Building by suit
Computer solitaire is one of my great passions. It's solitaire straight (Klondike-style), draw three, ignore point scoring, untimed, no Spiders or FreeCell-- only the way my grandmother taught me to play with her old-fashioned 20th century hand-held deck-- sound effects turned off, reset statistics every 100 games, change the appearance of the deck every couple months.The "cascade of cards" upon victory sends a rush of adrenaline into my bloodstream. (It's called "solitaire," which means when you've won, you've done it all by yourself, Mister.) Upon once achieving the still-record 27 wins in a 100-game set, I took a picture of the computer screen with my cell phone, inadvertently also preserving indefinitely the date of this momentous accomplishment (9/9/07). Outside of computer solitaire, I don't know my Minesweeper from my Blasterball, and I don't care to know. Computer solitaire washes my brain in a way not unlike the hand-held version did for Raymond Shaw in the 1962 film "The Manchurian Candidate."
My brother plays routinely and believes that the version on my PC is somehow rigged against him. An aunt, unnamed here to protect her professional reputation, plays semi-nightly to help alleviate stress. Andy Dick's character, Matthew, on "Newsradio" stopped contributing to Jimmy James' fictional broadcast operation almost entirely so that he could devote himself to the game.
At my work, computer solitaire is strictly forbidden-- not that I have much time to devote to it anyway what with all of the websurfing and daily blog research I'm required to do to keep my corner of cyberspace as semi-interesting as it is. At home, though, you'll frequently find me multi-tasking with the game when I'm at my computer enjoying the latest streamed episode of "Real Time with Bill Maher," "Lost," or "30 Rock," or if I'm just waiting out those precious few moments in the evening before that special lady knocks on my door.
Slate's Josh Levin had this to say Wednesday about the remarkable game that is as collectively important to our office cubicle well-beings as are those pitch-by-pitch online diaries of the afternoon ballgame. And such as with our National Pastime, computer solitaire's form is at once so perfectly linear and neatly tailored, yet so explosive and exhilarant, that we feel as though it must have been handed down to us directly from the Divine.
posted by CM @ 2:59 PM
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