***Warning: Heavy Political Content***


I have a sh*tload of person bias of course, but Barack Obama's speech was dead freakin' on last night. It was tough, inspirational, honest, and expertly delivered. He confronted the attacks that have been directed towards him in the last several weeks and threw it write back in the face of the McCain campaign. Now they have responded with an act of complete desperation by nominating the most inexperienced VP candidate ever (except for Stockdale, perhaps) as an attempt to gain the support of the mythical throngs of Hilary supporters who are supposedly on the fence. It funny because all these right-wing pundits who have been beating the 'Obama is not experienced enough' drum must feel like fools now. Not to be crude, but if McCain croaks while in office would you want someone at the helm who has been a mayor of a town of 6000 and Gov. of Alaska for 2 years. To top it all off, she's stridently pro-life, a creationist, and is stupid enough to believe that drilling for oil in ANWR will solve energy issues. AND! she has no idea what the job of the VP is. Seriously. I leave with some good humor from the Daily Show.

Faux-lympics

I gotta say I've been watching more of the Olympics that I ever had planned to. The last several nights has seen me watching USA vs AUS in softball, USA vs VEN and ITA in men's volleyball. Fuck, I even watched part of a water polo match as the US got their assess handed to them by the team from Serbia. Who, I noticed, were all quite hirsute. I guess they don't have to shave to lessen the drag as they swim. Last night I watched gymnastics, more softball, and all sorts of swimming events.

The big story, of course, is Micheal Phelps' run at 8 gold medals. Yesterday, a story came out reporting what he eats on a typical day. His diet consists basically consists of eggs, cheese, and an assload of carbs. My favorite was his dinner which had 1 pound of pasta and an entire large pizza. He's living the life, man. World famous athlete who eats like an 800 pound man.

Another story is how China has engaged in some trickery in everthing from the opening ceremony to the ages of their gymnasts. The opening ceremony used cgi effects in place of real fireworks and, in Cyrano de Bergerac fashion, opted to trot out a "more attractive 7 year-old" to lip sync to the voice of the buck-toothed girl with the good pipes. It's some pretty sick shit that looks factors into the equation with girls that young. Fucking Jon Benet Zedong. It's the same crap when any young girl goes missing in the States. If she's blonde, white, attractive, and from an affluent family it takes center stage in the national news. If she's black, or poor. No one gives a fuck. No one remembers Alexis Patterson.....everyone knows Elizabeth Smart.

The Chinese also got busted for having an underage gymnast on their team. Clearly, she's not the only one. The whole team looked 12. Win at all costs baby. I remember watching the little league world series when I was a kid. Teams from Chinese Taipei pretty much dominated for 20 years or so. The kids on that team all looked like 18 year olds. They all had deep voices, acne, and "fur in places where the kids on the other teams had no fur." That's why it was such a big deal when Trumbell won in 89. The 12 and 13 year olds from Connecticut beat grown men with muscles, facial hair, and larger dongs!

That was our planet!

Those goddamn dirty apes at pokerstars are up to it again with the 'battle of the planets' promotion. I have 4 SNGs left in this round of 20 and have an outside chance of finishing in the top 100. I have primarily been playing in the 6 max SNGs which only pay the top 2 spots and result in fewer points towards the promotion. The current leader of the 'Venus' (ha! rhymes with cleanest) division has over 600 points. That seems like a pretty sick total. I'd have to win half of my 6 max SNGs and place second in the others to achieve that total. It doesn't seem possible, but I suppose there is probably a little bit of strategy that goes into it. A good player would probably have a reasonable chance of making the leader board playing 6 max SNGs, but you'd have to go on an extreme heater to get over 500 points. It seems like a good strategy it to start off your blocks of 20 SNGs with 1 or 2 3-table tourneys would allow you to get a decent jump on the field if you were lucky enough to win 1 and place in the other. For some reason I've never done well with the 3 or 4 table SNGs, but if i wanna make a serious run at some 'free' cash, I might have to learn.

I just got done playing a SNG just now. I was getting beat around a bit the first few levels, but won a big pot with AK over AQ. Two hands later I had 88 and reraised a player in EP for most of his chips. He hems and haws in chat, calling me a donk, and typing that he had 88 and was folding it. Normally, I don't show, but I knew I could probably tilt the fucker so I showed my 8s. Sure enough next hand he donked off his chips-sadly, not to me. Funny thing is that he had a Phil Ivey pic for his avatar. I'm pretty sure his hero Phil Ivey would not have announced the hand he was going to fold his hand in the same breath as calling his opponent a donk. Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure Phil Ivey has probably never played a 6 dollar SNG either.

Speaking of avatars, I'd like to change mine. I wonder if pokerstars will allow me to do it again. I originally had a picture of a 70s hockey goon named 'robert maplethorpe' who was apparently the inspiration for the 'ogie oglethorpe' character from the classic movie 'Slap Shot.' Right now I have a picture of a psychotic drunken cartoon mouse from a short-lived show that was on adult swim a few years ago. I need to think of a good one.

