clean without bins

the holiday got off to the worst possible start when i was picked up in a cab (which i was not responsible for arranging!) and it turned out to be one of those 'transport for london sticker' cab driver mongs. the only way from that start was up.
and up it was. essentially, it's an awesome place to visit.

the best and worst of japan

best
everyone is polite. i got bowed to millions of times. and i'm not even important.
kids aren't bastards like they are here.
lots of women walk around in short skirts and long socks even in winter!
there was a little earthquake, about 5.3 Richters, when i was there (though it didn't wake me)
heated toilet seats
bullet trains. sat in first class by mistake for a bit. how lovely it was while it lasted.

worst
there weren't robots everywhere, flying cars, hoverboards and all the other gadgets i expected. although the taxi's did have automatic doors and you could pay them by card.
air hostesses on plane didn't speak english and on the way back all the meals were frozen. frozen fruit, omlettes etc aren't tasty even when you haven't eaten for 10 hours.
enormously high population density means everywhere in tokyo is always busy.
weak pound means everything is slightly more expensive than london.
stupid currency difference means i have no idea what anything costs. ie have to pay for everything in the thousands and am too lazy to convert numbers in my head.
no vending machines with anything other than soft drinks and cigarettes - nothing crazy like knickers.

oxymorons
it's clean but there are no bins


gonna add some photos when i get a chance.

had a tea ceremony where the lady said words to the effect of "you only get one meeting with some people in life, so make the most out of every experience"

****

leaving in 13 hours.

haven't started packing yet.

got my suitcase out but cat has fallen asleep in it.

oh and yeah, ran bad.

all the small things

people think that a hero is someone who does a noble and grand gesture to save others from perilous danger. well, that's what the tv tells me.

and the reason i dislike most people is because they believe that to be true. well, that and the fact that as chuck once (almost) said "people never really listen. they're just waiting for their turn to speak".
and when i read those words i was happy someone else could put so simply into words something i hadn't been able to formulate myself, yet it was something i instantly knew to be true. and since then i've been depressed every time i notice how true it is.

so i always cherish the moments when people don't act so selfishly, and it restores my faith in humanity after it gets grinded away by everyday life (mostly by other car drivers)

of car drivers, my least favourite is an illiterate man from new orleans. my friend and i left houston after outstaying our welcome at a friends house who was leaving on holiday with her family. so we were taking the 30 hour bus to orlando. and whilst there were reports of a hurricane on the way our hosts really had to go on holiday.
so we took the bus. after about 6 hours, and reaching dusk, i blinked and the sky went black. my friend and i shot each other a glance and before we could say anything the bus driver announced we were shortly gonna stop in n'orleans cos there was a hurricane and we couldn't go any further.
we roll into the bus stop at about 10pm. we find a phone box and call some motels listed next to the phone box. one has space so we go outside and hail a cab. we tell him the address, show it to him to as we had written it down. he kinda nods and drives off. 15 mins later he stops, we pay him and get out. it was a beautiful neighbourhood but it slowly dawns on us that there was a distinct lack of hotel. we turn around to question him and notice he's already taken our bags out the boot, dumped them behind us and started to drive off.

so we look around. 1030pm. no phone boxes, no shops, no people.
till we see some young dude walking down the street and then towards a house on the other side of the road. we cross over and as he's waiting by the door i shout to him (it was a nice long pathway up to the door) "can we borrow your phone?"

"not my house" he replies "it's my girlfriend's"

not so great.

some middle aged lady opens the door and lets him in. he must have mentioned something to her as she looks at us and asks if she can help. we explain the goings on and primarily due to our english accents she invites us in. apparently her daughter had been travelling in england the year before and she would have expected someone to help her daughter out in a similar spot.
so she calls us a cab as we sit round the kitchen table with her daughter who was hot, and her daughter's friend who called us wankers! she said here, wanker meant someone from the west bank of the mississippi, but she also knew what it meant to us!

so we exchanged emails caught a cab, and enjoyed n'orelans for a day before moving onto to florida the next evening which included meeting some old dude at a bus station in tallahassee showing us his gun shot wounds. plural.

so whilst hero may be a bit strong, the unnecessary kindness towards strangers is something that i hope i'll never forget.

if someone is so kind to strangers, imagine how they'll treat people they care about.*

i like to think of stu ungar, who's lawyer once remarked to him he was short of cash. so stu gave him $10k and said pay me back when you can. and if you can't, i don't care.
or pavel erdos, who literally gave away any money he ever had.


*imo sometimes it harder to be nice to people you care about because if a stranger fucks you over it doesn't hurt half as much as when someone you care about does.

the end of days

well, that was overly dramatic a title but the completely irrelevant timeline of the end of the year is almost upon us.
i'd heard lots of things before about days/weeks/months being unimportant as it's a game for the long run but only recently have i begun to not just understand that it's true but act in a manner than accepts it.
this end of year goal setting worked pretty good for me and it was only last night that i tilted hard for the first time in ages losing about $3k at 2/4.

what's nice about now is time off 'work' but also i'm off to japan for two weeks so i'll only be playing a few more hands of poker in december. gonna try to hit my vpp target this week before the i go away, but likely will have to finish it off when i return.

i checked my yearly results and i thought that i had two five figure months earlier in the year (march and april) (one positive, one negative) but it turns out they were both just short of 5 figures.
and even though i did loads on my last session i hit a $10k month. woo.


i bought some jelly bellies again recently. they're so so so good. and i mean so good that i have to hide them from myself (so i can't see them all the time) otherwise i just don't stop eating them. and then all the flavours melt into one so i just eat them faster. which is good but also bad.

one thing i've noticed is that i really don't like taxi meters. i rarely take cabs, but the never ending rising of the numbers without an end in sight always makes me nervous. i find myself racing against the meter even though i'm not driving. i think i'm competitive.

i also noticed that one of my cats is highly electrically charged. when i stroke her and then touch her near her ear a spark will literally fly between said ear and my hand. this is weird. my cat also finds it weird judging by the look she gives me when it happens.

the main difference between cats and dogs is dogs have owners whilst cats have staff.
the second difference is when cats bite you it hurts a little bit. when dogs try to bite your leg off at the ankle because they 'want to play with you' but just miss, catch you jeans and wont let go it's much scarier.


anyway, here's a garph

great idea

this is what i'm gonna do this week.

japanese

i got a business card today. i briefly glanced at it without paying much attention. a few minutes later i had another look and then realised it was all in japanese. i was pretty sure i could read it early so i thought i'm either hallucinating, or i've learnt japanese without realising.
disappointingly, what actually happened, was that it had english on one side, and japanese on the other.

got this business card at a meeting today which meant i had to cut my hair yesterday. not looking like a tramp is a good thing, but i mentioned it to the hairdresser and he spent the entire haircut trying to sell me on how important haircuts are before big meetings. he didn't need to though, i was already getting my hair cut with them.

i've mentioned a few times previously of my despair with other drivers and their retarded/selfish tendencies, but recently i think i saw one of the worst driving decisions ever. i undertook this person who was driving a pick up truck in the middle lane. obviously no one else was in the slow lane for miles, and he'd also just been overtaken in the fast line. and so, with no other cars behind him, and no slower cars in front of him he responded to my act by moving into the fast lane. that was a conscious decision he made. i would like to buy one of those LED signs where you can write what you want on it and have it in my rear window so that i can give out personal messages of abuse. except i obviously won't do that because like most fantasies, the imagination will be better than the reality.

anyway, finally found a house to live in over new years for after i come back from japan. it's only temporary but its very nice. guy that owns it is going away for a bit and he seems nice enough (though it's always hard to tell!).

oh and yeah, lost today. kk < qq aipf at 2/4 and 44 < aa all in on turn with kq46 board at 3/6. probably because i did a cash out earlier this week :D
though hoping to play lots on this weekend.

but how much do you spend?

some questions i have decided to ask people i meet who tell me what their jobs are (perhaps with some gentle coaxing from me, like, 'what do you do for a living?'):

1)how much do you earn? (repeatedly)
and if they give any sort of figure
1a) but how much did you spend to make that much?

2)are you addicted to it?
no
2a)how often do you go?
every day
so you are addicted!!

3)do you talk to people on the phone at all?
yes
3a)but how do you know they are telling the truth if you can't see their face?

4)can you teach me how to do your job?

5)how do you know your company aren't gonna go bust and not pay you or even just fire you?

if they mention anything they've ever bought
6)good day at work, eh? (with overacted sarcasm)

7)are you any good at it?

8)are you gonna be on tv soon?
no
8a) oh, i guess you aren't any good at your job.


then if poker comes up and they ask me any of these questions i can legally punch them in the duodenum

---------------------------------------

i also found out about something called the Dunning Kruger effect. It's funny, as it says people who think they are good at something are invariably bad as they haven't mastered it to a good enough level to realise they're bad. whilst people who are good at stuff realise there is always much more to learn.

which puts my last post into perspective

i'm terrible

at pretty much everything.
i would like to be the best at something.
one thing i'm best at is writing this blog. however, the is counteracted by the fact that i am also the worst at writing this blog

i'm gonna try and find something else that i am best (and not also) worst at.

multi tabling

leads to misclicks.
here is exhibit A
playing 9 tables i misclick preflop calling an utg raise from the small blind with faecal matter which, like a caterpillar, somehow turned into a buttefly.

