Weffalumps and Hoozles

They say Ambien isn't addictive in the habit forming way, so that aside.. after having taken my little bed buddy an hour earlier, I was still feeling a tad frisky in the early hours of the morning. My thoughts probably went something like, "Dude, this isn't working, let's go play some poker and then golf." I guess the stuff effects everyone a tad different, but for me, taking ambien is a lot like downing a handle of cheap vodka in one swig, then getting socked in the face with a mack truck composed entirely of down pillows. But without the physical effects of a hangover, I'm still unable to remember anything the next day.

I first started taking it during first semester finals last year. It took me a few tries to figure out you're supposed to take the stuff in bed, and not wander around aimlessly in the satanic grips of an ambien high. For example, ala Patty Mac the day after the Theology exam. "Are you alright?" "Huh wuh?" "You were wandering around the dorm last night and fell down the stairs. Came back up ten minutes later grinning and said, 'mission accomplished!' and went to your room." We may never know what happened that night, but I have a few guesses. I plead moral inculpability to two of the possibilites. This is all a fancy way of saying, don't walk around after taking ambien.

To continue, I was somehow coherent enough to aid my new goal of poker and golf to realize I didn't have any clean clothes. I then managed to gather my laundry from the basement and tackle the poorly lit staircase strewn with school boxes in various states of unpacking, and do the deed. I woke up the next day lying on the floor in the upstairs study, my laptop on a chair beside me. I noticed I was still logged into Empire poker, and was sitting away with twice my buy-in, when I heard Mother Dearest yelling my name. She walked into the study holding the battered and soaking remains of my only friend, cell phone.

Thus, I managed to destroy a $250 cell phone and win that exact same amount within the brief window of time alloted me by the ambien devil. My clothes were clean, the sun was up, and feeling well rested, I finished my fated task. Another brief glimpse into the Summer of Josh. If only the people around here played Frisbee Golf.


One of my few solaces has abused me like a red-headed stepchild. The new Willy Wonka movie priced me the dual penalty of $6 and the most eye-gougingly boring two hours of my life. I love Johnny Depp, and were I to bat for the other team, I'd be aiming for him or Christian. But gag me with a shitzu, he blew in this. The writing was atrocious, and all of the characters were horribly cast and played. I also love Tim Burton, but this time his infamous brand of cinematography was grafted onto the warty ass of an encephalitic midget. THE HORRIBLE FUCKING OOPMA LOOMPAS!!! I tried to leave after their first pop/rave ode to the gluttonous demise of Augustus Gloop, but my brother had the car keys.

He later brought home a rental copy of Constantine. I hadn't heard of it, but it had Keanu "I know Kung-fu?" Reeves, so why not. I was then treated to two hours of mindless blasphemy. The New York Times can quote this review, "Keanu Reeves plays the jaded demon-slayer Constantine, intent on foiling the plot of the Arch-angel Gabriel to bring Mutu, the bastard son of Satan, into the physical plane of humanity to test the worthiness of mankind before God!" That about says it all.

I suppose I should learn to stay away from anything my brother wants to see. His favorite movie of all time happens to be Joe Dirt.


Hmmm. I've got a room-mate now. I'll be rooming with Darren in Ojai until he leaves for Europe next year. I'll probably leave in a week or two. Which would make this the twilight of the Summer of Josh. Toodles. Oh yeah, if anyone needs to reach me, email me at tacjosh at hotmail, since the phone is down.

Picture Time!

I finally got around to downloading the pictures from my cellphone. The picture quality is surprisingly good. Sadly, my series on Johny K's belly were destroyed by same. Anyways, I proudly present, La Galerie Magnifique De Josh

Here's the cake P. Wod made for our last seminar. <3 u P. Wod!



I know we've all asked ourselves recently.. why Tim? Why. Parables in the Bible aren't simply to be ignored (think Sampson).



This picture was taken shortly after the Thesis party, but before Alan had gracefully relieved himself in the bushes of the smoker's patio in front of Anne Neumayr and Bernadette Coughlin. The latter upended my spit cup onto Keeler's lap in what I presume to be a preemptive strike. Here the evidence.



Were a straight line originating from PiePie's glasses and traveling down his line-of-sight to be drawn in true John Madden commentary style, it would fall lovingly and tenderly upon the offscreen visage of one Rebecca R. Shapiro. Awwww.



My shrine to section 3 philosophy in the library w/ PiePie.



Fly free Patty Mac! Your Canadian brothers now openly accept your lifestyle.



This has the makings of a hot Carl's Jr. commercial.



Really, who hasn't seen this before. Dirty girls.