UPDATE: I just checked on stars. Do they allow you to change it all you want now? Seems like it.

Everyone's a scumbag.

John Edwards just admitted to pulling a Newt Gingrich (i.e. cheating on wife who has cancer). Turns out Edwards was screwing some washed up party girl from the 80s and may or may not have sired a child with the woman. Not only that, his PAC had been funneling money to her shady video production company to the tune of 100k. So, he was taking money from all the people who admired his populist idea and giving it to his mistress. Wonderful. It's shit like this that turns the most idealistic person into a hardened cynic.

Maybe I expect too much of men like this. Politicians are granted extraordinary amounts of power, and it seems like very few of them can stay clean. If they don't end up fucking some staffer, they end up whacking off with some random dude in an airport bathroom. Or getting their pockets lined with kickbacks from fat Texas oilmen. Or get hummers from chubby chicks. Or choke on pretzels while watching scooby-doo reruns. Fuck em' all.

I don't really think this will have any effect on the election this year. Presumably Obama has kept it in his pants, and McCain should be running like the wind to avoid this issue (he cheated on and then divorced his first wife who had been crippled in a car accident). I guess we can be happy Edwards' campaign never went anywhere. I can't tell you how pissed I'd be if he had been the nominee and then this came out.

Tao of Poker's 5 yr tourney

Last night I was able to play in the tourney commemorating 5 years of Tao of Poker. It was a 5 dollar buy-in, with a serious overlay. A free seat into a 5k event at the Borgata Poker Open. Sometimes the best things in life are free! My first table was pretty tight. I wasn't able to get much going and ended the first hour with only a few more chips than I began with. The second hour I started getting a few decent hands, but didn't get played with too much. I was around 3k in chips when I was bounced around tables a few times and ended up at the same table at Dr Pauly. Not too long after I was seated I was dealt A8 sooooted in the small blind. Pauly was 2 to my right and had pushed his last 1k or so into the pot. I decided to reraise to about 2.4k , in hopes of squeezing the big blind out of the pot and going heads up. The big blind paused for a bit, but eventually decided to call with KQoff. Flop came K 3 6, turn Q, river K and it was over. It was a pretty fun two hours. It's too bad more tourneys don't have a 5k overlay. Anyways, thanks to Dr. Pauly for setting this up and congrats to the dude who took it down. Hopefully, he puts the seat to good use.

Le Théâtre de l'Absurde

Holy hell, this Brett Favre situation is mad and being in WI I get an closeup view of just how absurd this all is. I was watching TV Sunday evening as the local channels were giving us constant updates about where his chartered plane was and what time it was expected to land in Green Bay. The cameras where they to photograph him as he exited the plane and jumped in his Escalade. That night one story on the Journal Sentinal website stated that Favre will be competing for the starting job in GB, while another on the same freakin' site concluded that he is likely to get traded to MN.

They were all over Lambeau field yestersay like flies on shit waiting to catch a press conference that never happened because Favre and McCarthy's meeting went into the wee hours. There was rampant speculation last night as we learned that the 2 were still meeting. Does this mean Brett's the starter? Maybe they're talking about a trade? Maybe they were licking each others knobs? I swear, I am amazed the field reporters don't snap. I'm fully expecting one of them to go off and tell Tom Pipines he can shove this microphone up his ass.

The other side of the coin is the reactions of Vikings fans, of which I am one. There are two factions of fans; those who think Favre holds to the key to a Superbowl, and those who hate his guts because he was the leader of the mortal enemy for 15 years. If anything, I fit into the former group. I think the Vikes would have a better chance of winning if he were the QB. Good enough for me. I've always kind of admired Favre, except when he was in direct competition with the Vikes. The other group of fans would go nuts if the Vikes got Favre and would probably murder their friends, families, and coworkers with their bare hands.

However it all ends, at this point I don't care. I think the best ending would be for him stay in GB, beat out Rodgers for the starting job, and then decide to quit 1 day before the first game. I can only hope.

Random dump

My time here in Milwaukee is coming to an end. Soon I will be moving to Atlanta with my GF to start a new job. I'm pretty excited although I think I will miss many things about MKE. Change is good though, complacency bad.

Rock icon Paul Westerberg just released an internet only album that costs $0.49. You can buy it here. When I was buying it, I thought about how funny it would be it that 49 cent charge from paypal would make me over drawn on my bank account. Sadly, it's possible. In any event, the album is great. It is a bunch of songs and random tidbits, but you can only download it as one file. The idea, I suppose, is to encourage listening to the whole record rather than playing a few songs over and over while ignoring the others. I like the idea, but it only works if the whole things is worth listening to. It is.



Ok. This is one of the most exciting things (sad, I know) that has happened in a while. It took me over a year, but I finally beat 'The 100' on desktop tower defense and I was able to capture the moment with a perfectly executed screenshot. If you haven't played it before. I'll tell you it is the most addicting game you'll ever play. Anyway, now I don't really play it anymore b/c I've mastered it. Maybe they will come out with an updated version soon.