Octopodial Chrome

As every educated person knows, tarot (or tarok, or tarokk, or tarocchi, or tarock) games have a long history (first found in the mid-15th century they predate the 18th century fortune-telling use of cards) and are quite popular in Europe. Despite their similarity to bridge or whist (they are almost all trick-taking games, with the extra suit serving as trumps). Back in 1922, August Petryl & Son of Chicago attempted to rectify this by producing the Green Spade Tarock, subtitled The American Cards. It’s an amusing variant on the French tarot deck: black clubs, yellow diamonds, pink hearts and green spades; the king, queen, knight & page have been replaced with Indian chief, Indian squaw, white rider and white scout; the fool is Uncle Sam (!), and the trump suite seems to feature Western & Indian scenes. What an interesting little card deck—I’d love to acquire a copy.

As a groomsman’s gift, my brother Tom gave each of us one of these nifty knives, each engraved with the recipient’s initials:

It is a real beauty: light and comfortable in the hand; opens with a flick of the wrist; the blade is fierce. How cool can it get?

On Wednesday my bike’s odometer hit 200 miles. That’s two hundred miles in less than two months (I bought it the 6th or 7th of June). Not too shabby for a fellow who put less than that on his old bike in a year-and-a-half.

I just finished watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s, a film I first saw as a college sophomore approx. a thousand million years ago. Odd film about a gigolo and a fallen woman falling in love. I’ll say this though: Audrey Hepburn was a certified, bona-fide looker. Just goes to show how far fair skin and dark hair can go to make a girl beautiful.