Avid environmentalists and show supporters are invited to purchase a 14″ model of their choice to raise awareness regarding global whaling. Each model is authorized and endorsed by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. In addition, the Sea Shepherd Conservatory has worked closely with Handcrafted Model Ships to ensure that each model is designed from the actual plans from the ships themselves. These models are as close as you can get to the actual boats without putting on a rain coat. As an added bonus, they include actual parts from the ships themselves. That’s right, Bob Barker the model has an actual piece in it off of Bob Barker the boat, but hopefully not from Bob Barker the man. And speaking of the Bob Barker, come on down!

Oh, what a handsome ship he makes. Drew Carey had better look or Bob Barker might take over his spot as The Price is Right host, and by that I mean the boat! If you’re still holding out on buying these beauties, know that half of the profits from each sale goes directly to Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. So, the money goes to a good cause. As you might imagine, each ship is made from soft woods and other eco-friendly materials, so you can be assured that they are as Earth-friendly as possible. Lastly, there is a limited run of these ships to enhance their collectability. The run for each model is limited to 1000. After that, they’re all gone.

Take a look at the ship that started it all, the Steve Irwin. Named for world renowned conservationist and “Crocodile Hunter”, the Steve Irwin was the ship upon which the show was founded. As the only one featured in the first two seasons of Whale Wars, it has seen more than its fair share of the action. In the second season, actress Daryl Hannah even served aboard it with distinction. The Steve Irwin continues to be the flagship of the Sea Shepherd fleet, and the lynchpin of anti-whaling activities.

And last, but not least, the most beautiful ship in the fleet, the Brigitte Bardot. Fans of the show are aware that the Sea Shepherd Conservatory lost the Ady Gil when it collided with the Japanese Whaling vessel Shonan Maru 2 (as shown on the Whale Wars show itself).

The Ady Gil was so badly damaged that the ship had to be abandoned and sunk shortly thereafter. The Brigitte Bardot is a similarly designed trimaran to the Ady Gil, but is twice as large. Hopefully its size will allow it to avoid a similar fate as its predecessor. In 2011, the ship was damaged by a rogue wave (36 ft) while conducting anti-whaling operations. The ship had nearly lost one of its pontoons and the hull was cracked. It has to be escorted by to port by the Steve Irwin. Fortunately, the ship has undergone repairs and is now sailing the high seas once more. If you act now, you can have this beautiful model accentuating your home soon.

Upon further research, it would seem that this show does not actually involve any Welsh. Or, if it did, they backed out on their agreement to appear. Instead, this show is about making wars on whales: those large aquatic mammals whose blubber reduced to an oil upon which civilization depended before we discovered petroleum substitutes. The novel “Moby Dick” contained a reasonable depiction of what constituted whaling back in those days, but times have changed dramatically. We no longer ship out in row boats to throw harpoons by hand; now we fire exploding harpoons from directly from the boat that kill the animal on detonation. That’s how to win a war ladies and gentlemen- superior firepower. The whales are drastically outgunned (in fact, they don’t have any), and are just sitting ducks for the whalers.

Enter the Sea Shepherd Organization. If the whales represent victory for the whalers, then Sea Shepherd represents the defense team brought in to prevent them from scoring. Every whale corpse that’s savaged with an exploding harpoon and then hooked up to an air compressor in order to bloat it’s carcass with air to keep it afloat equals one point for the whalers. Each time that is prevented, it’s a point for the Sea Shepherds. Each side has it’s tactics they are going to use to try to win. It’s a bit like football, except instead of the quarterback getting sacked he explodes in a bloody mist from an exploding harpoon launched by the opposing coach from the sidelines. Come to think of it, if football were really like that, I wouldn’t miss a game.

We, the viewers, get to watch this grand spectacle courtesy of Animal Planet which carries the show. The show ends up being a rather lopsided view of the two opposing sides in Whale Wars, because the nations that operate the whaling fleets won’t consent to let cameras on board their vessels. Instead the opposing ships are viewed from the camera crews operating on the Sea Shepard fleet. So we see the conflict entirely from their point of view. Of course, since the whalers are hell bent on using explosives to kill a large, cute, and harmless creature, I’m not sure they really want that story told. It’s not a very good story. I mean, the hunter who killed Bambi’s mom didn’t exactly release his story as a best seller now did he?

