News You Can Bruise for 2000 January 7

Excellent. I was going to start writing Mahjongg Carnage and never finish it, but someone else has written xmahjongg, so I don't have to.

At one point Dan and I had a big argument over whether or not the solitaire version of Mahjongg was a "bastardized American version" (his exact words) of Mahjongg. I held that it was actually a different game that just happened to be played with the same materials, like Shisen-Sho, and that if you wanted a bastardized American version of Mahjongg you would have to look into the rule changes introduced upon the game's importation in the 1920s. Dan insisted on calling solitaire Mahjongg a bastardized American version of real Mahjongg, despite the fact that by the same logic, Klondike is a bastardized American version of Blackjack.

Wait, never mind, xmahjongg is just another version of the solitaire game, albeit one the authors of which are aware of the original game.

All you trendy people who are getting pointed to Hyperdiscordia's Jusanotoron calendar by your trendy web sites, be sure to also read the rebuttal to it I wrote and Hyperdiscordia published, way back in 1996.