Gabe, Jimmy, Koobs, the Kaisers and myself shooting up the Upper Ojai (represent!). Here is Gabe manning up on a clay pigeon.



My home-away-from-home in the last days...



The regulars! Terry, Bob, Pat and Big Al.



Santa and Big Al in the House Rockers debut.



Manning up after finals.



BDun getting all up in my grill.



Die Sarah. Note my striking resemblance to a wet gopher.



The neato MGM Tiger and his mancake handler.



Another shot of the Tiger.



The gang drunken bowling in the early hours of the morning at the Palms.



Pat only minutes later...



And no picture post would be complete without busting out the cute. Christmas Kitty!



And puppy love!



And finally, myself at the moment, ready for some hot bed loving. Toodles!

From the "Bored stupid" Dept.

Sometimes, sitting in front of a screen for hours on end, you get a little bored. Buttons get accidentaly clicked, and then you have to deal with the consequences. I present to you my latest creation, titled "-1BB EV"

Party Poker 5/10 Hold'em (6 max, 6 handed) converter

Preflop: Hero is Button with 7h, Th.
3 folds, Hero raises, SB calls, BB calls.

Flop: (6 SB) Qh, 7s, As (3 players)
SB checks, BB bets, Hero raises, SB folds, BB calls.

Turn: (5 BB) 5h (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets, BB folds.


Final Pot: 6 BB

The Machinist

Before Batman Beginnings, Christian Bale did a small indy film called The Machinist. It's about - duh - a machinist. The movie begins in media res, with the hero halfway though a year without sleep. If you're interested in seeing it, you should skip the following. I picked this movie up for a twofold reason: it has Christian Bale, who as I've said is Hot, and it's about insomnia.

I only wish I suffered from the same sort of insomnia that this hero does, and for the sake of illustration, I'll refer to it as Diet-Center Insomnia. They actually had Bale go down to at least 120lbs, maybe less. He looked like a concentration camp prisoner. I've heard of method acting, but damnit to hell, this is sick.

One of the opening scenes, after seeing the hero zombie it up at work, has Trevor Reznik (Bale's character) nodding off on his couch to a copy of Doestoevsky's The Idiot. I love Doestoevsky, so I got a little giddy, thinking that this movie might attempt some sort of Mad Russian plot line with correspondingly twisted characterizations. The Idiot deals with one Prince Myshkin, a sort of ideal of nobility and charity. Myshkin befriends a man he meets on a train taking him to live with the husband of his only living relative, a general in the army. Myshkin and his friend Rhogozin are depicted in stark contrast; Myshkin is often thought an idiot for his quiet and childlike mannerisms, and Rhogozin is your typical clever and wicked Russian. They both meet a girl, and Rhogozin falls in love with her. The story centers around Myshkin trying to save the girl from Rhogozin, and his conflicting love with the daughter of his host. In the end, Rhogozin tries to kill Myshkin, and makes off with Nastassya and murders her. Agalya, the general's daughter, runs away as well, and Myshkin loses his wits. With this in mind, I started looking for any subtle parallels in the movie, which from the getgo is clearly a mystery.

Trevor often spends his nights with a hooker named Stevie. He confides his problems with insomnia to her, and she "comforts" him. She offers to give up her lifestyle for him, and at first he glady accepts. But he also meets a woman who has been serving coffee to him in the early morning hours after work in an airport coffeeshop, and begins to spends time with her and her son.

An accident at work occurs after Trevor first meets a shady character named Ivan. Ivan distracts Trevor, who is helping another guy cut something in a saw-mill. The guy gets stuck, and Trevor is unable to shut the machine off before the other loses his arm. After explaining what happened, he is told that no one named Ivan works there, and the boss assumes Trevor has gone nuts, noting his obvious health problems and lack of attention. Trevor is eventually fired, and he spends the remainder of the movie trying to track down Ivan.

It becomes fairly clear that Ivan is an imaginary character, so I figured the writer was attempting to contrast the real Trevor with this imaginary Ivan fellow, ala Rhogozin. The prostitue could clearly represent Nastassya, and the coffeeshop girl the general's daughter Aglaya. Ok. Trevor finds a picture of Ivan fishing with a buddy from work, and manages to lose it. He later finds it on Stevie's nightstand, and assumes Ivan is her boyfriend. He is disgusted with her, and against all her protests, leaves her after a judicious beating. We never see the coffeeshop girl again, and the movie resolves with Trevor finding Ivan, who he thinks kidnapped and killed the son of coffeeshop girl, and murdering him.