The Sea Shepherd fleet was originally a single ship, the Steve Irwin. Obviously, this was named after the well known conservationist and “Crocodile Hunter” who was crazy about protecting animals everywhere- right up until he was ironically killed like a snitch in a jail yard by a shiv from a grumpy sting ray. Then, in later seasons, two more ships have been added: the Brigitte Bardot and the Bob Barker. Obviously the eponimous celebrities either have or did have ties with the Sea Shepherd organization. I’m just thankful that the fleet hasn’t added a ship named Bindi Irwin, the Jungle Girl yet.

I have to say that the ships look pretty damn cool. I mean the Steve Irwin looks like a traditional boat, but the Bridgette Bardot looks freaking awesome. Here, have a look for yourself at these replicas of the boats.

I mean the Steve Irwin looks like a converted shrimp boat, but the Bridgette Bardot looks like an alien destroyer closing in for the kill. What the hell is that thing? It’s got wings and crap.

Turns out the Bridgette Bardot has quite a history. Before she was commissioned by the Sea Shepherd, she was circumnavigated the globe in 74 days- beating the previous world record. For extra style points, she did it using bio-diesel. For logistical reasons, she has since been converted to conventional fuel, but that’s still pretty cool.

As for the last ship in the fleet, the Bob Barker, it’s a more conventional boat like the Steve Irwin. Kind of a bummer, but all the boats can’t be as cool as the Bridgette Bardot. Here’s a model of Bob for your viewing pleasure.

As you’ve probably noticed by now, I’ve transitioned to talking about the ships to showing models of the ships. The models were made from the actual plans of the boats themselves. That’s because the Sea Shepherd Conservatory has these models commissioned, designed from actual plans of the boats themselves, and built so that those of you at home can get off your duffs and into the war. You see, each model, in addition to raising awareness for the cause, helps to fund it. In fact, a full 50% of the profits form these models go to the Sea Shepherd conservatory. Furthermore, each model is made with a small piece or part from the ship on which it is based; I’m not quite sure how they do that, but it seems cool.

Of course, as you’d expect from an environmental group, every model is made of biodegradable and Earth-friendly building materials. And, to make them collectible, each run is limited to 1000 models. Once those 1000 are sold, there are to be no more models made like them. That’s all she wrote, so call in those orders.

After the suspension of racing during World War II, its resumption in ‘58 featured smaller yachts, undoubtedly more affordable to field. This makes any surviving J-class yacht to be a rare, valuable historical artifact – exactly what the Endeavor is.

When it was constructed, The Endeavor was extraordinary for its design and technological innovation, and it remains so for being one of the only America’s Cup J-class yachts still intact.

History of the J-Class

The America’s Cup is a yacht race between the Americans and British, with both sides fielding a single vessel selected by winning qualifying races against similar models. Each nation then selects the fastest model and crew to compete on behalf of it for that year’s race. Of course, wooden sailboat racing isn’t only a contest for the crews of the model sailing yachts; it’s also a contest for its designers.

Just as with car racing, technology and innovation come to the forefront of wooden sailboat engineering, and as such, the rules continued to evolve about exactly how a particular yacht model could be constructed. For instance, both of the 1903 America’s Cup racing yachts (The Reliance and The Shamrock III) were so lopsided as to barely be seaworthy on stormy days. The yachts fielded by the Americans were particularly lopsided because they, unlike their British brethren, did not have to be seaworthy enough to actually sail to the racing site under their own power. The Americans, for reasons only wealthy yacht owners understand, could produce a yacht just seaworthy enough to not sink when sailing about in closed harbor regatta races.

A new set of rules came down in 1914 called “The Universal Rule” which established classes of racing yachts by the ratio of their length, displacement, and total area of their sails. Previously, length was the only criterion which mattered, which designers readily abused by putting excessive amounts of sail on yachts of those models. Now that these factors were accounted for, different classes of yacht were established by variable ratios of the aforementioned criteria. Several other ratios were then codified into yachts of ten different classes for single mast yachts: I through S. The America’s Cup race from 1930-’37 soon saw the J-class as the most desirable design criteria.

