March 15, 2004
Playing to Lose

On Saturday KR hosted another of her fabulous Junk Poker Nights. The theory of Junk Poker is simple - you bring a big pile of junk, ante up, and play to lose. In practice, there’s always some odd little thing in the pot that you want to take home, even at the risk of winning more garbage. The key is to win early, and then spend the rest of the night breaking up pairs and preventing flushes and straights until somebody else is stuck with all your rejected winnings.

I arrived with around two dozen items, among them:

  • A bundle of forty-eight pairs of chopsticks collected from various restaurants over a five year period
  • A four-foot tall artificial Christmas tree with built-in twinkle lights
  • One of those poofy plasticky bath sponge things (which I’ve never actually purchased but which seem to breed like Tribbles)
  • A small and nearly empty tube of Benson’s Bottom Paint
  • A box of crayons which was full and still only contained four crayons (some vendor at a convention in Orlando mistakenly thought this would be a good promotional item)
  • A can of Aquanet full except for however much Aquanet it takes to create one Ginger-like bouffant

    • At various points in the evening I had in my possession:

  • A leopard print purse with a heavy-gauge chain replacing its broken handle
  • A coincidentally matching leopard print umbrella, thoroughly damaged
  • A not-quite-dead potted plant
  • A video tape of Filthy Talking Cocksuckers 6, which is as pornographic and low budget as it sounds (FTC 6 is a perennial favorite - T "won" it at a previous Junk Poker Night, and brought it back this year)
  • Many, many, many ceramic, knitted, and/or aluminum objects

    • In the end I left with:

  • A bottle of Boone’s Farm (2001 - I hear it’s a good year)
  • A cocktail server’s apron from one of the diviest dives in Seattle
  • A TV antenna slightly less broken than the one I already own (score!)
  • A plastic checkbook cover featuring Garfield and friends
  • A month’s worth of birth control pills
  • A handmade black purse
  • A small can of Grasa de Mula (yes, Mule Grease, and, uh, it’s not for greasing your mule. Apparently it’s good for "Reumatismos, Luxaciones, Torceduras, Fracturas, Golpes, Recalcos, Tos, Calambres, Bronquitis, etc." I was not able to establish whether a mixture of Donkey Grease and Horse Grease would be equally effective)
  • A back issue of Bitch magazine

    • And it all fit in one bag: Junk Poker victory.