journalists

if i wanted your opinions i would read editorials
when i read your articles, i want facts
and when i want to laugh, i read the bbc website.
eg today's story about Russian spies in America, they interview one guy who worked with one of these so called spies and he says
"I'm either very, very bad at second-guessing who is a Russian spy or he hid it very well."
Seeing as those two concepts are mutually exclusive, i'm going to add a third corollary,
you're a moron.
spies are probably good at what they do. and you're clearly bad at guessing who are spies.

i also was thinking today that if i was (or when i will be) a dictator, i will be less concerned about things like censorship and saying bad things about me. the things i will be concerned with are:
1) no eating like animals
2) no driving like selfish turds
3) no doing anything like a selfish turd
4) i will also implement an iq test. before taking it you will have to guess your own score. the closer you get, the more money/benefits you get. however, unbeknown to these people is that anyone who guesses their score to be 20% higher than their actual score gets evicted.

anyways, i'm off to reread quincy

i forgot the point of my entire last post was simply to say i once again went to sleep with the birds singing

birds singing is usually nice unless you want to get to sleep. or just want to enjoy some peace and quiet. and for beauty purposes, the noises that pigeons make it not beautiful. they are the vuvuzela's of the poultry singing world.

anyways, i was roped into playing some live poker last night. a 25 runner satellite for some comp in europe i'd never heard of where winner could choose either bulgarian coast or barcelona for a poker tournament.
i decided to go because i was very hot sitting in my shorts and the great danes had been not so great in losing to a japan team of very nippy players. it seems that they must have a reputation for nippiness cos we recently played a team of japaneses at 5 a side and they battered us using nippiness as their greatest strength.

but i digress. i ran like a beginner (very well) and found myself on the final table. here is where it got interesting since as usual i don't call (unbeginner like) but prefer bet/raise.
so when i 3bet the same guy twice in one orbit his eyes looked ready to pop, in a very threatening manner which i knew would be aimed at me. so to clarify, i got the feeling he wanted his eyes to pop out his head just so he could have something to hit me with.
i don't know why people get so angry with me when i play. the only two things i don't do that they do is
1)dont show my cards at the end of a hand
2)don't call incessantly
in fact i saw one person, with a 5 big blind stack, sitting in the big blind, call a raise to 3 big blinds pre flop and then check fold the flop. brilliant.

so the dude who hated me folded both times and both times i wanted him to call. the irony of his hate filled looks when making what were good folds didn't escape me.

anyway, long and boring story short i got heads up with a 2-1 chip lead, made a deal to give 10% of person who went to runner up along with some cash. it was already close to 2am at this point and whilst i didn't really wanna deal i was happy to have done so as i played like a retard heads up and lost.

this post has begun to bore even me. i'm in a massive hole for the month still and am hoping to play 10k hands more before the end of the month to see if i can dig my way out. which always reminds me of Chief Wiggum's advice when in this spot, "No, dig up, stupid"

it was a sunny evening

on a short midsummers night. the day had been spent like every other of late, watching all the games of football my telly could throw at me, and i was satisfied.

what better way than to round off the last 30 hours of my weekend than to include some poker.

oh what a mistake that turned out to be. not only did i have a remarkable lack of patience, i was blissfully unaware of the cold red mist that has descended upon me. less than 24 hours, and 2 sessions of poker later i had shot much of my online account, somewhere upwards of $7k. both sessions started off badly, got worse before i recovered. both times i considered quitting (at -$2k and -$1.2k) and both times i thought of soldiering on to win some monies back. and both times a downward spiral ensued, so fast that it had all turned to shit before i could notice and stop.

in the past, my newest biggest ever loss always annoyed me greatly that sleeping that night was almost as difficult as playing again immediately. and this was by far by biggest loss in a 12 hour period.

so come sunday night i decided the best cause of action was obviously to fire up the tables. expecting disaster i managed a breakeven session (thanks to two terrible calls by me towards the end, i would won otherwise!)

things i've learnt:
1) i still tilt like a coke machine being attacked by thirsty chavs. the coke machine now has cctv to 'protect' it, but that's only a deterrent, and even then it sometimes turns itself off.
2) i no longer care as much about money in my online roll. this is good as i can sleep, but bad, because i should care more than i do to prevent losing
3) i really really really have to try to not look at winnings/losses during a session
4) folding = winning money.
5) games are pretty bad now on stars outside of weekends. 
6) the recession is hitting everyone hard. crows, which are intelligent, have begun to attack pigeons. i know this because i saw it happen a couple of days ago. i do not, however, know why. i saw it fly after it's victim, landing everywhere it had just been, before finally nailing it's victim with it's claws and taking a chunk of feathers/flesh.
7) not everything i learn can be related to poker.

