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To satisfy this urge without bankrupting ourselves, my wife and I have taken to visiting Good Will stores on weekends. You can spend all day in a Good Will store, leave with a cart-full of items, and have paid less than thirty dollars.

I like to browse the books and electronics there. Not long ago, as a result, I came into possession of a CD collection of Clive Barker’s Mister B. Gone, an odd little story about the adventures of a minor demon who ended up embroiled in the invention of the printing press. Due largely to this text, I have now developed the habit of listening to audiobooks on my travels to and from work at Sebranek Inc.

It was that employer who, back in 1999, asked me to begin researching ebooks. Among other things, I attended the first eBook World Convention in New York, purchased a Franklin eBookMan, read Heart of Darkness and House of the Seven Gables on a tiny Rex6000 (a PCMCIA card with a screen on one side), and became generally addicted to literature on PDAs. One wonderful source I found for ebooks was www.Gutenberg.org, a free online library of public-domain works.

Recently, having finished Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter as an audiobook, I found myself casting about for something else to listen to. Then it hit me: Gutenberg.org has audio recordings for many of its works! I’ve been wanting to read Moby Dick, why not have it read to me, instead. So I started downloading chapters, burning them to CD, and listening to them in the car.

“Call me Ishmael,” he says, and then begins a tale far different in tone and content than I could have imagined. You can call me grateful to Gutenberg.org, and to the Internet in general.

Picture them
as figures on
an urn

The burly man
trudging to
his truck

The little girl
on her knees
on the sidewalk
mouth open

The teenaged sister
sitting there
beside her

The little dog
in the gutter

Originally submitted at Adorama

iLuv iEP315 In-ear Earphones with iPod Microphone Remote

iLuv iEP315 In-ear Earphones with iPod Microphone Remote

Not the best choice

Pros: Clear Sound, Lightweight

Cons: Uneven lengths, Breaks Easily

Best Uses: Mp3 Skype

Describe Yourself: Experienced

I bought these for use with an iPod Touch. The sound was okay, and they were comfortable in the ears, but the right cord is about six inches longer than the left, which makes them hang uncomfortably compared to earphones with balanced lengths. It also makes storage awkward, as the right cord has to be wound more times than the left, leading to tangling. After only one week, the right phone developed a short.

(legalese)

1. Avoid being killed by the angry mob of villagers (club cards),
2. Avoid being hanged by Scotland Yard (spade cards),
3. Avoid killing innocents (heart cards), and
4. Get rich in the meantime (diamond cards).

The winner is the wealthiest surviving wolf-man at game’s end.

Preparing to Play

• Separate the number cards from the face cards and jokers.
• Shuffle the number cards together.
• Shuffle the face cards and jokers together.
• Create a score sheet by writing “clubs,” “spades,” “hearts,” and “diamonds” (in that order) across the top of a piece of paper and listing the players’ names down the left side.

Turn Sequence
Game play is divided into “months” (each a hand of 5 number cards) with 3 full-moon “nights” (each the play of 1 card).

• Start each month by dealing 5 number cards face down to each player.
• On the first full-moon night, turn up the top card of the face-card pile. The value of cards in this suit is doubled this night. (Jokers double nothing.) Players each choose one card from their hand and lay it face down, then reveal them simultaneously. High card captures them all, including the face card.
• On the second and third full-moon nights, turn up a new card from the face-card pile. Players each play a card face up in clockwise order around the table. The first person to play is the person to the left of the player who captured the previous night’s cards. Again, high card captures all other cards on each night.
• In case of ties, a club beats a spade beats a heart beats a diamond. (Hence the order on the score sheet.)
• At the end of each month, score the cards each player captured in each suit. Each number card counts as 1 point, a jack as 2, a queen as 3, and a king as 4. Then discard face cards (players keep their jokers), collect and shuffle the number cards, and start a new month of play.

Ending the Game
The game continues until the heart queen is turned up. (Note: If this happens on any night during the first month, turn up a new face card and shuffle the heart queen back into the face-card deck.) Once the heart queen night is finished, determine a winner by the following sequence:

1. Angry Mob: The player with the highest clubs score is lynched by an angry mob of villagers and loses the game.
2. Scotland Yard: Among the remaining players, the one with the highest spades score is hanged and loses the game if he or she also scored at least 1 heart.
3. Innocent Survivor: If a remaining player has managed to avoid killing anyone (scored no hearts), that player wins. If two or more players are innocent, the richest of them (the one scoring the most diamonds) wins.
4. Guilty Survivor: If all surviving players have blood on their hands (scored at least 1 heart), the wealthiest of them (highest diamond score) wins.

Exception—Lover’s Release: If a player possesses both the heart queen (the lover) and at least one joker (a silver bullet), that player is released from the wolf-man’s curse by dying at the hand of his or her true love. For Scotland Yard’s prisoner or the intended victim of the angry mob, this is a merciful death. For an innocent survivor or guilty survivor, it means being prevented from winning. Still, in either case it can be viewed as a moral victory.

Tip Jar

If you like this game, please donate a buck.