Freedom On the Move!!!!!!!!!!

Reports have the returns on voting in Tikrit at 1 person as of noon, Iraq time. Now, I know in other cities the voter turnout is higher, but is that one guy from Tikrit even alive anymore?

TERRORIST: "You are the one who voted?"
MAN: "uh.... no. No. It was a different Ali."
T: "Then why is your finger blue?"
MAN: "Huh? Oh, this? I just put that toilet cleaner in my toilet and, oops - silly me, spilled some. Ha ha ha.... oh dear..."

Mercury Rising

I am eating my 4th tuna melt since last Monday. I can only assume my mercury levels are dangerously high. What a delicious way to poison myself.

Move Over McKinley

First, President McKinley is shot and killed in Buffalo. And now, Hillary Rodham-Clintoncollapses in my home town.

In my mind there was a much bigger cosmic connection, but after typing this, I see I was mistaken. Now if the guys in Franz Ferdinand all get shot and Scotland declares war on some Baltic state forcing a whole mess of mutual protection treaty clauses to be enforced and a world war to break out, well then, that would be weird.

The NHL Strike/Lock-Out/Cluster-F

Seriously, whenever you guys are ready...

Uh.....?

The guy in line behind me at the supermarket used the term "coinky-dink." As in "coincedence," except not.

He was around 30 and I detected no irony. He also (amazingly) seemed to have a girlfriend.

?!?!

The Grammys

They blow.

Poker Recap

Shockingly, I lost. And shockingly-minus-sarcasm, I wasn't the first one out. I was second.

But here's the thing. After trying to play my best, and losing, I then became a baby and tried to lose. And I started winning. Apparently I have absolutely no understanding of poker, because I was honest-to-God trying my hardest to lose (without being too much a sore loser and go all-in with a 10-high) and I won a few hands. This saved me from being the first to lose. And this is how it happens each time I play. I have a 25% chance to get the flush on the river? Oops, nope. Sorry! But some other jerk chasing a flush gets a full house on the turn and the river. Well fuck me.

I didn't get a single pair in the hole. Only 5 times did I get two face cards in the hole, and they were followed by a crappy flop which gave other players hands like three 6's or a 2-3-4-5-6 straight. Oh, that two-pair with a King kicker I had? Well, I lost to the exact same two-pair with AN ACE KICKER. Are you kidding me? Blow me, poker. Blow me Phil Gordon, Phil Helmuth, and Chris Moneymaker. Suck it Craig Raymer. I fucking hate poker.

Vivre la revolution de la musique

The latest playlist I put together on my iPod for the drive to Glendale:

1) Kick Out the Jams - MC5
2) Calm Like a Bomb - Rage Against the Machine
3) To Hell With Poverty - Gang of Four
4) White Riot - The Clash
5) Piggies - The Beatles
6) Holiday in Cambodia - Dead Kennedys
7) Viet Nam - The Minutemen
8) Caught, Can We Get A Witness - Public Enemy
9) Anarchy in the U.K. - Sex Pistols

My class anger is strong.

Poker

I am playing poker tonight. I hate poker.

I hate poker because I am a sore loser and I don't have the patience to learn how to play with the hopes of one day becoming a decent player. All I know is when I play by the rules and percentages I still manage to lose. I'm the guy who goes all-in with four queens only to lose to four kings.

And the whole time I'm "getting better" I'm also "losing money."

My impatience and sore losing are two of the reasons I can't stand golf. Well, I guess I also just really can't stand the game to begin with, but I think if I was decent at it I would be able to stomach a few holes. At least when I has having a bad day playing soccer my hustle and smarts would make up for an errant pass. In golf and poker, there is no making up.

Both past-times therefore -- for me, at least -- are just excuses to get drunk. And I'd rather sit in a pub doing that then walking around a constructed faux-gorgeous "park" or losing money.

So tonight, I'm playing poker. I hate what ESPN has done to the popularity of that game.

OK

I'm at the end of the first week on my new job. I have a computer at work now, so hopefully I'll post more frequently. I have some ideas for a more specific blog that I hope to start in the future, but I'd also like to get back into this space.

We'll see if I'm successful at that or not.

M-E-T-S, Mets! Mets! Mets!

Carlos Beltran is a Met! And I'm not excited!!!

Why? Sure, he's a very good player and he had a great post-season. But first off, this is the Mets we're talking about. And number 2: he batted .267 last season.

.267? $117M for .267? Guys get sent to AAA for numbers just worse than that.

This is going to a nightmare when Pedro's arm falls off in the 4th inning of his 3rd start, and then Carlos Beltran bats .267 again.

An apology

OK, so maybe all this talk about the "torrential downpours" was warranted. A bunch of people have died in mudslides and floods, and I saw a house that collapsed. So, I'll get off my high horse and apologize for my reaction to people's reactions to the rains.

What would you do?

It was a slow time at the supermarket, and they had a skeleton crew working the checkout. There weren't any baggers, so my cashier ended up walking around to bag all my groceries. Which is fine, except I had a lot of groceries and when I finished my debit card transaction the cashier was just starting to bag my foodstuffs. And the way she was situated, I couldn't really help because it would have turned into one of those "too many hands in the kitchen" type deals. So there I am, feeling awkward and weird as I make lame conversation about "all this rain we're having" and my class consciousness flares up and I start feeling like some elitist snob. BAG MY FOOD FASTER, PEON!!!

But then a bagger comes over... and I see the new bagger is a pregnant woman. Now I can't deal with it and say, "here, let me help" and she just smiles at me and says, "no, that's okay. I got it."

So there I am, standing with my hands in my pocket as a pregnant woman bags my groceries. Even with her assurance I still felt like an asshole.

I Broke That Car's Ankles

There's nothing like sprinting across a blacktop parking lot at night while it's raining and using the glare from lamp posts to tell you where the really deep puddles are, and then leaping-dodging-spinning-juking-deking around and over them (the puddles) in some slower -- almost lumbering -- and less graceful imitation of Barry Sanders.

But dammit if my shoes aren't (maybe) dryer than they'd be if I walked.

The Biggest Piece of Hyperbole Ever

Back in Los Angeles from the East Coast. It's been raining here a lot. You know, just sort of... wet. Whatever. Except on the news they're talking about how it's "pouring" and we're being "drenched" and it's "downpour" and "storms." They have reporters "live on the scene" (i.e. some jerk in a trench coat holding a mic at an intersection where water comes up to his ankle).

Are they aware of what happened on the other side of the Pacific? Because they did this a few months ago - when we were "inundated with storms" and meanwhile Florida had a hurricane epidemic.

This town sucks.