i had to send off a voucher for cashback; due by Thursday i sent it on Monday. It went to a freepost address and got me thinking. what class does freepost post fit under? i hoped it was first to make sure it gets there fast. but maybe it was 2nd class which would take longer. but how does second class take longer? do the postmen look at the 2nd class stamp, laugh at the people not wanting to pay more and just throw it to the side of the sorting office, purposefully delaying it by a day or two. if they could just put the post on the same truck as the first class post then it would all arrive at the same time.
except then you wouldn't be able to get second class post. so it seems to me that they delay it on purpose for no real reason, other than to punish people for not paying more. or to ensure people pay more to send it first class. either way, something doesn't quite add up.

8) i have weird thoughts.

fuck

fuck
fuck
fuck

im a fucking tilting idiot!!!!!!!!!!!!!

well that last one was a long post.

i just shaved without using a mirror. i wonder how terrible a job i did. will no doubt wake tomorrow morning/afternoon and reshave.
shaving is such a waste of time. if the body can automate breathing, blinking etc, why can't we automate shaving, eating etc?

speaking of annoying things i had a great idea today for an invention that hopefully hasn't been done. if not, i will get inventing. if it has, i will share with you my awesome idea (that has already been stolen) so you can bask in my nearly glory.

back to the grind of online house hunting. they say moving house is very stressful. i think looking is the most stressful part. but maybe that's what they mean? usually i get bored after 2/3 viewings so i have to make sure the first few i see are good quality cos i will end up picking one of them

i also got a new camera recently (it's old but new to me) which hopefully will lead to some awesome pics. i noticed with lots of digital camera i've used in the past few years they don't 'see' reds, like in sunsets. my first one from years ago did, so not sure why technology has gone backwards. anyway, this is an slr so should be good. has lots of dials though so gonna have to work out how to use it properly (trial and error obv - the manual is about 200 pages long!)

losing focus

of late, when i first sit down, i have been really unfocused and losing lots in the first few hands.
no change there tonight, and i concentrated enough to grind lots back.

gave about $1k to two different people. one is a massive moron, the other a massive nit, and i played badly against them all night. luckily enough people were donating that i finished up a little for the day.

been getting lots of headaches when playing recently. a combination of tired hungry and thirsty doesn't help. i really should eat drink and sleep properly. i also find my monitor way too bright now, and been trying to turn it down but it still seems to bright....

in other news, my flat hunting took me to gumtree and i found an ad that sounded too good to be true. awesome area, 80% of general market rate, but i still emailed the guy. and his response was, well, judge for yourselves (some street names changed for no good reason)


Subject: Re: Reply to your ad: GOOD LOCATION   -- -- --  NO EXTRA FEE - -- -- FULLY FURNISHED ONE BEDROOM FLAT

ello
Thanks for your mail. I am a very young comfortable professional,26 who works in a recording company as a studio manager.I would like to rent out a double bedroom Garden Flat with Broad Band Internet to a very easy going person at 700 per month including all bills.available now for you to occupy.not shared apartment..My apartment is very comfortable fully furnished flat of brand duplex flat.Located in quiet residential area { XXXXX} B street is located between area A and Abc Avenue and is therefore well placed for tube station (Jubilee Line) underground station and the shopping and restaurant facilities of Finchley Road.is fully furnished with digital home cinema, hi-fi system, VCR, DVD player, phone, fax, computer, cable/satellite, internet access, wardrobe, cupboard, Hanging wardrobe, safe deposit box, radio alarm clock, hair dryer, fully air-conditioned, central heating, intruder alarm, fire
alarm and more. Large fully equipped kitchen, 2 toilets and unlimited wireless internet.
I don't want any problem for myself.., i need to know the person that will occupy my apartment that is, the person that will take care of my apartment like theirs because am letting the flat out because am presently in Manchester working. It is not compulsory that i rent out the flat but if i can get a reliable and tidy person that will take care of my flat for me i can let it out.so i need to know them better i.e what you and your partner do for a living.

Rent Includes

Electricity
Gas
Water Charge
Council Tax
Lease
internet

Waiting to read from you.

 Well, that's a nigerian sounding email. and yes, they did start and email with 'ello' and end it with, waiting to read from you!
i thought i'd probe further with an email:

Hi,

Thanks for the reply.

As you probably guessed from my email address i'm a student at the moment, just finishing and will be writing my work up over the next few months.

