Next Up....

The Mad-Libs are fantastic, but they drive home a point that I do know but tend to dodge/ignore way more than I should. I am spending way too much of my life angry and upset, which is a large part of the reason I mash unit-ed myself at the Bike today. Over here its a small environment, people can't hide in the crowd and act like world class scum bags without consequence. Over here the level of decorum...well...there simply is one here. Over here I just sit and play 40; I don't have my head on swivel looking for a better game than a half (or full) dozen pros are gonna fight me for. Over here the game starts at 10:15...showing up at 9:45 instead of 9:15 doesn't cost me 5 hours of prime game time. Over here in the land of the blind I am a one eyed king. And for today that suits me just fine.

Some Random Small Posts Will Ensue

I'm playing right now but will make some small single thought posts from my phone. First of all I am alive; but barely. I really got knocked on my ass yesterday at Commerce, missing the whale twice in the 1/2 (we started, game filled, I quit and re-listed, he came in I was first to move and quit the main and never got back) and general high limit propping for them for free, all the while losing $5k mostly in the 40. I just felt...defeated. I felt like there were lots of players doing lots of things (playing being one of them) better than me and I just tucked my tail between my legs and ran to the Bike today. As they say, it is what it is.

The Traveler

I think I've mentioned my friend The Traveler on here before. He just got married, and has embarked on a three month honeymoon around the world with his wife. They are blogging about the trip here:

http://backpacksinfirst.blogspot.com

If you're interested, have a look.

Recommended Daily Allowance...Exceeded

 So we just finished off wedding season (for the year, not our lives...the wedding season of our liveswill continue for several years, more if Danielle continues to make friends that are younger than her) with a 5 day trip to Boston (and New Hampshire) for another college friend's official not tying shindig. The day trip to see Danielle's aunt and uncle (even though she emailed them the wrong date so they weren't able to take off from work) in Bath, NH?  Great.  The wedding itself, including everything from the rehearsal through the after party?  Wonderful.  I will comment that there is only so much time one can spend, comfortable, watching all of one's old drinking buddies drink while not drinking one's self before one starts to get rather annoyed, but that is neither here nor there.  The travel days to get there and back?  Meh, not so great but watchagonnadoyouknow?  Since arriving back here, however, I have been once again set afrenzy by the various amazing and idiotic pieces of my life, and without having any better way to do it, I'll work backwards from just now through the 20 hours I just played (out of 30) and try not to forget anything.  Curiously I feel absolutely fine physically, even though the rage in my brain is threatening to literally manifest into physical form, split through my skull, and go on a murderous rampage. 

First thing's first....That picture actually happened, just tonight.  I was driving home from the bike (more on those assholes later) and everything looked fine and dandy.  As you can see, it was 7:44pm.  That's usually pretty much fine, but I checked anyway and sure enough all four legs of the 710/105/605/91 rectangle were cleared for takeoff.  But then...well, you can see what happened.  I was just about ready to shit myself, honestly.  Why was I even at the bike, you ask?  Well, I had to cash out my points from last month.  You get until the 15th of the month, and I haven't been there yet and at this point I don't think I'll be going there at all, so after my 60 whale quit I decided to head over and just get 'er done.  So I show up and the game but boy is it shitty (all four winning professional props, three customers) and am told....I can't cash out.  You see, the system apparently went down and it's not showing me having ANY points from last month.  They owe me something like $900, and I just know they're going to try to fuck me out of them.  Like, I just know it.  Not only that, but the dude kept me there for almost 20 minutes before he could even confirm they'd extend the deadline for me (you better believe you're extending it you asshole).  So now I have to go back there at some point and just JFC what kind of second rate ass clown show are you guys running over there?  I mean really.

OK so before that what did we have....there was the constant losing.  Yeah, I could deal without that honestly.  People "free carding" me (where by "free card" I mean "three betting in position only to get four bet by me holding top pair no kicker") with gut shots and hitting them 104% of the time.  Kim just snapping off my aces like it's her job (and in fairness it sort of is I guess).  It's just getting so old, I can't get any traction.  The last two days I think I'm up like $900 (curiously the same amount the bike is in the process of stealing from me), but every day there is that two or three hour stretch where 40 bets just get blasted into orbit and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it.  I actually was at commerce for over 12 hours today, showing up at 6:40am (couldn't beat traffic) after sleeping for six hours (I still feel great...I'm quitting coffee for the 3rd time and so far it's been amazing) while the 1/2 whale played through the night.  You see, I couldn't get in yesterday because it was my turn to get the dogs after we returned from the wedding, but I had to go call the way to Danielle's dad's house instead of...you know, none of that matters.  I knew the whale was coming but I couldn't get there until 12:30 (he arrived at 12:45) so I was shut out for six hours.  Seems reasonable.  At 10:30 I decided to quit and come back early, which worked out swimmingly as the game had two seats when I arrived in the morning.  But that's a big mucketty muck in and of itself, as I've gotten into the nasty habit of loaning this guy money, which is just idiotic because well it just is.  I don't get enough out of it and I just shouldn't do it.  He always gets himself just mercilessly buried, so it always goes deeper than you want it to and it always takes him longer to pay you back than you want it to because he's just so under it and owes so many people so much and Commerce won't deposit cashier's checks for me anymore because the first time I did this they figured out he was involved and apparently they won't cash any of his checks and well it's just a world class CF.  I'm stopping all that nonsense, which should be a pretty big load off my mind, but the next time I'm in a game with him and he's busto and asks me to borrow (or literally just reaches into my stack) it's going to pretty tough to say no.  But that's exactly what I'm going to do.  It's gonna be...well...hilarious.

