rest of the article denies that ever happened. I suppose some people are still looking for it, just like those still looking for the Roswell ET bodies.

One Legged Clowning Again

I noticed the other day that I was having trouble doing the one leg stand. It has been getting harder to sustain it past 10 seconds even. It’s not like I’ve been laying off exercising, including the one leg stand. Hey, I can even do a one leg sit to stand (barely). I posted about the one leg stand, including a video, about 2 years ago.

I found another news item and study about old farts like me and it included a new recommendation about the one leg stand. According to this study, if you can’t do a one leg stand for more than 5 seconds, you’ve got one leg in the grave. If you can do 30 seconds, then you’re all good.

So, I practiced a little more and I even tried the one leg juggling trick, which I also tried two years ago—and clearly faked on a video. Well, one leg clowning is back—and this time it’s for real. I think the Latin quote Ars Longa, Vita Brevis fits for this activity. This one leg stand thing is a skill and you have to work at it, even as you age and your life grows shorter.

I still don’t know if this would be called aging gracefully?

References:

Rezaei A, Bhat SG, Cheng CH, Pignolo RJ, Lu L, Kaufman KR. Age-related changes in gait, balance, and strength parameters: A cross-sectional study. PLoS One. 2024 Oct 23;19(10):e0310764. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0310764. PMID: 39441815; PMCID: PMC11498712.

Araujo CG, de Souza E Silva CG, Laukkanen JA, Fiatarone Singh M, Kunutsor SK, Myers J, Franca JF, Castro CL. Successful 10-second one-legged stance performance predicts survival in middle-aged and older individuals. Br J Sports Med. 2022 Sep;56(17):975-980. doi: 10.1136/bjsports-2021-105360. Epub 2022 Jun 21. PMID: 35728834.

Learning to Play Cribbage from the Internet

I’ve been looking over the web about learning how and where to play cribbage. It’s a card game for two players usually, but there are variations allowing for 3 to 4 players.

 First, out of curiosity, I started searching the web on where to play cribbage in Iowa.

There are about 200 local clubs across the U.S. connected with the American Cribbage Congress (ACC). You can find them by looking in the Club Directory on their web site. So where could you play cribbage outside of the ACC with others in Iowa?

It turns out there’s a cribbage club in Des Moines, called Capital City. Like many ACC clubs, members play 9 games vs 9 opponents and they are two player games. They accept people of all ages, although one of the main reasons to join is if your interested in tournament cribbage games. Like the web page says, they have fun, but they also have to learn how to play a game in 15 minutes because that’s the usual speed you’d have to play in tournaments. I would expect the atmosphere to be fun and also competitive.

There’s another sort of cribbage club in Iowa and it’s in Indianola, which is only about 20 miles south of downtown Des Moines. It doesn’t have a specific name and it isn’t connected to the ACC. They play in a conference room an Activity Center. Interestingly, they allow only those over 50 years of age to participate. This probably isn’t going to help ensure that the younger generation learns to play cribbage and keep the game alive.

There is a photo of 4 guys sitting at a table and you can see the cribbage board in a corner of the table. So, there is the opportunity to learn the 4-player variation of cribbage. The web site also has a link to a set of rules about how to play the game. The rules have a puzzling suggestion, which is to lead with your highest card. That seems like asking for trouble because your opponent could drop a 5 card on your ten card and get fifteen for two points right away.

Either way, Sena and I are not about to drive several hours just to play cribbage. We’ve only been playing for a little over 5 years now, but over 20 years ago we tried to learn it. Which brings me to the point of how you learn it from the web.

There are so many YouTube videos and other written tutorials, all with variable quality. Some have too much detail for beginners and some don’t have enough detail to keep you interested. The teachers who allow comments on their videos often get heartwarming stories from those who remember playing cribbage with someone they loved.

I like a couple of videos from Jonathan Pinyan. I just watched the shortest one, which is only about 15 minutes long but teaches you all the basics while he plays a game with a friend.

And he made a 20-minute video playing a game with his father. Sena and I watched that one and now she calls the nob jack (one for his nob, the jack of the same suit as the cut card) the right jack because that’s what Jonathan calls it. It’s comical because I always feel like I have to correct her, “It’s the nob jack, not the right jack.”