Looking for somewhere at the moment to be able to concentrate on my work and yours stood out - seems almost too good to be true! If you're around sometime in the next few days it would be good to see the place and meet you as i'm sure you'd want to meet any potential tenants too.

Also would be good to know if there is the potential to get a parking permit for the streets around there?

Look forward to hearing from you,

well, then came a pretty quick reply:

Subject: THINKING ON THE VIEWING OF THE FLAT


Thanks for the reply.I would love to meet you, get to know you and show you round the flat so that you can see what you are renting but I have been having problems with time wasters who could not keep to there end of deal.Its really time wasting because i am a very busy person and do not really have much time to waste. To me, every seconds count.because i am presently  in the studio doing some live recording and icant make or receive calls due to the nature of my job,but have my Laptop here to reply to emails.viewing will not be a problem, Anytime during the week in the evening would be a good date for our meeting.
The rent is still very Low considering the current economic climate in London..

Can you please answer the following questions?
-Are you really serious about the renting the flat?
 How many are you to occupy the Flat?.
-If you love the flat when you see it, will you make the payment to hold it against your move in?

why I am asking these questions is basically because of my experience with my last tenant. Morgan moved into my flat in JUNE:2008,on commencing the tenancy, he paid a total sum of £537.50 in rent hoping that he would pay up the balance  unknowingly  he provided a fraudulent employers reference to convince me of having a stable job!
Although i served him with Section 8 and Section 21 Notices and obtained a Court Order for possession of the property, he was reluctant to move out or pay any of the rent arrears.County Court bailiffs got him evicted and his total debt to date is £1,263. (Quite much).
 I will prepare all the necessary documentations i:e Contract Form:which we will both sign after being satisfied with the flat.
Payment will be made after signing the contracts and keys will be handed over to you once contract is made.
Please,understand that i am NOT asking you to pay me BEFORE you view the flat.The neighborhood is safe and i guess you have heard much about this area?it is a safe, clean area.

-Your rent begins on your move in date..
-Viewing is never  a problem.
-Proof of ownership and Documentation will be shown upon viewings.
-There is no minimum or maximum stay.
- Rent include Council Tax,electricity,gas,internet, e.t.c
-Its 700pcm and 700 refundable deposit.

Kindly get back to me about an idea on what we can do so that we can arrange a meeting for viewing.

Thanks while hoping to read from you.
Regards,


Well, the thing that sealed it (95% scam surely?!) was that the subject line of the email changed. no real person does that surely?
also he referred to our meeting as a date. that scared me.

i took my tv off my wall. when i first put it up i noticed it was a bit high (not like that) but was too lazy to redrill holes and move it. plus, i never used it much.
but now with the world cup on it's painful to look at so high so i took it down and moved it to my desk. right now i also have my laptop on my desk along with my monitor. one would think my desk be massive to cope with this but right now i can see my monitor, much of my laptop and almost none of the telly (and it's only a baby telly vision). this will take some rearranging if i'm going to watch the world cup whilst working and surfing the interweb.

i should probably begin by clearing the books (there are 9 i have to read, one is by nabokov and boring, and one is my learn russian book which is ongoing, but that's still a lot of reading) and random foreign change off my desk. and probably also my degree certificate. it's been there for years.

anyways, this week i was sent to coventry and had some time one evening to meet an old young friend i hadn't seen for years. amazingly, she suggested the casino as the best place to get drink. and happily i knew where that was. so i drove there, had some cheeky pints too many and when she left i realised i was a bit too pissed to open the car door let alone drive. so i did what any gambler would have done and sat down at the poker table to reclaim my roulette losses. (or vice versa)

my aim was to tilt the life forces out of everyone whilst also lasting long enough to not be too pissed to remember where the hotel was. it could have started very bad. i sat with just over £100 in this 1/2 game. woo, i'm a shortstacker. first hand i play is a few hands in (i have no patience for live games anymore) and raise k4o in late position. only one of the blinds call. (read: old man, likely to be rubbish).
flop: 9JQ
i bet half pot he call
turn:A
i bet half pot again, he call
river 4
he check, i shove for about 50, he tanks for eternity, i give off caro strong tells in case he's read a book. unlikely though. he tanks some more, and folds face up J9 lol. ty. table talk down my end puts me on kt. more lols to be had.

then the fun begins. i call a raise from a big stack with kt spades. he had a big stack so i assumed he wasn't just bad, but also lucky, so proceeded to play with caution. old man from hand 1 comes along.
flop is q92, two diamonds, one spade
checks round
turn is 7 spades
old man checks, big stack bets £10, i raise to £30 knowing he has nothing, old man calls (!?) mr big stack folds
river is 5 spades
old man checks, i stick £60 or so in, he tanks for 1/100th of the last tank and calls with aq dd!!
this tilted him enough to leave. 1 down, 8 to go.

