Incentives to Create Weapons of Mass Destruction

Today I am reminded of Colin Powel presenting the evidence of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. By now, we all know that this evidence was incorrect. Malcolm Gladwell wrote a really cool article about it in the New Yorker that you can read in What the Dog Saw and I encourage anyone who cares to peruse through it. Today, the British Prime Minister said he will not support a U.S. led attack after we are presenting evidence of the use of chemical weapons. This time, there is actual evidence. There are pictures of dead birds instead of satellite pictures of mobile WMD manufacturing labs that could also be fire trucks. I remember watching Colin Powel make his case to the U.N. Security council and I couldn’t understand how they knew it was WMD’s in the truck and not Coca Cola or something? Can we really be surprised that England is skeptical of the evidence we are presenting now?

Nevertheless we went ahead with the shock and awe preemptive strike in Iraq. This sent a message to all other countries. Many people put bumper stickers on their cars that said these colors don’t run. Flags were flown out of windows. Everyone was on board. Mess with the best die like the rest. These are the messages we thought we were sending. The real message we sent was we will attack you if we suspect that you have weapons of mass destruction. It doesn’t really matter if you have them or not, we won’t rely on the preponderance of evidence, but on the fear of terrorism instead. The unintended consequence of this is that we gave rouge countries an even greater incentive to make weapons of mass destruction. This is the game theory optimal decision because if you actually have WMD, than you also have the protection of MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction. MAD is the greatest deterrence to preemptive strikes. This is why we were in a cold war with the U.S.S.R. for so long. It is also why the invasion of Iraq has given these countries an incentive to create as many weapons of mass destruction as they can.

This time we are dealing with a country that probably does have chemical weapons. They killed 1300 people with them. We are now talking about attacking them. This will undoubtedly kill more than 1300 people. IF we accidently hit a stockpile of chemical weapons we might even spread more of it around, essentially killing even more civilians with chemical weapons. This will give an incentive for the radical Islam crowd to kill more Americans. To make matters worse, Iran and North Korea have been developing nuclear weapons. Iran is one of Syria’s biggest allies. They’ve probably been working on them for about ten years because they know it doesn’t matter if they don’t have them the U.S. will be willing to strike anyway. So they may as well have them. It’s the game theory optimal strategy against a country willing to use preemptive strikes.

This is a really bad situation and there are no good solutions. If we go to war with Syria over this, we might actually have to destroy them. We might have to destroy other countries too. It’s not so bad when you beat up on a country that doesn’t really have scary shit, but when they do have scary shit they might be willing to use it. I’m not sure if Iran has nukes, but they sure have had incentives to make them these past ten years or so. Chemical weapons in a subway are pretty scary too. Have you seen Breaking Bad? Apparently you can make ricin out of apple seeds. I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s probably not that difficult to make chemical weapons. If we attack them, it’s just a matter of time before they strike back.

Freedom Isn't Free

I have come to the conclusion that I am annoying. I’m okay with that. I’m annoying because I am opinionated. When someone tells me about the Long Island Medium, I tell them she’s a cold reader and Houdini debunked assholes like that almost 100 years ago. Everyone thinks card tricks are cool or it’s nice to transport a coin or two, but when you tell them that psychics are bullshit they get offended because it turns their world view upside down. They want to believe that spirits still communicate with the dead, that their grandmother who’s named started with R because Ruth was popular name for women born around your grandmother’s demographic. Heart disease is the number one cause of death, so when someone picks up an audience member’s reaction to the letter R he or she will say something like “I’m getting the feeling that she had something wrong in this area” pointing to the chest. If the answer is no, then they say I don’t mean heart trouble, maybe she had cancer or something—The second cause leading cause of death. Once the connection is made you get the ahhaaa moment. This dude or dudette correctly picked up on a letter of a name and a disease that the person died from the rest is a cakewalk. The audience member assumes if these things are true then everything else the medium says must also be true. Ruth now says you are going to find love or come into a lot of money, maybe you should be a UPS driver or whatever the hell you tell him or her what your dreams are.

I piss people off because of the Glen Greenwald story about Edward Snowden. Nearly everyone I talk to thinks he’s a traitor or they don’t care. Everyone likes stories about kids coming up to servicemen and thanking them for fighting for their freedom. “Thank a Vet for your freedom,” and you’ll get 20 likes on Facebook.

“United States Armed Forces : Answering the Call to Defend Freedom.” 35 likes

“Freedom isn’t free, Thank you Veterans” 50 likes

“Support our troops,” 75 likes.

“For the freedoms that we enjoy our thanks go to the young men and women serving in all branches of the military. We Salute you!” 100 likes. Day, or Veteran’s Day. Edward Snowden is like Houdini telling people Psychics are bullshit, or hokum as he would have said back then. The United States of America is synonymous with freedom. Our soldiers are getting killed to defend that freedom. When Snowden says the NSA is spying on you what happens to that concept of freedom? Even if you’re not well versed in the bill of rights or the fourth amendment, it sounds like shit the USSR would pull. That doesn’t live up to our expectations of freedom. When we hear about soldiers defending our freedom, it makes us feel good inside.

When a physic tells you that she is receiving a message from your dear dead grandmother that she thinks you should accomplish your dreams of being a UPS driver, you also feel good.

When someone like Snowden tells you that the government that your soldiers are dying for is taking away your freedom, most people don’t know how to process that. It turns their whole world view upside down. They make excuses. “Well…I’m not doing anything wrong.” Glad to hear it, maybe you should petition the government to take away your fifth amendment rights too. Miranda rights are only for criminals. If you don’t like what someone is saying, the first amendment shouldn’t be for those people. We should only have freedom of speech for the people who agree with us. We should only have freedom of religion for people who choose the right religion. While we’re at it, why don’t we start putting military personnel in people’s homes. You support our troops right? Why do we need the third amendment? Who needs speedy trials, we have a military that is defending our freedoms. Let’s lock up people as enemy combatants forever. They’re only alleged terrorists, the government tells me so— They don’t deserve freedom .

We have been so conditioned to love, respect, and honor freedom that we don’t even remember what it is anymore. We just want to feel good about our military defending it. We feel that if we criticize anything about the government than we are trivializing what the military is doing. I don’t feel that way and I bet a lot of people in the military don’t feel that way either. They are sworn to protect the constitution. Many of them even read it.

This is why I am so proud of Edward Snowden, why I consider him a hero. He made sure not to release any secrets that would get anyone killed. He didn’t release this information to terrorists. He released it to a Brittish newspaper, because the first amendment that protects the freedom of the press doesn’t seem so strong either. Edward Snowden is fighting for freedom. He has risked his life, lost his job, and even lost his country to fight for that freedom.

Thank you Edward Snowden for defending our freedom. 0 likes

Pressing the Issues

I have not yet read the article entitled The Bomber: How A Promising Student Was Failed By His Family, Fell Into Radical Islam and Became a Monster. I will go out and get it as soon as possible though. There is a picture going around on Facebook of someone burning a copy of the magazine. Because I am a full fledged supporter of the first amendment, I see nothing wrong with someone expressing their anger by burning the magazine. As a U.S. citizen everyone has the right to burn whatever book or magazine they want. You can burn the Koran, the Bible, or Charlotte’s Web for all I care. You can even burn the American Flag without going to jail. The freedom of speech is one of the greatest rights we have. You can say whatever you want and will not have to go to jail for it. Socially, of course, you can’t say whatever you want, but that’s another story for another day.

The first amendment also guarantees freedom of the press. Dan Carlin said the press is one of the checks and balances of the government. The press is the public check and balance, or at least it was intended to be. We need controversial information out there. We need stories on evil men to see if there is anything we can do to prevent them from doing evil things. This isn’t about giving glory to an asshole. It is about providing high content information to the public.

Article I Section 9, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution: “No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States: and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.”

We have a constitution that specifically states that we do not grant titles of nobility yet the biggest news story of the week has been the new royal baby. This is the information that the public wants to hear. This is what CNN and Fox News make the most money from. This is a bigger story than the government spying on you in a country that isn’t supposed to respect or recognize nobility. This is a government of the people, by the people and for the people. Our fundamental governing principle is that God does not bestow governmental powers to people, but the people govern themselves.

We aren’t doing a great job of governing ourselves anymore. The government is spying on us and asshole can still bomb the Boston Marathon. I’m a runner I have ran a couple marathons. I am not good enough to qualify for the Boston Marathon, but I want to. I still think the media needs to write the story that the Rolling Stone wrote. We need the press to freely exercise their freedom of speech and come up with more important content and less unimportant baby bump stories.

Top Ramen, Love, and Salad Dressing

I had this epiphany while making breakfast today. I remebered a certain TED Talk and I wanted to watch it again. I Googled "Talks choice." The first video that came up was this Barry Schwarz Ted Talk about the Paradox of Choice.. I have seen the speech before, but I never paid much attention. I just thought it was some wacky guy complaining about how many salad dressings they sell at his local grocery store. I usually shop at Trader Joe’s and they don’t have as many salad dressings because the store is structured towards different clientele and they have less items than the average chain grocery store. I failed to see the bigger point of this video because I am a firm believer in the official dogma. It is so ingrained into my brain, I accept it without question even when presented with evidence to the contrary.

