While playing a low stack Omaha with some friends, some of the players were taking it far too serious and led the rest of use to start having conversations on all sorts of topics including the Austrian nutter Josef Fritzl.
Ok some of you out there will say that unless you chat to gain an advantage over your opponents then you should not do it. Some say that it is bad etiquette to chat over a game of cards. My response is that as long as you are not losing to heavily having a conversation helps to pass the time away and leads to a better game. Why be bored when you’re winning money?
So we started to do our analysis of the Mr Fritzl and more importantly the good citizens of the town where this incidence occurred. Some of us put it down to the Austrian rather dodgy recent history; some of us put it down to middle class proclivities for not getting involved in other peoples business.
In the UK we would put it down to an English mans home being his castle, and, poking your nose into peoples business is ‘PC Correctness gone made’ so the chances of our social services finding out what was going on would have been no different to what was going on in Austria. So in effect my Fritzl would have been able to continue his rather interesting hobby.
The fact that this has happened before in Austria led to some of us thinking if this was part of the ‘Aryan’ DNA to lock people up. Either in concentration camps or cellars they do like corralling people in small areas where they then abuse those people till their hearts content. Some of us thought it was more nurture than nature and it is just another ‘…you could not make it up…’ stories.
By the way it is funny how all those text message jokes have suddenly appeared. My belief it is the phone operators who design and disseminate these gags because when they get passed on they earn! Anyway here are my versions:
What does an Austrian say to his mates when he introduces his new girlfriend? ‘’Have you met my daughter’’?
What is a favourite Austrian chat up line? ‘’Would you like to see my cellar’’?