Seat 1: bb ($400 in chips)
Seat 3: villain ($464 in chips)
Seat 4: co ($225.15 in chips)
Seat 5: jenson ($776 in chips)
Seat 6: hero ($388 in chips)
hero: posts small blind $2
bb: posts big blind $4

*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to hero [Jc 6h]
villain: raises $12 to $16
co: folds
jenson: folds
hero: calls $14
bb: folds

*** FLOP *** [Jh 7c 6c]
hero: checks
villain: bets $32
hero: raises $60 to $92
villain: raises $356 to $448 and is all-in
hero: calls $280 and is all-in
Uncalled bet ($76) returned to villain

*** TURN *** [Jh 7c 6c] [3s]

*** RIVER *** [Jh 7c 6c 3s] [3h]

*** SHOW DOWN ***
hero: shows [Jc 6h] (two pair, Jacks and Sixes)
villain: mucks hand
hero collected $778 from pot

*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $780 | Rake $2
Board [Jh 7c 6c 3s 3h]
Seat 1: bb (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 3: villain mucked [Js Ts]

obviously it helps when the villain is a moran.

i've been outdrawing lots of people recently and used to feel guilty for it. i've since learnt not to care when i outdraw people, nor when they outdraw me.

one thing i like about poker is that you can get completely caught up in it. escapism is something a lot of people look for, i've always previously found it in things like computer games, but aside from improving eye-hand co-ordination they're pretty much a waste of time. poker not only lets me forget about everything for a few hours i also make some money at the same time. but now i have to go back to the real world and find a house.

ballcups

this guy is mental. trying to play about 2 brazillion hands of poker in a week to become wealthier, probably at the cost of any remaining sanity.
whilst i struggle to get another 17kvpps this guy has to do 7100 per day.

on the plus side it means i get to go outdoors and enjoy the hilarity of every day life. for example i've always wondered how bus drivers became such horrible drivers. did bad drivers get the job, or did the job train them to be bad? yesterday i learnt, that they in fact get training to be terrible. i was following a bus with L plates, where the driver gets lessons. he passed another bus and they both stopped for a chat, completely oblivious to anyone else on the road with places to go. like me.

i've also been recently amused by the use of the word quantum. for many years since it's conception Planck it's been used in science to mean small. as in the smallest possible amount of something.

then in the 80s quantum leap came along, a great show with sam beckett travelling through time. ever since then people have used quantum as a prefix to mean something huge. yet whenever i see it i instinctively use the small meaning and laugh at people talking how they've made a quantum leap in something or other.

i like photos. i started including some here on this here blog. mostly of hot wimmen. but i thought it's time i got serious, and below is my computer set up. i consulted some feng shui guides in order to organise things to boost my calmness and clear thinking. on that note, it's back to the grind.

TIME

i woke up t'other morning and my old, glow in the dark, (and possibly radioactive) analogue watch told me it was the 15th of november.


it looks almost nothing like that, but more like that then about 99% of other watches that exist.

seeing as thats a boring pic, here's a nicer one.



i had no reason to believe that it was lying, so i went about my business believing it was indeed the 15th. it wasn't. it was the 14th.
after setting the time on watches which have the date hidden behind quarter past the hour, i've always wondered how they know whether it's morning or afternoon. especially as it's never been wrong. till saturday morning.
sunday morning rolled around and i figured i should set it straight. by the afternoon it was telling me it was now the 16th. it wasn't. i'm not sure why my watch has gone rogue, but i can't ever believe it again.

i had 3 other things to blog about and i figured to prevent myself forgetting about them i would use a mnemonic. which was mdmm, h, p.
i remembered the mnemonic!
i forget what all those letters stand for.

anyway, it's late and i have to start waking up in the morning before 9 o clock regularly, and eat more food for breakfast. bizarrely (or not?) that always makes me hungrier for the rest of the day.

other point of note is played some poker. kinda struggling to find time to play during the week and was intent on playing 10k hands every weekend but that looks unlikely. managed about 7.5k this weekend. and a decent profit. was thinking of putting graph in end of year goals instead of just figures. not sure if i care enough but it might be more interesting for you?
had to revise my hand goal target, which is really just how many i think i need to play to clear the vpps.
also hit my 10k target already so will probably revise that to about 15k. or 100k. aim for the stars, right?

stolen joke

Books are great! But not if the acting in your head is shit.

euphamism of the day

i may be a little late in the discovery of this but 'balloon knot' makes me laugh. and then feel a bit sick. and then laugh again. ha.

in other news my fitness regime is as fickle as a woman's opinion. i have added a couple of new exercises (i misspelt that word and my computer tried to correct it to excelsior, a commonly underused word) to my regime. one is the infamous one legged squat. which is exactly what it sounds like. for extra difficulty, conduct this from a step so that you can sit lower than otherwise humanly possible. this are also good for improving balance. the second is essentially standing on tiptoes. start from tiptoes, come down very slowly and as soon as your heels touch the ground quickly rise again. feet can be either pointed forwards or charlie chaplin style. these are really easy for about 0-20, but once i reach about 50 the searing pain through my entire legs remind me why i prefer eating ice cream to 'working out.'

my other long running theme is the learning of russian which is still going much slower than i would like. it's pretty tough for a semi retarded individual like myself to learn new things like languages, but it's made even more difficult when the language is fully retarded (and by this i mean impossible!) it's definitely worth it though, on the off chance i meet kournikova



i once thought i saw her on my flight to kiev but it was probably just a very good imposter. i can't remember if i mentioned her before but this lady was gorgeous. i followed her up the stairs on to the plane, but sadly she was not in the seat next to mine. the look of absolute delight on the ~16 year old kid who realised she was about to sit next to him was almost as memorable as the look of shock to his reaction shown by his mum's face.

volume

not in a maths way, but a poker way. realised if i want the $2k bonus (which would come with a $2.4k bonus from fpps) i need to get my ass in gear and play lots more.
last weekend i played on sat night till 8am, and a bit more on sunday reaching almost 9k hands on the weekend! sadly my brain was against me and this resulted in my paying about $2k for the luxury of playing. almost not worth going for a $2k bonus.

had a bit of break and sorted my brain out, and thursday managed to play a bit and win about $1k. this weekend i've managed only 6k hands but won about $4.5k.

usually i find it hard to play when winning as i'm happy with keeping the money before i get coolered and return much of it back. but these days i really do my best to only focus on making the correct decision, trying not to look at how much i'm up/down in $ or ev etc.

also i know i have to reach about 80k hands to clear the vpp to get my bonus which is my real motivator. i've played enough that i would usually be able to make it in the next two months but i'm going to japan for 2 weeks and i'm busy in the last week of december so have at best 5 weeks of play left, and more likely four.
so i've started 9 tabling again (this time without horrific results) and i hope with 60hours of play i'll reach the bonus. whether i make i there remains to be seen. i would say it's currently a 50/50 shot.

also, i reached $5k so have started some 2/4 aswell, which seemed very soft over this weekend.

anyway, with all these winnings all that's left to do is buy a slap chop

the promised photo

i doubt it lives up to the many day wait (it's not nekkid ladies covered in chocolate sauce aka 2 girls one fountain), but i'd never seen one like this. i laughed unexpectedly causing me to ironically pee all over the toilet seat.

i went up an escalator today at a tube station and wondered what it would be like if i fell over backwards. everyone would have a nice comfortable fall onto the person behind. except for the last person for whom it might hurt.

to reward myself for such great thinking i purchased a huge bag of jelly beans from a pick and mix in town. when i was a kid i remember being told in the science museum that it was better for you teeth to eat lots of sweets at once, rather than spread it out over time. i've taken this to heart ever since and often consume kilo's of chocolate at once because it's better for my teeth.

crack

i managed to play about 8k hands on the weekend. sadly i played like a deluded crack whore (is there any other type?) although hopefully my generosity won't go unnoticed by those people who control karma and they'll throw a torrent of (attractive) naked ladies, money bills and chocolate covered pancakes into my face for the foreseeable future.
will update the ever depressing year goals on the right later.

it appears i have to go to the british library this week and whilst i'm in the area i'm gonna pop in to selfridges, even though they are many miles apart, for i hear they have a collection of pick and mix jelly beans. this will definitely be the highlight of the week. the highlight of last week was a photo i took in a friends house which i shall post as soon as i can be bothered to stick my phone in my computer.

sum forty one

just finished the easiest hands of poker i've had for a while, continuing a recent upswing following a $4k downswing. lots of swings but no roundabouts in sight.

more painfully than that emotional turmoil (which i am sadly used to) was a fat lip i got from football. as i mentioned last time it was unusually painful for usually i am impervious to it, but this time i got cut! foolishly i got home and following the ritual of the blowing of the nose, ate a post match orange which wasn't sensible as the juicy acid flavour caused some immense pain to me.
this theme of painful eating got me thinking. it's a great way to cure fat people. instead of stomach stapling, just make it painful to eat. i'm not saying cut their lips every two weeks or punch them in the face. unless they were horrible people in which case it's a two birds one stone situation.