The official dogma was taught to me in grammar school at a time when the Communists were still the enemy. I didn’t know anything about Communism back then other than they did not have freedom and we did. I was told that we had the freedom to choose what career we want to go into and the freedom to buy whatever we want. Communists did not have that same freedom. If someone had the potential to be a gymnastic gold medalist he or she would be forced to be a gymnast. The lack of choice seemed to be the definition of oppression. I never heard the term capitalism until I reached high school. It’s as if freedom (eg. freedom of choice) became a euphemism for capitalism.

I also like capitalism, especially laissez-faire. This is the form of economics I have come to love and admire the most because of the philosophy I read and just because it makes the most sense to me. I don’t want to digress and get into a big socio-economic debate, but I see these choices as a quick fix for a lot of things. This is not to say I do not recognize the problems of crony capitalism, et cetera, but I think I am primed to love choice. In a way freedom is about choice. Some people want the freedom to smoke marijuana and others want the freedom to their own bodies. They want to be able to make a choice. This is the essence of freedom.

I also like the fact that there are a lot of salad dressings and so many different varieties of mustard. An article that Malcolm Gladwell wrote for the New Yorker tells a story about the man who is responsible for all of this choice Americans have. He makes the case that we are happier because of this one man. HE even has his own Ted Talk about him. His name is Howard Moskowitz. You can watch Malcolm Gladwell’s TED Talk if you don’t have a handy copy of What the Dog Saw handy. The TED Talk is entitled Choice, happiness and spaghetti sauce. Moskowitz is essentially responsible for all of the choice you have at the grocery store. He is famous for making different varieties of diet soda and spaghetti sauce and according to the official dogma this makes us happy. Malcolm Gladwell is one of my favorite authors so I have an innate bias towards him. I tend to believe anything he says although there has been some notable exceptions. The Korean airplane crash that happened a few weeks ago, Malcolm Gladwell wrote about the reasons why Korean pilots are more likely to crash than American pilots in his book Outliers. Sometimes you can look at his writing and almost believe he is a prophet—That’s how good Gladwell is. Malcom Gladwell makes a case for the official Dogma. “The way to maximize freedom is the way to maximize choice.” Since Malcolm Gladwell writes closest thing I have to religious text since sliced bread with images of the Virgin Mary burned into it as it toasted, I obviously had a proclivity to believe Gladwell and the official dogma that he reinforced. In other words I totally bought into the idea that the abundance of choice is the key to happiness. I don’t think that’s really the case anymore. The choice between salad dressings, spaghetti sauce, and “Pepsis” is a rather minor one. I’m the type of person who usually makes a quick decision and once I like something I stick with it. I believe that there is a best decision and I am confident that I can make that decision. This probably has a lot to do with playing poker and choosing one line over another. There is always the most optimal line. If I decide check raising the turn is better than check raising the flop is better because one of my opponents is more likely to fold to the bigger bet on the turn than he would be to fold to the smaller raise on the flop—I check raise the turn. If he calls and sucks out on me, then I just go ahead and lose my chips. I don’t second guess myself. I think in terms of percentages. That play would have worked 85% of the time so I never mind what happens the other 15% of the time. When I go to the grocery store and Pepsi products are on sale I always get Diet Mountain Dew because I like it. I don’t ever think…Maybe I would rather have Cherry/Grape/Strawberry/Pepto Bismol flavored Sierra Mist instead.

The abundance of choice, according to Barry Schwartz “… produces paralysis rather than liberation. With so many options to choose from, people find it very difficult to choose at all.” Maybe I don’t have this problem with salad dressing or Pepsi products, but at some point everyone is faced with this dilemma. The great thing about salad dressing is that It’s cheap. If you don’t like one, you can just buy another. Over along enough time span virtually everyone can afford to try every single salad dressing at the grocery store. You can afford to try every Pepsi and Coke product at some point in your life. The decisions get more difficult when you buy a car. Let’s say you have always had a dream to buy a certain car. Assuming this car is the Nissan Versa, which it may not be you go to the dealership and buy a shiny new black Nissan Versa with tinted windows. You’re ecstatic for about a week. You drive around town and notice all the cool people who bought cool new Nissan Versas. You even notice the old Nissan Versas that don’t have all the cool new features that your Versa has, but then one day you drive passed another Nissan Versa. It’s brand new too, you can tell because it still doesn’t have the license plates. This is a White Nissan Versa with tinted windows. Now you think…hmmm…maybe I should have bought that color instead. You’re less satisfied with your decision even though it is your dream car.

Of course we finally must make a choice at some point. You have to choose black or white, orange or gray. Barry says “We end up less satisfied with the choice than we would be if we had fewer options to choose from.” This anecdote about the cars is an excellent example of this. Even though the Nissan Versa is the cheapest car money can buy, it’s not like salad dressing. Most people can’t afford to buy all the colors of the car their hearts desire. Even if they could, it really wouldn’t matter much. Is the person really going to be that much happier with the white car vs. the black car?

The reason I bring this up is because I had an epiphany while I made my breakfast this morning. I’ve been trying to eat really healthy lately. I have egg whites or oatmeal for breakfast most mornings. I eat a chicken sandwich with no cheese for lunch and I’ve been cutting out the chips and try to eat carrots instead. Then try to eat a kale or romaine lettuce chicken salad for dinner. After a while, I get sick of it and I went to the grocery store hungry and bought Cheetos and Top Ramen. I know Top Ramen is like the Nissan Versa of food, but I really like it. I think my body craves the sodium because every so often I am compelled to buy the MSG salty goodness of ramen noodles. This tends to happen more during the summer and probably has something to do with me running in 100 degree weather. A healthier option would probably be to drink Gatorade or pick up some salt tablets at the local running store, but don’t judge me. I like three flavors of Top Ramen: beef, chicken, and oriental. For some reason today I pulled roast beef flavored Top Ramen out of my cupboard. The Stater Brothers on Colton in Redlands just had a grand re-opening because of their remodel. I don’t know if I grabbed the roast beef because it was in the wrong spot or just because I was so discombobulated I just wasn’t paying attention. Anyway, it’s just Top Ramen it’s not as if I went to some fancy steak house and ordered filet mignon and got a salad instead. I noticed two things. First of all, beef is better than roast beef. Secondly, roast beef isn’t that bad. I could live with it. I didn’t have to go rinse my mouth out with Listerine to get rid of the taste. That’s when I had an epiphany. This isn’t about Top Ramen. This isn’t about consumerism. Barry Schwartz’s TED Talk isn’t about 175 fucking salad dressings. A times B times C equals X as Chuck Palahniuk would say. When my parents were on the prowl, they had to go to a bar and my dad had to drink enough liquid courage to overcome his apprehension anxiety just to say hi to my mom. Now dating is much different. Most relationships start online now. You can find anything you want online. There are websites dedicated to people who have balloon popping and ball breaking fetishes. It’s very unlikely that these people will find their soul mate at the average bar. You can come up with a check list of common interests and send an email to thousands of women. Nearly every single person under 45 is on an online dating site. Actually they’re on several. Not only do you have to choose when you want to get married, but you have to choose where you want to meet someone. Match, E-harmony, OkCupid, Plenty of Fish, Zoosk, Farmersonly.com, Christian Mingle, J-date, Athiestpersonals.net, Fetlife, Yahoo Personals…The list goes on and on. I wouldn’t be able to list ever single one.

This is the new normal. With the magic of online dating, you get to search for all of the qualities you want in a partner and you are much more likely to find the needle in the haystack you have been looking for your whole life. There’s just one problem. There are a lot of needles and the haystack doesn’t seem so big anymore. My friend Raph says true love lasts ‘till next Thursday. I don’t really like this cynical evaluation of true love. I don’t even really like the concept of true love. It makes it seem like it’s some mystic supernatural being outside of the earthly realm. One day cupid bestows this mystic magical feeling on an unsuspecting victim. There’s something funny about loves mystical power. So often, that love fades away. As my friend would say, it lasts ‘till next Thursday. As much as I’d hate to admit it, he’s right. “True Love” lasts till next Thursday in the same way you start to doubt the color of car you chose. This true love that everyone thinks is something mystical power outside of them, that doesn’t last. That’s just some increased dopamine and some oxytocin. The NRE (new relationship energy) quickly decapitates. As I was eating my Roast beef Top Ramen, I realized that love is a choice. You can choose to love someone and you can choose to stop loving that person just the same. I’m not saying this is true love, but it is romantic love. You can choose to fall in love with anyone and you can choose to fall out of love with anyone. The problem we are faced with now is that there are too many choices. These choices have an opportunity cost. At the tip of my fingers, I can date someone who looks like Marilyn Monroe or I can choose to date someone who looks like Bettie Page. I could choose to fall in love with both of them, but I must make a decision. Maybe I’ll choose Bettie and then start to regret that decision because the girl who looks like Marilyn Monroe is really hot and I’ll start to think I should have developed a relationship with her. Then maybe Bettie Page will start to realize that I’m not perfect just like everyone else and she’ll want to date someone who looks like James Dean. She’ll start to think what the hell am I doing with this guy? He looks like Ricky Martin. I’m using shallow examples, but really there are really much heavier things to base decisions on. Does Marilyn Monroe want to have kids? What are her religious beliefs? Does she snowboard? Can she get into an argument without throwing dishes?