He finally realizes that Ivan and the coffeshop woman aren't real. The latter is the mother of the child he killed in a hit-and-run the year before, the same child he imaginarily befriended and Ivan killed. Realizing the nature of his illness, he turns himself in, and immediately falls asleep on the bench of his prison cell.

Bleh. What a bunch of modern Psychological bullshit. This movie had so much potential, and had me guessing at what was really going on. Unfortunately, what I was guessing was far more interesting and creative than what was intended. The parallels between the movie and The Idiot are clearly there, but fall apart along with the plot in the end. The opening scene with him reading The Idiot is meant to serve as the beginning of his self-imposed fantasy, a way for his intellect to make him realize what he has been supressing. Blah Blah. I really wish someone could capture the characterizations and tragedy of a novel like The Idiot, and produce a decent modern movie. And use Christian Bale. The movie is worth watching for him alone, just don't expect anything brilliant plotwise. I will say that the ending isn't predicatble.

I've now slept three times (I won't say nights, I just went to bed after dinner and got up at midnight) in the last eight days. It's not insomnia.. when I get tired, I sleep well. I just haven't gotten tired very often. Weird. I should probably go back to the doctor, as this might have something to do with the heart issues I've been having. Say a prayer if you're into that kind of thing.

I've been kicking ass on the links though, and my HC is almost back to scratch. I had a lesson the other day from our new Pro, and he noticed a few problems with my swing. Sure enough. I'm getting tempted to spend the next year working on my game and try the amateur Nationwide Tour. What a sweet life. Play golf for five or ten years and earn enough to retire on interest. I wonder if I should be more worried about the moral and social utility of the ways I plan on earning money.

Wave of Mutilation

I'm killing myself, I'm sure. I've only slept three out of the last seven nights.. a predictable pattern of two day intervals. I'm at a trough right now, and how-do bed, don't mind if I skip the forplay. Before that though, we have pressing concerns. I have yet another new hobby! The ancient and se(a?)cret art of Chinese Paper Folding. My floor is currently littered with the mutilated corpses of many brave 5x5 squares of multi-colored paper, each frozen in a tortured mockery of divers forms of boxes, baskets and small furry woodland creatures. An apt Platonic metaphor can most likely be found somewhere.

On another note, I would go so far as to say that you haven't really lived until you've played a morning round of golf with your brother-in-law, your Club's resident assitant Pro, and two other good old boys, all the while suffering from both sleep deprivation and malnuourishment. I was Tiger Woods for those few fleeting hours. And yes, I took their money, a cool $1.50. We're talking high stakes gambling.

My brother-in-law, the former Vice-Principal for the local Junior High, just got bumped to head Principal, which is pretty sweet (teachers might not get paid shit, but the big wigs do). He's a great guy, and I'm really happy for him. He's also a damn good golfer. Our asst. Pro is not. I don't know what it is about PGA Professionals (not the touring ones), but most of them are dicks. I worked at our club for three years in high-school shagging balls and cleaning clubs, and suffered under the reign of the biggest asshole I've ever met. He was recently ousted by the course members, thank God. Judgment is still out on the new guy. He gave me a pretty cool swing tip while I was on the range, so I'll give him the benefit.

Apparently I'm the point leader in our WSOP keno league with 9th, 4th, 3rd and 1st place finishes, whoo. I don't really care about the poker though, I just like hanging out with the rednecks, drinking and smoking and pretending like I have a life. My brother has caught the bug like so many people, and spends all his time playing play-money online poker. He takes his wins and losses more seriously than I do. I busted him at the last tournament, and he almost cut me. I'm pretty confident that the poker ponds will be well stocked with fish for the next few years. Listening to the grandma next to me berate someone for calling without proper pot odds (when he clearly did), while a guy at another table expounds on the nature of coin-flip races (calling an all-in with J/10s), all the while playing in a sports bar in BF USA... well, I get giddy. God bless the WPT.

Hmmm. So, yeah. I should probably pick up alchoholism. Make things interesting.

I take it back

A day off was what I needed I guess. Back in the saddle, I won $800 in my first 150 hands, or less than an hour of play. A few statistics, representing the greatest rush I've ever seen, let alone experienced: 80BB in 150 hands, 35% flops seen, 68% flops won if seen, 28% of hands won, 100% showdowns won. Yikes. And I only had one big pair. Just a loose aggressive table paying off my multitude of top pair decent kicker hands, or folding to my bluffs having not seen me showdown a losing hand once. Another session following had me on top of yesterday's loss.