one of the things that made me laugh (and therefore hurt) this week was i've seen lots of motorbikes driving as if they were cars. when they stay in the middle of a lane of traffic instead of zooming past everyone, this bemuses me greatly. i understand that sometimes it's safer, but really, half the attraction of the motorbike is that you never have to sit in any traffic.

that's it for today, check out jethro's last post. made me laugh .and cause me pain. but it was worth it.

the times, they are a-changing

in the uk, the clocks changed tonight. the good way. an extra hour in bed! except i am still awake. which means i don't get an extra hour's sleep. in fact, i get an extra hour awake and then the same short sleep which means i'm gonna be more tired than normal tomorrow. this is pretty bad. i shall make sure i don't do this again in future.

i did intend to have another mammoth session of playing cards but my head hurts. it's been hurting since i played football on monday and got the ball shot in my face (almost sounds dirty). i've had a slightly fat lip since then meaning talking/laughing/eating is really painful as well as having a pain in my nose. not even sure if this is causing my massive headache or if that's from somewhere else.

i've also come to the conclusion that when i become a bum in 3 months time i will have to become a pro poker player for a few months whilst i start up some alternate revenue streams. this should motivate me to play properly and start playing some 5/10 assuming i hit my 10k goal by the end of the year.

ruiners

there are are few types of people that haven't yet been classified by mankind.
i may or may not have mentioned sidewalkers before. these people cannot walk in a straight line. they very slowly bend their walk into where you are walking, forcing you further and further to the side, and into any objects such as lamp posts and walls. they do not realise they are doing this and if you come across them should make them aware of their illness.

the second type yet to be classified are ruiners. these people will tell you the details and when possible, inform you explicitly of the funniest moments in movies/tv shows you are about to watch, knowing full well you are about to watch them.

just before i went to see bruno, one of these ruiners started telling me about the funniest parts. W. T. F. why would you do that? it's like going to a restaurant and eating someone else's dessert. worse still, i'd literally just met them (friend of a friend) so i was unable to say "stop. please do not ruin the film i am about to watch. i'm amazed your ego is so big that you think that your retelling of a scene from a movie will be better than when i watch the scene."

last week i was struck by another ruiner. before i'd even noticed he'd outlined the whole of an episode of heroes i was about to watch.

i do not understand these people. basic etiquette states that you ask for permission before ruining jokes/endings to films etc in case someone hasn't watched it. let along ruining endings for films you know they are about to watch.

i seem to be running pretty bad with everything of late. today, i let numerous people out in front of me whilst driving (well, two), and pulled to the side of the road in a narrow street to let people pass (three) and out of those five situations i did not even receive one thank you wave/flash of the headlights.

a few months ago i received a nod instead of a thank you wave from an oncoming vehicle. bizarre as it was, i think it might catch on. i will be nodding instead of thank you waving where possible, i suggest you do the same. it will catch on.

i've made a terrible mistake

playing awful and running bad means i'm now making a loss since september. somehow lost about $3k in the last couple of days. oops.
can't really be bothered to type much else. mostly cos i'm hungry. priorities, eh?

new friends

i think i need to get some. i may have mentioned this before but seriously, some of my friends are such hypocritical turds.
when booking a holiday that costs over £1500, worrying about paying £30 more for the hotel than you wanted shouldn't really be a big issue, especially when you've just bought a new car. but somehow it is.
and then to abuse me for not worrying about £30 because i play poker, or i saved money from somewhere else really is a wanker thing to do.
but why is this hyprocritical? because i get abuse from them for being tight!
and i also get abuse when i buy anything (and i do mean anything) and told "good day at poker. eh?" in that looking down at me for gambling way.

obviously it's a small problem to say to someone after 10+ years to say, yeah, i don't like you. maybe i should download some stuff from their house and call the music industry.

horrific play

i amaze myself sometimes with how bad i can play. last night was a shining example of this. for once i wasn't bored when playing 2k hands, and this was whilst playing a couple of soft tourney's on stars but even this didn't prevent me setting money on fire.
made the money in one of the two tournaments that i played in for a slight loss in them on the evening. but the cash games play was truly car crash horrific.

i seem to have this mentality where i think no matter how much i am losing i can just go on a huge upswing and win it all back in maybe 30mins or so. after all, i read about lots of other people doing so. but i don't think that's ever happened for me! maybe i'm just a bit rubbish.

i was gonna post some of the worst hands but they're so embarrassing it would be akin to being caught hosting an party of strippers in your basement all dressed up in nazi uniforms in the 21st century. when your dad was chief fascist in the uk during the second world war. (disclaimer: any likeness to real events is purely coincidental)

on a lighter (or possibly darker?) note, on one of my drives i finally remembered to take a photo of possibly the scariest shop i have ever seen. my mind boggles as to what could possibly occupy the insides, but i currently lack the courage to go in and find out.

giving up

not i!

many others appear to have retired from the anonymous world of blogging. fear not, i still am pestered by thoughts so odd only here can i release them into the world.

for example, tesco petrol stations have this great thing where you can pay for the petrol at the pump (instead of having to walk into the shop and queueue). i treat this like a pit stop and see how fast i can finish. there is however no real time pressure.
then yesterday, my friend was needing to inflate his car tyres. some petrol stations give you free air, others charge you. he finally found one, and though it charged, he still needed the air (apparently air is like like sex, you only really miss it when you're not getting any). with these ones that pay they only give you a couple of minutes. he seemed to think that he didn't have enough time to do all the tyres. i pointed out that it's done on purpose to really make it feel like a pit stop.

i was also struck down by a cold recently. except i wasn't really struck down but just mildly infected. this did however lead to much nose blowing. which gets real boring real fast. i would often just touch my nose with my hands to check it wasn't falling off.
i worry that people i share on office with now think i do drugs up my nose, because that's what i would think if i saw someone who didn't actually look ill touch their nose repeatedly.

house has just started the new series on telly. i think this is my favourite program of the moment. writing and acting is brilliant in it. unlike 'the invention of lying'
which i really wanted to like but really didn't. flawed and not funny would be my review. though there was one magnificently funny moment towards the end so i would rate it 3/20

here's a great song, the kind that also sounds really great live, whilst i go and look for a house. (to live in)

an iphone app

i might start a new blog (in addition to this one). it's a long story. i'll shorten it for you.

i might have had a hand in helping to make an app.
go to this blog to have a link to the site

tell your friends, play it, let me know what you think...

a l'il story

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8276243.stm

i'll be honest, i haven't seen a story this good for a while.

if you can't be bothered to click the link here are some highlights

A north London council has apologised after a woman was refused the loan of a pair of scissors in a library because she "might stab a member of staff".

Lorna Watts, 26, a self-employed dressmaker, was turned down at Holborn Library in central London.

she was also turned down at three other libraries.

"I asked why I couldn't borrow a pair of scissors and she said, 'they are sharp, you might stab me'.

"I then asked to borrow a guillotine to cut up my leaflets but she refused again - because she said I could hit her over the head with it!"

She added: "It's absurd - there are plenty of heavy books I could have hit her with if I wanted to.

There are two things that struck me:
1) the obvious ridiculousness that the library wouldn't loan her some scissors or a guillotine.
2) a dressmaker needs to go to a library to borrow some scissors? Shouldn't she have some scissors. perhaps if she doesn't have some she should purchase some. surely buying some would be easier than trying four different libraries to borrow a pair.

I've played so little poker since my last post it's embarrassing. been doing too many other things to have time for poker which is a bit annoying but priorities etc.

i think i'm gonna be away for almost all of december so i think i might have to play 30k hands a month for the next two months. which is as likely as me getting the job of online poker pro for pokerstars which i applied for. they give a $100k bonus if you get the job. that would very much suit me for a year.

little poker and the police (no sting jokes)

barely played any pokers of late. been feeling a bit ill and basically been breakeven.

really need at least 10000 more hands this month to get the $1k bonus from stars but that doesn't look likely anymore.

tried 9 tabling last night and finished up level ish after a very bad start. managed to cope although it's really boring and doesn't help improve my game, i might try and do it for the rest of the month to see how many hands i can play.

read highstacks post about the police and it reminded me of a story from a few years back. i was working in a club and i left a little bit after it closed, probably around half two in the morning. i gave my friend a lift home, which was two minutes from my house. after dropping him off i went round a corner and probably turned the wheel too far as the tyres screeched a little. this was about 400 yards from the road i lived on but i noticed a cop car was now following me.

i turned into my street and saw a space at the top of the road to park but decided to drive further down to see if there was one nearer. it was one of these roads that was a two way street but with cars parked on both sides you could just about fit one car on the road. get to the bottom of the road and there were no spaces. thought about reversing and with the cop car still behind me that would be quite funny to make them do that, but instead i decided to drive round the block. 3 quarters of the way round and heading back to where they first intercepted me they decided to finally pull me over. obviously they had been hoping i would run or crash or something exciting but were instead left wondering where on earth i was going.