If love is a choice, one must choose wisely if the goal is to have a long term committed relationship. The odds of a marriage lasting till death do us part are a coin flip at best. A second marriage has about a 40% success rate. These odds make the choices that much more difficult. Not only are you risking heartbreak, but you can also potentially risk financial ruin. People are always telling me how they don’t gamble and they don’t understand how I can play poker so much. Putting a couple hundred dollars on a poker table is gambling to them. Getting married isn’t. At some point you have to learn to recognize that they are both forms of gambling. You need to put your money in when you have the best of it and protect it when you don’t. The trick is to look at it rationally and realize that you have millions of choices. Make that choice to the best of your ability. The grass is always greener on the other side, but now we can see everyone’s lawn on Google maps and there are always at least 50 shades of green nearby. It’s really easy to be disillusioned, but the first step is to realize it. Once you realize this, you can make your choice wisely and you won’t have to regret your eventual decision.

Barry Schwartz TED Talk:

Malcolm Gladwell TED Talk:

Droning On

I'm not a fan of Rand Paul for a lot of reasons, but I agree with him on the issue of drones. It’s something that needs to be talked about. I'm necessarily against the use of drones of any kind however. Like it or not, drones exist and they are here to stay. The way that our executive branch of government uses this technology will set the precedence for future presidents to use the technology. When McCain for instance says it is crazy to think the government will use it to kill unarmed citizens (I'm paraphrasing) well it may be for now, but who's to say that will be the case in 50 years?

If we use the drones to collect information, we have to be comfortable with other countries eventually collecting information on us. I am okay with that trade off and it may be an acceptable use of drones. IF we use them for surveillance on someone after a warrant has been issued—I’m okay with that as well. Just naming someone an enemy combatant however, just circumvents the constitution and that is the bigger issue that needs to be addressed regarding American citizens. Perhaps an American citizen should not ever be allowed to be declared an enemy combatant without a trial. That would solve a lot of drone problems, as well as future problems that may arise with ever increasing technology.

If we use drones to kill unarmed people in other countries, we have to be prepared for other countries using drones to kill unarmed people in this country within the next 10-15 years. You can be against the police actions the U.S. has taken, but the fact remains that we do have enemies. If drones can be made by the U.S. then they can certainly and clandestinely be made by countries like Saudi Arabia or North Korea. These drones may not be as sophisticated as our drones, but they still will make the perfect suicide bomber. The short term view taken by our government is what bothers me the most. Today I saw that North Korea wants to make a "preemptive" nuclear attack on the United States. It is unlikely that the country has the technology to do this now, but they clearly will have it within the next five to ten years. Like it or not, we are the example for the world to follow.

What bothered me most about the Iraq war was that making preemptive strikes against a country for allegedly having WMD will set a precedent for another country to execute preemptive strikes. It also gave a strong incentive for countries without weapons of mass destruction to get them as fast as possible because we essentially sent the message that you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t.

We have created a situation where mutually assured destruction is the only viable way of preventing invasion—a proverbial monster.

If we use drones to kill terrorists in other countries, drones will become the next terrorists. It’s only a matter of time. If we use drones to kill U.S. Citizens without regard to the fourth, fifth, sixth, or eighth amendments… then they already are terrorists.

Unconventional Wisdom

There is a lot of talk these days about gun control. I won’t reiterate them because I’m sure you’ve all heard them. I want to make it perfectly clear that the mass shootings of 2012 were tragic and to I was depressed for about two days after the Sandy Hook shooting. Evil is the only way to describe these diabolical individuals. I do not wish to make light of these tragedies or offend anyone by what I am about to say. I could not imagine losing my own child in such a despicable way and could not even begin to understand what those parents and the loved ones of the adults are going through. I can not say with certainty that I know how to stop people like that, and if there is a way to keep mentally deranged people from obtaining even zip guns, I’m all for it. So when I say this, please do not think of me as a heartless bastard. I'm just pointing out alot of the things that never get mentioned after incidents like these, unconventional wisdom: 44 people were murdered as a result of the four mass murders in 2012.(I subtracted the suicides) It would take at least 7 seven round magazines to accomplish this, two thirty round magazines or one with 50 or more magazines. I looked at the FBI stats, something called the Unified Crime Reports a.ka.a. UCR The stats are not available for 2012 yet, but in 2011 there were a total of 12664 homicides in the united states. 393 of those were classified as justifiable homicides. 8583 of those were committed with firearms. This means that 32.3% of all of those murders were commit ed without firearms. (4081 homicides) about 93 times the amount of homicides caused by the mass shootings in 2012. 869 were committed with personal weapons. The FBI describes this as hands, fists, feet, etc. The next time you see someone get in a fight, remember that about 20 times more people died from that reason then were killed by the heartless bastard motherfucking mass shooters of 2012 in the previous year. There is a problem with violence in this country. A lot of it is caused by our cultural norms. We need to instill the idea in people that it is not okay to initiate force when you get in an argument. It is not okay to kill your wife or husband if you find her fucking someone else, or punch someone if he calls you an asshole. These problems have much more difficult answers then limiting rounds in magazines or banning “ assault rifles.” http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-offense-data

Book report

Lately I’ve been reading a lot of poker books, but in high school I read a lot of literature. I didn’t read things like the Great Gatsby or Sense and Sensibility. I preferred Tropic of Cancer. Tropic of Cancer is an awesomely filthy book. Who wants to read about the 50 shades of Gray when you can read about Henry Miller’s escapades with one legged hookers or how his Indian friend took a shit in the bidet of a whorehouse? It’s racist, it’s sexist—he calls one of the characters, Tania, an international cunt. I used to tell people this was my favorite book and hardly anyone ever heard of it. “What’s it about?” They would invariably ask. I used to say I don’t know. This guy goes to Paris…he’s an ex patriot and he wrote a book that changed the censorship laws in America. That’s not what it’s about though. It’s about sex mostly, but it’s more than that. It’s a book about a working class man trying to become a writer. Actually he is a writer. Trying isn’t the right word. “A year ago, six months ago, I thought I was an artist. I no longer think about it. I am.” Over the summer I read the book again. It’s amazing how much stuff I missed before because I wasn’t literate enough to understand it. I’ve had that line memorized for years, but I don’t think I fully understood it until recently. The book is chock full of vocabulary candy. The first time I read it, I had no idea what half the words meant. I didn’t know what a valise was. I didn’t know the meaning of “polysyllabic” or “indefatigable.” No one uses the word “quim” anymore either. Back then I had to have the dictionary besides me just to translate the book so I missed a lot of the subtle nuances. Reading a book like this when you are older is such a different experience. My vocabulary is more extensive and even if I come across a word I don’t understand all I have to do is touch it and the definition instantaneously appears like magic. I now know that “I am” is the shortest sentence in the English language. It is also the English translation of the name of god. Yahweh is I am. His Indian friend takes a bath every Sunday so he can please the great I am. I’m paraphrasing because I don’t feel like going back and finding the passage, but it’s things like that that really stick out when you read it again with a 34 or 35 year old brain as opposed to the brain of a horny virgin teenager. One of my favorite parts of the book is a monologue by Van Norden. It’s a rant about sex and poverty. It’s so different from the way I remember it. I thought it was a great ode to manliness. I admired the way this guy had such a way with women. I was wrong. “I had a married woman the other day who told me she hadn’t had a lay for six months. Can you imagine that? Jesus, she was hot! I thought she’d tear the cock off me. And groaning all the time. “Do you? Do you?” She kept saying that all the time, like she was nuts. And do you know what that bitch wanted to do? She wanted to move in here. Imagine that! Asking me if I loved her. I didn’t even know her name. I never know their names… I don’t want to. The married ones! Christ, if you saw all the married cunts I bring up here you’d never have any more illusions. They’re worse than the virgins, the married ones. They don’t wait for you to start things – they fish it out for you themselves. And then they talk about love afterwards. It’s disgusting. I tell you, I’m actually beginning to hate cunt!” I have a different perspective. There is another line where Van Norden says he would rather read a book than have sex(more colorfully of course) When I was young I thought that was hilarious. Now, from the perspective of this age, it is one of the most melancholy stories I have ever heard. Sex is something I used to think of as a wonderful expression of love between a man and a woman. It was supposed to be the joining of souls, not in any supernatural sense. The soul I am referring to is the soul of consciousness. The soul is between your ears. Everything I value, everything I am meeting in the middle with a woman who shares the same values.—the romantic ideal. This was real easy to think before I ever had sex, especially as the proverbial late bloomer. Now it just seems like a biological need. It’s lost the romance. I’ve become so cynical. You say what you need to say, do what you need to do to cum. You always hear how everybody doesn’t like to play games, but when you don’t play the game and are genuinely honest—it makes you look needy or desperate. The same thing happened to me when I re-read The love song of Alfred J. Prufrock. In High School I remember it reminding me of my favorite nostalgic memory of going to Philippe’s after the Dodger game because it says something about sawdust on the floor. Now another couple lines stick out: I grow old…I grow old… I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. I don’t feel that old, but I understand the poem a lot more now. He’s a dude that is afraid of rejection, has trouble with women and is a little down on himself because his hair is graying and he has a bald spot. I put a lot of water based pomade in my hair and it’s starting to get thin. I cuff my jeans. I have always been out of fashion, mostly on purpose. It sucks getting older. The problem with Prufrock is that he gives a fuck. I used to give a fuck, now I don’t—this is what I keep telling myself. People are always asking me for advice about women. I don’t know if I’m qualified to give any advice. I guess my advice comes down to this: You don’t want to be afraid of rejection like Prufrock. Yes you should dare goddamn it! What you don’t want to do is become misogynistic cynic like Van Norden, fucking away all the meaning out of life. Reading that book again really affected me. It changed my perspective, again.