This just manifests more clearly why most decent players aren't making much money in these shorthanded games; they just can't handle the swings. While I've experienced the extremes in two days, much smaller swings happen on a session to session basis (according to your standard deviation, mine being about 20BB/100 right now). A lot of my winnings are coming from good players who are caught in a downswing, and pay me off with losing hands more than they ever would when in control of their game. I experience this too, but to a much lesser degree. Once a player can make the transition to just seeing chips for what they are, they don't mind losing 50-100BB in a day or two as long as they know they played their best. It'll come back in spades. In the end, you're not playing to score a big rush, or dig out of a losing streak. You're playing for the far off in the distance average hourly rate. The more hands you play, the closer your true winnings will reflect that number. You simply have to keep your head, pay attention to every hand and every players betting tendancies, and make the best play you can in every situtation. Pretty easy really. Meh.

And with the many truly horrible players playing right now, that far off number keeps getting higher and higher. I have about fifty players in my buddy list at the moment, and every day I see fewer and fewer of them coming back. But new ones keep coming in :) Make your easy money now though, because it's not going to last much longer. I'm so tempted to put my bankroll at risk and start playing mid/high limit ring games, because if you want to make a decent amount at poker in the future, you're going to need to be playing higher limits. Low limit players will get better, and the maniacs will bust, and the current 2-3BB/100 winners will be nearly non-existant. Which means .5-1BB/100 at $50/100 and up will be the best most good players will be able to make. Maybe things won't get that dry, but I'd like to always have Poker open as an option for a little extra spending money (but certainly not a living).

Darren has been taking care of my Mustang while I'm gone, and he and Ryan Hoff have figured out my previously mentioned idling problem. Apparently my carbureatour is a tad too overkill for my little 302, so I need to downgrade. They put Ryan's carb from his '69 'Stang with a similar (though far inferior, haha) engine onto mine, and it ran perfectly. Hopefully this means I'm done troubleshooting the bitch, which I say with nothing but love and affection. This summers earnings are going to cover a few modifications for the poor baby, as well as living expenses until I can find a job, and a new laptop. I quickly realized I couldn't keep paying my brother 10% of my winnings (I should have learned this from my experiences with Keeler :p) for using his laptop. So, a hot new Dell Inspiron 9300 is in the mail and hopefully will get here soon.

So, you've read this far... maybe you're as bored as I am! Well then, keep on my friend, I'm riding a wave of mental diarrhea.

Catherine asked me to post some poetry. I enjoy writing, and have a few short stories I could share, but I don't enjoy reading or writing poetry. Most folks from TAC enjoy both, which is odd. Darren wrote his thesis on the importance of poetry in education (or maybe more generally, in the intellectual life). I should probably read it thorougly, but from what I gathered, his argument went something like this: The imagination presents ideas to the intellect gathered from sense perceptions. Poetry has the greatest effect on the imagination. Therefore our ideas or the ability to think are greatly affected by poetry.

Now that I've started writing this, I'm actually very curious about what he wrote, so maybe I'll make another post after I read it. But for the moment, suffice to say that the only poetry which I've ever read that had any influence on my imagination, was Milton's Paradise Lost. And he was a freaking Puritan. It had the same effect on my imagination that Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progess did when I was a child. Now Bunyan was a Puritan, and Pilgrim's Progress a work of prose, not poetry, but the fanciful allegory it employed is not far from the style employed in some poetry. Which brings me to the briding concept here, in that I hate allegory. So, two Puritans have written two separate works that are my single favorite works of their respective genres, both dealing with a religious subtext.

So, daring to generalize from these observations, I therefore dislike allegory or poetry not dealing with a religious theme, and not written through a puritanical viewpoint. We therefore have the very roots of a deep personal and religious self-loathing! Let me explain.

I have a very active imagination, and love works of fiction, mainly for their ability to depict rich and engaging imagery. I can remember entire stories from my childhood as collections of images and feelings. Re-reading these books, or ones similar, bring back the same moods and images brought about in my childhood. Which is probably the greatest joy most elderly people experience (but that's another topic), and one I too enjoy greatly. Music and movies I enjoyed when I was younger have the same effect. Weather as well. All of these things bring about a certain familiar emotion or frame of mind, I suppose you could say an imposition of the imagination on some present experience. But most novels, music or movies that I read/listen/watch these days fail to impact me at all in this way. Which isn't to say I don't enjoy them, but only in a different way, without much effect on my imagination.