i don't play for a bit so when i see 72o in late position i figure this is a good hand to get to showdown with. i raise, 3 callers.

flop is 89t, 2 clubs, and all check to me. i check
turn is a j. checks to me, i bet pot, 1 caller.
river is A of clubs. i figure i'm likely to get called by worse but wanna be sure to show this down so i check. he tries to play 'show me yours' and announces two pair.
i turn over my hand to not much surprise. maybe they have me pegged already.

i made a bad river call later with k7 on a 7733A board against nit of the century when every street was checked to the river when he bet small, i raised small, he 3 bet big. i convinced myself he could do this with any 7 but no, obv A7.  i think i'm lucky it wasn't quads.

7's were obviously being lucky after not coming up on roulette so when i got 74 on the button in a straddled pot i called. big blind was previous kid who lost to my 72.
(initial read: under 18, can't cash out as likely has no i.d., playing to lose.
current read: unchanged)

flop is 743
he checks, i bet small, like £5.
turn 4
he checks, i bet £15.
river 8
he checks
i bet £42. he pretends that he's thinking and then calls. again trying to instigate a game of show me yours i don't give him the pleasure by turning over 74 to a look of broken despair. he literally jumps over the wall next to the table to get away from me.
2 down, 7 to go.

not much else happened for a while, and then i noticed it was after 3am, having played about 30 hands (awesome live poker) so i cashed out and went to get a couple of hours sleep.

online has been boringly breakeven but with mountainous swings. for almost 20k hands. need to play better and run better imo. at least i'm starting to play lots of hands and keeping this up maybe retain sn status by august.

just when i thought i was out...

they pull me back in

just two days ago i was saying how nothing interesting or funny had happened. and then yesterday, bam, a gargantuan mong strikes out at me.

i went to my uni's print office on friday to see if they could make me a poster by tuesday. the 'lady' (definitely in caster semanya's genre of 'lady') said "probably, but we can't be sure"
brilliant. you've got no work whatsoever as it's the summer holiday for pretty much everyone and you can't even be sure to do a simple ctrl+p on your computers within 3 days.
so i had to get the local print shop to do it. and as a bonus they deliver it. i told them to call me when they get here, and i'll meet them at the print office (since it's a part of campus that they know, and also it's round the corner from my office)
monday rolls along and i get a call that they're here. so i go to the print office to meet them. for some reason they were waiting inside but i gathered they knew the 'lady' who works there since printshop man is here most days apparently. i say hi to him, get poster from him. and then 'lady' comes out her office to where we were and starts abusing me by shouting "we're not a deliver service you know!"
"ok, i replied, i wasn't using you as a delivery service, i was just meeting him here cos it's where he knows and i'm ..."
"WE'RE NOT A DELIVERY SERVICE!!!!!!!11"
"ok, i replied, not using you as a delivery service, i'm just meeting him here, my office is round the corner, it's an easy place to meet..."
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING? WE AREN'T A DELIVERY SERVICE!"

at this point i wanted to ask her if she was deaf or stupid. cos it had to be one or the other. but i knew if i asked i would just get interrupted again. so i just said ok and walked out with printshop man as she continued a random barrage of abuse and bizarre points to about how terrible it was that someone should meet in 'her' building.
as we left we talked and laughed about it, he didn't understand what the problem was either so i'm not going crazy just yet. though i was thinking of ordering some random things and sending them to her department, labelled for anybody else. perhaps even some labelled to her, with a message inside asking her to make a personal delivery to someone else in another department....

ps massive breakeven stretch on poker. due to playing stupidly bad. take two days off (enforced anyway) and gonna use that time to mentally refocus.

discoveries you make that turn out not to be your discoveries as other poeple already thought of them

i remember when i first discovered, serendipitously, and only a few years ago, that putting a bit of toilet paper into the bowl before dropping the kids off at the pool prevents splashback. i thought i was a genius. the first to have realised this. sadly, it seemed more well known than i had thought.

these are better moments than when people tell you about their negative discoveries. and by that i mean things they point out to you which lower your quality of life because you wouldn't otherwise have noticed them. for example, wagamama's seats are really bad for posture and leave you with a stomach ache. but only after you know about it! (sorry). and also that when eating meat for dinner you often end up with the meat sweats, being really thirsty for the rest of the night no matter how much you drink (sorry again). i'll stop now.