Why I support Dan Cathy’s (CEO of Chick Filet) Freedom of Speech.

I’m tired of hearing about Chick Filet, but here’s the reason why. The CEO has the right to express is opinion because he is a citizen of the United States of America and enjoys the right to speak his mind because of the first amendment.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
So yes, the CEO does have the right to say what he wants the same way the Westboro Baptist church has the right to say god hates fags at military funerals. Customers of Chick Filet have the right to stuff as much cock in their mouth to protest gay marriage as they want. On the other hand, supporters of gay marriage have the right to boycott the company as well.
Freedom of speech does not make you right or moral however. When it comes to sex, many of the religious folks in our country have morality all backwards. In my opinion, there are immoral sex acts. Rape is immoral. Forcing someone to have sex without their consent is just about the worst crime I can think of besides murder. It is wrong, not because it says so in some bronze age book with an unknown author says it’s wrong, It is wrong because it is evil to force someone into having sex with you against their will. Forcing people to do things against their will is evil.
There is a story in the book of Genesis that most Christians say is the reason why god hates fags. . . okay maybe most Christians don’t put it in those terms, but a rose by any other name is still a rose, right? The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is engrained in our culture, so much so that we think we all know it. Why even read that part of the bible, everyone know s the story right? Here is a quick synopsis, ikn case you haven’t actually read the first book of the bible or maybe you just forgot:

The story begins with two angels entering the city of Sodom. They meet a man named Lot who wants to wash their feet. The bible is chock full of foot fetish imagery like this. Jesus washed the feet of his disciples in the new Testament (I know you didn’t think Jesus was so kinky did you?) Lot was very hospitable he even baked the angels’ bread without yeast, because mnot only does got hate fags—he also hates yeast.
Then some dudes from the city come up to Lot and ask him to bring out the new boys so they can have sex with them. I guess they didn’t know they were angels, maybe they hid their wings? This is wrong by the way. I am assuming that these dudes wanted to fuck the angels with or without their consent. That’s rape. Rape is bad. Rape really is evil.
So then Lot is like “No, my friends. Don’t do this wicked thing.” Good for Lot, he doesn’t agree with rape, this is a good moral lesson to learn. . . “Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.”
What the fuck! Lot! What the hell is the matter with you? You offer your virgin daughters up for rape instead? That’s ass backwards. Rape is wrong. Rape is wrong, Rape is Wrong. Stand up and tell them to go fuck themselves. The angels can fly away with their invisible wings, but you should protect your daughters from being raped as long as you can by any means necessary.
Then the angels tell Lot to get the fuck out because they are going to destroy the place.
Lot and his family get out of dodge(or Sodom) I’m sure you’ve heard this part before, fire and brimstone, yada, yada, yada, the city is destroyed, but first Lot’s wife looks back at the city. Because she looks back she was magically turned into a pillar of salt.
So then after they leave Sodom, Lot no longer has a wife. His virgin daughters decide to get him drunk and fuck him so they can preserve their family line through their father.
I’m not the first person to critique this story, Richard Dawkin’s says similar things in the God Delusion, but I’m convinced that most Christians don’t really read their bible. If they did, there would not be so many.
There is a problem in this country. Many of our citizens really believe people can be turned to salt. They really think there is a god that will bless America and say fuck Iowa if he doesn’t like what they are doing. They feel like if we allow gays to be married or in the military god will jack off and cum fire and brimstone all over this great nation. I don’t think this is a red herring when about 40% of the nation think something called the rapture will occur within the next fifty years.
That is not a reason to mandate against someone else’s pursuit of happiness. Let people be happy and let the chips fall where they may. The real sexual crimes need to be prosecuted, but contracts between consenting adults should never be stifled. If this is your reason against gay marriage then your reasoning is not protected under the first amendment. Say what you must, do all you can, proselytize to your heart’s content but you do not have a right to impose your religious doctrine to squelch someone else’s individual rights.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Magic sky daddy in the sky says it’s wrong, is not a rational constitutional reason to outlaw gay marriage.

On one hand I agree that the CEO has the right to say whatever he wants because of the first amendment. I am a strong advocate of the first amendment. I like the fact that you can say anything in this country, no matter how bat shit crazy you may be. I even support the right of the Westboro Baptist church to protest military funerals. It is really the same issue. He thinks god hates fags.
I also support the boycott of Chik-Filet. This is also a right given to us, not only by the first amendment but by the fundamental nature of capitalism. I support individual rights. If two men want to stand side by side together and declare themselves married—that should also be a right protected under free speech. The state should either recognize it for them as well, or just get out of the business of marriage all together (which is what I would prefer)
Sex is not a crime, unless it involves force. I prefer individual rights to family values because family values seem to be valuing the wrong things in my opinion. If children are raped in churches, no one orchestrates a boycott against that church or eats a Big Mac in support of the victims. When Dan Cathy says they believe in the biblical definition of marriage—people get all giddy. What the hell is the biblical definition of marriage anyway? David had 600 wives. Should that be part of the biblical definition of marriage as well? I’m not against polygamy either, but if we have a family law court that issues alimony what happens if 300 of your wives want a divorce? How do you divide the alimony up amongst the wives? These are things that the courts could figure out, but polygamy has got to be the worst idea of marriage of all, except it’s still not worse than rape.

You Don't Want To Sit Next To Me

Interesting thing happened to me at the casino last night. Well, interesting for me, but that’s all that matters anyway ;) I sat down a at a $2-$4 game. I probably shouldn’t have because the rake is insurmountable, but I wanted to test this hypothesis that I had. I usually played during the day when I went to the casino. The day shift is full of regs, mostly retirees trying to eek a few extra bucks out of their social security checks. I wanted to see how the games were at night. My guess was the games would be better.
There is one old obnoxious guy named Charles. He plays a lot of hands. It’s as if he is donating all his money, but the weird thing is I feel like he knows better. He knows a little about the game. If he would focus and screw down he could beat the game. Watching him gave me an epiphany.
People don’t always gamble to win. Most people don’t even expect to win. They see poker on TV and see people win consistently. They have to know that there is a way to win, but most of them never look into it, or if they do they don’t use what they’ve learned.
I saw one guy praying for a third heart on the river. I didn’t come, but it wouldn’t have mattered if it did. The third heart will come on the river 18% of the time. If you stand to win more that 4-to-1 on a call then you call. You make money even though you only win 18% of the time.
I expect to win 55% of my sessions. That means I am losing 45% of the time I play. If I dedicated more time and learned how to table select better and became an expert I could probably only win 60% of the time. The first thing I did when I walked in was remind myself that I only win 55% of the time. I was hoping there would be a lot of loose players at night that just played to unwind after work. It was a Wednesday, so it wasn’t as good as it could be, but there were several loose players. I responded by playing tight.
I also told myself I wasn’t going to hide anymore. Hiding isn’t the right word, but it’s the first word that comes to mind. I just let everyone at the table know I played online, a lot of heads up. Poker is a game of manipulation. Most of the books and the podcasts say you should never let anyone in on the fact that you know how to play. That’s probably true for the most part, until you have reason to do otherwise. One of the things that drove me crazy when I went to San Manuel before was that everyone was trying to change seats all the time. Some change in hopes of increasing their luck and some change to get position on a bad player. When no one knew me they frequently sat to my left. I don’t want that because money has a tendency to flow clockwise in poker. It’s a game of position. If I have a decent aggressive player to my left, he’s going to put me in some tough spots. People always flocked to my left when I sit down. Last night they wanted to be on my right. I just said I played a lot of head’s up online, but now it’s for ridiculously small stakes. I complemented a guy on a good play, even though he lost the hand to me. It really was some textbook check raise the turn on a pair and a draw to the nut flush. The next hand he moved away from my left.
The reason why they don’t want to be on my left is because they realize when I come in I’m coming in for a raise. And when I come in for a raise I’m going to have a better than average hand—especially compared to the rest of the table. The guy that did the fancy correct play still lost a huge pot. If I play head’s up—You can bet that we will never chop. I miss head’s up. I play 95% of my hands when.
If it get’s down to the two of us pre-flop, we’re not splitting three bucks—it’s going to be mine the vast majority of the time and anything else that comes into the pot along with it. Just by subtly throwing that out there the aggressive regs didn’t want to be to my left. They knew that every time everyone folded they were going to have to face a raise and they have no idea what to do in that situation. They love to chop, it gets them excited. Why didn’t I think of this before? It made it much easier to win and I felt like the regs gave me more respect too. Sometimes it feels pretty good when people don’t want to sit next to you.