i get out and start talking to them, they run my name and licence plate etc etc. turns out someone with the same name and date of birth was a criminal. in scotland. who was blond (unlike me) blue eyes (unlike me) about 6 inches shorter than me and with a scar on his forearm. yet still they asked to see my forearm to see if i had a scar there. luckily i didn't as i think they probably would have taken me in for questioning.

cyclists lol

they get a bad press don't they. people seem to have an irrational hatred of them.
having cycled a few times around london i can confirm that it is pretty scary stuff with most drivers (especially buses) aiming for you.

however, cyclists should also not behave like retards.

i was thinking how nothing funny had happened to me for a while when today i was driving home and a cyclist was cycling the wrong way down the road towards me. i made a hand gesture like the one to the left wondering if they knew what the hell they were doing.

thinking nothing more of this i crossed over the road and hit some traffic. after not moving for a bit i begin to pull away and suddenly i hear and see a cyclist on my right who then shouts at me
"who you fingering? you cunt"
the first thing i thought was there's definitely a joke in that sentence. then i realised it was my good friend, the moron cyclist. he decided to cycle very slowly in front of me whilst taking his camera out and snapping my licence plate. i hope the photo included me smiling.

after taking his snap he decides to finally move out the way so i could drive past. making sure i laughed at him.

i do wonder what he plans to do with his photo of a car number plate. maybe send a police report about how someone made a gesture to him whilst he was cycling the wrong way down the road. i also wonder how he thinks a photo of a number plate is going to be proof of this.

i just wish i had taken a photo of him.

pets and hit and runners

alarming as this heading is, the two subjects are unrelated.

first of all, hit and runners. i am of course referring to poker players who win a hand and run away, tail between their legs. shortstackers are famous for this, but at least deep down they know they can't play poker and are of less than no use. their lives (at the cyber felt at least) are -ev
hit and runs from these players you expect. however, the hit and runners who sit down with a full stack are the ones that annoy me. they pretend they can/want to play, but they are too scared to lose 2 buy ins at once. this confuses me as much as it annoys me so that it ends up annoying me twice as much as regular annoying things. these players are often so paranoid they will leave if they are sitting with a double stack even if no one else has more than the initial buy in making it impossible to lose a double stack. so why they run from that table (whilst playing others so its not like they're done for the day) is a source of great pain to me.

as for pets, yesterday i noticed an advert on tv with a pet named roonaldo and it got me thinking. if you name your pet after a footballer (or other sportsman for that matter) who then goes on to move teams what are you supposed to do?
obviously you can't rename him/her else it'll get confused. so you have to give it away or end up disliking it. i can't see a way out.

luckily i was not idolatrous enough to name a pet after a human being. whether this foresight was subconscious or luck, i'll never now.

once again i need some help

last time i asked for help you lot were useless. honestly, a snake in my car. though i did look into breeding snakes and it is a highly lucrative business. anyway, i think i will put some chemical burner onto some money in my car which reacts with skin. so when someone touches it, they get burnt. something like sodium hydroxide (caustic soda).

anyway, todays matter in question comes in the form of music. i have 2 free songs to download thanks to a kit kat offer and have to pick from the selection on their website.

i was thinking of going for something i wouldn't normally go for, preferably songs where the entire album isn't worth buying. like chips ahoy by the hold steady.

i already went for all star by smashmouth. embarrassing i know, but it reminds me of rat race which is one of those terrible but funny films.

played a bunch of hands of poker, nothing too exciting happened. not haemorrhaging money which is good. still not sure if i'm gonna reach my goals for the year as im gonna go away for at least a couple of weeks in december.
wanna play lots this month to get all the bonuses stars are offering plus their rsa log in token which i havent got round to ordering yet. it means i need about 80k fpps and i'm on 40k. so i'll need to play around 16k hands more this month. never played so many in 3 weeks before but i'll be giving it a go....

wing mirror spider

i think i have spoken before about the huge spider that attacked me in the dead of night, but my real nemsis spider is the one that lives in the wing mirror of my car. the little gap between the mirror and the casing is always home to one of these huge evil creatures. mocking me as i drive. and waiting for me to open the window so that it can come and join me in my car. as if i would ever let that happen!

i think i'm gonna start updating the poker column every week rather than every session. i think it's just too many swings, and the idea was to look at my mental state in each session which i won't bore you with, but will just write down for myself. i say write down but i mean i will just think about what i've done after each session.
i've had some internet troubles of late where it disconnects for about a minute or so before coming back. this is seriously affecting my heart and potentially my balance. luckily in no big pots yet, but i fear it's only a matter of time...

so far i have avoided tilting when in 3 sessions i almost lost it. i seem to be playing a few too few hands and my vpp goal looks out of reach. i don't want to play more than 6/7 tables as my win rate plummets to negative numbers that mathematicians never knew existed so i'm gonna have to motivate myself to play more hours.

in my other two quests, russian is going slow. it's a pretty tough language, but i would like to be decent at it. in my other quest, to get fat, i have achieved my halfway aim, of 1 stone /6.5kg in weight gain. most of this has occurred in the past month (been eating ice cream every day!) and hoping to achieve reach another stone by the end of the year. i don't look noticeably different so it's all definitely in muscle. soon, i shall be like a little magnus magnusson.

obviously

in case you hadn't noticed, my blog is looking pretty pretty cool of late. i hope it stays that way.
for my legion of new fans i have added a favourite post section on the right. some of my finest work i'm sure you'll agree.
i have also added a end of year goals countdown (although hopefully the money won will be more of a countup) which i will endeavour to change after each session. i can't be bothered to keep a graph on here or anything fancy like that so you have the fortune of missing my swings and roundabouts (that's 'traffic circles' for people stateside)

as for the title of this post, i noticed at uni many moons ago that one of my lecturers would end his most confusing sentences with the word 'obviously'.
this made us feel retarded. however, this lead me to use such a tactic on other unsuspecting (and also suspecting) individuals. it's really an impossible move to counter. try it one day.

the method of noticing things you find difficult to deal with and incorporating into your play on others is something i have learned to apply to the poker. it's probably also mentioned in sun tzu's art of war but i haven't read that. to be honest, if he doesn't discuss this in detail it's a book not worth reading. obviously.

quick post

hands played tonight 663
monies won $300
one interesting hand when facing a donk bet in a 4way pot.

any thoughts let me know

Seat 1: BB ($200 in chips)
Seat 2: utg ($556.10 in chips)
Seat 3: Hero ($300.10 in chips)
Seat 4: co ($200 in chips)
Seat 5: jenson ($225 in chips)
Seat 6: SB ($367.35 in chips)
SB: posts small blind $1
BB: posts big blind $2

*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Hero [Td Th]
utg: folds
Hero: raises $6 to $8
co: calls $8
jenson: folds
SB: calls $7
BB: calls $6

*** FLOP *** [3c 2c 8h]
SB: bets $22
BB: folds
Hero: calls $22
co: folds

*** TURN *** [3c 2c 8h] [Tc]
SB: bets $58
Hero: calls $58

*** RIVER *** [3c 2c 8h Tc] [Qc]
SB: checks
Hero: checks

month totals:
1237 hands
~$500

a fine example of evil people

on my drive home today i was considering, if given the choice, whether i would eradicate shortstackers or the drivers that have those transport for london signs which say 'for private hire only' stickers on their cars. anyone in london will be aware of their complete incompetence on the roads. that sticker is a sign which means driver has failed repeatedly driving tests and is now forced to badly drive around other people in 7 seater people carriers.
i wasn't sure who were the bigger stains on society but before i could decide i had come across another car whose entire occupants should probably be culled for the good of humanity. people who are of detriment to society and make me ashamed to be on the same planet as them.

long story short, they, for no reason, wouldn't let me get past them (there was a parked car blocking my lane) even though they had nowhere to go, no one could get in front of them and we were going different ways. this in itself isn't unusual as most people are incredibly selfish. however, they did this on purpose and the bitch in the passenger seat was just laughing at me as i eventually drove past. i'm sure this is not a great example to set for their child in the back seat.
i chose not to call her a c*** as i drove past for two reasons. one, the traffic light might have turned red forcing me to stop, and two, the child in the back seat. in hindsight, the child probably could have taught me a few swear words.

i think things like this are a reason why some people like religion (or even karma etc), because you can relax in the knowledge that they will reap what they sow. and i hope those horrible bastards get what they deserve.

the one good thing that has come out of this is that i was only annoyed/disgusted by them fleetingly whereas in the recent past it would have bugged me for much longer. (though it's also quite depressing to realise i accept so readily that people can behave like that. perhaps this is why people get cynical in their old age?)

omg a poker post (Sigh, another boring plan)

i barely played last month logging under 7k hands, but actually running well above ev for a $1k+ profit, when ev says i should have been negative.

this concerns me as i am playing so so bad.

hopefully the break will have done me good but now i have 122 days in the year to get 48,000 vpps to get my $2k bonus, which is one of my aims. (the other being win monies please)

as i get about 0.55vpps per hand, i need eto play about 90,000 hands still. over 122 days this is 737 hands per day.

i will round this up to 750, and this will be my aim for each day. i will have to average this over the week but 6 tabling for 90-100 mins should be enough.

so my aim will be 7 100min sessions each week. tonight i managed 574 hands for a small profit.

also, if i hit $2k profit in any month this year i will buy myself something (hopefully i will manage it each month!)

i will also try to keep a running count of hands and profit at the end of every post (even the funny ones)

hands:574
profit:$180

as for today's humour, i was at 'work' and a machine i was using, which is known for being temperamental at best broke again. the error box popped up, containing a big red cross and the words "no error to report"

someone actually programmed those words in as an error message! i didn't know whether to laugh or cry, so i laughed.

today's funny news story

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8227443.stm

apparently, the country with the highest rate of bullying: Turkey
the country where kids enjoy school the most: Turkey

pranksters

i don't know if you remember the spider drawing attachment emails by a david thorne, (if you don't, look up the transcript); here is a follow up

the landlord stuff isn't great, but the gym one is genius!