History of Thomas Sopwith

Thomas Sopwith, who financed and sailed the Endeavor for the 1934 America’s Cup, was a British millionaire and aviator who shares many parallels to the American icon Howard Hughes: both were born into wealthy families, had a keen engineering mind, entered into aviation during a major war, and fell subject to government criticism for profiteering in the aftermath of that war.

Sopwith, born in 1888, studied engineering in school and developed a passion for aviation early, winning the 1910 prize for longest flight (169 miles) from England to Europe, in three hours and forty minutes. He used the prize money to build the Sopwith School for Flying at Brooklands, going on to establish the Sopwith Aviation company two years later. Shortly thereafter, the world was plunged into The Great War, with the company being commissioned by the British government to manufacture biplanes – the most famous being the Camel, a single-seat fighter – for use in the war.

The punitive, anti-profiteering taxes following the war quickly bankrupted him, but Sopwith re-entered the aviation business with engineer and test pilot Harry Hawker and his Hawker Aircraft. Soon, Sopwith was flying high again, looking for new outlets for wealth and his engineering talents, and like so many others, turned to competitive yachting to scratch the (costly) itch.

History of the Endeavor

Sopwith, working closely with builders Camper and Nicholson, made the Endeavor the most advanced yacht of its day, featuring:
a stainless steel hull and mast
a quadrilateral genoa style front sail (meaning it would overlap the main sail)
a twin clewed mainsail (an innovation still in use in the J classes of today)
a larger and improved spinnaker sail

Its advantages allowed the Endeavor to easily best its British competition. It beat both the Shamrock V and Velsheda to earn the right to be the challenging yacht for the cup. It seemed Britain’s best hope was to wrest the Cup from the Americans. Unfortunately for Sopwith, his professional crew went on strike just before the race, after demanding a wage increase, which was denied. The Endeavor, now crewed by amateurs still less skilled than their American counterparts, proved the closest to the Cup in its era, but was alas defeated. The Endeavor instead went on to dominate British sailing until feared lost in ‘37 when a tow cable had broken, leaving her adrift at sea. While eventually found, she wouldn’t sail without extensive repair, and sadly entered a long period of neglect.

Laid up, and set to be sold for scrap, like so many of her siblings of the forgotten J-class, a strange intervention occurred, a sudden offer to purchase, just hours prior to her intended demolition. But it wasn’t enough. Regardless of why she was spared, she would still find herself lost to history, and decaying – eventually at the bottom of the river Medina, for which her owner sold the wreckage for a mere ten pounds. Patched up, so she could again stay afloat, she continued to slowly rot away, a far cry from the once glorified yacht which ruled the waves and competed in America’s greatest race.

Not until Elizabeth Meyer, an angel investor whose recent passion was to restore the great yachts via a five-year project. She undertook the labor of love in 1984, culminating in the brilliant day, when, after fifty-two years, most of which saw her abandonment and destruction, the Endeavor sailed again, the twenty-second of June, 1989. And she remains today one of the rare few J-yachts to survive the era.

Early History of the America’s Cup Racing Yachts

You can’t really discuss sailboat racing history without discussing the America’s Cup. It’d be like talking about car racing without mentioning Formula 1. Actually, it’d be worse. Racing cars may be expensive, but racing sailboats are REALLY, REALLY expensive. So expensive in fact that there’s only one real international competiton for wooden sailboat racing: The America’s Cup.

The America’s Cup is a competition between the Americans and the British. Both sides field a single yacht, which is, itself selected by winning qualifying races against similar models. Once each nation has selected the fastest model and crew to compete on behalf of a given nation for that year. Of course, wooden sailboat racing is not only a contest for the crews of the model sailing yachts, but also a contest of the wooden sailboat’s designers. Just as with car racing, technology and innovation come to the forefront of wooden sailboat engineering. As such, the rules continued to evolve about exactly how a particular yacht model could be constructed as, for instance, both of the 1903 America’s Cup racing yachts (The Reliance and The Shamrock III) were so lopsided as to barely be seaworthy on stormy days. The yachts fielded by the Americans were particularly lopsided because they, unlike their British breathern, did not have to be seaworthy enough to actually sail to the racing site under their own power. The Americans, for reasons only wealthy yacht owners understand, could produce a yacht just seaworthy enough to not sink sailing about in closed harbor regatta races.

A new set of rules came down in 1914 called “The Universal Rule” which established classes of racing yachts by the ratio of their length, displacement and the total area of their sails. Previously, length was the only criteria which matter and designers had abused this by putting excessive amounts of sail on those model yachts. Now these factors were accounted for, and different classes of yachts were established by different ratios of these three variables. Of special interest is the J class yacht, because that was the class used for America’s Cup criteria between 1930 and 1937.

The Enterprise J Class Yacht

The J class yachts are some of the beloved of the America’s Cup Wooden Sailboats because they represent an excellent compromise between seaworthiness and speed. As previously mentioned, the rules of The America’s Cup favor the Americans because, during this era, the British yacht had to sail to the racing site under it’s own power. Not so for the Americans. While it may win races, most people would like a sailboat that they can actually sail out of the harbor. Enter the Enterprise Model Yacht.

The

Enterprise Model yacht

(aka the America’s Cup Sailboat Enterprise or just Enterprise Sailboat) was one of the best known American J Class yachts ever to sail. She was designed by the esteemed Starling Burgess and built in 1930 by Harold Vanderbilt- yes, THOSE Vanderbilts. This is, after all, a sport for the very wealthy. She was built to defend against the British challenger yacht, The Shamrock V, which she did successfully. One of the snazzy new design features which the

Enterprise Model yacht

had was the Park Avenue boom.

“What’s a Park Avenue boom,” you ask? I’m afraid you’ll never be able to hand with the Vanderbilts asking naive questions like that! Let’s get you educated. Take a look at this picture of the America’s Cup Sailboat Enterprise.

You see that doohickey under the main sail? That’s what we call the Park Avenue boom. It catches the main sail as it’s lowered and makes it easier to manage. How does it do that? Well, the boom has wings which extend outward to catch the mainsail as it is lowered. From there a piece of equipment called a lazy jack ensures that the mainsail is captured within the confines of the recessed area of the boom deck where it hides the bulk of the sail when moored.

What does all that mean? Hell I don’t know. I do understand that it makes the sail easier to manage. Less labor on managing the sail, means a more efficient race, which means the difference between sucking on some hot chicks in the winner’s circle versus sucking some British wake as you watch them sail to victory.

The actual Sailboat Enterprise was sold for scrap in 1935. Alas, she sails no more. In fact, the entire J class

Enterprise sailboat

line has gone the way of the dodo. Along came World War II, and the war effort. These model sailing yachts were seen as too extravagant a use of resources. Even after the way, the J class yachts were seen as too extravagant for post war economies. It seemed no one could afford the J class anymore, and they were replaced with smaller yachts.

So you see the special place that J class yachts have in the history of the America’s Cup. That’s why I love the little model replicas of these things. Now you can own your own little piece of rich, snobby sailing history by buying the

Enterprise Model Yacht

. Owning a little model wooden sailboats allows you to fantasize that you are one of the rich elite who has nothing better to worry about what to do with your millions of dollars than to try to make a faster Wooden Sailboat.

A younger player has learned the game and proposed a new side bet. He was open to taking either side of the bet. The bet is that one player will pay another play $20 if he doesn’t have a King. However, if that player does have at least one King, then he will be paid $35 per King by the other player.

Let’s take a look at the math on that. Since we’re dealing with a 53 card deck using the Joker, the total number of five card hand combinations are 53 choose 5 which total 2,869,685. The total number of hands which involve no Kings are 49 choose 5 which equals 1,906,884. So the odds of getting a hand without a single King are 66.4%. We can alos tell that there are exactly 2,869,685 – 1,906,884 = 962,801 hands containing a King.

The total number of hands which involve getting one King are 4 choose 1 times 49 choose 4 which is: 4 x 211876 = 847504.
Divided by the original 2,869,685 we see that the chances of getting a hand containing a single King are 29.5%.