comme d’habitude

I’ve been doing a lot of reading these last few weeks or so. I came across something by Ayn Rand in some compilation book about comparing yourself to others in your career. She said it is not necessary to compare yourself to others, just do the best you can do. That was not the most eloquent way of paraphrasing, but you get the point. She used the career of a writer as an example. She said a writer should not choose to be a writer because he is the best writer in the world. A writer should choose to be a writer because he has something to say.
Queue epiphany sounding music.
Look at the cartoonish light bulb above my head.
By the way I chose to omit “he or she,” because I’m purposefully avoiding the androgynous form everyone uses nowadays. It’s just this idea I have, but I digress.
I’ve started writing some short stories, well I guess a single short story would be more accurate. I think the reason I never tried to publish anything was because I always thought I had to be the best god damned writer in the whole fucking world. The problem is I want to live a life with the least amount of regrets as possible. I find that I’m more prone to regret the things didn’t rather than the things I did do.
I used to read Henry Miller in high school and I had to look up a lot of the words he wrote. People always tell me I have this stellar vocabulary. Again, “stellar,” used by choice. Most of the words that people get so impressed by are words I learned from Henry Miller. I mispronounced a lot of them. For years I totally said voluminous and polysyllabic incorrectly. Now you can get the MP3 pronunciation on the internet—That’s so much better than Webster’s dictionary. There’s still shit in that book I don’t understand because some of it was written in French. I understood common terms like cul-de-sac, or c'est la vie, but I didn’t get things like “comme d’habitude.”
Having an extensive vocabulary is not as difficult as it seems. All you have to do is read books by authors that have great vocabularies. In high school I had to keep a dictionary besides me, but now we have the internet. Now, with the internet, the answers are at my fingertips. You can highlight a word on you kindle or kindle app and the definition automatically pops up. What could be easier?
Henry Miller wrote Tropic of Cancer in France. It was published in 1934. It would never have been published in the United States of America at that time.
It was deemed obscene until the supreme court deemed in not obscene in Miller Vs. California (1973). Rappers can say Mother Fucker because Miller dared to write “international cunt.” I can’t say international cunt. I’ve only used it in a sentence maybe one time before this. IT just doesn’t flow right for me. I can’t think of a possible practical application of this phrase in contemporary America. I can’t use the word quim. No one knows what that is anymore because no one uses the word quim. They say Va-J J. Everything is vanilla, people are too afraid to say what they are really thinking.
I don’t have to emulate James Joyce. I don’t even like James Joyce. I can just have something to say. Having something to say doesn’t mean you have to use words like somnambulist. I don’t have to write like Henry Miller. In fact, reading it again, I wouldn’t want to. Anti-Semitism is not cool.

I haven’t written a short story in years. I’ve been looking at it all wrong. I don’t have to have the biggest vocabulary or be the best writer. I just need to write well with my own purpose. I don’t need to find my own voice—I already have that. I just need to say what I have to say.

Incomplete sentences

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything for this blog. On one hand I feel like If I write something I should try to publish it as well. If I put something on my blog, I squelch any chance of getting it published. On the other hand, sometimes I just want to experiment with my voice. Something like this has absolutely no commercial interest, at least without a theme. I can’t sit idle. It’s difficult for me. I have to be doing something. Learning, writing, fidgeting. Sometimes I listen to music, sometimes I listen to podcasts. I keep my mind active otherwise I start going stir crazy and start fidgeting. Keeping busy. That’s an incomplete sentence. It’s good to interject those every now and then just for emphasis. I’m at a point in my life where I feel like I’m not doing enough, but I’m wrong. It’s just about everything I can. I have four books and this week I decided to learn Spanish. This is partly because I’ve been applying for several jobs and a lot of places ask how many languages you speak so I figure this would look better on a resume. The other thing is I feel like I want to accomplish something. Learning a language is a lot like running a marathon. It talks time, effort, and most of all dedication. I haven’t decided how I’m going to do it yet. I don’t necessarily want to take a class. I want to learn it on my own. I found a Spanish pod cast and I have the total emersion software from Costco, it’s just misplaced at the moment. I also want to try the method my grandmother suggested when I was a kid and watch Novellas. I there a Telemundo version of Hulu? I took Spanish in High school, but I didn’t take it too seriously. I learned how to conjugate a lot of verbs a few nouns, but never really was able to put it all together. The problem was it was all book work and I never ventured out to use any of it. I never attempted to have a conversation en Español. I used to get pissed if someone started to speak to me in Spanish. It annoyed me a little bit. I thought it was a ridiculous proposition to just start speaking to someone in the United States in Spanish. Not to be stereotypical (actually I am going to be stereotypical) but I don’t look like someone that would know how to speak Spanish. I mean, I understand if someone asks ¿Hablo Espanol? I don’t understand just speaking Spanish a million miles an hour as if you assume everyone in the free world speaks your native tongue. You never see a guy from China go up to someone that looks like Owen Wilson and start speaking Mandarin. I decided to get off my high horse though. I subscribed to the Spanish101 podcast. I’ve listened to three of them now. It surprising how after years of being dormant the stuff I learned in Spanish class is slowly being resurrected. I have no idea if I’m spelling any of this correctly, this is the draw back of learning from a podcast. Comos Estas? Estoy Bein. De Colores et cetera, but I learned new stuff too like lentamente (slower) and Entonces(so and then so) which is a concept I still quite understand. I also don’t understand why someone would say more or less when asked “how are you?” More or less what? An incomplete sentence? Things are going pretty good with Kim too, she’s my only subscriber, which is fine. I mostly do these things for myself but it’s nice that she subscribed. She motivates me and I don’t even think she realizes it. She’s just being herself. It’s nice.

I like You Too.

You wouldn’t know it by looking at me today, but I used to be shy. In middle school, I couldn’t even talk to girls. In high school, I got a little bit better, but was still deathly afraid of rejection. I had a warped sense of romance. I used to read Shakespeare, I loved his sonnets. Required reading for sure, but I thought they were the epitome of romance. My favorite was sonnet 130. To be honest I didn’t remember the number, but through the magic of Google, I just typed in “Shakespeare sonnet breath” and that’s all it took to bring it up. The internet is amazing. This was my paradigm. I thought this was the truest expression of romance.

So instead of asking girls out to a movie or for ice cream, I just kind of stared googly eyed at some unrequited object of my desire, (extremely sexist, I know) Instead of going to dances I spent my time laboriously writing sonnets of my own. A few times I even mustered up enough courage to give them to some girls.

I wouldn’t recommend this.

The empirical evidence suggests that your chances of obtaining a date this way are extremely dismal.
A sonnet is a fourteen line poem written in iambic pentameter. In case you don’t remember, iambic pentameter is a combination of ten unstressed and stressed syllables. It gives the poem a song like rhythm, you know . . .if you actually can read it out loud with self-confidence.

Needles to say, I am not longer a fan of poetry. I fucking despise poetry. I’m strictly prose. I just buy cards like everyone else. I’m not really a fan of them either.
A couple of weeks ago someone pretty special, her name is Kim, gave me a little book entitled I Like You, by Sandol Stoiddard Warburg and illustrated by Jacqueline Chwast.

I can not pronounce either of their names.

It was cute, really cute. I could probably plagiarize the whole thing and it would take up a page, but it was nice and sweet. One of the lines is:
“I like you because
When I tell you something special
You know it’s special
And you remember it
A long long time.”

It’s poetry and I like it. I like it because I like the person that gave it to me. It was much more thoughtful than a card, but what really floored me was the fact that she wrote something underneath the book cover. I unwrapped it like a gift. I’m not going re-write it, because it was special, just for me.

I’m 34, and this is the first time anyone’s ever written anything like this for me. I just felt the need to share that. Sure I’ve received cards, but those are things written by other people. This book was written by someone else, but the little inscription on the inside cover—that was her. That was different. That, among other things, is why I’m in love.