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/2479342/Spider-email-joker-is-back-David-Thorne-spider-email-prankster-returns-David-Thorne-winds-up-gym-boss-and-landlord.html

trying to avoid poker till september when hopefully i'll feel like playing

gonna aim for thursday 3rd wcoop opening tourney as the beginning of my comeback and if i win it, the end of my comeback. one time, ship it, etc cliché etc.

idea's anyone?

some useless (possibly not wholly true) cunts broke into my car last night. i say broke in, but unlike last time, they didn't break anything.

i distinctly remember locking the glove compartment and the door after getting out the car (for reasons i shall not bore you with).
this morning i got to my car and the drivers door was not firmly shut. weird i thought. then i see the few items in my car (mostly rubbish) was strewn around over the chairs and the floor. the glove compartment was also wide open. the only thing that was taken was a bit of cash which i leave in my car for meters etc. radio was not stolen but there was nothing else of value in there.

i'm currently working under the assumption (i've always wanted to say that phrase) they somehow picked the lock of the glove compartment (and hence maybe not completely useless since lock picking requires some practice) and if they did that, then possibly the door as well? either that or the old coat hanger or doorstop trick to get in.
at least nothing was smashed. i am almost grateful nothing was smashed and then remember i shouldn't have to be grateful that the people that broke in didn't also smash it to pieces.

so now i plan to strike back. i have decided to come up with some ideas to booby trap my own car should anyone gain unauthorised access. it will be necessary that the trap should be quick for me to disable each time i get into my car. most important will be that i remember to do so! (i don't hold out much hope here so a non lethal trap is probably best).

i'm a little out of ideas at the moment, if you have any, please write them below!

the return of my internet

today i celebrated my internet returning with an absence of withdrawal symptoms. only now do i understand how those kids in chinese boot camps felt. you know the ones, set up to wean them off the internet, where a few in recent times have been beaten to death. they probably felt that at the time death wasn't as bad as not being able to play poker, see pictures of naked wimmen, and spend time winding up internet forums whilst talking to your neighbour on msn.

in the past week i have had to go out every day, get drunken, go to town repeatedly, play tennis and spend time in the sunshine.

i would like to thank the retards at bulldog communication technical support for this opportunity. it used to be that calling technical support would have you talking to an engineer who would ask you questions, try to give you directions on how to fix the problem (swear under their breath, or with aid of the mute button, at our hugely inferior computer skills), and if need be do some work in fixing your problem, call you back with updates etc.

now, they have a call centre (abroad). where people can just about read.
no one is an engineer. no one actually can give you any useful advice. no one can actually do something to fix the problem, and it left me swearing above my breath without use of the mute button, whilst deriding their vastly inferior computer (and life) skills.

thankfully, i have some friends who are computer nerds who were able to help me belatedly.

i considered updating from an iphone but i was lazy. my laziness, sometimes it's a curse, often it's a gift. i would give an example of the many times it has been a gift but i can't be bothered to type any now.

speaking of iphones, i have decided to make an application (or three). the first is out in 2-3 weeks i hope, and will be average to good. i expect you all to buy it.

the second will be absolutely amazing, and should be out in 4-6 weeks.

as for poker, i had to go out and play live last night (no internet!) and dropped £100+. all on two hands. first is vs terrible player who announced he was leaving in 5 mins. he was my mark1 at the table. announces two hands to go, and then in his final hand he is in the big blind 5 handed. i'm utg and raise to £6 with KJ. only he calls and we see a low flop of 357 and he bets out £6. i raise to £26 and he calls. turn is a 9 putting a 3rd diamond on the table. he check calls £35. river is a non diamond q and it goes check check and he shows pocket rockets with no diamonds. wp him.

my other bluff was a 3 barrel bluff against mark2 who flopped an underfull on a 553 2 club flop, 3rd club on the turn. wp me.

need to remember how to win at poker now i have the internet. if i can't beat 1/2 online i'm gonna just retire and work in a call centre abroad.

a happy ending

just finished my first 1k+ hand session in a while. didn't really play very well. made lots of mistakes and ended up level. had some great beats today, my favourite being a gu ywho i got to bluff all in with Aj on a king high board hit a gutshot river straight so we split the pot.
i also managed to pull a reverse re double bluff induction move where i flopped a straight flush and the preflop raiser shoved into me on the flop.

anyway, i'm still playing awfully and i have 48500 more points to pick up on stars to get a $2k bonus, which will be my aim for the year. along with $2.5k winnings from poker per month.
not sure i'll make either.
as an incentive i am gonna buy something fun with money every time i have a $2k+ winning month.
two things on my list are
1)ergonomic wireless mouse (these are supposed to be super comfortable)
2)slim ps3 with fifa/pro evo and cod


yesterday i slept on my head and when i awoke i discovered i couldn't look to the right without searing stabbing pains in my neck. this made driving painful as i couldn't really check my blind spot on the drivers side. so i just drove in the right hand lane ensuring no one would be in my blind spot. problem solving at it's finest. i am considering adding this experience to my cv.

so today i went to get a back/neck/shoulder massage to relax along with some neck healing. i walk in and the not unattractive middle aged lady asks me to take off my shoes, t shirt and if i want my trousers too. "most people do" she says.
"no i think i'll leave them on thanks"
the massage began and i had my face in the table hole so i couldn't see where she was. but i could feel what was going on! i had my arms down by my sides (no where else to put them) and she repeatedly brushed her legs against my hands.
this was weird. i began to worry that maybe porn films are a reflection of real life. luckily they weren't and i escaped all relaxed. although my neck still hurts, so not quite a happy ending.

terrible gambling

today reminded my why i hate gambling. i saw birmingham playing well against united and figured they had a goal in them against utd's dodgy defence and midfield. so i had some monies on them (£8), which obviously led to utd scoring. the price for a utd win plummeted further so i added a few pounds to my lay of utd. thus i jinxed it further ensuring a utd victory. wp me.
so i foolishly decided to try having a bet on the 100m run today.
once again, this reminded me why i hate gambling.

i saw asafa powell run pretty good, and tyson gay (great name!) run really badly in their heats. obviously though, they both made it through to the semi's comfortably along with usain bolt who would clearly win the final. bolt was a very short price to win the whole thing (2 more races) so i thought i would have a bet on powell to finish second.

except what i did was bet on powell to win outright, and to win in a market which did not include bolt. i figured when he would get through the semi's his price would drop from 20-1 and i could lay off for a profit either way.

he makes it through the semi's and his price went up to 30-1. just before the race started, it was 65-1. oops. usually i bet for about £5-£10 cos i am not much of a gamblor and this always ruins the bets when i plan to lay them as i end up winning 10p either way. so this time i scaled it up and ended up with £50 on powell to win. OOPS.
HOWEVER, my saver in the w/o bolt market meant that if he comes second i would still win £35 overall. this lead me not to worry as i was confident he would come at least second so not being able to lay off shouldnt be a problem.

i watched the race without paying attention to bolt, instead looking at gay and powell as they raced side by side in the dust of bolt. it's amazing how 2 metres difference translates into about 1/10th of a second.
anyway, bolt won in a world record, beating his 9.69 with a time of 9.58. the biggest jump since electronic records began. the worrying thing is that he could still go faster as he spent the last few metres watching the clock so he could see the time as he crossed the line.

as for powell and gay, they both got off to good starts, but after about 30m gay began to run away from powell who never managed to catch him. powell has previously run 9.74 which was a world record at the time, till it was beaten by bolt.

gay decided to run 9.71 tonight, the third fastest time in history.

i hate losing and think this will end any further attempts at gambling for a long long time. (ps poker doesn't count as gambling). i will also withdraw most of my betfair account as i don't play much poker there anymore since their offer ended and their software is painful to play on.

back to stars for me as soon as i feel like playing. hopefully that'll be next week but i can't be sure.

wake up early part III

i have decided that i do not like waking up early, not shall i be the type of person that does for the forseeable future.

all i want to take from that article i read is how to get up when i want. it's not about getting up early but for me, it's about getting up when i need to rather than lying in bed for an extra hour each day.

anyways, i been murdering my bankroll at the pokers so i've invested in some vids, and put them on youtube; learn away

wake up early, part II

i've always wanted to do a part II type blog post, mostly because it sounds pretty cool. sadly, this is less good than i thought it would be. probably like FFM threesomes are gonna be better in my head than real life.

anyway, so i woke up on time this morning. actually, i again woke up prior to my alarm going off (!?) but when my alarm went off i got out of bed almost immediately. this is a good thing. had time to do some eating, working out etc before leaving house. the problem is going to be not falling asleep at 6/7pm tonight. i love siesta's but it basically ruins my sleep patterns. though they are good when playing poker as you can last well into the early hours of the morning with no problem.

yesterday i noticed that my answerphone machine has a built in joke. when someone calls to leave a messages, after they hang up, the machine says "thank you for calling"
not only will they not hear this, but one would assume that no one is at home when the machine is required. so why would anyone program in the machine to say that?

waking up early

or not as the case may be
yesterday was an unusual situation as i went to bed much later than intended to try out this technique (230am), couldn't get to sleep for a while but then woke up prior to my alarm going off. thus, i was confused about whether to get up or wait for the alarm in order that i could condition myself properly. i decided to wait (mostly out of tiredness)
when my alarm went off (at 830, i love being a student/bum), i noticed i breathed deeply and stretched as required (almost subconsciously which is a good thing), but was far too tired to bother getting up.
it's definitely a first step to not wasting 30-90 mins of my life every day and hope tomorrow's wake up is more successful. i will do more thinking about the getting up process and that should be enough to improve.

it's funny how just thinking about stuff can be good enough to get better at things. i used to practice my tennis serve in my head after learning what i should be doing. (apparently professional athletes do this too)

today's bizzare syndrome is....

Stendhal syndrome

essentially, it is people seeing art so beautiful they literally cannot physically cope!

poker: been pretty bored with it recently. so i played live last week in what was the most boring tournament. not a single moronic statement from anyway ie no conversation at all. bubbled in the tournament but with two fish at a shorthanded cash table i couldn't get there quick enough. amazingly, i had top pair hold against overcards (allegedly, more likely one overcard or an underpair), AA hold against kq on a q high flop and flopped a straight with 8T. as most people shortstack i only finished with £300 and something after buying in for £90. ending up playing 3 handing for far too long (till sunrise) with money just going round in a circle.

started up again on pokerstars. i seem to get the reload bonus info and all other news about a week late from them. not sure why, but also it doesn't really make any difference. i'll clear the $300 by the end of the month and need to make sure i carry on playing to the end of the year to get the $2k milestone bonus.

unrelated, of late i have had some serious problems getting up early, and i found this blog
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/05/how-to-become-an-early-riser/
which is a strategy i will try. i do not expect great success though i envisage it succeeding(PMA etc). i will report tomorrow whether i actually got out of bed when my alarm went off. [for anyone that actually reads the article, obviously i didn't do what he suggested of actually playing the whole thing out, rather i did it in my head. the same technique i used to cure my arachnophobia]

i was gonna write the enxt bit in a separate blog but i thought whilst i have you here....i am sad to report i noticed some subtle hypocrisy in both internetpokers blog and jonny vincents.
internetopkers had a great blog about how running good/bad can only actually be determined by your win rate vs our true win rate. obviously true win rate is hard, if not impossible, to measure and mathematically all in ev is all you can measure perfectly (although that too is inherently flawed), but it was a very interesting post. this is true due to rate of coolers received/sent, good hands received etc
however, a few blog posts later he has a session where he runs +ev and implies that it was what he was due. ( i hoped he was talking about winning and not being so far above ev but i doubt that).

secondly, jonny vincent has a journal on some forum which is a great read. highly insightful and has impressive bad beats for amounts which make me sick. more of a mini sick to be precise (copyright michael macintyre).
he mentioned something that stuck about what he knows is <<<<< what he doesn't know.
this is essentially true for everyone. however, he then goes on to laugh at certain groups of people with different beliefs to him.

the worst thing about this epiphany is that i realised i do the same. in future, i will have to refer to retarded morons as people below running below in ev in life.

burn notice

this is a tv show. from wiki:
The title refers to the burn notices issued by intelligence agencies to discredit or announce the dismissal of agents or sources who are considered to have become unreliable. When a spy is burned, they are "wiped off the grid".

the show is set in miami, which is probably why in some south american countries the show is instead called "operation miami"
in italy they have obviously never heard of bruce willis as the show is called "die hard"
portugal went for the original "spy out of the game"

i assume most of these sound better in their native tongue. however, if anyone could possibly suggest how lithuania came up with "the ticket of the wolf" i would be greatly appreciative.

life thoughts

firstly, today i once again experienced the need to go to the toilet whilst being thirsty. i find this highly inefficient of my body. i know i need to get rid of the urea, but surely it can wait a few hours whilst the water about to be expelled is recycled around my body saving me doing two sets of activities. it would be killing two birds with no stones. anyway.

i had become lazy recently, but am now back in the working out/ eating lots/ learning russian mode. russian is a carazy language to learn, especially when you grow up in england where learning languages is as alien a concept to people as driving in the left hand lane.

which brings me nicely onto my next point. i spent much time recently getting annoyed with how terrible other people drive, and i think the negative traits that lead to road rage also lead to terrible poker play. wanting to correct how other people drive, impatience and not relaxing are all things i want to avoid including in myself as traits. so i have decided to make an effort to revert to how i used to be. i'm not sure why these changes have come about. maybe these things happen as you get older. i'm sure my taste buds have gone odd recently, thinking nice food doesn't taste so nice. but obviously they are wrong because i wouldn't call nice food nice, if it didn't taste nice. so i will continue to listen to my brain and not my tongue.

i also have to decide what to do with my life when i finish school in about six months time. this is quite a big decision that i will probably get wrong and have to change sometime down the road. only i have to actually decide and do something when i finish. if i do play poker for money it will only be short term (6months at most i think) as in general i want to do something more valuable and interesting.
after all, it's not really about money.
as a wise bruce once said, nowadays, once you have enough money for house/food and other necessities (eg sky and internet) any other extra money isn't so important. kinda like chips in a tournament where they become worth less the more you have. (obviously more money helps immensely but some other things should take priority)

if anyone knows of cool jobs please inform me. i once got a job offer of air traffic controller which is not the person who stands on the runway with flags as two of my friends thought. though i didn't take it for a couple of reasons, it sounded pretty interesting.

Test

icles

almost famous

yesterday i lost almost $4k. oops. i played the turbo thingy on stars at the same time and made $100 in that for beating about 23000 of 24000. which is about right in a prize/skill ratio as most of them were useless.
haven't played much before this new record loss (all at $1/2!) and not much too blog about.

i have also realised i don't like the captcha things websites make you do. they're good for all the anti spam etc, however, when i get them wrong i feel like a moron/robot.
which fits in nicely with dropping $4k.

i also came across this video (not literally, someone just sent it to me) and the guy that is the feature was someone i have had the misfortune of playing against in 5aside football. he is definitely in the top 5 of people i have ever played against. it was just very funny/bizarre seeing him on the interweb. sadly no clips against me.

today i found a new scientist from 1994. like the programme 'tomorrow's world' if anyone remembers that, there are many promises for how the future will change for us for the better. almost none of which is ever heard from again. so tomorrow, i shall peruse it and see if anything has come true. tbh, i'm still waiting on hoverboards like they had in back to the future. and that's been almost 20 years already!

animals

i wonder what sort of consciousness animals have. i hope it's reasonably high. and here is why:

my deaf cat was sitting outside the front of the house licking herself as cats do. some dude walks past with two dogs on leashes, who see the cat and start barking like dogs do. of course, my cat only sees them but doesn't hear them so doesn't even flinch but just sits there, legs akimbo, staring at the three of them walk past.

i'm pretty sure the dude was thinking that my cat is mental/tough like brad pitt in snatch. i just hope the dogs were thinking that too.

bad play bad cards bad airplane

well, it was a 4 hour journey (see previous post) and i think if it was a guy, saying no would have been easy. instead i just looked at this girl, shot her some evils, and said fine have my seat whilst i take yours in the middle of you and this fat man.
shot her a few more evils during the flight but i don't think she noticed since at the end of the flight she asked me how to turn of flight mode on her iPhone.

i made a horrific play last night and cried myself to sleep afterwards. very last hand of the day, recovered after being $1k down, uncheck autopost blinds on every table, very last table, very last hand get dealt AA utg. couldn't bring myself fold pre. so i raise. 3 callers. great.
flop comes TKT
checked round
turn is another T
nit in small blind bets out, only i call
river is 5 or something. so board is TTTK5.
he bets. i think and raise (LOLBAD). he shoves. i cry and call. obviously he has Tx and not Kx
all other tables were 1/2. that was limit above that.
many thanks to the dealer and my semi-retarded brain.

my wireless keyboard is now going mental so rather than replace the battery i'm just gonna go to sleep (explains any weird spelling in this post). definitely the easier of the two available options.

a cure for hiccups

i actually found one today. i was suffering for hours from this most pointless of afflictions when one of my chinese comrades says you just need to push a acupoint (or something like that). i assumed it meant acupuncture pressure point. so he showed me where it was, in the breastplate region. obviously i didn't know exactly where so i got him to do it for me. it really really hurt. the pain didn't last long though, and i stopped hiccuping. my body felt like it should still be hiccuping, but refused to do so! cured! i think the point is about 2/3rds of the way down the rib cage so if you could all please try this when you have the hiccups and let me know the results i can hopefully have a scientific study.

the second thing i need to ask is what would you do in this situation.
you get on a plane with your window seat boarding card. you are almost last on cos you don't see the point in waiting on the plane when you'll be stuck on it for the foreseeable future. you get to your seat and there is a hot bird sitting in it.
"that's my seat" you say
"i wanted to swap as i'm claustrophobic" she says. "it's ok?"
i stood there briefly considering my options.
first thing to note is she was clearly lying. why would your claustrophobia be appeased by sitting in the window seat? surely it's the whole plane thing that's the problem. so:-
1)it's my seat. gtfo.
or
2)ok. i'll sit between you (liar) and a very fat man.

what would you do?

(will post results in next post)

before i forget

bit of a collection of unrelated topics

i have lots of latvian change. and some lithuanian coins which the shopkeeper/taxi driver/some other cheat thought i wouldn't notice was different. i didn't notice.
this money is worth more than pounds but most places won't take coins in exchange for some real money.

here is an example of some fine european building. a well installed air conditioning unit in a room i once stayed in:



i remember now buying some chocolate deodorant (as mentioned in comments) cos it smelled nice in the shop. but when i got home it smelt more faecal. this is known as the 'elaine's skinny mirror effect.'
i still think there is a huge untapped market of food smelling smells.

here is my favourite hand of poker from today. first winning session this month. this hand helped. obviously i would have preferred a brick on the river

Seat 1 is the button
Total number of active players : 5
Seat 1: tard ( $103.90 )
Seat 2: luckynit ( $644.60 )
Seat 3: Hero ( $382.55 )
Seat 4: utg ( $252.57 )
Seat 5: utg +1 ( $670.85 )
luckynit posts small blind [$1]
Hero posts big blind [$2]

** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Hero [ As, 2s ]
utg folds
utg +1 calls [$2]
tard calls [$2]
luckynit raises to [$12] - predictably
Hero raises to [$30]
utg +1 folds
tard calls [$28]
luckynit folds

** Dealing Flop ** [ 8s, Kd, 8c ]
Hero bets [$37]
tard calls [$37]

** Dealing Turn ** [ 9s ]
Hero bets [$74]
tard calls [$36.90] - i must be behind
tard goes all-in
Returning uncalled bet [$37.10] to Hero

** Showdown **
tard shows [ Jh, Qh ]
Hero shows [ As, 2s ]
** Dealing River ** [ Js ]
** Hand Conclusion **
Hero wins $218.80 from main pot with a Frush

pizza

sadly i only have this years hand histories currently available and when i looked at the winnings i almost cried. $800 on stars (150k hands) and $3000 on betfair (15k hands) (although this was 5000 before the weekend). this is not enough to sustain a human being with an addiction to chocolate and has left me massively disappointed. it looks like acting is the way forward. if any directors are reading this, in case you weren't sure, i am brilliant.

here are some brilliant idea(s) i have had today:

some aftershaves/deodorants should smell like food. everyone likes pizza. men like steaks. i walked past a man today and he smelt of pizza and thought it would be nice if a woman smelt like that. probably.

litter should be punishable by a sliding scale which takes into account how pungent the litter is. for example, the person who left a banana on the tube should be fined heavily, especially as there is no fresh air available in the tube or anywhere else in london. i propose a punishment similar to that for piracy, which is punishable with jail time and an infinite fine (according to the adverts in the cinema). and i don't even mind bananas. though i wouldn't want to smell of one. it's hardly as attractive as pizza.

as well as today's great epiphanies, i had some opposite moments.

i went into a building today that i hoped was magical. i entered said building with many things including a pen and a pencil. i left about 10 minutes later and realised the pencil had gone missing. i was carrying it in one of those plastic wallets so i don't know how it got out. i retraced my steps 10 yards of pavement and one room inside building and did not find it. though i found some people giving me strange looks. i left the building for a second time only to discover the pen had also now disappeared. the remaining item in the plastic wallet was a rubber/eraser. for fear of losing this, or perhaps even my phone or wallet etc i did not re-enter the building. i was also somewhat afraid of re-entering and looking like more of a retard than i ever thought possible.

so i spent the rest of the day hoping it was a magical bermuda triangle building, and not a sign of dementia/retardation on my part. sadly i recently left my abode with a pen and piece of paper. i got out my car walked one minute to a shop, and discovered i had the paper but no sign of the pen. yet another lost writing implement. today has made clear to me i am free to join 90%+ of the population in bliss.

acting

i've come to the conclusion that acting = lying. saying someone is a good actor is to say they are a good liar.

i'm not a great actor.

ha. i lied. i am. and ironically, you believed me. if you didn't believe me, then you know i am in fact a great actor.

i wonder how the spouses of great actors/liars deal with this fact.

surprisingly, this epiphany makes natalie portman no less attractive.

i also started wondering why i haven't yet made over $1million from poker. either i'm not good enough or haven't played enough hands. i will need to consider this further. in less than 9 months i am currently set to become a full time bum, and as such am considering the idea of playing poker seriously for 6-12 months to make some money. however, if i don't make £100k per year i don't think it's worth it. sadly, i have no better ideas about what to do in life. yet.

mastermind

this is a gameshow. for those unaware, some people with masterful (allegedly) minds compete to win. i'm not sure what they win, maybe just prestige. anyway, there are two rounds of answering questions, and the winner is the one who gets the most right. if there's a tie, person with the least number of passes wins.

pretty simple.

what amazes me is that i've seen people actually pass questions they don't know the answer to. optimal play is just to make any guess no matter how ridiculous. always answering "is it ghostbusters 2?" is better than saying pass.

anyone that passes should be disqualified. but then no one would pass and the whole using passes as a tiebreak would be scrapped. maybe they should just fix it behind the scenes to ensure that anyone who passes can't win.

anyway, i'm off to play some tilt free poker in my leather jacket (see previous post)

advice for staying cool in a heatwave

due to the "record breaking temperatures" due this week, when it might reach 30 degrees today and 32 later in the week (2 records in a week! must be global warming), here are some tips i have picked up from the radio and bbc website today:

1)wear cool clothes. as such, i will be wearing a leather jacket all week.
2)Avoid over-doing physical exertion. Reaching for a cold drink ought to raise enough of a sweat as it is.

as a sidenote, it rained on my way home today.

ups and downs

last three days
+$1700
-$1700
+$1700

back to level for the month, though i got enough points for the $2.4k bonus and will probably get the other $184 tomorrow or the day after.

i have realised i am still bad at controlling my emotions and tilting away lots of money. i have found two things i do when i tilt
1) call out of position with very pretty but bad cards (eg56o, j9s etc)
2) call 3 bets with pretty much everything i raised with

today's calm may have been aided by my trip to the golf range. i'm not a great fan of golf, but whacking a ball really far (or not that far in my case) is very therapeutic.

anyway, i've checked my stats for this year and realised i have been losing lots this year at poker and if it wasnt for the bonus's i would be down lots. this is bad.
i need to be more calm and relaxed. i can't build a golf range in my room so self hypnosis is the way forward i think.

i would like to say i agree with br000se about mj. and i find it strange that some people i know are fed up of his songs being played on the radio (after 2days lol) "cos it's from 20years ago." terrible logic.

good to see i'm capable of making friends with retards. it's like i'm giving a little back to society.
also these retard friends do not have any money in their house. i mean, i understand not wanting thousands or hundreds lying around, but literally not even a penny in cash! going out always requires going via cashpoint(ATM) if unable to pay by card. i explained that this is not evolutionarily acceptable as if they lived in the 3rd world (or lower) they would not survive.

speaking of evolution, i went to take a shower the other day in my bathroom which is covered in white tiles (a traditional english decoration for bathrooms). i noticed a HUGE white moth. according to my biology lessens in school this means:
that there is no soot and lots of white things outside for it to be camouflaged against (no, not in london),
moth is a genetic mutant (x-moths?), or
moths are evolving to live in houses.
i took it outside obviously as i did not want to shower with it, and wonder how it will do in the green of nature. and whether it will reproduce or if the other moths will treat it like an outcast.

cause and effect

sometimes it can be pretty hard to tell cause and effect apart. and often this goes against the generally accepted view of society.

for example, 'white van man' is almost always a horrible driver, but are they horrible due to the driving every day, or does the job attract horrific drivers?

sometimes, it's even hard to tell after the event. time henman was a loser (he did well for a brit, but didn't really win anything of note). but was he a loser before he started playing, or did not winning make him a loser. please note this is a highly imperfect example but was the first thing i thought of with the tennis on the telly.

i also decided to play some pokers recently. been having awful sessions on stars after a good start this month and found myself $1.5k down in the mouth after 4 losing sessions in a row. my session yesterday involved 140 pairs preflop, and 3 sets on the flop. and i pretty much never fold pairs pre. so that was pretty horrific. but today made up for it and i had my best winning session in a while finishing over $1.5k up tonight. getting real tired after not sleeping much this week and had to stop before i lost all focus.

this was my favourite hand tonight. villain has $200, i cover:

little blind: posts small blind $1
massive blind: posts big blind $2

*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Hero [Jd 9d]
Donkey: folds
UTG+1: folds
poor villain: raises $4 to $6
Hero: raises $12 to $18
little blind: folds
massive blind: folds
poor villain: calls $12

*** FLOP *** [7h 2d Tc]
poor villain: checks
Hero: bets $22
poor villain: calls $22

*** TURN *** [7h 2d Tc] [7s]
poor villain: checks
Hero: checks

*** RIVER *** [7h 2d Tc 7s] [5d]
poor villain: checks
Hero: checks

*** SHOW DOWN ***
poor villain: shows [3s 2s] (two pair, Sevens and Deuces)
Hero: mucks hand
poor villain collected $80 from pot

the hangover (film)

i went to see this. it was quite funny. and made me want to return to vegas. however, i also saw something in the cinema to which i did not know how to react. i was truly stunned beyond any other stunning i have previously encountered.

(don't worry, no spoilers)
the film ends with these blokes finding a camera with pictures of their evening. you see these pictures during the credits. it's essentially the ending of the movie where you get closure. the couple sitting in front of me LEFT THE CINEMA AS THIS BEGAN. they knew it was coming cos everyone knew as everybody else stayed. except for them. i was gobsmacked.

it's like watching every episode of 24 except for the last episode of each season. or like going to university for 3 years and not doing your exams. awe inspiring shockingness.

(boring poker/life stuff now)
poker - lost monies today, can't tell if i played bad or ran bad. though it doesn't really matter.
up to 148k fpps and need 161.5k for all the bonuses.

not being doing weights or eating well but added 3 kilos of weight (7 pounds). 6 more kilos to go till target.

lazy poker player

and very lazy am i. in fact, i took a whole week off just now cos i couldn't be bothered to play. but the other night i was in town so i went to the empire casino that so many talk about to check it out and played a couple of hours of poker (ie about 30 hands) before leaving to catch the last train home. except i got to the station about one minute too late (and it wasn't even midnight!) so i had to walk down the road and catch the bus. i didn't go to the toilet in the casino as i rushed to catch the train. definitely a hugely -ev move that i probably won't learn from. though i do know if i ever go again i will most definitely drive as the night buses are always full of crazy drunken puking folk.

went back to betfair previous few weeks (60% rakeback offer!) after playing like a semi retard (no change there) on stars, and am pleased to have run highly fortuitous. like 40bb/100 over 4k hands. the problem with betfair is that the software and support is so so bad you have to be a retard to play there, which is ironically also good news cos it means all the players are terrible.
luckily, i am semi retarded so they let me play.

alas, stars have also got one of those instant cash offers this month, which is at the same rate as the supernova bonus so i need to get another 20k or so fpps this month (around 6-7k hands), which i want to do in about a week. so thats 1k hands a day for a week. easy. i thought. except i've gone back to 6 tabling at most instead of nine. i realised that playing more is seriously detrimental to my balance even though it was great for vpps and meant i can play less hours, money is obviously the primary factor. so i will stop that. amazingly i have been losing on stars this year which is shocking. shocking. well, not that shocking.

buying a house is still my aim for the year so basically i need a bunch of 10k months to finish the year. i cant really see that happening at the moment, barring winning a massive tournament. maybe i should play some?

also started watching house. tis a brilliant show and am highly addicted. i have been watching too many episodes per day which means i will finish it really soon, and then curse myself for not watching them at a slower rate. doesn't make much sense cos they take the same amount of hours to watch but i know when i finish it, i will basically be wanting more more more

2 tips and elbow fights

tip #1. if you meet an old friend, don't tell them they look old
tip #2. don't wake up at 330am, wear a 7.31kg backpack, and go running for a bus in the morning.

i arrived at the bus station 2 minutes late, and 10 seconds from heart failure. but the airport bus was later than me. 7 long minutes later it turns up, clearly delighted that it made me run for nothing. it's a one hour journey to the airport, and i'd left myself 30mins to get there before the gate closed - get through security, travel delays etc. down to 21 minutes now.
bus driver lets on people with the right ticket (like me). usually other drivers just let everyone on together but no, not our special driver. he seems to think there are a lot of people at the stop (~12 left). so he does the sensible thing and starts counting the number of free seats on his bus. he gets off the bus, and lets two people on. he then gets back on the bus to count the number of seats available. and lets two people on.
he repeats this process like an ocd riddled noah. 15 mins of buffer time remain when we finally depart.

i arrived in latvia, complete with the knowledge that 1 lat (what kind of a lazy currency name is that?) is worth more than one pound according to exchange rates - though obviously stuff is cheaper there than england. the cause for concern is that i treat foreign money like poker chips. play money chips if i'm being honest. and having them worth more than actual money is not a good thing for my bank balance.

as for lativa, in common with most non-british countries, personal space seems to be non existent. i sat down on my plane home, and some latvian dude sat down next to me. he planted his arm on the shared armrest taking up almost it's entirety. this would not have bothered me. except his arm then continued to move in my direction beyond the edge of the armrest into my chair space. he did not arrest his advancement until his elbow was firmly in contact with my forearm. this was war.

i noticed he had left free a small area of armrest between the chair and his arm. a schoolboy mistake. i cunningly placed my elbow there. this was effectively taking all four corners of an othello board, leaving my opponent helpless. as i impinged slowly on his space, advancing towards complete armrest domination he began to realise the futility of his situation, and how he had been outflanked in a manoeuvre napolean would have been proud of. he tried to retaliate by leaning toward me and sticking his face as close to the window as possible without touching me, but i just pretended to be asleep when he did that.
game over nikolais.

the problem with other people

before i start, i would like to say rubbishatpoker's blog is funny. i can't seem to comment there but his tales are well written and entertaining. i would like to think his name is rubbi, but maybe that's just me.

the problem with other people is that for the most part, most of them, cannot comprehend that you have different thoughts to them. yes, they all think that they're aware that everyone is unique etc, but when it actually comes down to it, people don't actually act as though they realise it.

for example, i dislike the sounds that people usually make when they eat. i use dislike in its kindest sense of the word. in fact, it can make me want to do crazy violent things. my words cannot express it very well. luckily i have the internet. and there are other crazy people like me who have expressed it much better.

my point, however, is that no one actually understands these reactions if they have not experienced it themselves. they dismiss you as crazy and tell you to just stop. as if you could just stop if you wanted.

i hypothesise that this reaction is normal. almost anything that someone hasn't actually experienced is generally dismissed by that someone. alcoholism, gambling addictions etc. it also occurs in much more subtle situations, such as not understanding other people's actions.

however, when you play chess/poker the idea of the game becomes to think like your opponent. if you just think what you would do in their situation, you will never win. not because your opponents aren't retarded, but because you are assuming they think along your logical thought processes and as we all know they are unique so don't think like us. except we still expect them to do so. when people make bad calls at poker if they win, you get angry, if they lose, you laugh at their failure. still without even thinking about why they made that call, everyone dismisses it as they are bad/stupid. in fact, they had their reasons for making the call; it may be that you will never know those reasons but that's not an excuse to avoid thinking about trying to work it out.

anyways, i shall leave you with some quotes i found online of other people who 'dislike' noisy eaters. they're pretty funny imo. and the last one illustrates my point.

I find the worst instances are the ones where someone is chomping away at, say, breakfast cereal really quickly, and breathing in and out loudly through their noses. Those kinds of shenanigans make me tense up with uncontrollable rage and want to hold the culprit's nose and mouth shut until they stop breathing and choke to death on half-chewed cornflakes.

Who'd have thought eh? Egg! They can even make egg sound noisy. Fuck it, I'm going to risk the criminal record, and give them a tracheotomy.

One word.... GULPERS!!! Even the word is disgusting but the animals that do this should be put down! Is it really necessary? I have eyes, I can see they're having a drink but I don't need to fucking hear it!!! Also slurping tea or coffee because its too hot. There is no excuse for this, its too fucking hot so don't drink it!! Now, getting onto the subject of crisps or crunchy snacks. I appreciate they aren't the quietest of foods but jesus to the pigs in my office have to crunch as loudly as they possibly can?? Its like a secret competition between them all who can crunch the fucking loudest!! If you lot hear of a massacre in Aylesbury its probably me that has shot the dirty, rotten, gulping, slurping, crunching BASTARDS!

I never could understand my wife's intolerance to me chewing food, clanking fork or spoon,sniffing,coughing etc. Now that I have Hyperacusis,tinnitus and sound sensitivity, I understand her and leave her to eat in peace at the proper times. It is ironic how things happen.