There are more things that have pissed me off.  There was the woman (the same one who once basically stole $2000 from me, then didn't return my calls for two weeks, whom I had to chase to the parking lot to try and get paid) screeching "Mother BEEEEEE!" again and again at the table.  That really set me off;  normally I could just take that insanity in stride, swallow it up and hide it way way down in the ever darkening inner-most reaches of my soul, but after a mere three refrains I had to snap "We understand" sarcastically back at her.  Maybe it was because she'd tried to look at my cards mid-hand a few minutes earlier.  Maybe it's because she's a horrible and awful person.  Maybe it was the attempted theft.  I dunno....  She said it two more times...that was a nice touch.  There was the free way ramp closure at 12:15am as we were trying to get home from LAX.  Seriously.  Do not pass go, do not collect $200, do not get home, fuck you.  I think that's actually what the sign said, or maybe I was hallucinating since I'd been awake for 19 hours straight running on 5.5 hours of sleep.  Either way, bumbling around surface streets in Garden Grove or wherever we were was just exactly the way I wanted to end that travel day, for sure.  There was Peyton Manning and his god damned talented self looking all smug and shit as he pummeled my Steelers.  I could rail on that game alone for a few paragraphs, but will leave it at "are you serious, these are the refs?  40 seconds on the clock with a timeout first and goal and you...spike it?  Seriously?  33 seconds to run one the "pick six" play at the end of the game?  Wow."  I mean, they got out played, pretty badly.  With Ryan Clark and Harrison maybe they had a shot, but without two pro bowl defensive starters Peyton is just going to shred you and guess what that's what happened.  There was losing my fantasy game 104 to 102.  Seriously, that was the score.  104 to 102.  Even as I was driving home tonight listening to the radio I became upset at the sheer absurdity of something.  The Whistle Song was playing and they were editing out every single curse word.  Not just the seven words you can't say on TV....all of them.  Hell?  Blanked out.  Damn?  Blanked out.  Now I'm all for trying to clean up the airwaves a little bit and maybe try and preserve the minds of our children for a few extra months, but the entire song is about blow jobs.  Is it really important that kids hear "pull a ---- hamstring tryin' put it on ya" when the man is literally wrapping about getting his dick sucked for the entire tree fiddy?  I mean, seriously people.  No wonder everybody hates Americans;  sometimes we are just a gigantic mob of morons.  

Rage

Oh the rage.  The rage can no longer be contained.  The last 3 times I have played poker just horrible horrible things have happened to me.  So many of them were my fault, though, and that's what makes it all the worse.  The first session was a 21 hour 1/2 bender which involved me failing to relinquish an amazing seat in a pretty good game, long after the chance I was playing well had completely zero'ed out.  And of course I was winning a good bit, like 2+ racks, then through the wee hours of the very early morning took a 6 rack downer before the whale finally gave back the full $20k he had managed to take control of from his case $2000 that somebody showed him out to get out of the fucking credit card machine at like 8pm jesus fucking christ why couldn't we all have just gone home.  I really, really don't want to do that any more.  I'm  not very good at poker as it is, really, and I'm definitely not good enough to just give up all my advantages (good rest, good mental game, game selection, quitting time selection, etc) to play through the night with one whale and 6 pros (who were admittedly all also off their best games) and pretend like I have this huge win rate or something.  Like, was I a winner in that game?  Sure.  Was I a much bigger winner than I'd have been in the 60 the following day had I just gone the fuck home and come back fresh?  No.  Forget "much", even a bigger winner at all?  Probably not.  Then the last two days I've played I just failed to make super obvious quits at super obvious times (up $5000, game just got shitty...quit...or at least drop down...just go up for the day, planning to leave in 45 minutes anyway, just go home!) and got super obviously punished (JJ vs 85s and 85s on 442?  I cannot win that hand obviously....TT vs 85s on 532?  I cannot win that hand.  643ccd I make a king high diamond flush and do not win.  AA v 44 on AQ3?  No good)  then wanted to destroy something beautiful because of it.  Also I spent 75 minutes driving to the casino today (SEVENTY FIVE) and it's currently above 80 degrees in my office because...jesus fucking christ there is no good reason for that other than I have lost the will to fight constantly with Danielle about keeping the house at a reasonable temperature so I'll just be miserable and that will be that.

Really I'm as close to flying off the handle as I've been in a while and just need to take a break.  Will the ants take over the house?  Can we hit 85 degrees in the living room?  Will Lundy win $15k, or just $10k?  Does she think she's the smartest person on Earth, or just the second smartest?  These are the questions that dominate my day.  I just checked my stats, and I have broken even for the last 400 hours, which is weird since everyone on Earth just assumes I've been absolutely killing it non-stop all the days of all the weeks this year.  I can assure you I've been killing nothing, which is probably for the best since it would't be pretty if I just went off like a bottle rocket, which is apparently what the fish who got me barred from the bike did last week, standing up and declaring "fuck you all" to the entire table (then saying he was going to shoot me...remember I wasn't even there) and not getting so much as a 20 minute time out.  Honestly...jesus, whatever, I give up I can't even rage properly.