Save Bucks

I, like most people is a nation, am addicted to caffeine. Our paper money should have a slogan like in coffee we trust. We love to suck down Red Bull, Monster, and Rock Star In mass quantities. I try to be frugal, but energy drinks are one of the leaks in my financial ideals. For some reason I’m really careful about looking at the unit price on most things at the grocery store, but when it comes to liquid energy or courage—I never seem to care that much about getting the best deal. I will if what I’m looking for happens to be on sale and if it is I’ll buy more, but if it’s not, it never discourages me—I’ll pay the little extra happiness tax. I’m frugal, not a miser.
I once read a book on investing that contained great ideas on saving money. The book was by Andrew Tobias, The Only Guide To Investing That You’ll Ever Need. It was a great book. Not only did it talk about P/E ratio’s, indexes, options, mutual funds and EFT’s but It had great money saving tips. One tip was buy commodities, but not the type of commodities you see in the financial section of the Wall Street Journal. He didn’t recommend that his reader’s buy corn or pork futures. He meant stock up on things like mouthwash. When you buy stuff in bulk it usually comes at a discounted price per unit. So if you bought a case of Cepacol that would last you a couple years or so, in the long run it would be cheaper than buying a 750 ml bottle every month.
This is how I purchase beer and energy drinks, albeit I’m cutting down on both. I do this with a anything I can really. The hard part is storing it. Tobias suggests underneath your kitchen table or under your bed. I keep after shave, razor’s, and body wash stored in some odd places, but I don’t care. With Register Rewards and coupons I picked up jour bottles of after shave for $1.80. I don’t clip coupons, but some of my coworkers do. They know all the tricks for register rewards and look at sites like crazycouponlady.com. I don’t have time for that, but Pro Glide razors can be purchased for pennies on the dollar.
I generally buy soy milk , not because I give a damn about animal rights, but because it spoils much more slowly. In the long run it saves me money. Almond milk is even better because you can buy boxes of it at Costco for really cheap and it doesn’t have to be refrigerated until after you open it. A twelve ounce box of Honey Nut Cheerios comes with a price tag of $3.50 at the grocery store, but 2.1 lbs. is $6.39 at Costco. A dozen Durex condom’s is $15.99 at your local drugstore. At Costco you can pick a Durex pleasure pack for $9.99 and it contains 4 times as many condoms. If you don’t have a use for condoms you can Google internet magazine subscriptions and pick up a two year subscription of Playboy for less than ten bucks.
I haven’t looked into buying lotion in bulk.
I really do enjoy the articles.
There are a myriad of things you can do to save money, but this is one of my favorites, probably because I figured it out on my own. I’m going to let you in on a little secret, well a couple. When I was in high school, I had a really good economics teacher. If you’ve known me for any length of time you’ve probably heard me talk about him. He got me really excited about Individual Retirement Accounts. I was intrigued with the idea of compounding interest. If you start young enough, like at 21 or so and just set aside $50.00 a week you can retire a millionaire by the time you reach 65. You can even stop at 27. There are a lot of naysayers these days. Everyone’s so anti Wall Street, the sky is falling—but don’t pay attention to them because you’ll be sorry. In the Automatic millionaire, the author suggests that you give up that cup of Starbucks every day to find the money to invest in your IRA or 401K. This is also a great idea, but I found a better one.
The economist, Milton Friedman once said there is no such thing as a free lunch. I’m a big fan of Friedman’s ideas, but I can assure you there is a such thing as a free cup of coffee.
Starbucks has exploitable policy. If you order a caramel frap-a lotta calories they make it on the spot. They steam the milk and brew the espresso to order. If you try to watch calories like me, however the five calories in a regular cup o’ joe is a lot more appetizing. It’s also cheaper. I think it’s less than two bucks for a tall coffee. Here’s my tip. If you go in the morning—they will offer a couple different brews,
one bold, perhaps a French Roast and one mild roast, most likely Pike Place. Demand goes down throughout the day since most people like to drink coffee in the morning. I like to brew my own coffee in the morning, but I found that when I go into Starbuck’s in the afternoon they tend to run out of drip coffee. They also have a policy if they are out of what you ask for—it’s on the house. More often than not, when I ask for a cup of coffee at 3:00 p.m., I don’t have to pay for it.

The Bubbly Stuff

The late Christopher Hitchens’s once said, “The four most over-rated things in life are champagne, lobster, anal sex and picnics.”
I have never liked champagne, but it is compulsory to drink it on special occasions like weddings or New Year’s Eve. It’s so engrained into the fabric of our society that we even give sparkling apple cider to children and people that abstain from partaking in the pleasures of alcohol. For some reason bubbles are linked to fun like Pavlov’s bell was linked to food for dogs.
This year I will not be drinking any champagne because I have to work, but I thought it would be fun to write something on the process of making it. Most people never think of these things and since a lot of people have been telling me that I have a lot of useless information I thought it would be fun to share some interesting factoids about what you’ll probably be drinking during the first few seconds of 2012.
Most people are aware that there is a difference between sparkling wine and champagne. Because governments like to make useless laws, for an adult beverage to be called “champagne” it must come from a certain region in France, the Champagne region. This is the conventional wisdom. If you’re like me, and you like to exploit conventional wisdom and impress some of your friends at the same time—you can bet (perhaps your next drink) that there is “champagne” that does not come from France. You have to be subtle, and bets like this tend to work better on drunken people, but you will surely win.
All you have to do is say Korbel. It’s made in Guerneville, California near the Russian river. I’ve been there twice and even though I don’t like champagne, I found it interesting to learn about. According to Wikipedia, Korbel relies on a semi-generic provision under U.S. Law to call its sparkling wines California Champagne, but on the tour they give another reason. The treaty of Madrid was written in 1891 and this contains the provision reserving the term “champagne” for sparkling wine produced in this special region of France. Korbel was founded in 1882. Therefore, they used the term “champagne” before the law was created. In essence—they were grandfathered in like when you get unlimited internet on your cell phone even though it’s now limited to 2GB for new customers.
I should edit the Wiki, but I’m too lazy.
Creating champagne is a process. The first step is the same as any other winery. Grapes juice is mixed with yeast and barreled until it ferments into wine. Most people are familiar with this process. IF you’ve never been to a winery, you’ve at least probably seen the episode of I Love Lucy where she steps on the grapes.. . so you probably have at least a rudimentary idea of how the process works. After the wine is produced, and this is the part I find fascinating, it’s bottled. The difference between champagne and Two-Buck Chuck is the second fermentation process. A second batch of yeast and sugar is added to the bottle. The wine is fermented again. This creates the bubbles and the distinct taste that differs from wine. It also makes it stronger. The level of sweetness is dependent on how much sugar is added to the second fermentation process. This is called the dosage, pronounced Doe-ssage (like massage) The dryer the champagne the less the dosage is added and vice-versa.
Adding yeast to a bottle presents an interesting problem. At some point you have to get it out. Traditionally this is done by storing the bottles and a 45 degree angle with the cork facing downward. Hundreds of them were placed on a rack just like this. Then the bottles were moved by a man that had to wear a face mask in case one of the bottles exploded and shot the cork off, which was fairly common. Each bottle had to be shifted twice a day so the yeast would settle to the top of the bottle. It is done with hydraulics now, but it’s more fun to think of someone actually doing it by hand.
The last step in the process is to freeze it and then take off the cork. Once frozen the yeast pushes out of the bottles. Consequently, so does some of the liquid. Another problem for the champagne makers is each bottle contained a different amount of liquid. The solution was to add foil to the top. This concealed the discrepancies in volume between different bottles. Technology has now eliminated the need for this concealment, but the foil still remains. It is now part of the allure; it gives it that certain specialness. Foil became a mark of luxury. This is why Imperial margarine is wrapped in foil, the makers of Imperial margarine tried to capture that same allure. (Don’t eat that crap by the way. It’s full of trans-fat.) Trans-fat is more dangerous than terrorism.

So this year, when you drink that bubble stuff, you can tell your friends how it’s made. Raise your glass, think of how I’ll be working and have a Happy New Year.

