Posted by Marie Le Conte
https://youngvulgarian.substack.com/p/a-terrible-confession-about-my-awful
Hello!
Hi! Unfortunately I have been playing Balatro again. I had no games on rotation and the call of the Poker Game That Makes You Lose Your Mind was simply too strong. Most importantly, I’m pleased to announce that I finally managed to both reach Ante 13 and have a single hand of over one billion chips, two things I had failed to achieve in my first playthrough.
Secondly, playing some five-of-a-kinds in Balatro made me think about all the poker hands you could have if people just had more imagination and more of a sense of whimsy. Here are some poker hands I’ve invented, which would, I believe, liven up the game. Thank you for your time.
Father and Son
A king and a jack. You must let people know you’re about to play that hand by listening to the Cat Stevens song in its entirety first. If you get all the lyrics right, the points will score triple.
69
A 6 and a 9. Nice.
9-1-1 Emergency?
Very chic hand this, no? A 9 and two aces. I love it. I think it’s my favourite poker hand now. It’s fragrant, it’s fresh, it’s elegant.
The Throuple
One queen and two kings. Could also be one king and two queens but no: I don’t want that. The throuple is what it is. If you manage to snap your fingers and very sincerely bellow “go off queeeeen!” without wanting to die then you get some extra chips.
Jack Shit
A jack and a two. Nothing else to it. Doesn’t score all that much - actually score less than a jack by itself - but it is what it is. Sometimes you just want to give up, and play jack shit.
The Seeds Of Your Own Destruction
This works for any hand without face cards and of at least three cards if the lowest-scoring cards are equal in value to the highest scoring card. Each hand contains the seed of its own destruction. It’s a hand that lets you remove chips off the person of your choice. You don’t get to keep them for yourself though. It’s a “nothing matters” move.
Lynette Scavo
So I rewatched the first season of Desperate Housewives last year and 1) what enjoyable trash! 2) I just can’t believe Lynette had four kids. That’s just so many kids. Mental amount of kids to have. Point is: the Lynette is now the highest hand in poker. It’s one queen and four jacks. Poor Lynette.
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A column
I went to this exhibition earlier today which I thought was a group show, and it sort of was, but mostly it celebrated the work of a painter who failed to have his time in the sun when he was alive. I really, really loved his work. I’d never heard of him before but I ended up being really taken by his pieces. I couldn’t tell you what his name is. I left the gallery under three hours ago and, already, I’ve forgotten it.
I know I’ll want to talk about the exhibition with my boyfriend when we have dinner together this evening, so I’ll have to look at the painter’s name again just before he arrives, and try to hold it in my head like you let mouthwash slosh around your gums even when it stings. I can tell you who he is now - I have a picture of a caption on my phone, it mentions “James Wilson McCracken” - but will I still know that by the time I’m done writing this? Your guess is as good as mine.
I suppose I could really try to push it inside my skull by focusing on the image that springs to mind when I read “McCracken”. There’s something quite fun and dramatic about it; what you’d call a Scottish sea monster in a kids’ book for parents who don’t really care about being culturally sensitive. If I really focus on the image of a giant octopus using its many tentacles to come up with a new way of playing the bagpipes, then it’s possible I may end up remembering his name.
McCracken; destroying ships with one arm and swigging Buckfast with another. McCracken; voiced in the cartoon by an American somehow hired despite being unable to even place Glasgow on a map of Europe. McCracken, McCracken, McCracken. Will it stay in place now? We’ll see. Either it won’t or it will, really, to the extent that in a year or twelve I’ll be able to think “oh yes, the day I discovered McCracken, I was wearing a pair of tailored grey trousers and I went for a walk in the morning because the sun was shining and it was February”.
That’s how my memory works, most of the time. It either leaks like a sieve or grabs onto bits and pieces and never, ever lets go of them.
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https://youngvulgarian.substack.com/p/a-terrible-confession-about-my-awful
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