Poetry and allegory are supposed to directly engage the imagination. The previous paragraph is simply to say that I dislike these mediums for that reason. As I've said, they simply don't do anything for me on that level. Most poetry is an attempt of the author to reveal an emotion or experience to the reader through some linguistic form or rhythmical quality. Unless a poet is writing about something that I've experienced myself, I can't really imagine it. And if I can, I find the form of poetry to be too artificial and cumbersome to present such ideas. Why not just come out and say what you're thinking, or if you're trying to depict some type of imagery, use prose? Whatever poetry tries to convey, can be done better through prose is my generaly feeling. So I generally find myself annoyed at any poetry I can relate to. The only exception to this, is Paradise Lost. This is the only example of poetry that I've ever come across that utilized a beautiful and powerful rythm and form. The imagery produced is amazing as well, but simply reading the verse aloud in my head lends a quality that I've never experienced before. The same thing goes for allegory. The Faerie Queen, Gulliver's Travels, The Divine Comedy.. I can only enjoy these stories as stories, and get annoyed whenever the allegorical intention of the author imposes itself. On the other hand, the very story of Pilgrim's Progress is allegory. There is no imposition, no hamfisted attempt at political or religious satire.

To conclude, why are these two works written by Puritans? Does anti-Popery, a hatred of tradition and symbolism, lend itself to these genres? Clearly! Now my life is based on tradition and symbolism, and Popery. Clearly, my experience with poetry and allegory reveals my own puritanical leanings, and hatred of my childhood, hidden to myself until now. My life is a sham, and I can but move to New England, and join myself with my Calvanist brethren. Farewell.

Ick

Sympathy post. 400 hands, -$1300. Single worst day of poker in my life. I've had bad streaks of cards before, and heard others bitch about them incessantly. But now I know what a bad day is. None of my big pocket pairs held up, or if they did they took the blinds, none of my straight or flush draws came in, every time I hit top pair I'd be outkicked by one, or some guy would river some weird two pair, and that doesn't help when you get AK/AQ/AJ about 50 times. Six-max tables are wild to begin with, and I can't complain, because these are the same guys padding my pockets, but WTF.

I took my brother to War of the Worlds, and wasn't expecting much. Enough said.

I'm sure everyone is excited for the Fourth tomorrow, but as far as I'm concerned, it's just one day I can't play golf on (stupid tournaments). I think I'll throw my computer in the trash can, rent Bridges Over Madison County, get myself a gallon tub of chocolate ice-cream, and just pig out. Because I deserve it girlfriend.

Kittenwar.

Thanks to boobs (<3 u), I present Kitten War.

I just got back from Kansas City, where my brothers and I attended a KC Royals vs. LA Angels baseball game. I'm not a big baseball fan, but going to live games is fun. That is, only after you're two innings into the game, and have decided in precise detail the exact manner in which the closest 84 people next to you are going to die. I'm not an overly vicious man, but sometimes.. I get ideas. And they're not nice ones. After the final victim in sight was rendered in full stereoscopic 3D Josh Imagination, having fallen over the bleachers into the field after a zinging foul from the man at bat picked off a low-flying pelican who just happened to to crash into the head of the single mother obstructing my view of the aforementioned play as she stood in the isle melodramatizing over her whitetrash brat of a child, only to be run over by the Royal's Mascot Sluggerr, driving hell-bent for glory around the dugout ring in his all-terrain 4x4... only then could I enjoy the game in some sort of fictious peace.

Then I noticed the JumboTron. You really don't know what a redneck is capable of until you've seen about 40 different couples voluntarily succumb to the peer-pressure tactics of the JumboTron Makeout Time camera search. This led to more painful imaginations, and by then it was the bottom of the fourth, and I really didn't even know what the score was. Which left me no recourse but to shell out $7 a cup for lukewarm 20oz Bud Lights until I actually started to enjoy myself in a Christian fashion. Which come to think of it probably doesn't involve jumping up with the rest of my neighbors and drunkenly shouting the lyrics to Big & Rich's 'Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy' during the rally inning.

I did score a Johnsonville Bratwurst which Sluggerr airmailed to me out of his Brat-cannon, so I can't complain. Good times. Good times.

The drive home was fun too. Nothing like a little Interstate Intrigue. For some reason, and this is particular only to my brother's '02 Grand Am, Truckers feel compelled to flash their brights at me exactly 2.3 seconds after my passing. It has always been thus when I drive this car, and I can't figure it out. The taillights are on, the brights off and regular beams on. I guess they simply recognize and salute genius when they see it. Sadly, this time I didn't get pulled over for SUSPECTED INTENTION to Possess and Distribute Controlled Substances, but there's always next time.

If you haven't guessed, yes, I am bored. Man was not meant to live without a job, and I can see why rich people have so many problems. Idle hands are the devil's workshop. I'm thinking of upping my move back time to mid-July, details to come.