For a hand with two Kings, it is 4 choose 2 multiplied by 49 choose 3: 6 x 18424= 110,554
For a hand with three Kings, it is 4 choose 3 multiplied by 49 choose 2: 4 x 1176 = 4704
For all four Kings, there is only one combination for the four multiplied by 49 = 49

So if we add up all of the the hands with Kings, we get 962,811 hands containing a King: ten more than we were expecting. I’m guessing there we some rounding errors in dealing with these large numbers. When we’re accounting for close to 3 million hands, having a 10 hand discrepancy ain’t too bad. So I’m just going to convert to percentages.

66.4% of hands contain no King. 29.5% contain 1 King. 3.8% of hands contain two Kings. .16% contain three Kings, and .002% containing 4 Kings.

Going back to the original wager, if we play out 10,000 hands, then we’d have:
10,000 x 66.4% = 6640 No Kings receiving $20 = $132,800
10,000 x 29.5% = 2950 with one King receiving $35 = -$103250
10000 x 3.8% = 380 with two Kings receiving $70 = -$26,000
10000 x .16% = 16 with three Kings receiving $105= -$1680
And quad Kings being such a rare event that it doesn’t figure into 10,000 hands.
So if we do the math, over 10000 hands, the person buying the Kings will reap a profit of
$1870 which amounts to 19 cents a hand or so.

Nothing to get excited about, but the kind of stuff that gets the chips flying.

The class is so flexible that Ogre proposed three distinct builds for the Alchemist: a bomb thrower (Dr. Strangelob), a melee build (Mr. Hyde), and a poisoner build. I’ve only played a bomb specialist, but I found that there were enough feat and discover spaces left over to add a separate element to the character. I decided to go with the poisoner, because certain feats the bomb chucker would already have such as Point Black Shot and Rapid Shot or Two-Weapon Fighting, would have natural synergy with the poisoner.

I decided to go with the Two-Weapon Fighting model instead of the Point Blank Shot and Rapid Shot model because it’s very difficult to make use of the sticky poison discovery when dealing with ammunition. They only way around it would be to use multiple daggers of throwing, but coming across such things in a Pathfinder Society setting can be rather daunting. In order to maximize the effectiveness of poison, you need to hit the target multiple times in a round. Each hit adds a +2 to the DC save versus the poison and increases it’s total duration by half. The sticky poison discovery, meanwhile, allows one dose of poison to be stretched to a number of hits equal to your Intelligence modifier- which is quite a cost saver for the poisoner.

Now I know a lot of people will feel that an effective bomber can not be made without Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot, but I disagree. Both feats are helpful, but not necessary. Overcoming a target’s touch AC, is often rather easy- even of a +4 is added to it for firing into melee. Add to that the multiple dexterity buffs that an Alchemist has access to, and often these feats prove rather unnecessary. Granted, they are useful feats, but in this build I an forgoing the utility of those feats in favor of the versatility of adding poison to the mix.

The reason I chose the Gnome is because their racial traits in the Advanced Player’s Guide allow of them to pick up another bomb use every two levels. That ends up being quite a few extra bombs by the time you get the Fast Bombs discovery. So you’ll not run out of them anytime soon. In addition, their smaller size gives a +1 to hit on everything. Given that bombs and poison do not depend on size for damage, it’s a natural choice. Not to mention that, for flavor reasons, Gnomes are typically seen as natural Alchemists.

Alright, let’s get down to stating out our Gnome. Using the PFS 20 point buy, we know we’re going to need a high Dex and a high Int. Strength can be a bit of a dump stat, since we won’t be using it. My proposed point allocation would be to take the 4 points you’d gain for taking a Strength of 7. Let’s make our Wisdom and Constitution 12, with those 4 points. If we leave our Charisma at 10, then we can take the remaining 20 point and give each our Dexterity and our Intelligence a score of 16. After adding in the Gnome racial modifiers, we have: S5 D16 Co14 W12 I16 C12. In addition, let’s substitute our some of the Gnome traits of hatred and defensive training (which I’ve never seen used) for the far more useful trait of Eternal Hope out of the Advanced Player’s Guide. Eternal Hope allows for one free reroll a day, an awesome ability.

