Category: Random News

This past summer at the Hot Springs Music Festival, Nikolai taught Sarah, Elaine, Janina, Jaimie, and myself (amont others) how to play the Russian card game Durak (“Stupid”). This is a game that you don’t play so much to win, but just not to lose. It was so fun that I stayed up til 2am the last night I was there playing, even though I had to leave at 6am to drive back to Houston in time for a 2pm rehearsal for Princess Ida. At any rate, I tried to remember the rules the other night, but failed. Luckily, Google to the rescue!

I first learned about the game of booray (or boo-ray or bour?) from one of my poker buddies at the LBJ School. Unfortuantely, Mike couldn’t remember how to actually play this game from the lands across the Sabine (that’s Cajun Louisiana to those of you not from East Texas). Thought of it again while whiling away the time with cards before Andrea’s concert this past Tuesday with Elizabeth and AC, and finally got around to googling it today.

The most straightforward entry was from the Wikipedia, but the explanation I enjoyed reading the most was from The Nexus Project.

Now, I just need to find some folks to play with and some time to play.

Chirac: ‘New Europe’ Wrong, Childish
Ya know, I’m gettin’ a little tired of ‘France equals Europe” line of reasoning coming out of Paris. A quote:

Hello? They are agreeing with the UK, Spain, and several other EU members. There is no single EU policy on Iraq, and I personally doubt if the EU will ever
have a common foreign policy. But this kind of hubris is particularly ga(u)lling.

PS Best line of late: David Letterman – “The last time the French asked for more proof it arrived on the back of a German tank driven down the Champs-Elysee.”