Ready?
Here We Go!
So, Bee, Have an absolutely fantastic Birthday and may your 17th year be exploding with fun, good luck and plenty to cheer about!
HABEE BEEDAY!
Now, Save me some Cake! ;)
Basic rules
Most domino games are blocking games, i.e. the objective is to empty one's hand whilst blocking the opponents. In the end, a score may be determined by counting the pips in the losing players' hands. In scoring games the scoring is different and happens mostly during game play, making it the principal objective.
Block game
The most basic domino variant is for two players and requires a double six set. The 28 tiles are shuffled face down and form the stock or bone yard. Each player draws seven tiles; the remainder is not used. One player begins by downing (playing the first tile) one of their tiles. This tile starts the line of play, a series of tiles in which adjacent tiles touch with matching, i.e. equal, values. The players alternately extend the line of play with one tile at one of its two ends. A player who cannot do this passes. The game ends when one player wins by playing their last tile, or when the game is blocked because neither player can play.
Draw game
In the more interesting Draw game, players are additionally allowed to draw as many tiles as desired from the stock before playing a tile, and they are not allowed to pass before the stock is (nearly) empty. The score of a game is the number of pips in the losing player's hand plus the number of pips in the stock. Most rules prescribe that two tiles need to remain in the stock.The Draw game is often referred to as simply "dominoes".
Adaptations of both games can accommodate more than two players, who may play individually or in teams.
Carmen Lowell: "Oh, Lady Fortune! Stand you auspicious!" God! Why don't people talk like this anymore? It's just, we've gotten so lazy! We don't say "Oh, Lady Fortune! Stand you auspicious!" We say "Dear God, help me..."
Ian: Or instead of "Enjoy the honey heavy-dew of slumber", "Yo, get some Z's"
Carmen Lowell: It's just... It sounds so good and it feels so good to say. It's rich and luscious.
[Carmen touches her cheek]
Ian: "See how she lays her cheek upon her hand. Oh, that I were a glove upon her hand and I might touch that cheek"
[Carmen blushes]
Ian: See what I mean?
Carmen Lowell: [blushing] Yeah...
More than acronyms(which by the way is an acronym itself. Dear God.), jargon gets to me. A myriad of 'so called chat lingo' has sprung up and infested the Internet like weeds to a garden, ruining the sheer beauty and tranquility of a once glorious language.
A farrago of 'words'(not really words, but you know what I'm getting at) like 'brb', 'ttyl', 'asap', 'g2g', 'idk', 'ily', 'u', 'skol', 'btw' and the ever popular 'k'.
It's quite unnerving to decipher the gibberish, no even better- gobbledygook, that get posted as 'sms' s. Par Example: "hope u f9. cnt cum 2day. sori. wanna mke it up 2 u. tc. hf. ttyl. ily."
I mean, can I at least have the dignity of understanding English the way it's supposed to be understood. Are we so primitive and immature to mix our numbers and alphabets and type out incomprehensible syllables that make no sense when strung together logically?
And don't get me started with the excessive usage of exclamation marks.
Lord help us. Thy fiery might and awesome power shall be the only reasoning pillar in this jungle of madmen. It is you, the erudite, that hold the staff that controls these blabbering buffoons. You the great Linguist who can stop them from brb-ing with their 'techno-junkie-jargon'.