How Solitaire Disproves Evolution

Maybe it's just me, but I think the Solitaire game on my computer really, really hates me. It led me on a merry dance when we first bought this computer, letting me win time and time again. And just when I thought I was really hot snot, I hit the brick wall. It won't let me get past a winning percentage of 14%. Occasionally, when I lose too many times in a row, it dangles a few winning games in front of me so that I never actually drop to 13%, but as soon as I try to smash through the glass ceiling, WHAP goes the Solitaire god and smacks me firmly in the 14% range. I have spoken with a few people and found that they, too, hit the 14% limit and are stopped cold.

Why would Windows do this? What did I ever do to it?

At first I thought I was just missing some important factor in the game, until I played a few games where there was literally no chance to win. I mean NO chance. I ran through the entire deck on the first run and there was nothing to play. I got a zero score. It's happened now about 4 times or so.

So this ticks me off for a couple of reasons. First, if we paid this amount of money for a new computer, by golly there ought to be a way to win the game. I might lose due to head-thumping stupidity, but there should always - ALWAYS - be a way to win, no matter how hard. Those zero-score games were a real eye opener. Second, it tells me that some manipulative, power-hungry computer geek is getting back at the world for never asking him to the prom by creating a tiny cube in which Solitaire players exist like blind mice, bumping into the walls. And that's just mean. My family has gotten used to me sitting at the desk, playing a few games, and muttering every few minutes, "This game hates me." SM tries to lure me to play another game, but now it's personal. I refuse to give up. Especially since once I played a game that the computer said I lost, but if I didn't believe it I was more than welcome to go back and try to win anyway, SUCKER (okay, so I made up the terminology - the sentiment was the same). I was so mad at losing what appeared to be a promising game that I didn't take the computer's word for it, and I kept playing. I WON. HA!!! Take that, you plastic pile of junk.

So, let's go back to this idea that it is literally impossible to push past a 14% win ratio. I've got this feeling that if I were on a deserted island (that miraculously had electricity - just go with the flow here) and I had 30 or so years to play Solitaire, there would be no "Aha!" moment when I would discover the magic secrets and win 100% of the time. I would just sit there like a bump on a log, playing the same stupid game a million times in a row. I would never, ever evolve into a higher being. (Of course, if I had electricity and chose to fritter it away on Solitaire, then I suppose I deserved whatever amoeba-like classification I got, huh?)