dissonance

Bongiorno!

More later.
Ciao!

My numberwang nightmare

A couple of days ago I went to play bingo with some coworkers of mine.  Yup, bingo.  No longer relegated to grandmothers with blue hair, bingo has been slowly taking a turn to appeal to a younger (still dominantly female) audience.  Well, at least in the UK.

The bingo hall was much much bigger than I expected. Here's about half the room:

When the game started the numbers are called out by a guy standing on the front stage:

And dudes, the game is FAST.  And it's not like "B-24... that's B... 24...".  They say a number from 1 through 90 and you have to find that number on your set of game cards.  They just ramble a number one after another with barely a pause until someone shouts bingo.  Well actually, I don't think I heard anyone say "Bingo".  More like, "Yup!" or "Yeah!".  I wish I won, I could totally see myself shouting "Aw yeah bingo biotches!"

For each round you can win 3 ways: Across 1 row, 2 rows or all three rows (full house).  We had two winners in our group who got £10-£15.  Why are people getting so excited about such little returns?  Well some rounds are actually "linked" to other Bingo halls around the country and everyone plays to win £10,000+ for a full house!  Nae bad at all.

Me, I didn't do so good at first.  All the numbers being shouted out is not very good for my Maths Fears.  But after I realize I don't have to do anything with the numbers besides essentially point at them, I did start to enjoy dotting my cards with the special pen:

Yeah I'm totally into blue nail polish right now.

In between rounds you could also play mini Bingo with these cards at the table:

But I didn't play because Ho-Lee-Sheet, the girl who says the numbers over the loud speaker is FAST!  And she uses this sing songey voice that insists on drilling a hole in your ear to drive you to the brink of insanity.

But don't let that stop you from having a listen