Philly and Harper’s

I have arrived in philadelphia and finagled my way into 1 hour of computer time at the philadelphia ‘free library’. This detour was made necessary by the fact that I realized on the plane that I had not in fact printed out my TGV (french train) ticket but in fact had only printed out my reservation. Everything is now fine and will be ok though my french remains a shitshow and has already gotten me into problems even before Ive stepped foot in france.

On the plane I got to read Harper’s (not to be confused with Harper’s Bazaar), a great literary magazine in the style of the new yorker but just generally funnier. I used to read it when I was in Peru simply because Nina (my roommate) had like 4 or 5 of them and they provided good reading material for the bus. I wasn’t about to bust out an ipod on ‘el numero 7 bus’ but if someone wants to take my harper’s issue, it will only serve to help world literacy.

I highly recommend the publication to those looking for a good read (especially you charlie, since it is really similiar to the new yorker). My favorite part of the magazine is a section entitled ‘readings’ which consists of excerpts of anything from congressional testimonies to 911 calls to boardgame excerpts. That last one was quite frankly the funniest one and the one that I hope to pass on.

It seems that the son of the governor of kansas (yes, the woman) made a boardgame called ‘don’t drop the soap’. As you might have guessed, it’s a sort of monopoly except baltic avenue is the shower room and park place is the infirmary. Some excerpts from cards below (think chance cards in monopoly):

“A guard finds you after you sold him some bad crack, lose one turn”

“You throw a pile of feces at a guard. He hits you repeatedly in the head. Go to the INFIMARY and lose two turns”

“You bench 350 lbs, you are a beast. Collect five packs”

“The Aryans think your mouth is pretty. You try to fight them off. Proceed to GANG WAR.”

As you might have guessed, ‘packs’ refers to cigarette packs, the currency of the game. Really quite genius. Hopefully someone can find the full list online and post it, there are too many to put down and right now I am on limited computer time at the philadelphia public library. I am off to see the city and find a good used bookstore to get me some reading material. Ill post a picture as soon as possible of the fat, grease-laden, heart attack inducing cheesesteak I will eat for lunch.

UPDATE: Here is the site if any of you are interested in buying it. (http://www.gilliusinc.com/dropsoap.html) I think ‘not suitable for children’ is quite the understatement.