Day 37 - Build a House of Cards

Date: February 12th, 2010

After the ruckus that was a community, downtown treasure hunt, it seemed only right to do something calmer and cheaper.  As I grew up, I quickly learned that if you're going to do something difficult, its best if it either means something to you or accomplishes something for you.  To that end, I never embarked on things that, when initially described to people, got a response of "oh wow, that is so hard to do", unless they had some meaning for my life.  Logic puzzles, for example, I totally did all the time.  On the other hand, building a house of cards neither held any lifelong promise for me nor any perverse sort of appeal as a means of spending my time.

Then I discovered the joy of eHow.  Its a website that has instructions for every little thing under the sun.  That includes a house of cards.  Apparently, I was lied to.  Its not hard at all.  The internet told me it was an incredibly easy project.  I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but the internet holds the answers to all the great mysteries of life.  From proof that a Lobsterita is not, in fact, a lobster-flavored margarita to this professional looking website that explains what really happened at Roswell, New Mexico.

I decided to start with training wheels for my house of cards.  And by training wheels, I mean over-sized novelty cards.  And by over-sized novelty cards, I mean the 350 ticket prize from Pinball Pete's that I got for 315 tickets by flirting with the guy behind the counter.  Its a skill like anything else.

 

Pictured: training wheels.

In actuality, it wasn't that hard to put together a card tee-pee.  But that's not really, a house, per say.  It took a few attempts, but it came down mostly to having steady hands and patience.  In short, its like quilting, but a lot quicker and less satisfying.  It took a lot more attempts to get a little bridge thing created.  By that point I'd given up on training wheels when I realized that the smaller cards were actually easier to work with.  So I made Justin use the big cards and I used the small ones.   Why?  For the same reason that I posted the picture of Ryan's amazing hat and not mine.  Its my blog and I can do what I want.

 

This is what I wanted to do.

See that?  That's a picture of Justin building his card bridge faster than me even though he was using more difficult cards.  What you can't see, is the look of quiet contemplation on my face right before I smacked my hand down on the carpet and made it fall over.  What you also can't see is the look of utter devastation on Justin's face when I destroyed his masterpiece.  Because I am The Decider and I decided it was some to wreck me some cards bridges.

 

Now no one will know that mine wasn't first.

After that we got super serious.  Now more random destruction of each other's card bridges.  I'd like to say he got me back by destroying mine, but that would be a lie.  Oh heck, I'll say it anyway.  Justin got me back by messing up my card bridge too (seriously though, I'm lying here).

I quickly abandoned the pipe-dream that was having multiple stories of card house to work with.  Did you know that a brand new deck of cards is really slippery?  Did you know that when something is slippery, it does not have a lot of friction?  Did you know, also, that when something is positioned vicariously in a way it would not normally stand, friction helps hold it in place?  See, I knew them from a fancy book-learnin' standpoint, but not so much in practice.  Well, technically a little in practice since I don't have to slide into a wall to stop or change direction when I'm walking places, but that's not the point.

 

The point is, Justin succeeding at this almost cost him a friendship.

Then it hit me.  I don't have to conform to your bourgeoisie sense of architecture.  Did Frank Lloyd Wright follow your rules?  I think not.  What about Picasso?  Did he paint inside your so-called lines?  Hell to the no.  Actually, Picasso weirds me out a little.  But the point is - maybe you need to be weirded out, man.  Maybe you need to get pulled out of that box called suburbia by your hair.  So I didn't build some traditional, multi-story house of cards.  Not me, no sir.  I built.... a Ranch house of cards instead.

 

Its an ironic commentary on 1950's nuclear familial interaction.

Building the house was a lot of fun, actually, but the truth is it was more about the company than the cards.  It was an activity I could see people doing to shoot the breeze while they hang out, but I probably wouldn't ever do it by myself.  All in all it was a good day.  Until I sighed and blew my own house down.  Then it was a great day.