On the other hand, I just found a web reference which asks about the “his knobs.” You’ll see long, comical discussions on the web about the etymology of terms like that in cribbage, often turning out to be differences between British and American cribbage players’ nomenclature. And the “right jack” is related to the card game Euchre, which is where Jonathan Pinyan got it.

But let’s not get started on that.

The Svengoolie Movie: The Deadly Mantis

I watched the 1957 giant insect movie, “The Deadly Mantis” last night on the Svengoolie TV show, and Sena watched some of it. At times, it was a little hard to tell if this was a romantic comedy or a giant insect horror flick. The reporter Marge Blaine (played by Alix Talton) and Colonel Joe Parkman (played by Craig Stevens) had this fling going on which sometimes took precedence over the huge, deadly papier-mâché praying mantis.

There’s a lot of stock film footage of the military and important military radar dividing lines across the northern hemisphere including the DEW Line (standing for Distant Early Warning Line) which were real. There were a couple of shots of Greenland, which is important to you know which U.S. President—who was probably unaware at the time of the dangerous mantis unthawed from its icebound prison in the North Pole.

If you look carefully in the upper right-hand side of the frame at the 34:48-time mark, in the Internet Archive black and white copy of the film, you’ll see an important goof that Svengoolie pointed out (which I missed at first). It’s the shadow of the large microphone and boom which shows up as Marge and Dr. Nedrick Jackson are leaving the room (Jackson is played by William Hopper, cue Perry Mason music because he played detective Paul Drake on that TV Show). It’s interesting that the Perry Mason show was starting the same year this movie was filmed.

One detail never specified about the monster is its exact species. We can’t tell if it’s the European praying mantis or the invasive Chinese Mantis. That’s not important for the movie, but again, it might be important on the world’s current political stage. Most entomologists advise destroying the eggs of the Chinese Mantis. I don’t know if tariff escalation would work. I think it’s hard to distinguish different mantis species eggs apart and we also don’t know the gender of the giant mantis in the movie.

That’s an important detail, which is only delicately referred to in the film as Dr. Jackson reads aloud from a book about the insect’s mating process, which invariably concludes by the female biting off the head of the male and often eating him (called sexual cannibalism). In the movie, Dr. Jackson reads aloud a gentler description, “The female is larger than the male and invariably destroys her mate when he’s fulfilled his function in life.”

There are interesting parallels to the mantis in the way the male and female lead actors interact with each other in the movie. Colonel Parkman and Dr. Jackson both behave like typical male chauvinists, and Marge never bites their heads off. But the romance doesn’t go that far. Marge dances with the soldiers but there’s no scene with Elvis Presley dancing and singing “Heartbreak Hotel.”

And there’s no time for any of that because the giant mantis is too ravenous after being cooped up for thousands of years in an iceberg. All it wants is breakfast: “Two humans on a raft and wreck’em” or is it “Two humans, dummy side up”? Whatever.

Anyway, the ferocious mantis ends up sort of like the bad-tempered giant cockroach in the 1997 movie “Men in Black.” Agents K and J speed through the New York Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel and have a showdown. The soldiers in The Deadly Mantis have their showdown with the monster in New York also, but it’s in what’s called The Manhattan Tunnel, which I found out doesn’t even exist.

But the parallels don’t stop there. Just before that, the terrifying insect climbs the Washington Monument (to get to the top, of course) and buzzes the White House. During the search for the bad bug, the military brass order that every U.S. citizen in the area report any “Unusual Flying Object,” in other words every UFO.

That means the sequel to both movies would need an extraterrestrial giant, bad-tempered female cockroach and mantis hybrid looking to bite the head off a suitable mate who crash-lands her UFO in the 51st state (formerly Canada) leading to the emergency mobilization of Men in Black who partner with Red Green and the rest of the Possum Lodge members to use duct tape and bug spray to overcome the beast and finally ensure peace by neuralyzing everyone in the world using a souped-up satellite owned by Elon Musk. Svengoolie will tell jokes.

It just goes to show you, we’re humans, but we can change, if we have to…we guess.