Gambling Is Not a Crime

I’ve been starting to play HU NL on cake because the games are quick and I figure it will be the fastest way to build a roll, at least that’s what I once read on two plus two. The problem is the games are sparse. Limit Head’s up games are even more rare. Come to think of it there’s nothing really that popular on Cake except for the No limit Cash games. I watched a few videos on it before and I figure I can just play 30 buy-ins. It’s helping with my bet sizing and reading abilities. What does someone do when they have one of the monsters they get about 4% of the time? They tend to raise more, especially the min raisers.
Yesterday someone called a raise with 92o and I filled up. I couldn’t imagine hardly any deuces in his range that didn’t contain an ace so I stacked off. I was wrong. Why did he play 9-2? My first inclination is to think. . . yeah big mistake, but that’s not really the case. The reason to play 9-2 when my stack is on the shorter side is because I would stack off if he hits a monster(he had quads) He didn’t need a hand that strong, but it’s very deceptive. In fact I should probably add a couple of those bottom 10% hands in my range just for balance. 92o and 83o seem perfect.
I don’t really like Cake, but I don’t have much choice. I'm dead money right now and I'm okay with that. I play ultra micro levels to try to learn the game, figure out my SPR, and learn the ABC's of No Limit before I venture out into higher stakes.
Today Card Runners posted a thread on 2+2 that suggested the DOJ thinks the WIRE act only applies to sports betting. That seems strange to me. If they thought that then why did they seize the domains of Poker Stars and Full Tilt? I can see Tilt, but it appears the Department of Justice did not know about the so called Ponzi scheme until well after they seized the assets.
The proper roll of government is to protect its citizens from others, not to protect citizens from themselves. When laws are passed to protect people from themselves, freedom is lost. It bothers me to see how often people make the wrong arguments. Poker is not gambling, it is a game of skill. This moot point, is a red herring. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, it is gambling. It certainly can be, and for the losers it is. What is wrong with gambling? Is it inherently immoral? Gambling is not a form of stealing. All bets are essentially an agreement just like any other verbal agreement or contract. When you “put your money where your mouth is,” what you are really doing is placing a value on your knowledge. If you wager $100 on a football game you are betting that your knowledge of the players, injuries and assessment of the skill of the players et cetera is better than your opponent’s knowledge of his or her chosen team. If you sit down at a poker table you are banking on the fact that your knowledge of the game is greater than at least one of the other players.
Of course you could be wrong. You could even bet a hand of blackjack thinking that your “luck” is good. Your knowledge is flawed, but people make these bets everyday. They don’t realize the casino knows that as long as you bust before the dealer you pay them, but if the dealer busts in the same round the casino doesn’t pay you.
In gambling, knowledge is power. This is not the same as stealing. If you buy a car at one dealership, but don’t know it is $5,000 cheaper at a dealer across town—you lose $5000 to your ignorance. What’s the difference if you lose a gambling game because of your ignorance? Shouldn’t you be free to choose to do so?
Should it be a crime to waste your money?
Nearly all gaming is games of skill. Usually the casino, or in the case of lotteries, the state is in possession of that skill.
Why does it matter if someone bets $5.00 on the Laker game over the phone? What’s wrong with that? What if it’s $500.00 $1,000, or even one million? Why is it anyone’s business? Why should someone not have the right to do as they please with their own money? The question should not be is poker legal according to the WIRE ACT of 1961. The question should be why does the government need to impose the WIRE ACT of 1961 on it’s citizens?

Vegimite

On the gold coast of Australia, there is a casino named Jupiter’s. The cocktails are not “free.” I say free n quotation marks because Vegas cocktails have are paid for with a hidden cost. Degeneracy is a lot more expensive than any fair price. The air is fresh at Jupiter’s. Smoking is one of the seven deadly sins in Australia. Marlboro Red’s don’t have a surgeon general’s warning. Instead the country has opted for graphic pictures of charred lungs. Smoking causes gangrene, I never even knew what gangrene was until I saw a picture of it on a pack of smokes. Gangrene makes your foot look like you were walking on hot coals for three hours and then decided to stand on a blistering hot spot for a smoke break. Mouth cancer looks like the Angelina Jolie’s lips kissed a hot iron and her teeth and gums were burnt to a crisp I the process.
They have a vending machine similar to the one at jury duty. It dispenses free coffee and soda. You just need a rewards card. I think I received two free refreshing diet cokes. I probably could have earned more if I would put a penny in one of the pokies, except they don’t have pennies in Australia and I don’t play slots. The poker room is downstairs. They didn’t have Limit Hold Hold Em and spread only two tables of No Limit. I chose not to play because I suck at No Limit cash. I just went to look around, check out the ambiance and the atmosphere. The atmosphere was reminiscent of a Motel Six lobby, Australian food sucks. The only thing worth eating down under is meat pie and schnitzel. Beef isn’t corn fed, so it has that grassy gamey taste to it. I It’s the kind of beef you get a t a health food store that has all the omega 3’s 6’s9’s or whatever. Less fat equals less taste. So I had the lamb shank. It was decent but the mashed potatoes were instant and the carrots were overcooked. Our waiter had an American accent. His name was Michael. He insisted that we (there is no more we, but there was) try Vegimite. Vegimite is made from Yeast. XXXX, pronounced four X, is a brewery in Queensland. They brew yellow-pissey beer similar to Anheuser-Busch. The process includes disposing of the yeast. Some genius figured out that they can sell this used yeast to a company that would make something out of it. I say something because it can only describe it as a cross between margarine and axle grease. I don’t understand how it’s fit for human consumption.
For some reason, I have an uncanny knack for remembering names. My father still calls my Uncle Avery, Adrian. He’s been doing since I was young enough to still call him Dad, which means two things. One—It’s not genetic and two—I’m getting old. Michel lacks certain social skills. He had this look on his face that screamed my hand is in the cookie jar and I don’t want to get caught. His voice was timid, and he avoided making eye contact. Quaint, shyness often gets mistaken for creepiness. He wasn’t creepy, but creepy was close. Michael was from the United States. He loved to surf. He said the one of biggest surfing competitions is held at Coolangatta, a beach town like Huntington or Laguna Beach. Before relocating to Australia he lived with his mother in Florida. Before that, he lived with his father in Loma Linda. The best man at his father’s second marriage works at the Lincoln Memorial Shrine in Redlands.
In other words, it’s a small fucking word after all.
I went to the A.K. Smiley Library today and I know the Lincoln Memorial Shrine is somewhere around there, but I’m not exactly sure where. My extraordinary name remembering skills are humbled by my lack of sense of direction. I want to go in there and say hey I met this guy that knows you in Australia, but I don’t know who to look for. I remember Michael’s name, but I don’t remember his father’s best man’s name. I have to meet someone to remember their name. I almost don’t want to go because It’s been a mystery for a couple years now. There’s this guy I heard about in another country that works a couple miles away from me. Part of me wants to keep the mystery, but part of me wants to check out the Lincoln Memorial Shrine. I don’t know. It can’t be half as good as Great Moment with Lincoln at Disneyland right?

IDGAF

New Year’s resolutions are for people who lack the ability to be honest with themselves. If you really want to quit smoking or lose weight—Do it now. Don’t resolve—take action. Just do it, not because of some slogan on a box of Nike’s—because the second you resolve to do something—you are hesitating. Hesitation doesn’t accomplish anything.
For some reason I’ve been meeting a lot or writer’s lately. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while, but I’ve always stopped myself. I’m way too critical. I have some ideas and I begins to write a story, but they seem to all end up being dragged to the recycle bin. So I’ve decided to write a blog. I’ve started this before, I’ve written some things here and there, but I always felt like I need some kind of gimmick. Blogs that have a lot of reader seem to be about something, perhaps cookie recipe blog, or a political activist blog.
I don’t want to do that. I tried here and there, but I don’t think it’s for me. I thought about doing a blog that reviews as seen on TV products, which is ironic because I don’t even watch TV. There needs to be an objective third party review of all these products. Some are decent and some are huge rip offs.
This is not going to be about a subject though. This is going to be a verbal exercise. I’m just going to commit myself to write every day for ten to thirty minutes, just to practice. The grammar may not be perfect, I might not throw in many polysyllabic words and no one will probably read it. I might write about my friends, or doing some card tricks at bars, or dating, or whatever. I’m not sure yet.
This is more like a diary, but with no key and I’m not hiding it under my bed.
I had an epiphany the other day. Someone asked me what changed about me? She knows who she is and I’m not going to mention why, but after careful consideration I realized what it was. I have found the key to happiness. This is the key that will set yourself on the path to accomplish all your hopes and dreams. Anything in life is for the taking if you just recite this little incantation. It works like magic. Brace yourself. Here it is:
“I do not give a fuck.” That’s all you have to do. Of course I don’t really believe in “magick,” but this is as close as you’ll get to anything supernatural. Let me explain. Let’s say you meet a woman at the grocery store and you think she’s really attractive, and you want to meet her, but you chicken out. Maybe it’s because you haven’t shaved, or you’re not feeling very attractive because you’re bumming it in your pajamas or maybe you’re just a pussy that has no self-confidence. If you didn’t give a fuck you would have asked for her number. Maybe she would have said no, maybe she would have given you a fake number or maybe you would have met the woman of your dreams, but if you give a fuck it makes you hesitate. If you don’t give a fuck, you become indifferent to rejection and are able to take action.
It took me a long time to learn this. I used to be too polite, I was always afraid to say what I really wanted to say in general. When religion came up, I used to just go with the flow and keep my mouth shut and just pretend that pray with everyone at the table. I don’t do that anymore, and I feel a lot better about myself.
When it comes to writing though—I still give a fuck. What if I’m not good enough, what If I don’t know what I’m doing what if my vocabulary isn’t up to par? What if I don’t know how the story is going to end? What if my character development isn’t good enough? What if I don’t have enough information? What if what I write is offensive? What if it gets rejected?
A better question is. . . What if I just don’t give a fuck?