The Accelerated Drinker trait, out of the Guide to Cheliax, is really too useful for this class to pass up. So we’re virtually forced to take that trait. As for our other trait, I like Indomitable Faith to help combat the Alchemist’s low Willpower save.

For feats and discoveries by level, here’s what I’d recommend:

Anyway, that’s my recommendation for the first 10 levels in terms of feats. Now in terms of which poison I’d recommend, poisons like Blue whinnis seem ideal. It’s cheap, and a failed save leads to Unconsciousness which will take the target out of the fight immediately. Since we can craft it quickly at a cost of 40gp per application, it’s very cheap to use. Add in our Sticky Poison ability, and one use amounts to roughly 10gp per strike. Not too shabby.

In terms of extracts, you will need to get the Haste Extract as soon as it become available at level 7. This will allow you to either throw four bombs a turn, or make four poisoned dagger attacks. That can add up to quite a lot of poison. The Reduce Person basically gives a +2 to hit with either bomb or poisoned dagger, so we’re going to need that. The interesting thing about Pathfinder Society Rules are that if you find a potion, you have to pay for it if you want to keep it over the course of the adventure. If, however, you use what you find over the course of the adventure, then it’s free. This makes Transmute Potion to Poison particularly attractive. Didn’t need that potion? Well turn it into a powerful poison which combines with Sticky Poison to get quite nasty. There are many other obvious extracts you’ll need, but I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

Apparently, top-down just seemed logical, given their experiences with large corporations; a single big one could organize the resources for a market better than five smaller. A central economic planning body was preferred to competitive interactions between smaller actors in separate fields. The term “progressive” came about as a result of this ostensible idea that that’s where the world’s heading. Of course, our understanding of it all then was limited and ill-founded – and we’d all pay for it later.

I was reminded of James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds, showing how localized decisions aggregated into a broader network yielded better results than top-down. How? According to this social organizing principle, the group itself acts smarter than even the brightest of its members – providing all have access to different information, are making independent decisions, and aren’t influencing each other. It’s not a new phenomenon, first observed by Francis Galton in a county-fair game guessing an ox’s weight over a century ago. The majority missed it while the average of the group’s responses were within 1% of it.

The most noted has to be the wreck of the USS Scorpion – a submarine that went down with all hands in May ’68, the Navy only having its last reported location days before. To help pinpoint the wreckage, a panel was assembled of diverse talent: mathematicians, salvage experts and sub tacticians – each given all available information to best estimate the location. Using Bayes Theorem, a collective determination was calculated; while its discovery proved none had correctly located it individually, the “group guess” was within 220 yards of it exactly.

So, if the broader network is smarter decision-making, why didn’t top-down planning go the way of the dodo when it proved inferior? Okay, let’s do a quick recap on the history of socialism.

It first assumes the marketplace naturally chaotic, which jives with why top-down planning was a local choice to combat it; observers claimed entire industries become consolidated in the hands of a few individuals. Second, it was born during the Industrial Revolution – a really crazy time – with its pioneer, Karl Marx, believing the whole thing a one-off process: the world needed to transition from an agrarian society to an industrialized one. In Das Kapital, he argued all industries would eventually find themselves controlled by only a handful of wealthy leaders, at which point, the process was complete. He seemed hopeful society would lose its dynamism, returning to a more tranquil time, and leaving these industrialists in possession of “the means of production” of the greater society was an injustice.

Of course, history has an ironic sense of humor. In time, Marxist revolutionaries would go on to do just that, as industrialization was proven not a one-off process after all.

Innovation constantly brought a new stream of products and services to market, and a society run by top-down committee (see: the former Soviet Union) just couldn’t effectively allocate resources to produce what the public actually wanted. And, like we know of any bloated bureaucracy, it collapsed beneath the weight of its own inefficiency.

What’s consistently proven to get the job done? Well, for resource-allocation, the free market is tops. If an oil embargo suddenly restricts its nation’s access, we hardly need an army of bureaucrats to refigure society’s production flow. As a commodity’s price rises, people naturally seek less expensive alternatives or use less of it. The free market allows for a resource to be restricted to those who use it best to benefit society; downright unthinkable to the “progressives” of yesteryear. And it’s that free market mindset which allows the “wisdom of crowds” to do its thing.