anyway, things have been nicely quiet out here for me.
i've found poker increasingly boring to talk to most people about over the past few years for various reasons. and sadly in the past week it's been the most interesting thing i can think of that's happened, yet no one would understand what i was talking about.

played four sessions this month for ~1k hands each time which is decent volume for me. though laughably little for anyone who takes it semi seriously. the last two session started off disastrously. yesterday i flopped the nuts with qj on a kt9 board, got all in against 99, river was a 9.
that was followed up with aa losing to kk aipf, and a few hands later against the same kk guy on another table aa losing to jj aipf.
today didn't start much better. 78ss flopped 9tj with 2 clubs and got all in on the flop vs...78cc (river club!)
that was shortly followed by simultaneously getting qq against aa and qq against aa.

in the end yesterday i finished 1k down, and today 1.5k up so i can't really complain, i guess i'm running well enough even though all in ev disagrees telling me i'm running bad. been working hard on not checking results during play, and not checking ptr of myself at all. hopefully at end of month will be recorded as +ve at 2/4!

i'm sure there were some other things that have been happening but all i can really remember about the past few days is that it has been pretty hot here, and in fact on friday i almost melted. not that i'm complaining. after the coldest winter in bloody ages it was nice to be overly hot.

last, but by no means least, i find that facebook seems to get rather a bad press, but really, there are some moments that make it worthwhile.

i just ate a whole clove of garlic with some parsley

hopefully these weird smells will allow me to fit in with the degenerates that frequent the local poker club and they won't look down on me like an outcast.

so there's been some iPoker (nothing to do with apples) tournament series with an overlay. i managed to get logged on to william hill after a palava including having to use a different computer to download the software and speak to live chat to get my account information after i had tried and failed the online auto generating  reset link by virtue of telling them a fake birthday when i first joined. obviously this makes it very difficult for anyone else to get into my account, but equally difficult for me.

i finally got in ready to make a deposit, seconds after the tournament started. and they don't have late registration. that probably saved me lots of money, so a hearty thanks to their slow live help.

later i fired up some tables, with only a couple to begin with that seemed ok. just as i sat down, and before playing any hands, i noticed an all in for a $1200 pot, only for both players to split it with Ak. i thought that was a bit loose with 150bb till i realised it was a 3/6 table, not a 2/4 one. obviously, i couldn't back out now having sat down so played there for a while. i added a few 2/4 tables too to keep myself from boredom. as it happened, almost nothing happened for the first 500 hands. that used to annoy me enough to tilt but this time i just kinda sat around still waiting. lost a bit at 2/4 (further into the red on ptr, grr - which i'm not gonna check myself on more than once a week) and won a bit at 3/6 but all pretty uninteresting. managed over 1k hands which is nice. that's my daily target i think. 3 times during the week and 4k over weekends.

more interesting was a 5 a side game of football where a couple of opponents went mental shouting threats at us, leading to unmitigated violence on their behalf including but not limited to head-butts. according to the ref, there is no need to do anything about this. i guess it's acceptable when your losing, as seen on t.v.

they say necessity is the mother of all invention and following my lunch today i have surmised there is a need for a new name for eggs where you make them somewhere between fried (over easy) and scrambled. the ones where you intend to make fried eggs but are too hungry to wait for them to cook so you mix it up, but only a little bit.

ps spoke to boss, officially unemployed. here's to watching all the world cup games!

i have a pen that i can't work out how to open

maybe i should take a picture of it and see if anyone can help me. clicking the top makes it talk like napolean dynamite. there are no twisty bits, or parts to click in or out, and i cannot for the life of me see how to get the pen part to come out it's shell for it to write. any guesses greatly appreciated and rewarded by a steaking of highstack into a stars tournament where he has to comically abuse the opponents on every occasion where he beats them in a hand.

i meant to play tonight but forgot. my aim of becoming +ve on every level on ptr took a step closer earlier when i won money at 2/4 combined with them not tracking a bunch of losing hands. sadly, a few poor sessions put me back in the red there for now....

and without further ado, here's the month's graph:

follow much reader feedback i've decided to include some more crazy swedish photos.
here are some of the icebar from the icehotel in lapland:

just in case you weren't sure whether it was ok to smoke in a building made of ice

and a view from inside. they cheat by using reindeer rugs everywhere so it's only 99% ice

if you're bored of those here's a picture from a seemingly standard underground station over there.

and if you weren't bored of icehotel photos let me know, i have a few of the rooms too....

also gonna see my boss tomorrow to check i have officially entered to the world of the jobless. except i'll still have stuff to do, it won't be as hectic as it is now and it'll allow me time to write things up that i've needed to for a while....