Squatting on Wall Street

I saw this Occupy Wall Street protest and I’m not really sure what these people are trying to accomplish. If you want to protest at a publicly traded company—try Starbucks. Those greedy bastards that give their employees’ health insurance have only earned me 19.24% on my money. Better yet protest by not using Google. I’ve lost 13% with that stock.
What is Wall Street? It’s a street in New York where stocks are traded. Stocks are shares of corporations. You too can own a share of stock in a company, or multiple shares in several companies. Why would you want to protest this market? If you don’t like big oil, (which I freely admit, I’m not part of that crowd) would it make sense to protest outside of Auto Zone because they sell Pennzoil?
I used to make a couple hundred bucks a month playing online poker, (usually) averaging about one losing month per year. I read a couple books on investing and decided to start putting some of that money into the market in 2009. It’s a good thing too, because if I would have left a lot of that money on FTP—it would have been gone. I did this because I started seeing people have their withdrawals confiscated by the government. Part of what I had left on the site was probably seized by the government, but most of it was either grossly mismanaged, or straight out stolen, . . .but looking back, the writing was on the wall. I probably won’t ever get that money back. Luckily I put most of my money on PokerStars and the stock market.
Even if the market goes down by 50% tomorrow I’m still ahead.
I like the stock market. I like looking for low P/E ratios on stocks that pay dividends. I’m not rich, granted, but I also enjoy putting money into 401K’s. I like that the government let’s me defer my tax liability to invest. I don’t like paying taxes. I think the government has mismanaged Social Security even worse than Full Tilt Poker has managed player deposits.
I like watching my 401K grow. I expect to have swings. I don’t mind the swings, in fact I kind of like them. Don’t get me wrong, it sucks to have your money go up or down 5% in any given week, but I like the fact that when it goes down, I get to put my money in when stocks are a discount. I made some mistakes investing in the stock market, but I’ve also learned from them. I’m down about 7% right now and I’m okay with that
I think the government has a duty to protect people against fraud, but here’s the thing about fraud you usually don’t see it until it’s too late. Let’s face it, Greenspan and Bernanke made a lot of mistakes in this area. A lot of Objectivists, like me even vilify Greenspan. He’s the ultimate example of what happens if you compromise on your principles. Regulation of a free market is no longer a free market. That being said, there seems to be something immoral about telling people the can afford a house when they can’t. It seems to me, that the problems of this economy were not the problems of Wall Street—a lot of people lost their shirts in the stock market. The problem seems to be with the deceptive evaluations of risk, predatory lending, and sub-prime mortgages. If someone has bad credit-they probably should not get a mortgage. If someone makes $30,000 a year, they can’t afford a $400,000 house. I wish I could tell you what the hell a derivative is, but I can’t.
I think one of the problems is that if you ask the average Joe on the street what is the Dow Jones Industrial Average? They don’t have a clue. S&P 500? It’s one of those things on the news that terrify them when it goes down. If you ask 10 people which president is on the dime, you might get one person to give you the correct answer, if you’re lucky (without checking their smart phone—made by some “diabolical corporation”) I can tell you Rosevelt’s on the dime, but I only have a vague idea of what derivatives are and have an even vaguer idea of why critics say it lead the economic collapse.
I’m not a fan of government spending, but I think I could live with it a little better if they start using some of that money to teach kids about money. Learn about the stock market. How is money made in this economy?
When I was in high school, I had one semester of economics. That’s not enough. I was lucky enough to have a teacher that actually started a bank with seven of his friends. They only needed a million dollars, but were able to lend out more than that( I want to say 3 million, but it was about 16 years ago so I’m not sure) He taught us about thinking at the margin by bringing in a couple dozen doughnuts and having a couple students eat as many as they could. I learned that the world has never had a 100% capitalist economy, nor a 100% socialist economy.
I learned that greed is good, contrary to popular belief.
Money is not backed by gold (at least not anymore) It’s only an idea, a representation of value.

I watched a video showing some of these Occupy Wall Street people. Here’s my question. What is the goal of these protestors? One man said there are no jobs for teenagers. Will protesting “Wall Street” create more jobs for teenagers than lowering (or eliminating) the minimum wage? I don’t smoke marijuana, but legalizing it would do way more to create jobs in in this country than protesting Wall Street. We might even get some of these hippie pot heads to work, since they wouldn’t have to pass piss tests anymore.
Another protester says if you paid more in taxes then General Electric, you should be here. WTF? Corporations don’t pay taxes—people do. If you decided to put $15 bucks in a GE rather than blow it on a pitcher of beer(B.T.W. I’m not against beer by any means)—you would have earned $1.30, not counting fees of course. How much of that should be taxes? Let’s say you also bought Rite Aid and lost .50 cents on that share. Should you not be able to deduct that to pay for GE’s taxes? What if you lose money one year and gain the next? You can’t subtract the previous year’s losses on the current year’s tax liability. Hey. . . what if you get taxed 30 cents on that GE share, but the company decided to raise it’s products prices to make your EPS $1.60?--Who’s paying the tax now?

Pro-Vaccine

For the record, I am not a fan of Rick Perry. Before the debate at the Regan Library, all I heard about him was he likes to pray for jobs, and pray for rain. I prefer problems be solved thorough rationality. In my opinion, reason and logic are much better tools for solving problems than asking the Flying Spaghetti Monster(assuming that’s the god you believe in, although it may not be) to solve them for you.
So I started watching the debate with a preconceived notion of Rick Perry. I still disagree with his fundamental mystic philosophy and I think he could have answered some of his attacks better if he started out with a better premise. What really upset me however were not so much Rick Perry’s comments, but Ron Paul’s attack on Rick Perry’s vaccination mandate. Ron, along with basically every other Republican (with the exception of Romney’s half ass objection) said that parents should have the choice. It is wrong for the government to impose what they think they should do to inoculate their children.
I can not believe the anti-vaccination movement in this country. It is dangerous that someone can lie about a study and the idea still takes off, poisoning the intellectual wealth of a nation. I also can’t believe “pro-lifers” can be against vaccination. These people are against the parents right to choose abortion, but they are for parents choosing to increase cancer risk for their children. This is not the same thing as mandating helmets for motorcyclists. If someone choses to ride a Harley without a helmet, they do so at their own risk. If a parent decides they don’t want the government telling them they need a car seat, only the child is at risk. If a parent says they don’t want their kid to have the HPV vaccine—they are endangering the lives of everyone by propagating the virus and weakening the immunity of society..
The fact is the HPV vaccine only works in about 95% of the women who are inoculated with it. Let’s say a man with HPV has sex with someone with the HPV vaccine that did work. Now she has sex with another man—a man without HPV. Now, that same man has sex with a woman who does not build anti-bodies against HPV even though she had the vaccination. She still doesn’t get the disease because the guy banged a gal who did have the antibodies against HPV.
This is called herd immunity. A country has the right to defend itself against biological warfare. We have the right to create laws telling people they can’t send anthrax in the mail. By that same right, we have the right to protect ourselves from HPV by requiring vaccinations for everyone. We have the right to quarantine people with the Ebola virus. To me there is not difference between the person with the Antrax in the envelope and the person that wishes to spread cancer causing viruses because they chose not to get vaccinated. To say this is an attack on freedom is like saying the second amendment protects your right to manufacture biological weapons.
I actually like that Rick Perry created an executive order to have 12 year old girls vaccinated for HPV. I would have preferred he did not leave an opt-out option for parents. I wish he would have defended this position better.
This makes me question the anti-abortion movement. I’m sure there are some people that oppose abortion because it ends a “human life.” You know what else ends a human life—Fucking cancer. IF you are so against terminating cells the size of a hang nail then you better be for preventing cancer terminating the life of a grown woman. I can respect the argument against the pro-choice movement, but not if those who argue against are okay with parents choosing CANCER over vaccination. It almost seems that they’re not so much against offspring dying as a result of their parent’s actions—they’re just more concerned with people staying abstinent. Let’s face it if you had to have a kid every time you had sex—you might think twice about it.
Michelle Bachman has no problem screening immigrants for diseases, Why is this any different? Are diseases spread by citizens better than disease spread by immigrants? In my opinion viruses don’t discriminate. Would it be better to screen potential sex partners before they are allowed to have sex than to require a vaccination? Should we issue sex licenses? This is why I refuse to join the Republican party—they are so inconsistent. Consequently, I also refuse to join the Democrats for the same reason.

Exercising my first amendment right

Today is a great win for freedom of speech. When Fred Phelps dies we can all go to his funeral and shout FRED WAS A FAG! FRED WAS A FAG! We have to be very careful with our definitions though. In this context I'm using the word "Fag," as someone or something god hates--like people in the UK call cigarettes fags--god obviously hates cigarettes like he hates shellfish, yeast, foreskins, goats cooked in it's own mothers milk, and animals with bruised testicles. So I may use the term fag differently than others may use it. For example, when I go to a seafood restaurant I like to order fag scampi. You have to be very clear about this--you don't want to cross the line and commit libel or slander a dead man at his funeral.

Why is it that we see more Christians protesting gay marriage than we see protesting the Westboro Baptist Church? Because, ironically, they can back up their protests biblically. Why do you not see moderate Muslims being more proactive in stopping the radical islamo-fascists ? (I'll give you a hint--it has to do with their holy books) There's no sense pretending--religion is bad for you and it’s bad for society. Luckily, we live in a secular nation and have the freedom of speech to say so.
Here it is in case you haven't read it in a while:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Since I’m on my soapbox I may as well say it. I’m tired of people assuming that everyone believes in the bible. Sometimes you just don’t want to hear what the bible has to say. Here’s an example (I apologize in advance for posting something so disgusting)
Psalms 137:9 (New International Version)
“Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks”