Few new truths have ever won their way against the resistance of established ideas save by being overstated.

The house generally wins. Elizabeth Street, Hobart. September 2010.

I am not a gambling man. I am more a gambolling man. Punting is a game for mugs, and there does not seem a shortage of mug punters out there. There used to be a lively (if not quite happening) music scene in Hobart. Now we have poker machines.

Now I understand that not everyone wants to hear another version of Keh Sanh played at the wrong tempo and sung by a guy with less gravel in his voice than Nana Mouskouri, but it is surely better than the sound of some poor down and out pissing away his kid’s new pair of shoes in the hope of three pairs of cherries.

I confess that I have no experiential knowledge of electronic gaming. As I said at the top, it is a mug’s game and I may be many things – charming, handsome, sophisticated, romantic, modest – but I am not a mug. So I turn to you, the global village, and ask what is so fun about poker machines?

Comments

smudgeon said…

Nothing.

Or, more correctly, I don't enjoy it myself. It's loud, bright, and it makes my brain hurt. It's also obnoxiously hypnotic.

I guess they just give "them" enough winnings to keep them interested, and fleece them back over time.

Horrible bloody things.

28 September 2010 at 09:46

Roddy said…

There was something inviting when the machines had their little handles. They now appear cold and impersonal with only a button to push.
Realistically, I have never been one to play these mechanical thieves.

28 September 2010 at 16:08

Kris McCracken said…

Me, so you've had a go then? I've not had the honour...

Roddy, the ye olde ones look more interesting.

30 September 2010 at 15:19

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.

This will hurt me...

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