Thanksgiving Hilarity

Being without firm plans for Thanksgiving (some tentative ones, but just that) I asked jd if there was room for one more at whatever he was getting up to.

Whatever he was getting up to turned out to be a full-on bash with some local members of the gay gaming community. I showed up (before the meal but an hour later than intended, thanks to Muni fuckery -- it was supposed to be weekend schedule, which is every 20 minutes; 40 minutes passed before one actually showed, and Mr. Random Dude-with-eyepatch said that it was already late before I showed up) with a bag of salad, a pecan pie, some ice cream, a fuckton of booze, and Cards Against Humanity.

We played Cards Against Humanity, with people popping in and out as the fancy took them. As beverage-spewingly hilarious as the game is with two people, it is much, much better with a large crowd. If I'd been taking notes, I might have been able to do justice to describing this game. I was sort of keeping track on Twitter, but the game was too intense to actually tweet very much about it. This went on until until food happened.

Holy wow, there was a spread. Turkey. Ham. Potatoes, both with and without bacon. Mac and cheese. Ambrosia, which is one of the very few vaguely edible forms of cool whip (which is not lube). jld's unexpectedly-upscaled-recipe broccoli casserole. 13 different pies. Many more things. Boozes. All the boozes.

After that, more Cards Against Humanity, with the other table playing Magic. I sat out the Ticket to Ride and 7 Wonders, but got sucked in to the hilarious debatey shoutfest that Who Would Win can become.

There are rules to Who Would Win, but the congenial crowd mostly ignored them, with some pretense at timing, but not much. Bystanders jumped in with support for various sides (sometimes alternating sides); at one point when my opponent was struggling, I jumped in on his side. Two of the best battles were Harry Potter vs. Godzilla at tennis (killing your opponent is a tennis foul, thus Godzilla squishing Harry would result in Godzilla's loss), and Voldemort vs. Julius Caesar at mini-golf.

That last may have been one of the things that resulted in the cops getting called on the party, what with Brutus Black getting in on the backstabbing action, and the yelling back and forth. My new buddy, the guy who got pie on his sweater and had to take a moment outside, was trying to defend Caesar and had a hard time of it, particularly with how mini-golf hadn't been invented then, and of course Brutus, because the Death Eaters and hundreds of Roman legionaries got involved.

Other random highlights involved the doorknob continually falling off, geeking out about library science principles with one of my new buddies, charger-plug-based hilarity (I need silicone putty and a new charger reel, as one end of mine shattered when the power strip fell during the shenanigans), a lost wallet (not mine), spilled various boozes, an actual bartender (the sole other lady in the crowd), innumerable dick jokes (in and out of games), the hipstabomination canning jar glass...

JD pointed out it was midnight; I'd thought it was only 10 or so. Thus I headed off in search of transit home, apparently just before the cops showed up with a noise complaint. I am not really good with Muni, and almost missed my connection for the last 2 BART trains to Daly City, but I did make it, suspected asthma attack notwithstanding. And now I am home.

Who Would Win variant: Courtroom Party rules

This is a variant on the rules of the card game Who Would Win as played at that one Thanksgiving party.

3+ players (same 3 not necessary), comprising 2 barristers & a judge, plus witnesses.

Barristers are issued one character card each; judge reveals the event card after the character cards have been read.

Barristers take roughly 20 second turns debating why their character would prevail. Depending on the barristers, judge, and party, interrupting may be allowable. Several turns back and forth countering each other's arguments may ensue, with other players being called in as witnesses to testify why they think the character would win (or straight-up volunteering their testimony). At some point (after either a certain number of exchanges have passed, a certain time limit, if all viable arguments have been exhausted, or everyone appears to be getting sick of it) the judge calls for closing arguments; the closing arguments may stick to a stricter timing rule.

Judges may be called to witness, but must temporarily cede judge position to another player while witnessing.

The judge's decision is final, but debate may in fact continue after the judge's decision if the barristers and/or witnesses feel they still have points to make.

Play should proceed in a pattern to allow all players to oppose each other as barristers.

Play continues until the judge, or the actual police with a noise complaint, shuts the whole thing down.

Thanksgiving in Loony-land

Since I hold that it's an insufficiently examined life that doesn't take a regular reckoning to reflect on the ways in which I could be much worse off, and rejoice in the things small and large that bring me contentment, fulfillment, and joy, I go less out of my way than I used to to think about this specifically on Thanksgiving.

Like Valentine's Day, while it's nice to have the reminder to take stock and figure out what's up, it's not actually good nor healthy to save up all of the holiday spirit for that one particular day, and not see it at all during the rest of the year.


( How I celebrate. )

( Thankfulness/privilege awareness/actions )

24 tweets for 2012-11-23

In the last 24 hours, I posted the following to Twitter:

• Friday, 0034: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/44614/who-would-win Who Would Win is basically an amazing game for a bunch of drunk geeks.
• Friday, 0054: Made it to Glen Park with a BART train to spare despite my fail at Muni and what feels like a Godsdamned asthma attack.
• Friday, 0112: Warming up car a bit before home.
• Friday, 0135: Home!
• Friday, 0201: My fitbit #fitstats for 11/22/2012: 2,150 steps and 0.9 miles traveled. http://www.fitbit.com/user/23LLYD
( read the other 19 )

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