escherriffic games

We just got back from an Easter weekend trip to Houston, to be with Catherine's family and friends for their annual seder and weekend festivities. At two different points during the weekend, I sat down with two different groups of people and played two different card games, with one important thing in common: they were both postmodern, in that in each case the rules of the game had to do with the rules of the game. As you played, you found out more and more rules, and you got to add or subtract more and more rules, all the while actually playing the game.

How odd, that these people would be so like-minded as to be drawn to this sort of thing not once but twice. The first was with a couple of guys Catherine's age; the second was with several people in their teens and early 20s. And again the games weren't related at all; it's just that they had that self-referential quality. Ah, memes!