Oddly enough, socialism has been almost entirely refuted, and yet, it’s still around. We can only hope, like other “great” ideas – flat earth, phrenology, and stagflation – it’ll find its way to the dustbin of history as people become better educated.

Or just tired of wasting time and money – whichever comes first.

Casinos are inherently bureaucratic organizations: they produce nothing of value and simply take customers’ money. Thus, casino management is virtually always comprised of layer upon layer of bureaucratic departments whose entire purpose is maintaining the status quo. After all, as long as the lights stay on, no drugs are being dealt, and the employees remain relatively civil, why should anything change? The consequence of all bureaucracies is that strange, inconvenient rules seems to work their way into the organization and soon become just another annoying aspect of it. All casinos have these, but I think Hollywood Park’s HR department might deserve honorable mention in terms of its uselessness.

For one thing, you have to get by a security guard just to get to the department. So forget ever strolling there to fill out an application; Security would never let you get to it without an appointment. I remember multiple times telling him that I had business with HR, just for him to look at me, blithely, and ask, “You got an appointment?” Because if someone gets to talk with HR without an appointment, chaos would abound.

Which is another annoying facet of Hollywood Park. Security. You must have your government-issued badge displayed while in employee-only areas at all times. That’s fine for all other employees because, their badge is part of the uniform. House players on the other hand, typically carry it in their wallet. So, every time you go into the area, you have to have it out.

I once made the mistake of putting it away after showing it to the guard at the entrance only to get stopped by yet another one coming down the stairs. Of course, he stopped me and asked to see. And “Jesus,” muttered I, softly, while, again, I dug out my wallet.

And “excuse me,” he challenged.

“I said ‘Jesus’,” I said, unapologetically, while showing him my badge. He’s not a cop, and I’m not begin detained by law enforcement. I also probably make three times what this asshole does an hour. Quit the power trip. I already had to show a badge just to gain access to this hallway; do you really think I snuck in ‘Mission: Impossible’-style, only to be outdone by Deputy Dog? Besides, at some point, shouldn’t Security come to actually know who’s employed there and who isn’t?

And so, I make the overly inconvenient walk back down to HR to sign the paperwork and surrender my oh-so-special badge. “I’m sorry,” I had the nice lady tell me. “It wasn’t anything you did. We just needed to cut costs, and eliminated your position, plus the positions of two other house players. I’m enclosing a letter you can use to file for Unemployment.”

That might be handy – if I were actually unemployed. Seeing as how I’m not – it does nothing. “Can I go ahead and change my address?” I asked. I moved last month, and HR wouldn’t allow me to update it unless I showed them an updated government ID; because, you know, I might give them the wrong one. I have no idea why I would do this – but isn’t it a great idea to have this rule in place, so everything is as inconvenient as possible. Never mind that the California DMV always features a hellish line because of budget cuts. It seems that bureaucracies love to force you to deal with other bureaucracies. Besides, shouldn’t the goal of any HR division be to make it as hard as possible for anyone to actually do anything?

But I digress. Upon reviewing all the paperwork, they presented me with what was supposed to be my final check. Unfortunately, it didn’t include the hours I’d worked for the last two days. HR was mystified because they had thought that they had inactivated my employee ID#, thus preventing me from clocking in. But, bureaucracies and fast action do not got hand in hand. So my number had not been deactivated, and I was only finding out now that I actually been let go a few days ago. Or was supposed to be. So now they owed me more money. Meaning I’d have to brave Security once again (without a badge nor appointment) to get the money they owed me.

So I then returned to face my co-workers and tell them the bad news. Otherwise, my immediate supervisor would not have known that I was not actually working, because no one had told him.

“Are you working?” he asked me.

“Not any more,” I replied.

“Oh,” he paused. “I guess they got you too.”

I guess this is how business in conducted over there. It’s a strange way to do business. I’m not sure if I’m going to be missing the wages. They pay me $30 an hour to play cards, which is nice, but I didn’t often get to play in the games I was particularly good at. At yellow chip NL games, for instance, I’m averaging $25 an hour over the last 200 hours. That’s the other things about being a poker play. Just because you lost your job doesn’t really mean you lost your income.